Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Hell, I don’t know—we had a CI call in? Keep it vague. You plus one go out there—I don’t want a crowd. I do want info on the vie as soon as possible.”

  Porter nodded, got up, and left the conference room. Farnsworth

  turned to Janet and Willson.

  “You people be careful out there. If Kreiss killed someone looking for his daughter, then maybe this kidnapping business has driven him over the top. It wouldn’t be the first time he has run out of control, and I don’t want the Bureau embarrassed again if we can avoid it.”

  “What was that little phone game you just played with Foster?”

  “That was an RA fucking with a headquarters horse-holder. That won’t keep the heavies off our backs for more than twenty-four hours, if indeed this was all about Kreiss from the git-go, which I’m beginning to think it was. But we have to be sure.”

  “Why bring in the aTF?” Janet asked.

  Farnsworth sighed.

  “Because, Janet,” he said, “there’s always the chance, remote as this may seem right now, that the people at headquarters know something we don’t down here in the too lies of Virginia. And if there is some kind of bomb lab hidden at that arsenal, do you want to be the first through the door? Or shall we let our dear friends from the aTF have that honor? Hmm?”

  Janet saw Willson and Porter grinning. It made her wonder if she was ever going to get ahead of the politics curve in this business. Like there had never been politics in the lab, she thought. Yeah, right.

  “Mr. Ransom,” Farnsworth said, “I’d like you to go along in case my team runs into Kreiss. And if you do, I’d like you to talk to him, see if we can keep Pandora’s box shut until we see what the bigs in Washington are going to do next. Can you do that?”

  Ransom looked down at the table for a moment.

  “I can try,” he said, not very convincingly. Janet thought he actually looked a little scared.

  Kreiss heard the noise of something happening up in the tunnel about the same time as the siphon chamber began another dump cycle. The roar of the water escaping the dark chamber beneath him overpowered all other sounds and filled the air with a fine wet mist. He decided to pull himself back up to the floor of the tunnel and was doing so when a sharp, noxious smell enveloped him. It was not only hard to breathe; it hurt to breathe.

  He swallowed involuntarily, causing his eyes to water. He could still hear nothing but the rumble of the chamber emptying into the earth below, but when he got his hands and shoulders up onto the concrete lip of the tunnel, he realized that there was a small, viscous, fuming river headed right for him. He pulled hard right as the stream hit the center of the lip and shot over. The corrosive fumes were so strong now that he dared not

  breathe, and then he saw a flat branch of the fluid sweep sideways along the lip. His rope disintegrated right in front of his eyes, and the metal on the end of the stick foamed ominously. He knew that smell.

  Acid. Nitric acid!

  He buried his nose and mouth in the vee of his crawl suit and took one deep breath, and then he got up and sprinted up the tunnel, trying to ignore the swelling stream of acid, until he reached the cone of sunlight and the ladder rungs. He stopped just outside of the light and took another deep breath, straining air through the tough fabric of the crawl suit. Was the shooter up there, waiting for him to stick his head out? His lungs were bursting, and his eyes were tearing so badly, he could barely see. No more choices here, he thought, and scrambled up the rungs, straining for the bright sunlight of the main street above. The makeshift grid of pipes slowed him down, but not much, and he rolled off the edge of the hole and kept rolling until he was all the way across the street and into a side alley. Finally, he could breathe, and, so far, no one was shooting at him. He lay back on the warm concrete and concentrated on clearing his lungs and eyes.

  Acid—a flood of it. Where the hell had that come from? Obviously, the bearded man had initiated that catastrophe. This place wasn’t the ghost town it appeared to be. He rolled over onto his side and looked around.

  There was nothing stirring in the morning sunlight. He could hear a faint slurring sound coming up from the tunnel, but nothing else. He took one final deep breath and got up. He’d lost his stick down in the tunnel, but he was lucky to have escaped. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if the rope had been eaten before he’d made it back up to the tunnel.

  He climbed the nearest building and spent the next fifteen minutes scanning the entire industrial area from the roof, but there was nothing different about it—same collection of concrete buildings, empty streets, and dilapidated sheds on the bare, dusty hillsides. The man who had pursued him from the power plant was nowhere in evidence. The power plant. He studied the front of the building, with its four garage doors and windowless exterior. The man had come out of the power plant, so whatever they were doing here, that’s where they were doing it.

  He climbed back down from the building’s roof and went down a back alley to the side of the power plant. The tank farm up on its side hill was visible behind its concrete mass, and he wondered for a moment if the acid had been dumped down out of one of those tanks up there.

  Then he saw what looked like fresh tire tracks coming out of the tank farm’s dirt road. Big dual tracks, the kind a truck would leave. He remembered the truck in the garage bay of the power plant. He wanted to take another look into that garage bay, but he did not want to cross the open space between the explosives finishing building and the power plant, in case the man was in there, waiting for him. He’d taken enough chances already.

  He looked at the tire tracks again, then knelt down and fingered the ridges in the dirt. Fresh indeed.

  He checked his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He decided to go back to his own truck and then go to Blacksburg and look up Mr. Browne McGarand. That green-and-white tanker truck should be pretty easy to spot. Find that truck, find his shooter. And, he hoped, find Lynn. This time, maybe he would take a gun. He still had Jared’s .45 in his truck.

  He’d have to find some ammo.

  At 3:30, Janet, Ransom, and Ken Whittaker were waiting out in the bright sunlight on the main street of the arsenal’s industrial area. The two young rent-a-cops were finishing unlocking the padlocks on the final two buildings adjacent to the power plant. The Bureau team had arrived at the front gates at just after two o’clock, where they had been met by Ken Whittaker, the local aTF supervisor, and the same two kids in their little rent-a-cop pickup truck. The group had done a quick windshield tour of the bunker area and then descended on the industrial complex. Whittaker, a tall, thin man, wearing oversize horn-rimmed glasses, was in nominal charge. Sunday or not, he was dressed in khaki trousers and shirt, and he had his aTF windbreaker and ball cap on. When Willson had briefed him, he had been all business, and he surprised Janet by asking none of the bureaucratic ground-rule questions that had been swirling around this case from its inception. He agreed that it would be a joint scene, but he insisted on being in charge of any inspection for possible bomb-making facilities. Willson and Porter agreed to this immediately. Willson noticed Janet’s bewilderment, and while Whittaker was giving orders, he quietly pointed out that, at the working-stiff level, federal agents were federal agents and tended to focus on the business at hand. It was Washington where winning the turf battles seemed to be as important as the case, he said, which was the reason he was permanently homesteading in Roanoke.

  Janet showed them the hole in the street where the car had gone down.

  There was an eye-stinging smell coming up from the hole, which Janet recognized as being the fumes of nitric acid. The rent-a-cops said

  they could smell it, too, but they insisted there hadn’t been any industrial activity in the arsenal for years. Janet didn’t remember all those pipes being near the hole, but then she didn’t remember much about getting out of there, period, after Kreiss had shown up. They had then driven up and down the streets and side alleys in a four-vehicle pr
ocession, seeing nothing but bare concrete walls. Ransom suggested that they ought to climb down into the hole in the street, but the fumes were too strong.

  “There was nothing like that when we came out of that hole,” Janet said, staring down into the darkness.

  “That’s new.”

  “What’s the purpose of this tunnel?” Whittaker asked. One of the renta-cops said the site maps showed it only as the Ditch. Willson guessed that it was an emergency dump channel for the big buildings lining the street, someplace that an entire batch of chemicals could be dumped if something went wrong while they were making explosives.

  “Wow,” Whittaker said.

  “And I wonder into whose drinking water that would go.”

  Neither of the two kids ventured an answer to that one. Whittaker had asked them if they had keys to all these buildings, and they said, yes, they had the series master-lock keys for every building in the complex. Whittaker had just looked at them until they understood what he wanted. With lots of dramatic sighs, they started at the high end of the street and began taking down padlocks. Whittaker split the joint FBI-aTF team up into groups of two. He briefed them on potential booby traps and told them to go through all the buildings, with orders to stop and back out immediately if something seemed wrong. He kept Janet and Ransom with him.

  “And we’re looking for?” one of the agents had asked.

  “These buildings are supposed to be empty,” Whittaker said.

  “If you come on one that isn’t, back out and sing out. And be careful how you open doors: Bomb makers are into booby traps.”

  The FBI agents looked at one another, and then Willson said, “Gee, with all that aTF bomb experience, maybe Whittaker ought to be the guy opening doors.” Whittaker laughed and even agreed, but then Willson said, “No, we’ll do it.” Whittaker, Ransom, and Janet had remained down near the big hole in the street. One of the rent-a-cops came back to where they were standing.

  “That’s all the main process buildings,” he said.

  “How about the power plant?” He was perspiring, but that hadn’t kept him from lighting up a cigarette. Cigarettes and pimples, Janet thought. Don’t they just go together.

  Whittaker checked back with Willson’s team up the street by radio.

  They were still working their way down, building to building. So far, they had reported seriously empty buildings.

  “Yeah, open it up,” he said in a tired tone of voice.

  “The weekend’s shot anyway.”

  The kid gave a two-finger salute and trudged across the empty space between the last of the big buildings and the looming facade of the power plant. Whittaker followed him halfway down, then stood in the street, talking on his radio to the two team leaders. Janet walked with Ransom over to a building marked nitro FIXING.

  “Now there’s a great name for a building,” Ransom said.

  “How’d you like to work in a place that did—” Janet felt rather than saw a great wave of intense heat and pressure on her right side. The blast compressed her body with such strength that her chest, lungs, and extremities felt like they were being stepped on by some fiery giant. She wanted to turn to see what it was, but then she was literally flying through the air and right through a wooden loading-dock fence before rolling like a rag doll out onto the concrete of a side street, until she slammed up against the wall of the next building. She tried to focus, but there was an enormous noise ringing in her ears, and then she felt herself screaming as an avalanche of things began to fall all around her, big things that hit the ground with enough force to make her helpless body bounce right off the ground. The sun had gone out and she could not get her breath. Her right side felt as if she had been kicked by a horse, and she found herself spitting out bits of concrete and lots of dirt and dust. Then a huge mass of reinforced concrete wall, big as a house, crunched into the street right alongside her and she screamed so hard, she fainted.

  When she came to, her whole body was buzzing with pain. She wasn’t able to get a good breath because of her side, and she was dimly aware that there were sounds around her she couldn’t quite hear. Her eyes were stuck shut by a coating of concrete dust. When she was able to get them open and focus, she could see that the whole industrial area had been wrecked, with great mounds of concrete rubble piled everywhere—in the street, between the shattered buildings, even on top of the buildings that were still standing. The last two buildings in the row had been partially knocked down, and where the power plant had been, there was only the stump of the main smokestack presiding over two piles of twisted metal that must have been the boilers. She saw Ransom come staggering out into the street from somewhere, his clothes

  torn to ribbons, bleeding from the head, eyes, ears, and mouth. He tripped over a mound of rubble and went down like a sack of flour, lying motionless in the street. She was horrified to see a rod of metal sticking out of his head like a feather less arrow. A great cloud of dust hung over the entire area, thick enough to turn the daylight yellowish brown.

  She looked around for Whittaker, but he was nowhere in sight. Her knees felt like they were on fire, and she looked down and saw that she had skinned the knees of her pants down to two bloody patches of road rash.

  She tried to get up, but there was a large piece of concrete with its re bar still embedded lying on her right leg, and her right hand didn’t seem to be working. She tried calling out for help, but all she managed was a whimper, and that turned into a coughing fit, which hurt her lungs.

  Then someone was there, levering the big chunk of concrete off her leg. It was one of the surveillance squad agents—Harris, she thought his name was, pretty sure that’s what it was—and he was saying something to her. She absolutely couldn’t hear him. She pointed to her ears and shook her head, which turned out to be a big mistake. She experienced a major lance of pain, followed by a cool rose haze that enveloped her consciousness, and then, blessedly, it all went away.

  When she regained consciousness the next time, she found herself inside an ambulance, but the vehicle was not moving. Her whole body felt awash in some soothing balm, and she was hooked up to IVs in both arms.

  A young paramedic was talking urgently on a telephone down near her feet, and she could see out the back doors of the ambulance that it was parked on the main street of the industrial area, looking down toward what had been the power plant. She was shocked by what she saw: The power plant was essentially gone, with nothing remaining but the wrecked boilers on the wide concrete expanse of what had been the floor.

  The two large buildings at the far end of the street nearest the power plant had been mostly destroyed, with only their uphill side walls still intact. The streets were littered with pieces of concrete, big and small, and there were two body sheets lying out on the street between her and the open space in front of what had been the power plant. The medic turned around and saw that she was conscious. He said something into the phone, which she could not hear, and then hung up. Then he was talking to her, but she could barely hear him. She shook her head, much more carefully, but couldn’t move her arms. She was able to read his lips.

  “Can you hear me?” he was asking.

  She winced and mouthed the word no. Her lips felt twice their normal size.

  “Can you breathe all right?”

  She tried out her lungs. It hurt to inhale, and her ribs were throbbing under the warmth of the painkiller, but she nodded.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked. Three she mouthed, and then she said it out loud: “Three.”

  “Okay, good.” She realized she could hear him now, although his voice was still distant. He saw that she could understand him.

  “Your vitals are okay,” he said.

  “Your pupils are a little bit dilated, and I think you’ve cracked a couple of ribs and maybe your right wrist. I’m guessing a mild concussion, but otherwise, I don’t see anything major, okay? The IVs are for pain and shock, and we’ve got you on a monitor. Just relax. We�
�re gonna transport in just a few minutes.”

  “What happened?” she croaked.

  “Looks like an A-bomb to me, lady. There’re a million cops out there right now.”

  “What about… them?” she asked, pointing with her eyes to the body sheets down the street.

  “Don’t know, ma’am. I mean who they are. The cops in suits are pretty pissed off, though.”

  At that moment, Farnsworth’s head appeared over the medic’s shoulder.

  His face was a mask of shock and concern. He saw Janet looking at him and tried for a smile. It was ghastly, Janet thought.

  “Hey, boss,” she said weakly.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Can she talk to me?” he asked the medic.

  “Yeah, but she can’t hear so good,” the man said, and then crawled out of the way so that Farnsworth could climb partially into the ambulance.

  “Janet, can you tell me what happened?” he asked, and then swore.

  “Listen to me: Are you okay? Are you hurt badly?”

  “I took a flying lesson,” she said, trying for a little wisecrack to get that mortal look off his face.

  “We were standing next to some building, down there, called Nitro Fixing. Then the world ended. I don’t know what happened.”

  “The surviving team members said the power plant blew up,” he said.

  “One of them was in the doorway of a building when it went up. Said the whole fucking thing literally disintegrated in a fireball. No warning.”

  “Who—” she began, looking past him into the street.

  “Ken Whittaker is dead, and definitely one of the rent-a-cops, if not both of them. They were out in the street, we think.”

  Janet felt her stomach go cold. But Farnsworth wasn’t finished.

  “Ransom is … well, it’s gonna be touch-and-go, I’m afraid. He had a bastard of a head injury. They’ve heloed him out already. Our guys who were up the street inside buildings are pretty much okay. But, listen, we have a development.”