Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  He missed Holly as much as he missed William. His wife had been a strong, taciturn woman who never complained, even when the cancer rose in her. When he found out that Holly was going to be taken from him, he had consoled himself with the knowledge that he would still have his son and his grandsons, but then William had gone off to Waco. And always, behind most of his troubles, was the government. Unfeeling, devoid of conscience, overweening in its power over the lives of the individuals it smashed flat without a second glance. He might have saved William if it hadn’t been for everything else that happened, courtesy of the government. He had once been appalled at what those

  sick boys had done in Oklahoma City, but now–now he could well understand the impetus to strike back. There was retribution due, by God.

  He sighed and stepped out the back door, shutting it and locking it, knowing he’d probably never see the house again. It had all begun so well, and ended in pieces. Holly was dead’ Jared was dead, the arsenal was dead, and Kenny… well, Kenny had truly never lived and never would. He was a virtual ward of the state, working a menial job at the state mental hospital in Greensboro and living there as well in one of the supervised homes.

  Browne almost wished he could go down there and tell Kenny that his brother was gone, but Kenny would only smile sadly, accepting this bit of news with the same equanimity as he would the fact that it had begun to rain outside.

  He went to the garage. The pickup truck was pointed nose out, so he simply got in, started it up, and drove out into the street, turning right to get to Highway 460 and then make his way out to the interstate. His own life was over. Now he would see how well he could finish it, and the bastards who’d cremated his son.

  Kreiss sprinted for the telephone repair van when he heard the truck’s engine start up in the garage. He had been twenty feet away from the back of the garage when McGarand had come out of the house and started up his truck. Once in the van, he blasted straight down the alley, knocking over two trash cans as he turned right and then right again and gunned it back the way he had come in on Canton Street. He ran a stop sign three blocks up. There was no sign of McGarand’s truck ahead, and he almost thought he’d lost him, when he saw the lights of a major traffic intersection a half a mile or so ahead. By the time he got to it, the light was still red and he saw McGarand’s F-250 stopped in the left-turn lane. The truck was sporting a cap over the bed, so this was probably not a trip to the grocery store. He slowed down dramatically to allow a few cars to get ahead of him into the left-turn lane, then closed it up in time to make the turn behind McGarand. He followed the pickup truck for eight miles, until it turned onto the hamburger-alley strip that signaled the approach of the 1-81 interchange. Traffic was heavy, but he was having no trouble following the pickup.

  This was a complication he hadn’t planned on, and when the F-250 turned onto 1-81, he had a decision to make. Follow him? Or break it off and go back out to the arsenal to search some more for Lynn? But of

  course, that wouldn’t work, not after that big explosion there this afternoon.

  The place would be crawling with feds. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that Lynn might have been caught up in all that.

  He’d seen a television news report when he got home, a film clip taken from an airplane or a helicopter in the late-afternoon sun, showing the bare concrete floors of what had been the power plant. Big bomb, that, he thought. Really big bomb. The surrounding buildings had all been damaged in some fashion, with the two process buildings nearest the power plant semi flattened He’d checked those buildings, all those buildings, and had found everything locked tight and no signs of recent entry.

  Should I go back to the guy’s house? he wondered. The pickup was three cars ahead of him, its big taillights distinctive enough that he didn’t have to stay too close. The traffic out on 1-81 was heavy, as usual, with wall-to-wall semis jockeying for that vital extra hundred feet of progress down the congested roadway. Where the hell was McGarand going? And then turn signals—the pickup was getting off.

  Kreiss slowed down, slipped between two semis, and then turned off, going as slowly as he could so as not to come right up on the pickup at the end of the ramp. He almost did that anyway, but McGarand’s vehicle turned right and then right again into the front parking lot of the big TA truck stop. Kreiss waited for as long as he could at the ramp, but then headlights flared behind him and he had to move. He went right, then into the truck-stop plaza, which was brightly lighted. He caught sight of McGarand’s truck going behind the main building, through the big rig fueling lanes, and disappearing out into the back parking lot, which was filled with dozens of semis idling in the smoky darkness. He pulled the repair van up to the auto-fuel lanes and turned out the lights. The lanes weren’t filled to the point that there were cars waiting, so he got out, locked it, and hurried around the corner of the restaurant and store building, dodging incoming vehicles and weary-looking drivers filing in and out of the building. The whole area was brightly illuminated by sodium vapor lights coming from several towers, and the air was filled with the smell of diesel exhaust from the trucks parked out behind the building.

  He paused when he got to the back: There was no sign of the pickup truck.

  Had McGarand spotted him and ditched him? He didn’t think so. So what was he doing back here among all the semis? He watched the occasional truck driver walking back out of the restaurant building, cradling a thermos of coffee or some carryout gut bomb from the choke and puke

  inside. There were three women hanging around a set of phone booths over on the other side of the plaza, kids, really, standing out in their cutoff shorts and halter tops, eyeing the rigs as they rumbled back out through the plaza. AIDS victims in the making, he thought. But where had the pickup gone? He wasn’t thrilled with the thought of walking out into that dense pack of trucks out there, where the only lights were the running lights of the tractor-trailers. There was a high chain-link fence around the whole area, so that truck had to be out there somewhere. Doing what?

  And then he squatted down behind a Dumpster by the back of the building as McGarand’s truck reappeared from between two semis in the farthest parking lane, lights out now, going slow and headed back into the main plaza area. The truck went right by the Dumpster, and Kreiss got a good look. Yes, the same guy who’d opened up on him at the power plant.

  Which wasn’t there anymore. Courtesy of this guy? Had they been running a bomb factory in that power plant? An illegal bomb factory at an ammunition plant—what a concept. He’d told Carter that Foster and Bellhouser had been blowing smoke; maybe not.

  He moved to the corner of the building as the pickup truck cruised out into the open area, did a careful 180, and pulled into a parking place right in front of the restaurant. He watched from around the corner as McGarand went into the restaurant, carrying a thermos, just like any other trucker. Just as soon as the bearded man had gone in, Kreiss hurried back to the telephone company van and checked the fuel gauge. Half-full.

  He put Jared’s telephone-company credit card in, cranked up the fuel pump, and filled the tank, keeping an eye on the front door while trying to keep the van between him and the building. Would McGarand see the telephone repair van? Recognize it maybe? He finished fueling and re stowed the hose. There were cars waiting now, so he couldn’t stay there.

  He got in, started up, and drove out toward the front area of the plaza, looking for a place to park where he wouldn’t stand out quite so obviously.

  Then he saw an Appalachian Power truck parked all by itself in one corner of the plaza, and he drove over there, turned around, backed in, and shut down. He could see the main entrance door and McGarand’s pickup, while the larger truck masked his van. Then he waited.

  Janet woke up at 11:00 P.M. and had a confused moment trying to remember where she was and why. The hospital was quiet, and her room was in semidarkness. Lights from the parking lot below illuminated the windows of the hospital building. She sat up care
fully. She could

  hear nurses talking quietly at the charge desk out in the hall. She hurt in a general sort of way, but her mind was alert. Her wrist was not as swollen, and she was able to breathe without nearly as much pain. She wondered what was going on with the arsenal case. She rolled over very carefully, found the phone, got an outside line, and put a call through to the Roanoke office.

  The secretaries weren’t there, of course, but one of the agents in the fraud squad answered and told her everyone was still in the office trying to sort out the disaster over at the arsenal. There were a million questions coming down from both FBI and aTF headquarters in Washington, and everyone was pretty upset about the loss of Ken Whittaker. She told the agent that she was ready to escape from the boneyard and asked him if someone could come get her at the hospital in Blacksburg.

  An hour and a half later, she carried into the federal building and went directly to Farnsworth’s office. His door was closed, but there was a group of agents, including Ben Keenan, Farnsworth’s number two, in the RAs conference room. The conference table was piled with papers, site diagrams, photos, teletype messages, and a dozen very used polystyrene coffee cups. They all stopped talking when they saw Janet, which is when she realized that she probably looked a mess.

  “Janet, what are you doing here?” Keenan asked, his tone of voice belying his brusque question. Keenan was known for his people skills and was extremely well liked within the Roanoke office.

  “Got tired of staring at the ceiling,” she said, coming in and clearing away some papers so she could sit down.

  “And it not being my honeymoon and all.” This provoked some smiles as she sat down.

  “Since I was there when it happened, I thought maybe I could help.”

  Farnsworth’s door opened and the RA came out, accompanied by Marchand’s red-faced executive assistant. They stopped short when they saw Janet. Farnsworth looked like he hadn’t slept for a long time and his suit was a rumpled mess. Foster’s expression was flat. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone.

  “Ransom didn’t make it,” the RA announced.

  “Died an hour ago.

  Never woke up.” He turned to Foster.

  “That makes two agencies who are going to be mad at us now, aTF and the spooks.”

  Foster nodded as he looked down at the floor. Then he said he needed to make some calls, stepped over into Keenan’s office, and shut the door.

  There was a grim silence in the conference room, and then Farnsworth greeted Janet, asked how she felt, and asked her to come into his office.

  He closed the door behind her and asked if she wanted some coffee. Her

  brain did, but her stomach vetoed the idea. She was now beginning to think that leaving the hospital had not been her brightest idea. She sat down gingerly in one of the chairs while the RA poured what looked like used motor oil from a pitcher on his desk into a mug. The smell of the stale coffee confirmed her stomach’s opinion. He poured in a paper packet of sugar, which literally floated on top of the noxious-looking brew. He sat down heavily.

  “Five years here as RA, never lost an agent,” he said quietly.

  “Until today. Even if he wasn’t technically one of ours, this really sucks. Ken Whittaker was a good man. You know his wife, Katie?”

  She shook her head.

  “She’s devastated, of course. Kept saying, “So close, he was so close.”

  Meaning close to retirement. This really sucks. And now Ransom. I liked him, too. Shit.”

  “Plus the two security kids,” she said.

  “I feel responsible. If I hadn’t gone out—” “No, no, that’s all wrong, Janet. You had every right to go out there, although I fault you for going alone. But there obviously was something going on at that place.”

  “I guess so. But still… How’s Kreiss’s daughter?”

  “She’s alive but in and out of a borderline coma. Took a head shot from flying debris. Damn wall nearly crushed her. She was saved by the fact that she was up by the front door. Hasn’t said anything beyond those few words when they pulled her out of that nitro building: Washington and hydrogen bomb. Intriguing combination, huh?”

  She nodded distractedly.

  “So, where do we stand?” she asked.

  “What’s aTF found out?”

  Farnsworth shook his head, then ran his fingers through his graying hair.

  “Their people on the scene called out one of their own national response teams, after the nuke guys backed out. Even though the casualty count wasn’t that big, it was one hell of an explosion. The NRT is still there.”

  “I’m not familiar with that,” she said. Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten for a long time.

  “It’s an aTF special team. An NRT has chemists, forensic experts like you, arson and bomb dogs, post blast and fire-origin experts, intel people, special vehicles and mobile labs, all that good shit.”

  “The NEST people find anything radioactive?”

  “Nope, just radon. I still can’t figure out what that was all about.

  But nothing to indicate it was nuclear, although the bang sure seemed big enough.”

  “And?” she prompted. She realized she probably sounded impertinent, but Farnsworth was too tired to notice.

  “And they haven’t called it yet. Blast origin point in the power plant.

  Eureka. But type of explosive? They can’t find it. Some nonstructural physical evidence scattered around the site, but almost every piece of it can be traced back to equipment that was probably installed inside the power plant. Boiler tubes, plant machinery, turbine parts. Otherwise, stone-cold mystery right now. They haven’t found even a trace of the security kid who went down there to unlock the place.”

  Janet shifted in her chair and exhaled, causing Farnsworth to look more closely at her.

  “You all right? How about a glass of water?”

  She nodded and said she thought she needed something in her stomach.

  He went out and came back with a cup of water from the jug cooler and a stale-looking doughnut.

  “We sent some people in chem-suits down into that tunnel system and found a couple of things, the most interesting of which was evidence of somebody shooting a large-caliber weapon down there. That ring any bells?”

  She shook her head, but not too hard. The doughnut helped, and she sipped the cold water.

  “The fumes in the tunnels tested to residue of nitric acid. One of the tanks out behind the power plant appeared to be the source of that, although it was, like all the others, flattened.”

  “No cars?”

  “No cars,” he said with a fleeting smile.

  “But the divers reported that the whole thing appears to dump to an even larger underground cavern system. They pulled a guy in there from the Army who used to be what they called a ‘plant rep’ when the civilian company operated the place. He confirmed that the tunnel was called the Ditch. It was used when something went wrong with a chemical batch and they had to dump it quick to prevent an explosion. Said where it went after going into the Ditch was something no one ever knew, or at least he didn’t know.”

  “Wonderful,” she murmured.

  “And what about Kreiss?”

  “Well,” Farnsworth said, trying to get the sugar to dissolve in his coffee, “that’s getting interesting. Foster and Bellhouser may have something there. First of all, no one can locate Kreiss—at least we

  can’t and the local law can’t. I don’t know if Foster and company have asked for more help from the Agency. That may be hard after losing Ransom.”

  “Might he have been there—when that place blew up?”

  “Willson’s troops talked to some of Kreiss’s neighbors, of sorts. Bunch of hillbillies living down the road from Kreiss’s cabin. They weren’t exactly forthcoming, but indications are they’d seen Kreiss alive and well late this past afternoon, which was after the blast. But that’s all they would say.”

  “And Kreiss i
s a suspect in the jared McGarand homicide?”

  “Yes and no. You’ll remember what Ransom told you about putting bugs on Kreiss’s vehicle? How he got all but one off, and then Ransom finds that one at that McGarand guy’s trailer, where McGarand got dead?”

  She nodded. The doughnut felt like it might be changing sides. She drank some more water and tried to ignore the queasy feeling in her stomach. It was hurting to breathe again.

  “Local law hasn’t been told anything about that, or Kreiss. I sent a couple of our people to the scene after seeing Ransom’s report. Told the cops that it might, emphasis on might, relate to a case we’re working on telephone company fraud. Our guys weren’t fully briefed on the Kreiss angle, either. I simply told them to go see what the local cops came up with on this possible homicide and report back.”

  “And—?”

  “And the locals are definitely calling it homicide, but the physical evidence points all over the map. Jared McGarand’s wallet and keys seem to be missing, and there was evidence that someone had been into his phones, although he himself was a phone repairman, so that might not mean anything. There’s some unknown substance they recovered from the front steps that they were really interested in, because there was some more of it on the body, which for some unknown reason seemed to have been hosed down. But that’s not as important as what we think we’ve found out.”

  “Foster still trying to tie this bomb-cell conspiracy theory to Kreiss?”