Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “But I’m willing to bet that was about his daughter, not any bomb plot. And, Kreiss was right: They did have his daughter. So if they had his daughter captive at the arsenal, the McGarands weren’t using that place for a fishing hole.

  They were doing some bad shit out there. If this is about Waco, we need to warn Washington.”

  “That’s going to present a problem,” Keenan said, and Farnsworth nodded, obviously already knowing what Keenan was going to say.

  “What?”

  “The aTF is going on record, as we speak, that this was an explosion resulting from natural causes. Without direct evidence of a bomb, what you suggest is purely supposition. aTF will view any alternative theories we bring up as a challenge to their authority in the area of explosives determination.”

  “Oh, for crying—”

  “Think about the state of relations at the Washington level among our respective agencies just now,” Farnsworth said.

  “Which haven’t been helped by Ken Whittaker’s death, during what was essentially a Bureau deal.”

  Janet took a deep breath and then let it out.

  “So if we could find Kreiss,” she said, “maybe we could firm this up a little?”

  “If you find Kreiss, he goes in a box somewhere where nobody can get to him, and that includes aTF,” Foster said.

  “Assistant Director Marchand has those instructions from the deputy AG’s office. Edwin Kreiss isn’t going to testify to anything. We can’t allow it.”

  “Hell, I suspect he wouldn’t allow it,” Janet said.

  That last remark produced an uncomfortable silence, which Keenan finally broke.

  “Look, boss,” he said, addressing Farnsworth.

  “It’s time to elevate this hairball to headquarters. Tell ‘em what we know, tell ‘em what we think, and then hunker back down in the weeds, where we belong.”

  “I represent headquarters,” Foster told him.

  “Not my part of it,” Farnsworth said. There was a strained silence in the room. Finally, Farnsworth instructed Keenan to keep looking for Edwin Kreiss. He told Janet to notify Keenan if she had any further contact from Kreiss, and to get with the surveillance people to put a locating tap on the hospital lines into the I.C.U, where his daughter was. The RA and Foster then went into the secure-communications cube to get on the horn to Richmond, which, as the supervisory field office, was directly over the Roanoke RA.

  Keenan stopped Janet outside Farnsworth’s office. As Farnsworth’s deputy, he dealt primarily with the four squad supervisors, so he had not had very much direct contact with Janet.

  “You’ve met this guy Kreiss,” he said.

  “Whose side is he on if this does turn out to be a bomb plot against the seat of government?”

  Janet had to think about that.

  “I’ve met him, but I wouldn’t say I know him. All these bomb conspiracies notwithstanding, the only thing Kreiss has ever been focused on was finding his daughter. She is now at least safe, if not fully recovered. I don’t know whose side he’d be on.”

  “You’re the last person who spoke directly to him,” Keenan said gently.

  “Take a guess.”

  Janet sighed.

  “Well, sir, if Kreiss thinks the older McGarand had a part in kidnapping his daughter and getting her hurt, he’ll pursue him and punish him, maybe even kill him. Everything else would be incidental

  to that objective. I don’t think Edwin Kreiss takes sides anymore, and I don’t think he takes prisoners, either, or at least not for very long.”

  Keenan nodded thoughtfully.

  “Do you understand what Foster and his buddy over at Main Justice are up to?” he asked.

  “No, sir, I haven’t a clue. But if Foster’s really acting for Assistant Director Marchand, I think it has something to do with what happened when Kreiss was forcibly retired.”

  Keenan looked away, nodded his head slowly.

  “Lord, I hope not,” he said, and then went back into his office.

  Kreiss had left the interstate near Harrisonburg and made his way east over to the Skyline Drive, the mountain road. It would be much slower than running the interstate, but it accomplished two things: It got him out of the state police’s primary surveillance zone, and the narrow, winding mountain road made it easy to spot a tail. He left the Skyline Drive south of Front Royal and worked the back roads along the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah River into Clarke County until he cut U.S. Route 50, at which point he turned east and joined the morning rush-hour traffic. An astonishing number of cars were headed into Washington at that hour of the morning, but the heavy traffic would be a good place to hide his vehicle in case the northern Virginia cops had been alerted. By the time he’d made it down through Upperville, Middleburg, and Aldie, it was nearing 7:00 A.M. He was now in familiar territory, having lived in northern Virginia for many years, so when he hit Route 58, the Dulles Airport connector, he got off the main highway and stopped at a diner next to a large shopping mall for some coffee and breakfast.

  As he watched the sluggish stream of commuter traffic drag by on the four-lane highway outside, he thought about his next steps. Ideally, he needed another vehicle. Second, he needed a place to stay while he hunted McGarand. Third, he wouldn’t mind a nice GPS position on McGarand and the propane truck. He smiled grimly. Actually, finding McGarand shouldn’t be all that hard, as long as he stayed with that distinctive green-and-white truck. The Washington area was served by a large metropolitan gas company, which meant that there were not a lot of propane customers in or near the city. Driving something like that downtown, especially in Washington, was strictly regulated, which left the Maryland and northern Virginia suburbs. If he intended to park it, he would most likely use a truck stop along the Beltway. The biggest trucking terminals in the Washington area were in Alexandria, on the

  Virginia side of the Potomac River, and near the rail yards on the Maryland side.

  Browne McGarand had come up from southwest Virginia, so Kreiss would begin his search in Alexandria along 1-95 and 1-49$.

  The easiest way for him to get a new vehicle would be to rent one. For that, he needed to get to a couple of ATMs. He had brought some cash with him, and there was a motel right behind the diner. He would prepay a room, park his truck in the back somewhere, get cleaned up, and walk over to the mall, where there were bound to be ATMs. Then he would taxi over to Dulles, rent a van, find a trucker’s atlas or an exit guide, and get to work. Then it would be a matter of slogging through the Washington-area trucking centers, looking for that propane truck. He remembered that there had been a logo on the truck, but he couldn’t recollect what it said. Something about that logo had not been quite right, but he simply could not remember it. So, first a motel room and a shower. Then some scut work.

  Browne McGarand got off the Beltway and made his way up U.S. Route 1 into the rail yards on the Reagan National Airport side of Crystal City.

  He parked at an all-night diner and got some breakfast. He and Jared had scouted out this phase of the plan some months ago. He would drive into Crystal City proper after rush hour, staying on the old Jefferson Davis Highway until he reached the Pentagon interchange, just before Route 1 ascended onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge over the Potomac. Then he would get back off the elevated highway, loop underneath it, and drive down a small two-lane road that led into the Pentagon parking areas. Just before the turn that would take him into Pentagon South Parking, he would turn into the driveway that led to the Pentagon power plant.

  The power plant had originally been a coal-fired facility, then an oil fired one, designed to provide emergency power to the huge military headquarters. Now it housed a dozen large gas turbine generators in a fenced yard next to what had been its coal yard. Because the gas turbine emergency generators could be started remotely from the Pentagon, the facility was no longer manned. Its entrances had been chained and locked.

  All except the parking lot, which was really an extension of the old coal
yard. The parking lot had a long chain across it, but no lock, probably to let fire trucks get in. The coal yard, now empty, was surrounded on three sides by high concrete walls, originally used to contain a small mountain of coal. He would back the truck out of sight of the entranceway and shut it down. It had been Jared who had found

  this spot when he’d gotten lost in the maze of roads around the approaches to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. He’d blown a tire right in front of the power plant, pulled into the driveway to change it, and discovered the perfect hiding place. Someone would have to come into the driveway and then all the way back into the old coal yard ever to see the truck.

  From the power plant, it was a five-minute walk to the Pentagon Metro station. Browne was dressed in what he hoped were suitably touristy clothes: khaki slacks, short-sleeved shirt, a windbreaker, and a floppy sun hat and some sunglasses. He wished he had a camera to complete the outfit, but, as long as nothing had changed, this would do. The Pentagon Metro station was on the east side of the Pentagon building. He would take a Yellow Line train into the District, then get off at the Mount Vernon Place station. His target would then be within easy walking distance.

  He ordered another cup of coffee, and, as the caffeine kicked in, wondered if he should bother getting a motel room.

  Janet got back into the office at 11:30. She picked up a sandwich at the first-floor deli and took it upstairs to her office. She had just popped open her Coke when the intercom buzzed and Farnsworth’s secretary called her down to a meeting in the RA’s conference room. She sighed, poured her Coke into her coffee mug, put the sandwich in the office fridge, and went downstairs. Farnsworth was there, along with Keenan, Special Agent Bobby Land from the Roanoke surveillance squad, and two uniformed police lieutenants, one from the Virginia State Police and the other from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.

  The person who got her attention, however, was a woman who was sitting by herself at the other end of the conference table from where the men were standing. Janet struggled not to stare at her. She had a striking, witch like face: intense black eyes under thin eyebrows, a slightly hooked nose, wide cheekbones, and dark red lips. She appeared to be in good physical shape, tall, with wide shoulders and a fit tautness to her skin. She looked to be in her late forties, and the way she was sitting at the table, still as a grave, staring quietly into the middle distance, projected an attitude of total composure that made her utterly unapproachable. As the only other woman in the room, Janet would normally have gone over to introduce herself, but something in this woman’s demeanor gave her pause.

  “Okay, gents, this is Special Agent Janet Carter,” Farnsworth said.

  “Let’s get going.” Everyone took a chair, leaving the other woman in

  semi splendid isolation at the far end of the conference table. Janet forced herself to face Farnsworth, who shuffled some papers before beginning.

  “We’ve had some developments in the McGarand business,” he announced.

  “Not to be confused with progress, however. Janet, for your benefit, this is Lieutenant Whitney from the Virginia State Police, and Lieutenant Harter from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Farnsworth glanced down at his papers for a second while Janet waited for him to introduce the woman, but he did not.

  “There’ve been some musical chairs with vehicles in the arsenal case,” he said.

  “Browne McGarand’s pickup truck has been located at his grandson’s house, where it was not present during yesterday’s sweep, except for the brief time that Browne McGarand visited there. Jared McGarand’s telephone company repair van, which had been parked at jared’s trailer, was found by another phone company crew at the TA truck stop above the Christiansburg interchange. This is the same truck stop where two security guards allege that an unknown subject, later identified as Edwin Kreiss from a Polaroid photograph the security guards took, attacked them without provocation in their office. They’d detained him in the parking lot, where they had been watching him ‘case the place,” to use their words.”

  “Unprovoked attack’?” Janet asked.

  Farnsworth shrugged.

  “Both of them were steroid junkies. One of them nearly died from a partially strangulated larynx, and the other reported being disabled with a … weapon, I guess, that another branch of government said was something subject Edwin Kreiss might have been carrying. They called it ‘a retinal disrupter.”

  ” “A retinal what?” Keenan asked.

  “They described it as a very powerful flashcube, tuned to the optical frequency of a purple substance in the human eye that can be overloaded by a strong pulse of light. Firing a retinal disrupter into a subject’s eyes renders him stunned and immobilized for up to sixty seconds, if not longer, which has its obvious tactical advantages.”

  “Where can I get me one of those?” Lieutenant Whitney asked. He was a large-shouldered man in his fifties, with buzz-cut gray hair and a huge pair of mirrored sunglasses hanging down from his perfectly creased shirt pocket.

  “You can’t,” Farnsworth said.

  “If it’s any comfort, neither can we.” He gave the lieutenant a second for that to sink in, then continued.

  “Kreiss’s personal vehicle is also a pickup truck. It is not at his house, nor is Kreiss.

  Browne McGarand is not at his house, and we have information that he

  did not go to Greensboro, North Carolina, as he told the local police he was going to do. His other grandson, whom we located in Greensboro, confirmed he had not heard from his grandfather, and he also did not know about Jared McGarand’s demise.”

  “Sir, what’s the status on Kreiss’s daughter?” Janet asked.

  “She’s stable, comatose, but breathing on her own. The docs now think she’ll come out of it, but they can’t say when.”

  “You guys designated a prime suspect for the Jared McGarand homicide?”

  Keenan asked.

  “We like this guy Kreiss, based on what you folks have told us,” Lieutenant Harter said. He was a dark-haired, well-built young man, whose short-sleeved tan uniform shirt fit him like a glove. He had been giving I Janet the eye while Farnsworth spoke.

  Janet was surprised to hear this: Now what had Farnsworth done? The last thing she’d been told was that they were going to stay quiet about Kreiss. And she was still wondering who the woman was. She was wearing a visitor’s badge, but it was not one requiring an escort. She had not moved a muscle, reminding Janet of an exquisitely made Japanese robot she had seen at Disney World several years ago. She did not even appear to be listening to the discussion. Her hands rested motionless on the table. Janet noticed that the outside edge of the woman’s right palm was ridged with calluses, which fairly shouted karate training. She jerked her attention back to what the lieutenant was saying.

  “Is there a federal warrant out?” Harter asked.

  “No,” Farnsworth said, looking down at the papers in front of him.

  “And we’ve asked the state and local authorities to hold up on obtaining a warrant for right now.”

  “Because of what happened out at the Ramsey Arsenal,” Janet said, concentrating again on the discussion.

  “Exactly,” Farnsworth said.

  “The purpose of this meeting is to confirm that we will continue to press our search for Edwin Kreiss and Browne McGarand, but we will do so in conjunction with a larger federal investigation being conducted in cooperation with the ATE” Farnsworth shot Janet a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t going to blow his cover, but she had caught on—Farnsworth wanted local law to think the Bureau was working hand in glove with the aTF

  “This is all about that big explosion, out at the arsenal?” Lieutenant Harter asked. His expression indicated that he wasn’t exactly following what was being said.

  “Yes, and we have reason to believe that subject Browne McGarand may be engaged in a bombing conspiracy, which might involve the capital city,” Farnsworth continued.

&nb
sp; “Do y’all think the explosion at the arsenal was their lab going up?”

  Whitney asked.

  “We think it was, but the aTF national response team is leaning toward natural causes. A methane buildup. Given the size of that explosion, we’re treating the whole matter very seriously. If there was a bomb-making cell operating out of the arsenal, and they blew themselves up, then end of story. aTF tells us that happens sometimes. But if that explosion was a package left behind to entertain federal authorities who might come snooping, then they’re capable of making one hell of a bomb, and we have to assume a clear and present danger.”

  “We’ll play it any way you want to, Mr. Farnsworth,” Harter said.

  “But when it’s all over, we’re still going to want to have a talk with this Kreiss fella.”

  “And you’ll get it. I guess what I’m saying is that we just want to make sure that there isn’t a bigger deal going down here. You know, like an Oklahoma City-scale conspiracy.”

  “What’s this Kreiss guy’s role in that theory?” Harter asked.

  “Kreiss’s daughter was one of those college kids that went missing, remember? As we told you, he’s been looking for his missing daughter, who turned up at that arsenal.”

  “And right now, y’all think he’s chasing down this Browne McGarand?”

  “Yes.”

  Harter and Whitney looked at each other and then back at Farnsworth, who knew what their question was.

  “Kreiss used to be pretty good at hunting people. We wouldn’t necessarily be upset if he finds McGarand, especially if it prevents another bombing.”

  Janet watched as Whitney nodded his head slowly. Farnsworth was obviously confusing the shit out of the locals “Oka-a-y,” Whitney said.

  “But how do we get him for this homicide deal?”

  “His daughter is now hospitalized in Blacksburg. I’m requesting that she be placed under police guard. Eventually, we’re pretty sure Kreiss will come back here to see her. Can you help?”

  “Yes, sir, he comes back, we can take it from there, I think,” Harter said.