Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Leg traps?”

  The girl explained what had happened to her two friends. She reiterated that she had seen only the two men, one much older than the other.

  Both guys had black beards and looked like mountain men.

  “Yes, that’s what we have,” Janet said.

  “The younger guy’s name was Jared McGarand; he’s dead. The older guy is his grandfather, Browne McGarand, and he’s missing.” She told Lynn what had happened to Jared, then asked her what had happened to the boys’ remains. Lynn didn’t know, other than that the water had covered them up. She closed her eyes for a moment, and Janet gave her a minute to rest.

  “The younger one—you said he’s dead?”

  “Yes,” Janet said.

  “An apparent homicide.” She didn’t feel it was the time to discuss her father’s possible involvement.

  “Good riddance,” Lynn said.

  “That guy was a serious creep.”

  “Lynn, when the medics picked you up, you were sort of babbling something about a hydrogen bomb and Washington.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes. It didn’t make much sense, but it got everybody’s attention.”

  Lynn frowned for a moment, and then her face cleared.

  “Oh, yes, I do remember. The other one, the older one, told me he was taking a hydrogen bomb to Washington. I said, Yeah, right, like he could just make a hydrogen bomb with some plans off the Web. He said it wasn’t what I thought.”

  Oh shit, Janet thought.

  “Any indication of what he was going to do with this bomb?”

  Lynn frowned again, trying to remember.

  “No,” she said.

  “Wait—yes.

  He said he was going after what he called ‘a legitimate target.”

  ” Janet studied the girl. There was a toughness there, despite her

  current physical frailty. Definitely her father’s daughter.

  “Did he sound like a nutcase?”

  “Yes and no. He wasn’t raving. He was calm, sort of matter-of-fact. But fanatical, maybe—remember, I could only hear him. He said he’d made a hydrogen bomb, that he was taking it to Washington. Like it was a routine deal, something he did every day. That made it kinda scary, you know?”

  Janet nodded, writing it all down in her notebook.

  “I wonder why he would tell you,” she said.

  “He implied I was supposed to be insurance, a hostage or something, if things went wrong. He told me to get ready to go, but then he never came back. The next thing that happened was that the building fell in on me.

  But that was much later.”

  Something was playing in the back of Janet’s mind. What had that older aTF guy said—that this had been a gas explosion?

  “When he said hydrogen bomb, and you challenged that, and he said it wasn’t what you thought—I wonder if he meant a hydrogen gas bomb?”

  Lynn shrugged and then winced. Janet knew that feeling. She stepped out into the hallway and summoned the nurse. Then there was a crowd and Janet backed out into the hall to let the docs do their thing. She went down the hall to the waiting room, which was empty. She fished out her cell phone but then hesitated. She needed to call her immediate supervisor, Larry Talbot, to tell him what had happened to the two boys. There were parents to be notified, and, of course, remains to be found. But there was a bigger question here: That Agency woman wanted her to page some kind of a warning threat to Kreiss. But here was the daughter confirming that Browne McGarand was up to something that did involve a bomb and Washington, D.C. She should report that immediately, but would anybody listen? Her bosses seemed to be so caught up in protecting their rice bowls right now that there might be nobody listening.

  She called Talbot, got his voice mail, and told him what Lynn had said about the missing kids. Then she put a call into Farnsworth’s office. The secretary said he was not available. She asked for Keenan, but he was with Farnsworth. Where was the RA? Out, the secretary said helpfully. Feeling like a child, Janet almost hung up, but then she gave the secretary the news about Lynn Kreiss being awake, and that she, Janet, needed to talk to the RA urgently, as in, Now would be nice. The secretary was unimpressed, but she said she would pass it along. Janet gave her the number for her cell phone.

  She went back down to I.C.U to talk to Lynn some more, but the doctors were busy and the nurses forbidding. It was now almost three o’clock.

  She stood there in the busy corridor, thinking, while a stream of hospital traffic parted indifferently around her, as if she were an island. In three hours, she was supposed to page Kreiss for his wake-up call. If he still had the pager, and if he had it turned on. She could just hear him saying, Now what, Special Agent? In that weary voice of his. Now what, indeed. I’ve got good news and bad news. Your daughter is conscious and apparently doing okay. She says one of the guys who kidnapped her is taking a hydrogen bomb to Washington. If you’re interested, that is. Oh, and an old friend of yours stopped by with a message—want to hear it? And Kreiss would go, Nope, busy right now. Bye. Her cell phone rang. It was Farnsworth’s secretary: “Get back here now.”

  Kreiss nosed his rented Ford 150 van into the truck stop off the Van Dorn Street Beltway exit in Alexandria. It wasn’t much of a truck stop, not compared with the interstate facilities, but he had to check it out. His exit guide listed only two such facilities on or near the Beltway, not counting trucking terminals. This was the third trucking terminal he’d stopped into on his circuit of Washington’s infamous 1-495. It was midafternoon, and he knew that in about a half hour or so he would have to quit until after rush hour, because nothing moved during rush hour around Washington.

  There were a dozen trucks parked at this stop, and three more filling up in the fuel lanes. No propane truck was in evidence. It was possible, of course, that McGarand had put the thing in a garage somewhere, and he had made a mental note to look up fuel companies in the area and make the rounds of those if the truck stops came up empty. But there was something so nicely anonymous about a truck stop that he was pretty sure that’s where the propane tanker would be. Kreiss believed in the theory that if you want to hide something really well, you hide it in plain sight. He drove the van around the parking lot and behind the store and rest facilities building. No propane tanker. He got back out onto the Beltway and headed east, toward the Wilson Bridge and the crossing into Maryland.

  He had a terrible feeling he was wasting time.

  A stone-faced Farnsworth was waiting in his office when Janet got back to the Roanoke office. Keenan was with him when Janet took a seat in front of the RA’s desk. He asked her to debrief him on what Lynn Kreiss had told her. When she was finished, he turned in his swivel chair and looked

  out the window for a long minute. Janet looked over at Keenan, but his expression was noncommittal. He seemed to be uncomfortable with what was going on, but willing to go along. Farnsworth swiveled his chair back around.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m glad the girl’s going to recover. I’m sorry the other two kids didn’t make it. Larry Talbot is going to make family notification, and we’re sending in some search teams to see if we can find remains.”

  “The county people are getting up a search team and a canine unit,” Keenan said.

  “Larry’s coordinating it.”

  “Good,” Farnsworth said. As best Janet could tell, the RA was only minimally interested in the resolution of the case of the missing college kids.

  “Now, this other business: You have a page to make at six P.M.” right?”

  “Yes, that’s what Mata Hari wanted me to do. I wanted to ask you about—” Farnsworth was shaking his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “Make the page. If he calls back, give him whatever message she wants. Then I hope we’re done with the Edwin Kreiss affair. His daughter’s been recovered, and the other two missing persons have been … accounted for.”

  “But what about the girl’s state
ment? That Browne McGarand’s going to Washington with a bomb?”

  “You said she said she was blindfolded,” Farnsworth said.

  “We have no evidence that Browne McGarand has ever even been to the arsenal or that he was the man who abducted Lynn Kreiss.”

  “Then show her his picture,” she said.

  “She saw them both in the storm. It just about has to be him. She described him as a big man with a huge beard. Looked like a mountain man.”

  Farnsworth and Keenan exchanged looks.

  “What we know is that jared McGarand’s truck had been parked outside the arsenal fence. We have no evidence that he himself penetrated that arsenal perimeter, either.”

  Janet frowned. What the hell was this? Farnsworth was sounding like a barracks lawyer.

  “There were two people involved in Lynn’s abduction,” she said.

  “One young, one much older. She was abducted inside the arsenal.

  She saw them both and can identify them. We found her inside the arsenal, so they must have been inside the arsenal, too. Doing what? She said that the older man told her he was holding her as a possible hostage, in case things went wrong with his little H-bomb project in Washington.

  She was found in a building right near that power plant. What more do we need?”

  Her voice had risen with that last question, and she became acutely aware of the way her two supervisors were looking at her. Impertinence was not an attribute much admired within the Bureau. Farnsworth leaned forward.

  “We need to adhere to the very explicit guidance we have been given from headquarters. Now, I would very much appreciate it if you would comply with my orders. Make the page. Give Kreiss the message if and when he calls in, nothing more, nothing less.”

  What the hell is going on here? she wondered.

  “Can I tell him his daughter is back among us?”

  Keenan made a noise of exasperation.

  “What part of ‘nothing more, nothing less’ don’t you understand, Carter? How about doing what you’re told for a change?”

  Janet had never heard Keenan speak this way, but she had about had it.

  “How about telling me what’s going on around here?” she countered.

  “Why is this office so hell-bent on mind-fucking Edwin Kreiss?”

  “You’ve got it wrong, Janet,” Farnsworth said.

  “That page will conclude your involvement in the Edwin Kreiss matter. Then you can help Larry Talbot close out the missing persons case.”

  “But what about the bomb? Are we just going to sit on that?”

  “You’re talking about wholly uncorroborated information, obtained from a young woman who has just awakened from a coma, as if it were evidence. There is no evidence of a bomb, and if there were, bombs are the business of the aTF, and even they are saying there was no bomb.”

  Christ, Janet thought. This was like being back in the lab: We know the answer we want; how about a little cooperation here?

  “But they don’t know what we do,” she protested.

  “Of course they’re saying there’s no bomb!”

  Farnsworth closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “I am ordering you to drop this matter.” He opened his eyes.

  “And if you can’t accept that order, you have an alternative.”

  That shocked her. She sat back in her chair, unable to think of what she should say next. Both Farnsworth and Keenan were watching her, almost expectantly. Then, surprising herself, she fished out her credentials and leaned forward to put them on Farnsworth’s desk. Then she hooked her Sig out of its holster, ejected the clip, and then racked and locked back the slide. A single round popped out onto the floor. Keenan automatically bent to retrieve it. She put the gun on the RA’s desk, as well.

  “You guys page Kreiss,” she said, getting up.

  “This is all fucked up, and I quit.”

  She walked out of the RA!s office and went straight upstairs to her cubicle.

  Larry Talbot and Billy were in the office. Talbot took one look at her face and asked her what was wrong. She told him she’d just quit. He sat there at his desk with his mouth open.

  “You did what? Why? What’s happened now?”

  “There’s something way wrong with this Kreiss business,” she began, but then she stopped. Talbot probably wouldn’t know what she was talking about. His expression confirmed that. The intercom phone on his desk buzzed. He picked it up, listened, said, “Yes, sir,” and then hung up.

  “Mr. Keenan wants to see you.”

  “He can fuck off and die, too,” she said.

  “He’s not my boss anymore. I quit and I meant it. I’ll come back later for my desk stuff. They have my piece and credentials. I’m outta here.”

  “But, Jan, what the hell—” Larry said, getting up.

  “Obviously there’s been some misunderstanding. Look—” “No, Larry. The more I think about what I’ve just done, the better I like it. You got what you need on the missing kids?”

  “Um, only the basic story of what happened to them; I was on my way to talk to the Kreiss girl before I did the actual notifications. Hey, look, Jan, why don’t you just take the rest of the day off. You’ve been through a lot. Go home and think about this. Quitting the Bureau—that’s a big deal.”

  “It’s the Bureau’s loss, as far as I’m concerned. Think of it as a logical consequence of my being sent down here to this … this backwater. I’m a Ph.D.-level forensic scientist, for Chrissakes. I’m here because I wouldn’t come up with the quote-unquote right answer in an evidentiary hearing.

  Now here we go again. I should have quit the last time. And for the last goddamned time, don’t call me Jan!”

  Talbot put up his hands in mock surrender and left the office. Billy got up and came over to her cube.

  “Hey,” he said gently.

  “What the hell was it they wanted you to do?”

  “They won’t go after this guy who’s on his way to D.C. with a big-ass bomb. And they won’t let me tell Kreiss that his daughter is in safe hands.

  It’s outrageous!”

  “What did they want you to do? Quitting is a pretty big step, Janet.”

  “The Agency sent some gorgon down here to give Kreiss a message.

  I’m supposed to be the messenger. I’m just tired of all the lies, Billy. First in the lab, now here. This isn’t what I signed up for. Nice knowing you.”

  Billy seemed lost for words, so she grabbed her jacket and her purse and left the office. She was home in thirty minutes, and she went directly into the bathroom to take a long shower. As she stood in the streaming water, she reflected on her decision and concluded that it had been the right move. She realized she needed to put it in writing, and that she also needed to get something in that letter referring to the arsenal case. She smiled then: Bureau habits died hard—she was still thinking about covering her ass, even in the process of resignation.

  She turned off the shower, got out, and dried off. She put on fresh underwear and was combing her hair when she heard a noise from the bedroom door. She whirled around and found the Agency woman standing in the doorway. She was wearing slacks and some kind of safari shirt with lots of pockets. Her eyes were invisible behind wraparound black sunglasses.

  “Brought you something,” the woman said, proffering a shiny object in her outstretched hand. Janet blinked, focused on it, and then there was a shattering pulse of purple light. The next thing she knew, she was on her back in her bed, completely enveloped in a sticky web of some kind. The individual strands were the consistency of raw yarn and smelled of some strong chemical. Her arms were pinned down at her sides, her hands turned palm-in against her hips. Her legs were bent to one side. She made an instinctive move to escape, but the effort only caused the web to contract everywhere it touched her body. She felt as if she were in an elasticized-rubber onion sack. Only her head was free. Everything she looked at had a purple penumbra, and the center focus other vision was a haz
e of small black dots. The woman was sitting calmly at Janet’s dressing table, watching her, her sunglasses gone now. Janet tried to think of something clever to say, but there was no escaping the fact that she was lying on her bed, in nothing but her underwear, trussed like a de boned turkey. She tried to blink away the haze of purple-black spots. The woman’s expression was totally blank.

  “So that’s a retinal disrupter?” Janet asked.

  “Yes. The spots will go away in about an hour. Usually, there’s no permanent damage done.”

  “Usually? That’s comforting. And you did this—why?”

  “To ensure you’d make the page, Agent Carter.”

  “I’m not Agent anybody anymore,” Janet said.

  “Especially because of that.” The woman looked at her watch.

  “We have a little over an hour. I’ve arranged for the return call to bounce here, and then you’ll give him the message I asked you to give him. Still remember it?”

  “What if I don’t?” Janet asked.

  “What if I simply tell him to run like hell?”

  “Same difference,” the woman said.

  “That’s what my message is designed to do anyway. It’s just more effective if he knows it’s me. But I think you’ll want to do it my way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll go get another capture curtain and wrap it around your throat. Then you could practice some very care mi breathing until someone finds you. Think of it as Lamaze with a twist. Whenever that might be, now that you’re… unattached, shall we say? Why don’t you relax now. Attend to your breathing. That stuff’s like a boa constrictor:

  It tightens on the exhale, as I suspect you’ve discovered.”

  Janet had indeed discovered that.

  “Why the hell are you doing this?

  Taking down another federal agent?”

  “But you’re not a federal agent anymore, are you, Carter?” the woman said sweetly.

  “Not that you ever were. An agent, I mean.”

  “Huh?

  “Janet said.