Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  Instant hoo-ha. Fortunately, one of their ADs was there; he let Kreiss walk. But now, of course, they want to have a word, as well.”

  “Why the trip to Langley? What’s up with that, boss?”

  Farnsworth tugged at his shirt collar.

  “That’s a great deal more complicated, and it’s why I’m here with five agents, and why they’re outside in tactical gear. And it’s also why I leaned on those Hatfields and McCoys to make them bring you and Kreiss’s daughter to me.”

  “How did you know they even had us?” she asked.

  “That Agency woman? We got word to her that Kreiss had been picked up. She said she had tracked you and the girl in there to the Wall clan, but now that they had Kreiss up in D.C.” she was backing out. End of story. Good-bye. That was before Kreiss did his thing on the parkway and got away again, of course.”

  “And Mr. Wall? He’s not a fan of things federal.”

  “That old man was here when we got here, sitting on the damned porch like he owned the place. I think he had some of his ‘boys’ out there in the woods. Probably still does. All we got out of him initially was tobacco spit.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  Farnsworth moved his coffee cup around on the table in a small circle for a moment.

  “Well,” he said, “Mr. Wall out there is a realist. I told him who I was and that I was not one of his regular revenuers. I told him I’d bring the full weight of every government law-enforcement agency—FBI, DEA, aTF, DCIS, IRS, and even the Secret fucking Service in here and hound him and all the fruits of his two-branch family tree until the end of time. I told him we’d freeze his bank accounts, audit everybody’s tax returns, cut off their Social Security and Medicaid, intercept his mail, tap his phones, tail his pickup truck, haul him and everyone he knew into court on a weekly basis, and force him to consort with lots and lots of lawyers. I think the thought of lots and lots of lawyers did it, actually.”

  “Micah Wall doesn’t strike me as a heavy-duty crook,” she said.

  “Oh, hell, all these hillbillies are fringe, at worst. They make a big deal of being fierce mountain men and the last of the Mohicans, that kind of stuff. But what they really are is a bunch of poor, undereducated white trash making a subsistence living up here in the hills. They work onagain, off-again minimum-wage jobs while making side money salvaging parts out of junked cars and appliances, distilling a little ‘shine, fighting their roosters and their dogs, or poaching illegal furs. It’s more lifestyle than crime.”

  “He didn’t strike me as someone who scares easily.”

  “Mostly I convinced him that there are no more refuges from the government, not even for hillbillies. Then, I told him something else.”

  “Which was?”

  “That you’d be safer with us than with him, because the person hunting both of you worried even us.”

  Janet put her coffee cup down on the table.

  “Last time I checked, you were on her side.”

  “Because I had specific instructions to that effect. From the

  executive assistant director over FCI, no less. That was before I went and checked with my SAC in Richmond, and he with our assistant director. Like I said, we now have significantly changed circumstances. Remember that DCB deal?”

  “That Domestic Counterintelligence Board that Bellhouser was being so coy about?”

  “Right. Best we can tell, there isn’t any such board. Nobody in our chain of command can put a line on it, and the question’s been asked at the director’s level at headquarters.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Janet said.

  “That means Bellhouser and Foster had their own agenda. That business about a bomb cell was bullshit.”

  “Except, as things turned out, it wasn’t exactly bullshit, was it? As the aTF found out the hard way. But here’s the thing: My boss says AD Marhand was personally involved in Kreiss’s termination. What he can’t find out is what that was really all about. The Office of Professional Responsibility has the files, and they’re not only all sealed but physically over at Main Justice. Now, tell me something. You think Kreiss had a part in that bombing?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “Kreiss was not involved in that bombing.

  He was up in Washington hunting that McGarand guy because of what he did to Lynn.”

  Farnsworth considered that and then nodded.

  “Yeah, I buy that.”

  “Okay. Now, that Agency woman—let me tell you about that piece of work.” She began with Misty’s appearing in her house, then told him what had happened at the hospital and her breaking through the roadblock on the way to Micah’s. When she said that they were aTF people, Farnsworth interrupted her.

  “We’ve had no report of that,” he said.

  “And their SAC would have been in my office with his hair on fire if they thought one of my people did that. They shot at your car?”

  “Yes, they did. That’s how Lynn was wounded. Then that damned woman came over the hill.” She told him how she had driven the woman off the road and then made it to Micah’s, and then she described the cave expedition that followed. He was shaking his head in amazement when she was done.

  “You think those people were all killed down there?” he asked.

  “In the lake?”

  “Don’t know,” she said.

  “But it got real quiet when the stalactites stopped falling. No dogs, no more lights or voices. I don’t know how many men there were back there. But we were not pursued after that.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Farnsworth muttered.

  “This just doesn’t sound right.

  We’d have been avalanched with calls if the aTF thought they were chasing one of our agents and there was shooting.”

  “Maybe we’re making assumptions,” she said.

  “Maybe this wasn’t aTF

  Maybe that damned woman just said it was, to throw some shit in the game.”

  “You’re assuming they were her people?”

  “I’m beginning to think so.”

  Farnsworth got up and paced around the kitchen. One of the agents stepped in through the back door and reported all was secure outside.

  Farnsworth acknowledged and the man stepped back out. Farnsworth asked Billy to crank up a fresh pot of coffee and get it to the men outside. Billy signed off from the communications terminal and started hunting for coffee makings. The agent, whom Janet knew only slightly, had nodded politely to her before he’d stepped back outside. Back in the fold, she thought.

  “Now I know we need to pick up Edwin Kreiss,” Farnsworth said finally.

  “I mean, headquarters wants his ass for what he did to those two agents, and local law wants him for the jared McGarand thing. I think we need to bring him in for his own protection. Damn, I think I got snookered here.”

  “That woman knew all along that it would be damned difficult to trap Kreiss. Once Lynn was recovered, though, she saw her opportunity. She came after his daughter, knowing Kreiss would come in to protect Lynn.”

  “Right, right, I can see that.”

  “Once she knew that Kreiss had been picked up in Washington, just before the bombing, she backed off, left us alone at Micah’s. Until, of course, she found out that Kreiss had managed to escape.”

  “Which means she has a source inside the Bureau,” Farnsworth said.

  “I’ve been making reports up my chain of command since this shit started.

  Maybe the leak’s in Richmond.”

  “Well, then,” she said. “we have to move. We need to get Lynn to a safer place, and we need to find Kreiss. Actually, I think I know how to do that.”

  “How?”

  “Let me talk to Micah. Do you have one of your cards? He’s still outside?”

  “You going to take those with you?” he asked, indicating the credentials and the Sig. When she hesitated, he added, “How ‘bout if I say I’m sorry?”

  She smiled wearily.

 
“This wasn’t you, boss. This is something slimy and corrupt oozing back out of the ground in Washington. You need to get Lynn to tell you what she knows about her father’s termination.”

  Then she picked up the credentials and the gun, her badges of office. He passed her one of his cards, and she went outside.

  Micah was sitting in the front seat of one of the Bureau cars, his hat on his lap, his face a mask of shame. Janet opened the driver’s door and got in.

  Seeing his expression, she said immediately, “You did the right thing.”

  “Not in my book, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Your car’s over there.” He wouldn’t look at her. Without the mountain man hat on his head, he looked old and much diminished.

  “Look, Mr. Wall. First, you saved Lynn and me from some seriously bad people. Second, nobody in this country can fight the government anymore, not if they decide to come after you the way Mr. Farnsworth said they would. Everyone knows that.”

  “Ain’t everyone up here knows that,” he said.

  She sighed and then she saw a way to let him save face.

  “I didn’t tell you the whole truth, Mr. Wall. Look.”

  He looked over at her, and she showed him her credentials.

  “I’m the government, too, Mr. Wall. I’m one of them. You didn’t betray anyone.”

  His chin rose slightly, and his face cleared.

  “I was assigned to protect Lynn Kreiss,” she continued.

  “And that’s what I did. With your help. But now we must get in contact with her father. The last he knew, you had

  Lynn, so we think he’s going to call.”

  He started to shake his head.

  “He ain’t told me nothin’,” he said.

  “And

  I ain’t gonna—” “No, no,” she interrupted.

  “We’re not asking you to turn him in to us.

  But you must tell him that we have Lynn now, and that I said she’s safe with us. I need him to contact me. Not anyone else. Just me.” She turned Farnsworth’s card over and wrote her home phone number on the back of it.

  “Here’s my number.”

  “What about them revenuers in the cave?” he asked, taking the card.

  “Wasn’t they gov’mint?”

  Janet got out of the car.

  “What people in the cave, Mr. Wall?” She looked at him for a moment to make sure he understood, and then she went back into Kreiss’s cabin.

  “I don’t think he knows where Kreiss is,” she told Farnsworth.

  “But I think he’ll put Kreiss in touch with us. For Lynn’s sake.”

  “Good,” Farnsworth said.

  “We’ll be safer in Roanoke, I think. Get the girl up and let’s get the hell out of these mountains.”

  “Why don’t I take her to my place? Micah has my car right over there.

  We both need some sleep.”

  Farnsworth thought about it.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And I’ll put some agents on your house. Then I think we’re going to have to call in the aTF people in the morning; we’ve got to sort this out.”

  “Get them to explain the bullet holes in my car, for starters,” Janet said.

  “Goddamn cowboys.” Billy grinned at her from the kitchen. Then she went to get Lynn up.

  Kreiss awoke and took a moment to remember where he was, which was in his sleeping bag in a one-man tent on the Ramsey Arsenal. He rubbed his face, looked at his watch, and realized he’d overslept. He had wanted to talk to Micah before 2:30 a.m. He listened to the sounds of night outside.

  Everything sounded pretty normal. He slipped out of the warm bag and struggled into the crawl suit. He slithered out of the tent, listened again, and then pulled on his boots. It was almost cold, with a clear atmosphere and enough moonlight to define individual trees. There was a steady background noise of crickets and tree frogs. He could barely hear the creek making its way down toward the logjam. He took several deep breaths and watched his exhalations make vapor clouds.

  He had to think carefully about what he would say when he called Micah. He had to assume that someone, and possibly more than one someone, would have Micah’s phone line tapped at the local telephone central office. He needed to find out what had happened to Lynn without giving away his current location. Unless the Bureau had set up a very elaborate radio triangulation net, the closest they should be able to get was that he was operating off a Blacksburg or Christiansburg cellphone tower. That would tell them he was in the area, but not where. He switched the phone on and saw that the battery wasn’t at full power. He swore; the damn thing was dependent on being plugged into the rental van. He dialed Micah’s number and got a rejection tone because he hadn’t used the area code first. He exhaled, tried again, and the phone was picked up on the second ring. It sounded like Micah.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Yeah, good. Them federals from Roanoke, they done got your daughter.”

  Kreiss felt a surge of alarm.

  “Which federals?”

  “FBI. That woman what was with her? Said she was with the FBI. She done left a message. Says to call her in Roanoke. Says Lynn is safe with her, but you gotta call, and only to her.”

  He gave Kreiss the number and then there was a moment of silence.

  Then he asked if Kreiss needed anything. Micah didn’t sound quite right, and Kreiss thought that he might be trying to tell him to get off the line.

  He told him no, thanked him, and hung up abruptly. He got a pen out and wrote down Janet’s phone number. He looked at his watch: It was almost 3:00 A.M. Not a terrific time to call anyone, he thought. But Lynn was with Carter, which should keep her safe from Misty, especially if they had her at the federal building in Roanoke.

  He was fully awake now, so he decided to scout his immediate area, and perhaps lay in a few approach-warning devices. He went to the edge of the little grove where he had pitched his camp and looked down at the wrecked industrial area, which was about three-quarters of a mile away.

  There was no sign of the security patrol vehicle, but there were portable lights rigged to run off a trailer generator around the remains of the power plant. The wreckage of the other buildings looked like a scene from World War II in the dim moonlight.

  To his left was the edge of the vast ammunition bunker field, arrayed in rows and lanes to the visible horizon, secure behind their own double fence line. A single road led from the industrial area to a double gate, which was closed and presumably locked. Each of the bunkers was topped by two galvanized-steel helical ventilator cowls, all of which were motionless in the still night air. The hundreds of partially buried bunkers made the place look like one vast graveyard. Two thousand acres of canned death, Kreiss thought. It was a fitting symbol for what they had once contained.

  He wondered where McGarand had gone to ground. He set about rigging some motion detectors. He’d call Carter just before daybreak.

  Between now and then, he’d try to figure out what his next moves were, assuming he had any left.

  Janet sat straight up in her bed with the worst headache she had ever had, a blinding, throbbing pain behind her eyes and lancing down both sides of her neck. Her mouth was dry as parchment and her skin felt hot all over. She tried to clear her throat, but there was no moisture; even her

  eyes were sticky and dry. The room was hot, unnaturally hot. There was daylight outside, but not sunlight. She looked at her watch: It was 6:45 on Wednesday morning. Then she realized the heater must be running.

  The heater? She didn’t remember turning on the heater. She tried to clear her throat again, but it hurt even to try. She got out of bed, slower than she wanted to, and went into the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and saw that her face was bright red. She blinked her eyes to make sure, then splashed some cold water on her face. It felt wonderful, but the headache hammered away at her temples and she felt a wave of nausea.

  What the hell is the matter with me? she wondered.
And why is the damned heater going full blast?

  She put on her bathrobe and went back into the bedroom to open a window. The cool air from outside felt like she was breathing pure oxygen, and she stood there for a moment taking deep breaths. Then she stopped: blinding headache. Hot, dry skin. Bright red face. She knew what this was: carbon monoxide.

  The heater.

  She bolted from the bedroom and ran down the hall to Lynn’s room, trying not to breathe. To her horror, Lynn’s door was wide open, and Lynn was gone.

  Maybe she had awakened and gone out of the house. She ran to the stairs and called for one of the agents who had been downstairs. Her voice came out in a dry squeak. Dear God, let her be downstairs, she prayed.

  She went down, holding on to the banister, her breathing strangely ineffective.

  She realized she had made a mistake going downstairs, but she was committed now; no way she was going to make it back up those stairs.

  She focused on the front door and made it, her lungs bursting from holding her breath. She threw open the door and stumbled outside. Then she realized what she had seen out of the corners other eyes as she ran for the door: the two agents, down on the floor in the living room.

  She took three deep breaths and ran back inside, grabbing the first one she came to and dragging him roughshod over the front threshold and out onto the landing. His face was bright red and he didn’t appear to be breathing. She ran back inside and got the other man, dropping him almost on top of the first. Then she fell down to her knees, gagging, as her lungs screamed for oxygen from the exertion of getting them out. After a minute of this, she got up and staggered over to her car, opened the door, and got on the car phone, calling 911. Then she

  called the Roanoke office and asked the duty officer for backup, agents down. Then she rolled out of the car onto the wet grass and fought off a siege of the dry heaves while she desperately tried to get more oxygen into her damaged lungs. A car drove past. She caught a glimpse of a man’s white face gaping at the scene on her lawn, but he didn’t stop. Thanks, pal, she thought.