Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Edwin,” the woman said.

  “I’ve been sent to retrieve you. I’m not leaving until I do. Here’s the real deal: You get out of that car and walk back up into the woods. If you don’t, I’ll drop your daughter down one of these deep holes I keep finding here.”

  Janet saw Kreiss’s hand close on the phone handset so hard that it began to crack.

  “Edwin,” the woman continued.

  “You get out of the car and she gets to walk away. You have my word, which you now know is a lot more reliable than your precious Bureau’s word, isn’t it? Then I’ll give you an hour or two. Let’s wait until dark. Then we’ll work it out, you and me. Sound and light, like old times. You can even try to stop me. But this way, what happens to your daughter is up to you, not some faceless bureaucrat in Washington.”

  Kreiss said nothing, staring straight ahead.

  “It’s a no-brainer, Edwin.”

  He hesitated, then said, “I need a minute.”

  “Take a lot. Take two. I know where to find you.”

  The phone subsided into a hissing noise. Janet was paralyzed: She absolutely did not know what to do. Kreiss closed his eyes and then the handset shattered in his white-knuckled grip. Janet tried to think of an argument, a reason, any reason for him not to take the woman’s deal, but she knew there wasn’t one. Not after what he’d heard Assistant Director Greer say. Son of a bitch} “I’m trying to think of an argument not to do what she wants,” she said.

  “For the life of me, I can’t.”

  “There isn’t one,” he said, dropping the broken handset onto the seat and moving back to his side of the front seat, his hand opening and closing.

  “Can you tell me what it is the bosses want so badly?” she asked.

  “A graphic file. A picture of a letter. Signed by the deputy AG. Garrette himself. Sent to Ephraim Glower. Telling him that Justice was attaching one of his bank accounts.”

  Janet didn’t understand.

  “Why is that important?”

  He rubbed the sides of his face with his hands. Then he turned to look at her, his eyes hollow. His expression scared her.

  “Glower didn’t kill himself and his family because he was going to be uncovered as a servant of the Chinese government. He killed himself because they took the money back.”

  “What money? And who is ‘they’?”

  “The money he’d been paid to derail the espionage investigation for all those years. He’d run through the family fortune, but this Chinese money was going to save his ass. When they got caught taking the illegal campaign contributions—you know, the Hong Kong connection money—the reelection committee opted to give it all back. Some of that, a couple of million, had been used to pay off Glower. So they used Justice to get the IRS to attach Glower’s bank accounts. That meant Glower was now broke again. That’s why he did it.”

  “The reelection committee knew about Glower? My God! That means’ Yeah he said, scanning the area around the car again.

  “Anyone who has that letter can tie the Chinese campaign contributions to a quid pro quo: a fee paid for services rendered. Access to our nuclear weapons secrets in return for several millions in campaign contributions. Not directly, of course. Through the Hong Kong cutout. Basically, anyone who knows the case would recognize the letter as the smoking gun. Only problem was, the political side lost their nerve. What a surprise.”

  She took a deep breath and tried to get her mind around all this.

  “What was your deal?” she asked.

  “When you were terminated?”

  “Glower called Agency security to have me thrown out of his house that day I went to confront him. But I went back a few hours later. Found him and his entire family slaughtered. Very obvious suicide. Maybe too obvious, now that I think about it. Like that White House lawyer? Anyhow, he had a wall safe. I broke into it, found the letter.”

  “They found the safe, they knew somebody knew too much.”

  “Something like that. Initially, they didn’t know who, or what. Later, after the investigation, they began to figure it out. They knew it had to be me, so they threatened the only remaining thing of value I had: Lynn.

  The threat was pretty clear. If I agreed to remain silent, they agreed to leave her alone.”

  “Why didn’t they just move against you?”

  “Because by then, I had a lock on them: AD Marchand was part of it.

  He’d been taking care of the FBI end. I let Marchand know that I had documentary evidence on the real reason Glower killed himself. Anything happened to me or Lynn, there was a mechanism in place that would guarantee that information would get to the appropriate congressional committee chairmen. When I told Marchand what it was, he just about fainted. Basically, I had a gun to the administration’s head. They had a gun to Lynn’s head. A lock.”

  “And it held until Lynn disappeared,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s why they came, not because of any phony bomb cell. With her gone, you had no more reason to keep quiet.”

  “Precisely, Special Agent.” He sighed.

  “Only there was a bomb cell, wasn’t there. That was the kicker. Browne McGarand and his merry band.”

  “What would happen if Greer and the director got their hands on this letter?”

  “They’ll burn Marchand and Garrette right down. After that, it’s whatever deal the director wants to make with the attorney general herself.

  Based on all the friction these past five years, they’ll have a lot to talk about, don’t you think? Problem is, now I can’t give it to you.”

  “What! Why not?”

  “I’ve already explained that. Lynn.”

  She stared out the window for a moment.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” she said.

  “About the lock. They will have learned from all this. You get Lynn back this time, they’ll just send someone else. There’s an infinite supply of them. Even if you take that woman out there, they’ll tap someone else. Someone maybe worse than she is. You have to turn loose of what you know. That’s the only thing that’ll put this thing to rest.”

  He started to say something, to argue with her, but then stopped. He was listening. She went for broke.

  “The problem with your so-called lock is that you’re just one individual,” she said.

  “Okay, you’re Edwin Kreiss. But the G’s gotten too big. Too powerful. Trust me, I’m part of it—I know. One man? No chance. Lynn will never be safe until you give up what you have to another government agency. Let them get a lock. Hoover-style. Then everyone will leave you alone. Otherwise, you’re condemned to a permanent hunting season.”

  She stopped. She was almost afraid to look at him. She could feel his anger. The clock on the dashboard advanced silently, each increment increasing the tension between them.

  “You mean give the Bureau the lock.”

  “Exactly. The organization can make it stick. As a lone individual, you can’t. No disrespect intended.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a prolonged sigh.

  “What the hell,” he said finally through clenched teeth.

  “I’m getting too old for this shit. I hid it in Marchand’s own archives, FCI Division.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered.

  “It’s right there? In the fucking Hoover Building?”

  “Right there. File name: Year of the Rat. Just like that book. Password:

  Amoral.” He gave a cold smile.

  “Think they’ll be embarrassed?”

  Janet could just imagine.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  He looked at his watch.

  “I just made a deal, and now I need to ask another favor. I need you to cover Lynn for a while, once Misty releases her.”

  “And you?”

  “She has orders to retrieve me,” he said, pulling down his hood.

  “I have other plans. One of us will prevail. Will you take care of Lynn for me?”


  “Yes, of course, but—” He opened the door and got out. Then he leaned back in.

  “If I survive this, you’ll eventually know about it. But I’m going to have to go underground for a while until the elephants sort things out in Washington.”

  Knowing she might not ever see him again, she felt she had to ask.

  “What was it like being on your own for all those years? Hunting people down, making up the rules as you went along?”

  He stared down at her for a moment.

  “You mean without the FBI Manual?

  Without a squad supervisor, and the ASAC and the SAC, and a fistful of teletypes from some ad hoc committee in Washington telling you when to go right, when to go left? What was that like?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was amazing. It was every G-man’s dream, Special Agent. Until I came up with the right answer to the wrong politicians.”

  “Come in with us,” she said impulsively.

  “Once she lets Lynn go.”

  His weary eyes smiled at her.

  “Can’t do that, Special Agent. You know how it is: You can fall in love with the Bureau, but the Bureau never falls in love with you. Take care of Lynn.”

  Then he was gone, loping up the hill and into the trees like some big cat.

  “Wait,” she tried to say, but the word died in her throat. She got out to look for the speaker microphone, found it, and stuck the jack back into the wiring harness on her left collar shoulder. Farnsworth was yelling.

  “Carter? What the hell’s going on down there, Carter? Carter! Come in, damn it!”

  “Kreiss was here; now he’s gone,” she said. Her chest felt constricted by her sense of failure.

  “I’m going to wait for Lynn Kreiss. I’m returning to the admin building position. Request you meet me there.”

  “Goddamn it, Carter, what the hell is going on?”

  “Request you meet me at the admin building,” she said again.

  “For what it’s worth, I believe we have achieved AD Greer’s objective.”

  Kreiss pushed into the tree line, hit the ground, rolled to the right, and then scurried through the underbrush for fifty feet before stopping. He then crawled back to a point from which he could see down into the industrial area. Carter’s car was moving back toward the admin building, its tires crunching through gravel and broken glass. The van was still sitting there. He felt his pulse throbbing from the dash up the hill, during which he’d half-expected to hear a rifle shot. But maybe Misty had developed a sporting side. He, on the other hand, would have made that deal and then dropped his quarry as soon as he appeared.

  Carter had stopped the car on the power plant side of the admin building.

  In the distance, he heard other vehicles coming as the Bureau’s backup brigade closed in. Then he saw Lynn emerge from the wreckage of the turbo generator building beside the power plant’s foundations, hesitantly at first, shielding her eyes against the sunlight, as if she had been blindfolded. She took three steps out into the debris field, stumbled over something, recovered, stopped, and looked around.

  Move, goddamn it, move, Kreiss thought. The first of the backup cars reached Carter, spilling agents. Lynn had to see them, but she still wasn’t moving and seemed disoriented. He needed to get Lynn out of there. He drew the big .45 from his chest holster and sighted down the stubby barrel at the nearest of the two ruined generators behind her. It was a distance of at least two hundred yards, so he elevated the barrel, pointing it at least a foot over the top of the generator, and fired once. The booming sound of the .45 echoed across all the wrecked

  buildings in the industrial area, dropping all the agents, including Carter, instantly to the ground.

  The bullet, partially spent, hit the base of the generator well behind Lynn, causing her to yelp and take off up the main street at a dead run toward the cars and the agents huddling behind them at the top of the street.

  Kreiss backed away from the tree line. He had accomplished two things: made Lynn move, and told Misty that, for once, he had a gun. He was deciding what to do next when something blasted an entire branch off the tree under which he was hiding, followed by the distinctive crack-boom of a big rifle. Misty answering in kind: I know where you are, and I, too, have a gun.

  The agents must be going nuts down there, he thought with a small smile. Then he squirmed farther back into the woods and began crawling, head down, as fast as he could go, east this time, away from the power plant. His objective was the patch of trees that projected down to the area where the wooden mixing sheds had been. It was about five hundred yards, line of sight, but longer the way he went through the woods.

  From there, maybe he could get back into the wreckage of the industrial area. Misty was down there somewhere, in among that ring of rubble surrounding the remains of the power plant. She would expect him to stay in the woods, where he was most proficient. He intended to travel in a large circle, staying literally on the ground, moving slow enough to keep the wildlife from revealing his position. He would creep for an hour, then dig in and rest, making his move back into the industrial area right after dark.

  He didn’t think Misty would come out until after dark, either, especially if the Bureau people hung around.

  He hoped they wouldn’t linger after Carter told her boss about the archive. Farnsworth should see where his interests lay and invoke standard procedure: They had the hostage clear and a line to the evidence, which was all his bosses really wanted. What happened back at the arsenal after that shouldn’t matter, especially to the big guns at Bureau headquarters, where life in the fast lane was probably about to get really interesting.

  Janet didn’t hesitate after getting Lynn into her car. She took off, turning the car in a screech of tires and gunning it up the hill toward where Farnsworth and the rest of the backup team were waiting. The other two cars followed, once they were sure she had the hostage out of harm’s way.

  She made Lynn put her head down on the front seat until she thought they were well out of rifle range. Fucking Kreiss, letting off that cannon.

  But it had done the job.

  “You okay?” she shouted as she maneuvered noisily around a pile of concrete blocks.

  “Yes,” Lynn said.

  “She had me blindfolded. I didn’t see anything useful.

  Thanks for the rescue. Again.”

  “My pleasure, but it was your father who got you out, not me.”

  “Dad? Here? Where is he?”

  “Up there in the woods somewhere. I think he’s going to have it out with that woman, now that you’re clear.”

  Lynn sat up, biting her lip as Janet pulled up alongside Farnsworth’s car. He was sitting in the right-rear seat, with the window open, a radio mike in his hand. His driver had his gun out and was searching the industrial area with binoculars. Janet got out to explain what had happened, while Lynn laid her head back on the back of the front seat and closed her eyes.

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  “We were supposed to bring him in.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, we were supposed to bring in the evidence he has.”

  He gave her an exasperated look.

  “So? Where the hell is it?”

  She leaned forward and whispered what Kreiss had told her. He blinked, then gave a slow whistle of surprise.

  “In Marchand’s own archive system? Man!”

  “I believe we can access that archive right here from Roanoke.”

  “But we’re not going to,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I’m gonna let AD Greer and his people go grab that little buzz saw.”

  “Don’t you want to see it? After all this?”

  “Hell no,” he said.

  “And neither do you. Look what happened to Kreiss for knowing what he knows. Where is he anyway?”

  “Out there in the weeds,” she said.

  “And that woman is down there somewhere, in all that rubble around the power plant. That’s where tha
t second shot seemed to come from.”

  The other agents were gathering around, looking for orders.

  Farnsworth thought for a moment, then announced they were pulling out, that their mission was complete.

  “I thought we were supposed to pick up some guy along with the girl,” one of the squad supervisors said. Keenan, taking his cue from Farnsworth, gave him a signal to back off, and then Farnsworth told everyone to mount up and get back to Roanoke. He told one of the agents to drive Janet’s car; Janet and Lynn Kreiss were to get in his car.

  Lynn Kreiss stared out the back window of the car as they pulled out.

  She shivered when she thought of what they’d be doing come nightfall.

  She could never do that. She wondered if Lynn knew what was going to happen back there. Of course she did.

  Kreiss made his move an hour after sunset, before the chill air of night cooled the ground enough to provide too great an infrared contrast between his body and his surroundings. The sky had clouded over during the afternoon, rendering the darkness almost absolute once the sun went down. But Misty was an active sweeper. She would have a real IR surveillance device, maybe even an illuminator and receiver set, not just a nightscope. IR devices created images based on the contrast between warm objects and a cold background, or vice versa. The greater the contrast, the clearer the image. He crept out of the tree line on his belly and snaked down as fast as he could, hugging the bottom of a swale he had scouted earlier. He was also assuming that Misty was still down in the vicinity of the power plant’s ruins. That van was still there, and there now seemed to be a bio luminescent glow emanating from the ring of rubble surrounding the flattened plant. She might have deployed a defensive light ring, which was a thin, flexible tube of clear plastic Lucite, the diameter of a straw, filled with the material contained in ChemLights. It created a faint green glow that could be used to illuminate a defensive perimeter for hours without degrading the defender’s night vision. He had chosen his vantage point because it put several buildings between him and the rubble around the power plant.