Hunting Season (69 page)

“Get down on your knees or I’ll wrap you. Then you’ll get to roll all the way to the van.”

He sighed and got down awkwardly onto his knees, his hands still held out in front of him. His arms were getting tired, but he was determined not to get his hands tack-welded to his body if he could help it. The firelight behind the building shell was dying out, and the street was slipping back into darkness. Misty was moving around him, staying at least ten feet away, the gun still pointed at his head while she examined the car. Then he thought he heard distant sirens.

Janet awoke into a red haze with a splitting headache. Getting tired of all these goddamned headaches, she thought irrelevantly, and then she tried to open her eyes. They were stuck together by some warm sticky substance, which she finally realized was her own blood. Her forehead was covered in blood, and she could feel it dripping down her chin and onto

her chest. She moved sideways and tried to wipe the blood out of her eyes.

She wiped the blood off her hands and felt around for her Sig, then I remembered it was in her holster. She looked over to see what had happened to Lynn, but the girl was not visible. Then she was, a crumpled I white-faced form scrunched into the space between the dashboard and ; the front seat. No, not white-faced—red-faced. She, too, had hit the windshield and was bleeding profusely from a scalp cut. Janet swore softly and tried to untangle herself from between the front seat and the steering wheel. Then she heard something outside, sat up very carefully, raised her head, and looked through the shattered windshield. There was just enough light coming from the fire to reveal Kreiss on his knees in the street, and a tall black figure with a gun moving slowly toward the car. She recognized that figure, and she moved her hand behind her to draw the Sig. Lynn moaned from under the dashboard, but she did not move.

“It’s your cavalry all right,” Misty said.

“She drives like she shoots, though. Nice going, Special Agent.”

Janet shook some more blood out of her eyes as she struggled to get more upright in the seat. She glared at Misty through the open side window.

She saw two Mistys, then three, then one, and blinked her eyes rapidly to clear her vision. She held the Sig just out of sight below the windowsill, her fingers sticky with blood. Misty was stepping closer, but her gun hand kept that Colt aimed right at Kreiss’s head as if it had its own fire-control system. Janet looked over at Kreiss. He appeared to have a ball of fabric wrapped around his hands, which he held out in front of him as if praying.

“We’ve come for Kreiss,” Janet said.

“We? We? Got a mouse in your pocket, there, Special Agent?” Misty was smiling wolfishly.

Janet swallowed to relieve the dryness in her throat. She thought she heard distant sirens, but she dismissed it as wishful thinking. Then she saw Misty’s expression change. Damn it, she did hear sirens.

“Here’s the deal,” Misty said.

“He’s going with me. You try to interfere, I’ll execute plan B.”

“Plan B?” Janet repeated stupidly.

Misty gave her a patient look but said nothing. Janet figured it out.

Janet tried to think of something to say, a move to make, but she was staring at an impasse here and she knew it. God, her head hurt. Her teeth hurt and her eyes hurt and she was feeling a little nauseous.

She felt the Sig in her hands, and wondered when she’d managed to draw it. Misty smiled as if reading her mind.

“Whatcha got there, Special Agent?” she said in a taunting voice.

“Got your gun, do you?” She stepped closer, her weapon still pointed unwaveringly at Kreiss. Janet definitely heard sirens now, but they were getting closer not nearly as fast as she wanted. Lynn groaned again behind her.

Kreiss looked over at the car; he had heard his daughter.

“Want to try it out, Special Agent?” Misty asked. She took a fighting stance, extending her arms, crouching, and gripping her weapon with both hands, still keeping it pointed at Kreiss. She was maybe six feet from the car, her body facing Janet but her head turned to watch Kreiss.

“Think you can actually shoot someone? Because I don’t think you can. I think I can nail you and then him in the time it’ll take you to work up your nerve, because you’re just another fucking amateur and always will be.

But, hey, Carter, I’m game if you are.”

Kreiss moved then, struggling to his feet. Janet felt her heart start to pound. Her mouth was now absolutely dry and there was a chemical taste in her throat. The Sig suddenly seemed to weigh twenty pounds, and she gripped the butt even harder.

This was the moment she had dreaded the whole time she had been in the Bureau.

“Get back on your fucking knees, Kreiss,” Misty hissed, steadying the gun on him but now watching Janet.

“No,” he said, starting to walk toward her. Janet realized what he was doing. He was creating a diversion, forcing Misty to split her concentration.

Giving Janet the shot. But only if she did it right now.

Time slowed down. A rivulet of blood ran into her right eye and she had to blink rapidly to clear her vision. Misty saw Janet blink and smiled.

Kreiss kept coming.

“Watch this, baby face,” Misty said, snapping her eyes back to Kreiss for a second and then back to Janet.

“Let me show you how this is done.”

Janet fired right through the car door. She didn’t try to aim. She just stared at Misty and forced her hands to track that stare, willing the bullets to slash through the six feet of air between them and tear into that goddamned woman’s body. She fired until the Sig wouldn’t fire anymore, her fingers burning as the car’s insulation caught fire, watching with grim satisfaction as Misty staggered back from the hail of bullets that were tearing into her, still trying to bring the

Woodsman around and then dropping it with a wail that was cut off as the final round tore out her throat, spinning her around and down onto the concrete. Janet’s last three rounds hit the concrete wall behind, sending two ricochets howling down the ruined street and one back into her own car, inches from her knee.

When the noise finally stopped, Janet tried to focus on the scene in front of her. Misty was motionless on the ground. Janet turned her head to locate Kreiss. Oh God, oh God, Kreiss was down, too, face flat on the concrete, not moving, his face buried in the rubble.

She dropped the Sig by her foot and tried to get the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Lynn was crying behind her now, making a whimpering little-girl sound that surprised Janet. She pushed herself sideways, getting more blood in her face, wiping it off on the seat back, and then started climbing through the window feet first She felt the car move then, swaying as she changed position. She froze, then resumed her movements, forcing her legs and then her hips out the window, straining her back, and then dropping out of the car onto—nothing.

She yelped, grabbed the blood-slick windowsill, and hung there for a moment while the car rocked dangerously on the single pipe holding it over the hole. She heard the end of the pipe grinding ominously. She climbed partially back into the car, got another faceful of blood, and then blindly kicked out with her legs until her feet hit solid ground. She arched her back, making a bridge of her body between the rim of the hole and the car, and then stood up, windmilling her arms until she could get her balance.

She sat down, then recoiled when she felt Misty’s foot move against her back. She rolled away, wiping her eyes clear of blood, and came up on all fours. Misty was also on all fours. Her chest pack was a mass of black blood, and there were bloody holes in her right hand and throat. Her left eye was hanging partially out of its socket. Her face was twisted into a white mask of fury. The hole in her throat was pumping visibly, spattering the concrete and literally drowning out the words she was trying to speak.

Janet crawled backward from this horrible apparition as the sweeper brought up a large stainless-steel syringe in her left hand. The needle dripped a fuming substance from its glittering tip, and then Janet, still moving backward, felt a searing lance of pain on her right shoulder as Misty pressed the plunger to fire a jet of acid across the concrete at Janet.

Then Janet heard a single shot from her left and Misty’s head jerked sideways and she dropped like a stone, the syringe clattering into the street.

Janet tried to get up, but her skin was screaming in pain as the acid

melted through her shirt and burned her. She saw Lynn hanging partially out of the car window, her face white, blood streaming from her forehead, still clutching Janet’s .38. The car shifted again, the steel pipe under the wheel well beginning to bend up at a dangerous angle. Janet yelled at Lynn to stop moving as she tore away the upper-right part of her smoking shirt and rubbed at her skin, trying to get the acid off her. Then Kreiss was there, telling her to stop moving, and then he was kneeling next to Misty’s body and dissolving the capture curtain in the fountain of blood coming out other throat until his hands came free, flailing away the ropes of the latex hanging off them like a bundle of snakes. He pulled Lynn all the way out of the car, getting her clear just as the steel pipe made a loud creaking noise and then viciously snapped, dropping the car nose-first down into the hole with a terrible crash. After that came a profound silence, into which the sounds of sirens finally penetrated. Kreiss put Lynn down gently, sitting her up against the building’s wall.

Janet sat on the concrete, still batting at the skin on her shoulder while trying to keep the blood out other eyes with her left arm. Kreiss squatted down next to her, rubbed his bloody hands against the jumpsuit, and took her hand.

“I wasn’t sure you could do it,” he said softly.

“I wasn’t, either,” she said, looking over at the Misty’s shattered body, which was draining four distinct streams of blood across the concrete and into the Ditch. Lynn still held Janet’s .38 in a virtual death grip while she stared at Misty’s inert form. Janet realized she was clutching his hand like a lifeline. Her own legs were trembling.

“Look,” he said.

“You’ve both sustained head injuries. Your memory will be affected. I’m going to take… that… away. Here’s your story:

You got here, heard shooting, saw the thermite, and then fucked up and drove into the hole and got out by the skin of your teeth.”

Janet blinked. The sirens were definitely closer now.

“They’ll certainly believe that,” she said.

“Still the fucking amateur.”

“No, not anymore you’re not,” he said. He looked over at Lynn to make sure she was still conscious.

“Who’d you call?”

“Would you believe the aTF?”

He smiled at that.

“I’ve got to move,” he said.

“You remember the crash, but nothing else. Stay close to Lynn, if you can. I’ll be in touch when things cool off.”

“Will you?” she asked.

“Oh yes, Janet. But first I’ll send you a sign. Now, lie back down, relax.

That’s just a cut on your head. Scalp wounds bleed. Looks worse than it is, but it will divert any questions for a while.” He looked up and listened.

“They’re almost here.”

“Farnsworth is going to be seriously pissed,” she said, not letting go of his hand.

“Farnsworth is going to be too busy to be pissed,” he replied. He squeezed her hand and then he moved to Lynn. She watched him gently put his daughter down on her back in the anti shock position, head down, knees raised. He wiped her forehead, took the gun out of her hand, and then held her face in his hands for a moment. He kissed her forehead and stood up. He picked up Misty’s gun, and then lifted her inert form, hunched into a fireman’s carry, and then he was gone, bent over with the weight of her, like a lion off to hide his kill.

Janet relaxed onto the concrete, hearing the noise of vehicles up by the gate, knowing they’d be down here soon. She let the blood seep over her forehead now without trying to impede it; the bleeding actually seemed to help the headache. The skin along her upper arm and shoulder still burned, but it was more like a really bad sunburn now. She wondered if her shoulder would be scarred forever. She realized she didn’t really care.

What had he called her? Janet? No more “Special Agent”? She smiled at that as headlights flooded the street. It began to rain.

Three weeks later, Janet Carter waited outside the RA’s office for her final meeting with Farnsworth and Keenan before she formally checked out of the office. That morning, she had tentatively accepted a teaching and research position over at Virginia Tech in the materials forensics department of the civil engineering school. The school was developing a post incident forensics program to investigate and determine the cause of catastrophic failures in large structures, such as bridges, streets, or buildings. When the department chair, who had also headed up one of her Saturday seminars, found out she was looking, he had offered her the job immediately, subject, of course, to the

appropriate due diligence on her academic degree and an FBI recommendation. Like many government employees leaving federal service, she’d been a bit surprised at how easy it had been.

As she sat there, she wondered, not for the first time, where Edwin Kreiss was. Based on the way Lynn had been acting lately, she was pretty sure they had been in touch. The past three weeks had been interesting times, in the Chinese sense of that expression. The aTF never did find McGarand, but they had found a vehicle in the woods that had been rented up in Washington at the Reagan Airport, and the driver’s license used had been Browne McGarand’s. A joint forensics team had spent some time at the scene where they found Janet and Lynn. It had taken a specially equipped fire truck to get the fire in the valve pit out because the thermite grenade had ignited some metal fittings. There had been no trace of human remains in or around the valve pit itself, but they had recovered an IR sight-equipped AK-47, along with evidence that it had been emptied almost indiscriminately into the valve pit. She wondered if anyone had tried to account for all the blood trails out on that street, but the rain had probably washed most of it away.