Out of Time

by David Klass

  “And I will find him,” Carnes promised. “The only thing we need from you now is to answer any follow-up questions my investigators come up with, and to stay the hell away from this case while I catch Green Man and figure out what to do with you.” He waved for the camera crew to stop filming and leave.

  The room emptied till only Carnes and Grant were left. The little man stood and walked closer to Tom. “What do you want from this? I mean you, personally?”

  “Nothing,” Tom told him.

  “Credit? You were shot twice. Do you want to be a hero?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What are you holding back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why can’t we corroborate anything you’ve told us?”

  “He’s very good at cleaning up after himself. But I’ve told you the truth.”

  Carnes stepped yet closer and bent so low over Tom’s chair that spittle from his mouth wet Tom’s cheek as he whispered, “It’s my investigation, and I’m catching Green Man. Jim Brennan is out of this, and so are you.”

  “He left me to die. Let me be part of stopping him.”

  “Since you have problems understanding orders, I want you to listen to this carefully. You will not talk to the press. You will not reveal to anyone any details of what you have learned. You will not contact anyone who is in any way involved in this investigation or who was previously involved. You will now completely separate yourself from the Green Man investigation and take some time off to recover from your wounds, while we figure out whether to let you go back to being a computer analyst or to throw you in prison for impersonating an operational FBI agent and for gross dereliction of duty.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “So you were the one who questioned this guy and filed the report?” Carnes asked, glancing out the second-floor window of the small-town police station on the nearly deserted main street of Glenwood, Michigan. A sunny Friday afternoon was giving way to a cool evening, and the town center was emptying fast.

  “Yes, sir,” Ted Dolan said nervously, his big hands tucked into his pockets. “Well, actually Mitch wasn’t home, so I questioned his wife, Sharon.”

  “But you do know him?”

  “Yes, sir, Mitch is a big police booster. And I know both his kids. I taught Gus, his son, junior lifesaving. And his wife is involved in a lot of causes and town projects, so I also know her. Sharon.”

  Carnes heard something in Dolan’s voice and lowered the report. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s . . . a fine woman, sir.”

  Carnes gave the awkward, small-town police sergeant a conspiratorial smile. “Out of ten?”

  Dolan looked back at him. There were only men in the room. “Nine, sir.”

  “No wonder you questioned her instead of her husband,” Carnes said. There was laughter, and Dolan relaxed noticeably.

  “When you were in the house, did you see anything that might be used in any way to resist a rapid police entrance?”

  “Only the hunting stuff I told you about, in the basement.”

  “The painting you saw hanging on the wall was good?”

  “Really good, sir. I didn’t know Mitch was an artist. Sharon said it was just a hobby he fooled around with.”

  Carnes brought his cell phone over and showed Dolan the pencil sketch of the seascape that hung in Willa Sayers’s house in Cape May. “Similar to this?”

  Dolan studied it intently for a few seconds. “I’m no expert, but I’d say very similar.”

  Carnes’s cell buzzed. He stepped over to a window, read a text, and typed a few quick words back. Then he turned to the men in the room. “The perimeter has been secured, and the SWAT team is ready to go in. I want to emphasize to everyone that there may be two kids in the house. We are not like Green Man—we are not child killers. The children may have been trained to fight back. We will only engage with them if forced, and all efforts will be made not to injure them in any way. Sergeant Dolan and Chief Parry, since you know the layout of the property, I’d like you both to come in with us. As advisors and observers, but not to fight in any way.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chief Parry said. “It’ll be an honor to be part of this, sir.”

  “For me, too,” Sergeant Dolan said. “You bet. Thank you.”

  Carnes was looking past them. He had spotted an elegant, wide-brimmed leather hat hanging on a peg above the chief’s desk. “What is that?”

  “That’s my Lord Saybrook safari hat,” Chief Parry said. “I brought it back from South Africa a couple of years ago. Paid more than two hundred dollars for it. Would you like to try it on?” He took the hat down and passed it to Carnes, who put it on and looked at his reflection in the window.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  The SWAT team was dressed in black boots and coveralls, with dark gloves and form-fitting shrapnel-resistant skullcaps. Since they were dealing with a bomber, their bulletproof Kevlar body armor had been reinforced with heavy inserts that were also designed for shrapnel. They had set up at the back of the property, where it was dark and quiet. The six-foot fence that ran completely around the twelve acres brushed a northern red oak, and three team members had silently trimmed the great tree’s low-hanging branches.

  Hwang, the sinewy, panther-like SWAT commander, gave his report to Carnes quickly and succinctly as his men listened, ready to fill in information if necessary: “We’ve detected several different kinds of sensors all over the perimeter. This rear section of the property seems to have the least, and we’re out of all visual sight lines from the house. A trip wire runs on top of the fence. We jumped it on both sides and then cut the center. No one in the house will know that. They’ll see a constant signal, but we’ve breached their system on both sides of a seven-foot section of fence, and we’re ready to go over the center whenever you say.”

  “I say now,” Carnes told the men. “Let’s do it.”

  Hwang turned to his men and gave an order with a silent hand gesture. He was first to the fence and seemed to glide to the top. He leapt to a branch of the red oak and dropped soundlessly to the ground. His men followed him one by one, and then Carnes, Grant, Dolan, and Chief Parry clambered over noticeably more slowly and awkwardly. A two-man camera crew came over last and carefully lowered their equipment to the leafy ground inside the fence.

  The SWAT guys didn’t seem particularly happy about the small crowd joining them on this operation, and they didn’t wait around. As soon as they were inside the fence, they spread out and sprinted for the house. As planned, they approached it from three directions, and in less than a minute they were demolishing the front door with a piston-driven battering ram.

  They threw in a flash-bang concussion grenade and came in after it at high speed, fanning out through the large house, expertly covering one another as they moved from room to room and to the danger spots—up the stairs to the second and third floors and down to the basement. They carried short-barreled, fully automatic assault weapons for maximum maneuverability, and when they covered one another and spun into open spaces, it looked like a sequence of well-practiced dance moves.

  Carnes, wearing the safari hat and cradling a semiautomatic, and Grant, with Chief Parry and Sergeant Dolan, followed the SWAT team into the house. The camera crew walked with them and filmed everything that Carnes did. He was soon standing in the third-floor library, where he had found a laptop that he was slowly powering up. While he waited for it to turn on, he received a series of negative reports. “There don’t seem to be any family members in the house, sir.”

  “They may be hiding. Check for tunnels. Remember, they’ve been preparing for something like this for a long time. I want every computer secured and—”

  “Sir, we haven’t found any computers yet,” Hwang said.

  “You will. There’s one right here, and we’ll find more. Green Man has lived here for m
ore than twelve years. Trust me, this house contains a treasure trove of crucial information, and we need to find it and secure it—”

  Suddenly the house lights all blinked off and then on again as a deep male voice spoke to them from everywhere and nowhere. “You have two minutes to vacate this house before it is destroyed.”

  They looked around. There were no visible speakers. Perhaps the voice was coming through the vents.

  “That sounded like Mitch,” Sergeant Dolan said nervously.

  “Yeah, definitely Mitch,” Chief Parry noted, edging a step closer to a door.

  “It’s his recorded voice,” the SWAT team’s tech guy said. “This was set up. We triggered it somehow when we came in.”

  “We should get out of here,” the guy holding the camera said.

  “No one goes anywhere,” Carnes told them all in a strong, confident voice. “Think about it. If Green Man really had this place rigged with explosives and wanted to kill us, would he be dumb enough to give us a warning? No, he’d take us all down.”

  “One minute and forty-five seconds,” the voice said.

  “Continue the search,” Carnes said. “This is just a bluff—”

  “This guy has destroyed six major targets,” Grant cut in. “He doesn’t like to kill innocent people, but he’s shown a willingness to do so. He’s never been known to bluff. He just blows things up. I’m out of here.”

  “You’re a coward,” Carnes told him. “And you’re disobeying my direct order.”

  Grant looked back at the little man in the safari hat. “If you stay in this house, I don’t think you’ll be around to prosecute me.” Then he left quickly, and they could hear his boots thudding down the wooden stairs.

  “One minute and thirty seconds,” the deep voice said. “Vacate the house now.”

  The two camera crew guys fled out the door. “Hey, you two, get back here!” Carnes shouted after them, but they had taken the stairs so fast that one of them could be heard tumbling down.

  Sergeant Dolan glanced down at a dark stain spreading at his crotch and realized that he had pissed himself. Without a word he lumbered for the stairs, and Captain Parry followed him.

  “One minute and fifteen seconds,” the voice said.

  “This study is where he planned his attacks,” Carnes said to the SWAT team members, his voice coming out unnaturally high-pitched. “Let’s start here. What he’s been reading will tell us what he’s been thinking. . . .”

  The SWAT team members looked at their commander, who turned to Carnes. “I’m taking my men out.”

  “Captain, you are under my command,” Carnes snapped, “and I’m giving you a direct order to search this study and secure vital evidence.”

  Hwang gave a hand gesture to his men, who immediately left the study. He followed them out.

  Carnes stood, suddenly alone. Something flashing on the desk caught his attention. He glanced down and saw that the laptop had finally powered up. On its screen was a beautiful screen saver photograph of the earth, taken from space on one of the NASA missions. The earth looked like a precious jewel, its seas and landmasses gleaming. And then the image slowly morphed into something else that was round. It was an antique stopwatch, the hand moving, counting down so that every tick was audible and seemed a little louder than the previous one. . . .

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  “Keep the camera trained on the house,” Grant ordered the cameraman, but it was no good. They were in a ditch fifty yards from the front door, and the man’s hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t hold his camera. He dropped it and ducked low to the ground, trembling.

  Grant picked up the camera and saw that it was turned on and operational. He hit the record button and pointed it toward the house. He peered through the viewfinder and saw the remains of the front door that the SWAT team had busted inward.

  Then a shape appeared, hightailing it out. It was Carnes, minus the safari hat. He came hurtling out the door, short legs churning, and he vaulted down the four front steps in one desperate leap. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was sprinting. He headed for a stone fountain on the front lawn, dove behind it, and disappeared from Grant’s viewfinder.

  A heartbeat later there was an earth-shaking BOOM and an explosion so violent that Grant nearly dropped the camera himself. The three-story colonial house seemed to rise up on its foundation, as if the basement had suddenly sprouted another floor beneath it. But the new floor wasn’t a floor at all—it was a fireball of explosive energy that consumed wood and hurled rock outward as the structure fell back down and imploded, collapsing in on itself in a plume of fire and a cloud of smoke and dust.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Sharon drove northward, in her silver Accord, with old Finn curled up and napping happily between Gus and Kim on the back seat. At first the kids were full of questions about this unexpected trip. “How come you can’t tell us where we’re going?” Gus asked.

  “Because your father and I thought this should be a surprise,” she told them, staying just at the upper edge of the speed limit. She had let them each bring one bag, and she had now been driving for more than three hours, on small roads that Mitch had chosen for them. She had never appreciated how hard it must have been for him to drive to and from missions—how the pressure not to make any slight mistake turned the simple act of driving a car into a tense ordeal.

  “What about school?” Gus wanted to know. “My report on the Puritans is due on Tuesday.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Mrs. Lowell is gonna be mad.”

  “And I’m supposed to go to Emma’s birthday party,” Kim said.

  “Everything will work out,” Sharon promised. “You kids should get some sleep.”

  “How come Dad’s not with us?” Gus asked.

  “He has something to finish for business and then he’s going to join us,” Sharon replied, gripping the wheel a little more tightly.

  “When?” Kim asked.

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Do you want to hear some music? You guys can choose the station.”

  Soon they were both fast asleep, and Sharon drove alone through the darkness. She wanted to switch on a news station and find out if anything had happened with their house, but she resisted the impulse and just turned the music down and concentrated on the driving.

  She pulled off the mountain road on a winding driveway and bumped along slowly for two hundred feet till she spotted the dark silhouette of an old barn. She stopped near the barn and flashed her lights twice and waited.

  A vehicle slowly approached them out of the darkness. It was a large red pickup truck. The truck stopped, and an older man climbed out. He was thin, with silvery hair, but despite the fact that he was well into his seventies, he walked with a light step as he approached the Accord. Sharon jumped out of her car and hurried to him and hugged him, and she was surprised to feel herself trembling in his arms.

  The man must have felt it, because he whispered, “You’ve done great. Everything is set,” and then he gently released her and peered into the Accord. He saw the two sleeping kids and their dog and smiled. “Hey, Gus and Kim. Time to wake up.”

  The kids woke, disoriented, and looked up at this older man in confusion.

  “This is your uncle Arthur,” their mom told them. “He’s a very old friend of your father.”

  “We’re gonna have some fun now,” Arthur told them. “I’ve got a boat less than two miles away. We’re all going on a boat trip together.”

  “Cool,” Gus said, now fully awake.

  “I don’t want to go on a boat trip at night,” Kim said nervously.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Arthur told them, “but I need you guys to help me. I hear you each brought a bag. Grab ’em and stow ’em in the back of my big red truck over there
and climb into the back seat. And there’s plenty of room for your four-legged friend there.”

  “What about our car?” Kim asked.

  “For this part of the trip we’re gonna ride in Arthur’s truck,” Sharon said. “But we need to go quickly.”

  “The back seat of the truck is gonna be the kids-and-dog section,” Arthur said, glancing at his watch. “You can do whatever you want back there. Let’s move it, guys. I’m gonna park your car in my barn, to keep it safe, and then we’ll drive down to the coast in my truck and take our boat trip.”

  An hour later they were on the deck of the large, nondescript fishing boat setting off into a dark sea. Both children were scared, but Arthur knew exactly what he was doing. “The cabin is down those stairs, and there’s a warm bed all made up and waiting for you,” he told Kim. “Your dog is already asleep down there, and there just might be a chocolate chip cookie sitting on your pillow.”

  “I’ll take you down,” Sharon said. “Those cookies sound good.”

  “I’m staying on the deck,” Gus announced.

  Sharon and Kim headed down the stairs, and Arthur and Gus were alone on the deck on the dark sea.

  “How did you meet my father?” Gus asked him.

  “We worked together a long time ago.”

  “On a job?”

  “Kind of a job,” Arthur said. Then he added, softly, “Your father is a hero of mine.”

  Gus looked up at him, intrigued but a little suspicious. “Why do you say that?”

  The older man kept his eyes on the dark ocean. “Do you want to steer?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “We’ll do it together. We’re heading straight across this bay. I’ll show you.”

  Gus walked over to him, and the older man arranged his hands on the wheel. “That’s it,” Arthur said. “Steady as she goes. You’re a natural.”

  They steered together. It was a calm, almost windless night. The sliver of moon was a golden scythe slicing through dark clouds. Gus finally asked, in a very scared voice, “Uncle Arthur?”