by Neil Mcmahon
But the man only raised a big hand in greeting as he passed, saying, “What’s happening, baby?”
Monks muttered, “How’s it going,” and walked on, feeling a little better-suspecting that he had just seen his first FBI agent of the night.
He took a service elevator to the first floor and trundled the cart toward Mandrake’s ward, passing several more people with a glance or nod, classifying them automatically-hospital attendants, a harried intern, a phlebotomist pushing a cart of blood samples, a middle-aged woman in a dress who might have been a visitor or an administrator. At least that was who they seemed to be.
When he got to the ward, the charge nurse was at her desk, making notes on charts. She gave him a smile and murmured “Hi,” then bent back to her work. Probably she was an agent, too.
The hallway from there on was empty, as it usually would be this time of evening. He knew from Baskett that he was looking for room 163. Still, he played his role, pushing doors open and glancing inside as if he was checking the laundry situation. When he got to 163, he glanced furtively up and down the hall, then pushed the cart inside. Mandrake was asleep on his belly, mouth slightly open-the picture of helpless innocence.
Monks’s hands shook and his teeth almost chattered as he lifted the limp, warm weight out of bed. Staged though this was, the guilt and shame of abducting a child burned through his veins with his hammering pulse.
This time, the charge nurse did not look up as he pushed the cart past her.
32
Monks buckled Mandrake in the Bronco’s passenger seat, quickly arranging pads to make him comfortable.
“Buddy, I feel like absolute shit,” he whispered to the sleeping child. “After all we’ve been through together, to do this to you-I just can’t tell you.”
His cell phone chirped. He grabbed for it, fumbling in his haste.
“All right, we seen him,” Freeboot said curtly. “You just drive back the way you came. Keep that phone handy. Oh, and tell my little boy he’s going to be with his daddy soon.” The connection went dead before Monks could speak.
Hope surged up in him. Freeboot’s men had been watching, but not overhearing. They didn’t know about the FBI agents.
There was still a chance.
Monks pulled out of the parking lot and drove back to the freeway, easing carefully into traffic. Driving along this mundane road on this ordinary March evening, surrounded by mothers in minivans anxious to get their children home, strings of truckers cutting swaths to make their schedules, complacent businessmen on their way to conferences or trysts, he found it hard to imagine all the human activity seething behind the scenes.
Monks had gleaned enough from Baskett and from his own previous experiences with the FBI to have a fair idea of it. The Critical Incident Response Group had hundreds of personnel on alert by now. Several vehicles were following him, leapfrogging, with drivers taking turns at dropping back, changing into different disguises, then catching up again. A microphone and tracking device had been planted on the Bronco, shot from a gun as one of the tailing cars passed him. Monks hadn’t even been aware of it. Hidden roadblocks were ready to slam shut, and helicopters were poised to drop SWAT and hostage-rescue teams. Probably, top-level officials across the U.S. and even worldwide had been informed that the Calamity Jane killers were in the crosshairs.
This was going to be very big news, very soon-however it turned out.
Monks and Baskett had agreed to talk as little as possible, and to try to keep it to moments when Freeboot’s men weren’t likely to be watching. Monks spent a couple of minutes maneuvering on the freeway, changing lanes and speeds, then punched the number that Baskett had given him.
“Freeboot just called,” Monks told him. “They know I got Mandrake. He told me to drive back the way I came, and keep the phone handy.”
“O-kay, we’re in this,” Baskett called out to the people around him. “Dr. Monks, we’ll assume the situation’s unchanged until we hear from you. When we do, we’re ready to move.”
Monks drove on, thinking about the next question:
Move where?
Just over two hours later, he was on Highway 20, passing the west end of Clear Lake. The road was two-lane with little traffic, making things tough for his FBI shadows. But headlights would appear in his rearview mirror and turn off after a few miles, then quickly be replaced by different ones. Probably some of the oncoming vehicles were also part of the team.
He hadn’t talked to anyone in the interim. With the little boy asleep beside him, driving back into the coastal fog, he had been lulled into a sense of unreality.
That was shattered by the chirp of his phone. He jerked so hard at the sound that his teeth clacked together.
“When you get to Upper Lake, turn right,” Freeboot’s steely voice said. “You know where you’re going from there?”
Monks realized, with an ugly jolt, that Freeboot knew exactly where he was.
Then, with another one, that that road led to Freeboot’s burned camp-his home turf, where he would be at maximum advantage.
“The camp?” Monks said.
“That’s right. Now, I got this feeling you might have talked to somebody.”
“I called Marguerite’s mother, that’s all. I had to give her a story about why I left.”
“Yeah, well, you better be all alone from here on. We got you covered all the way. If anything else twitches out there, this is history.” Freeboot paused, a silence filled with menace that Monks could feel over the phone.
“What do I do when I get there?” he said.
“Just come walking on in, and call my name out loud.” Freeboot gave a sudden little snort that sounded like laughter.
That was all.
33
The last fifteen miles of road to Freeboot’s camp were gravel and dirt, almost impassable in places, twisting and crossing in an unmarked labyrinth. Someone who didn’t know the way could drive around lost for days, but Monks had come up here enough times with the sheriffs to remember it. The earth was washboarded and rutted, still soggy from the winter rains, slick enough in places to make him spin his tires and drift sideways, even on slight inclines. After the first couple of miles, he locked the Bronco into four-wheel-drive and left it that way.
But for all that he could see, he might as well have been on another planet. The fog thinned into patches as he gained elevation, blanketing him one minute, then parting to reveal a nightbound landscape of rocky crags and forest lit by a gibbous moon, then closing in again. There were no FBI vehicles tailing now, no lights but the Bronco’s, no signs of human life.
Monks heard a sound, a plaintive little yowl like the plea of a trapped cat. His head swiveled toward it.
It was Mandrake, starting to cry.
“Christ,” he hissed, hitting the brakes. The sedative that the hospital had given Mandrake wasn’t strong enough-the jouncing ride had awakened him. He looked up fearfully into Monks’s face, a face he already associated with nightmare.
And now he was in a new one.
Monks unbuckled Mandrake’s seat belt and cradled him, doing his best to smile. “Everything’s okay, buddy,” he said soothingly. “You’re just having a little dream, but you’ll be back to sleep in no time.”
“Mommy!” Mandrake screamed, struggling and flailing with his tiny fists.
Monks sagged in despair, then crooned nonsense while he fumbled in the back for his medical kit. He flipped on the dash light, found a vial of Ativan and a syringe, and drew off a half-milligram dose, holding it above Mandrake’s head, out of his view.
Mandrake probably didn’t even feel the needle, but it hurt Monks plenty.
The crying stopped. Mandrake’s head rolled to the side.
Monks made up his mind. He cut the Bronco’s ignition and lights, and picked up the phone. The connection was weak and static-laden, just at the edge of fade-out range.
“Freeboot’s never going to let me get to the camp,” he told Baskett. “He’l
l stop me along the way, grab Mandrake, and disappear.”
“We’ve anticipated that, Dr. Monks. Recon teams are moving in on foot right now. There are helicopters, and paratroopers ready to drop.”
“I’m not going to let him have Mandrake.”
“You have to. That’s our beacon on Freeboot.”
That was the contingency plan that Baskett had put into effect. Monks would hand Mandrake over to Freeboot. When he took off, FBI surveillance would recognize that the implanted microtransmitter was moving apart from the tracking device on the Bronco. That would be their signal to move in. But the transmitter’s range was limited, a maximum of a couple of miles even in open terrain. Once Freeboot was outside that, he was gone.
“There’s a thousand square miles of wilderness out there, and it’s his backyard,” Monks said.
“Our men are the best, Special Forces-trained.”
“You haven’t seen him in those woods. He’s like a cougar.”
There was a brief pause. Then Baskett said, a little too kindly, “You’ve been doing fine, Doctor, and you’ll be done very soon, which I think is good. Sounds like you’ve had enough.”
Monks’s eyes widened in outrage. “I know landing Freeboot would make your career, Agent Baskett. But you’re not going to risk that little boy’s life to do it.”
“You are going to follow orders, Monks,” Baskett said, with icy anger. “If you compromise this operation, you don’t know what trouble is.”
“I’m the one who’s out here with his ass on the line, while you’re sitting on yours in an office,” Monks snapped. “So spare me the tough-guy act.”
“You know he’ll kill you if you don’t have that kid.”
“He’s going to kill me anyway,” Monks said. “I’ll try to get some shots off-that will be your new signal to move in. I’m stopping right now to leave Mandrake in the woods. Have your men get him quick, there’s critters.”
He clicked off the phone. It chirped again instantly. He rolled down his window and threw it into the roadside brush, then tugged off Mandrake’s pajamas.
He wrapped Mandrake in a sleeping bag and put that inside a nylon duffel, making knife slits to let in air. Outside, he stayed still for half a minute, listening into the darkness. There was nothing moving, no sound but the prickly stillness of a vast forest at night. He trotted twenty yards into the woods and hung the duffel high on a sturdy pine stob. The agents would find him by means of the implanted microphone, probably within half an hour.
Back in the Bronco, Monks quickly stuffed the pajamas full of his own spare clothes, padding them into the shape of a little body, then pulling a wad out of the neckhole and covering it with a white T-shirt to simulate a face. He buckled the doll into the passenger seat and awkwardly patted it into shape to look like a sleeping child. At night, it might fool somebody for a few seconds.
Whatever happened, Mandrake was out of it now.
Monks hefted the cold, comforting weight of the Beretta, then tucked it under his right thigh. The round that he had chambered hours earlier at the beach was still in place, ready to fire.
He started driving again, expecting at every bend to find the road blocked and armed men moving in-praying that the stuffed pajama dummy would lure Freeboot close enough for a clear shot.
34
But no ambush came. When Monks got to the camp, a little more than an hour later, there was still no sign of a living soul.
He was shaking with dread.
He stopped the Bronco fifty yards short of the scorched clearing where the fire had been. He opened the door and stepped out onto the soft wet earth, holding the Beretta pressed against his thigh. He waited, watching, listening. The collapsed buildings were as desolate as ancient ruins. The night breeze still carried the faint smell of charred wood.
Just come walking on out and call my name out loud.
Monks walked slowly forward to the edge of the burn.
“Freeboot?” he said. The wind caught his voice, carrying it like an echo.
Call my name out loud.
“Freeboot!” he yelled, and this time something tiny changed in the periphery of his vision. He swiveled toward it, raising the pistol.
A light had come on-small, dim, on top of a pile of soot-crusted rock that had been part of a foundation.
Glenn’s cabin, Monks remembered. That was where Glenn’s cabin had stood.
He trotted toward it, stumbling through the soggy foot-deep ash that still covered the earth.
As he got close, he saw that it was a small scalloped bulb, sitting in an open guitar case, like a candle illuminating a shrine.
But Glenn’s guitar was not inside. Monks slid to his knees, staring at what was:
A human ear, with dark blood congealing along its severed edge.
The lobe was pierced by the skull-shaped earring that Glenn had worn.
Monks looked up to the sky, his face streaking with the first tears that he had wept since watching young soldiers die under his helpless hands thirty years ago.
PART Three
35
Monks’s home telephone rang five times. He let the answering machine take the call.
“Carroll?” Sara’s voice said, with brittle sweetness. “Will you pick up the phone, please? I know you’re there.”
He raised his glass blearily and swallowed more vodka. It was sometime after dark; he didn’t know or care when. He was sprawled on the couch in his living room, surrounded by squalor-clothes on the floor, unwashed dishes, half-eaten food. Like a man evading creditors, he hadn’t answered the phone for the past two days. The only reason that he left the phone on at all was because the severed ear was being DNA tested and he still harbored a whisper of hope that it wasn’t Glenn’s.
“We have to talk,” Sara said imploringly. “You can’t just keep your head buried in the sand. I understand why you had to lie to me, and I’m over it now.”
His cats prowled the mess happily, one or another of them occasionally settling on his chest to comfort him. A dying fire in the woodstove kept the chill away. The television was playing an old episode of Have Gun, Will Travel. Richard Boone had just finished thumping a couple of mouthy young punks in a frontier bar. That was a world that made sense.
“You prick,” Sara fumed. “You selfish asshole. Pick up the goddamn phone.”
There was silence for ten seconds or so, then an abrupt deadness that had a sound of its own.
Monks swilled more vodka. She was absolutely right, he was a prick and a selfish asshole. But she was determined to nurture him, and he had already explained to her, as gently as he could, that if he encountered any nurturing just now he was going to kill somebody.
He was walking the perilous line of that somebody being himself.
The phone rang again a few minutes later. This time the voice was a man’s. Monks listened without interest, expecting it to be another reporter.
“Dr. Monks? This is Andrew Pietowski, with the FBI.”
Monks stiffened.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call ASAP,” Pietowski said. “There’s something important I’d like to discuss with you. Let me give you a couple of numbers where I can be reached.”
Monks heaved himself to his feet and walked unsteadily to the phone, getting it in time to interrupt Pietowski reading out the numbers.
“This is Monks,” he said.
“Doctor, glad you’re home. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Yes,” Monks said. Pietowski was a Washington, D.C.-based domestic terrorism specialist who had followed the Calamity Jane murders from the beginning-a hefty man in his fifties with a big balding head, big nose, and big ears, a look that was reminiscent of former president Lyndon Johnson. He had flown to California immediately on learning that Freeboot might be involved. Pietowski listened more than he spoke, seeming to prefer staying in the background, but he had the kind of imposing presence that Monks had noticed.
“I’d like to drop by you
r place, but I thought I’d better call first,” Pietowski said. “I gather you, uh, had a run-in with some newspeople.”
“It was nothing personal. I never actually shot at anybody. I just wanted privacy.”
“I think they got that message.”
Monks braced himself and said, “Is this about Glenn?”
“No. Those results won’t be back for a few more days.”
He sagged with the miserable relief of bad news postponed.
Pietowski broke the silence. “Okay if I come on in?”
“Sure. How soon are we talking?”
“I’m at the foot of your driveway.”
Monks blinked. “I’m not exactly at my best right now.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
It was almost one A.M., he saw with vague surprise. He eyed the wreckage around him with a notion of a hasty cleanup, but decided there was no point in pretending. He poured another drink instead, and waited at the door for Pietowski.
Freeboot had gotten away clean, again. The sad and sordid truth was that the Bronco had, after all, been bugged. The FBI had found three devices, probably planted by Freeboot’s men while Monks had followed Marguerite on the beach, just as he had feared. Freeboot had known from the start that the FBI was coming in. The kidnaping and the agonizing drive to the camp had been a sham to torment Monks, and the FBI’s huge wasted effort, a way of insulting them. Freeboot probably had gone to the camp hours before Monks got there, and left the ear in the guitar case, with a voice-activated light.
Call my name out loud.
And then Freeboot had stayed in the forest long enough to stalk one of the recon agents, disarming him and beating him unconscious with his own rifle-a contemptuous message that he could easily have killed the man. He had worn a ski mask, bolstering the thought that he’d altered his appearance and didn’t want his new face seen. But his bare footprints were easy to identify. Dogs had followed them for two miles. After which, the prints had simply vanished.