Firebug: A Short Story

by McBride, Michael

  A tingling sensation passed through Behrent’s abdomen.

  “This proxy physically travels to each of the individual offices once a month?”

  She had to concentrate to regulate her breathing.

  “He’s on the road two weeks out of the month. It’s a good thing we’re paying for the car and not the mileage.”

  “And which states are in your region?”

  “Arizona, Southern California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

  Her mouth became dry, her palms damp.

  “I wonder if it would be possible to talk to this proxy.”

  “I’m sure Wes would be happy to help you out. He’s one of the nicest guys on the planet. He’s still on the road, though. You want me to give you his cell phone number?”

  “Sure, but I’ll probably just wait for him to get back.” She attempted a smile. “How long has he been with the company?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Five, six years? He’s been here since before I came on.”

  The ground tilted underneath her.

  “Is he in any of these pictures?”

  Her heartbeat.

  Thupp-thupp. Thupp-thupp. Thupp-thupp.

  “Yeah, that’s him up there with my dad and John Elway.”

  Blood rushing in her ears.

  She stood and leaned closer to the picture. Three smiling men in suits in a luxury box at Sports Authority Stadium. Two of them she recognized, but it wasn’t until she reached up and covered the upper half of the third man’s face that she recognized him, too.

  “What did you say his name was again?”

  “Wes. Wes Moore.”

  IX

  The ranch-style house was located on five heavily wooded acres northeast of town. It was built in the late seventies and showed its age. The majority of the driveway was gravel and weeds grew from the cracks in the concrete apron by the garage. There were blackout blinds over every window and it was impossible to tell whether or not there was a car in the garage. Despite the younger Waldon’s insistence that Wes Moore was still out of town and the GPS in his company Explorer showed its current location to be in eastern Utah, Behrent knew what she had seen and wasn’t prepared to take any chances.

  CSPD officers had every road into and out of the area closed off and secured. Moore’s immediate neighbors had been evacuated and were currently under federal protection and Young’s supervision, although so far none of them used anything other than kind words when asked about Mr. Moore. Snipers had taken up position in the ponderosa pines and SWAT teams were prepared to go through the front and back doors on her mark. She and Abrams wore Kevlar vests beneath their fire-retardant gear and were prepared to follow SWAT through the front door. Behrent knew that her evidence was circumstantial at best and that she wasn’t the only person who’d climbed out onto a limb on this takedown, but she’d be the one who took the fall if it failed. Were it not for the fact that Moore had potentially caused the most destructive fire in the history of the state and cost the community more than forty million dollars in firefighter expenses, there was no way any judge would have executed the warrant. That he’d been one of Raymond Waldon’s weekend golf buddies probably played a considerable role, too.

  This was her one and only shot.

  A miss, and Moore likely walked, free and clear.

  If he was even the man she’d seen for the briefest of moments across the street.

  Her transceiver crackled.

  “On your mark, Special Agent Behrent.”

  From where she knelt roughly a hundred yards away behind a stand of junipers, she could barely see the house, let alone the men with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and full tactical gear hidden in the bushes, prepared to converge on either door on her go. A single knock and either Moore opened the door or they knocked it down and went in hard and fast through the smoke and blinding glare of a flashbang.

  “You sure about this?” Abrams whispered. “We don’t get a do-over on this one.”

  Behrent drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly to steady her nerves. Her hands shook and she could barely think over the thrum of her heartbeat. She rolled her head on her neck. Was she sure? If she was wrong, her sister’s murderer would remain on the streets to kill again. And again.

  She stared at the house through the maze of trees.

  Behrent had never been more certain of anything in her life.

  She pressed the button on her transceiver.

  “I want him taken alive.”

  A half-dozen men in black materialized from the forest, streaking toward the front door.

  She readjusted her grip on her Glock.

  One raised his fist and pounded on the door. Stepped back. Paused. Two others moved in front of him, a battering ram held between them. They drew it back, swung it forward—

  A blinding light.

  Behrent barely had time to raise her arm to shield her eyes. A wall of heated air struck her and tossed her backward onto the ground. She heard a thunderous crack, then nothing over the ringing in her ears.

  She opened her eyes and looked up to find the branches above her burning. Pine needles curled and blackened and rained down to the forest floor. She tried to stand. Couldn’t. She was on her back, her fire-retardant jacket smoldering on her chest.

  The high-pitched tone in her head toyed with her vision. Her balance.

  She fought to her feet. Swayed. Stumbled forward. Fell to her knees. Grabbed her two-way from the ground. Shouted into the microphone.

  “The place was rigged to blow! Everyone’s dead!”

  Pushed herself to her feet. Staggered toward the house.

  The bushes and weeds all around her were on fire. As were the body parts scattered across the dirt between them. She couldn’t hear the crackle of the flames or her own voice as she shouted for survivors. Only the infernal hum.

  One of the snipers dangled from a fiery pine by the cord he’d used to secure himself. His entire body still burned. Even his skin.

  A hand on her shoulder.

  She screamed. Turned around. Thrust her pistol into Abrams’s face.

  His face was black with soot and blood flowed freely from a gash across his hairline. His nostrils and lips were caked with ash. He pinched his eyes shut tight. Steadied himself against her shoulder. Opened his eyes and pointed at his ear.

  She nodded her understanding and made a sweeping gesture toward the ground. Judging by the expression on his face, he obviously hadn’t seen what had happened to the SWAT team yet.

  Both raised their weapons and advanced toward the house. The smoke grew thicker and the heat intensified. The detritus underfoot served as the perfect fuel for the fire, which raced across the forest floor in every direction.

  Behrent struggled with the realization that the front door had been rigged with explosives. She’d never considered the possibility. For her lack of foresight, sixteen men had paid with their lives.

  There was a crater where the front door had been and the flaming roof had collapsed onto the living room. Glass from the shattered windows twinkled like rubies. The garage door was buckled outward far enough to see the rear bumper and tires of an SUV inside.

  Behrent coughed and buried her mouth and nose in the crook of her left arm, which did little to spare her the smoke. She could barely see her Glock in her extended right hand through the haze, which obscured the house, save for the flames burning from the impromptu entrance.

  The heat was hellacious, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It singed what little hair had come untucked from beneath her cap and made her eyes water so badly she could hardly keep them open. She choked and coughed and felt the dry smoke invade her lungs. It swirled on the waves of heat, revealing just the hint of a living room full of furniture burned to the bare wooden framework before hiding it once more.

  Beneath the ringing she heard the faintest roar of the inferno, so loud in actuality that it reverberated in her chest. She felt Abrams’s shoulder against hers
and drew strength from his proximity.

  The smoke funneled through the back of the kitchen, where she could only assume the back door had once been. The doors must have been rigged to blow together. The appliances were crumpled and smoldering and melted glass had fused to the linoleum.

  There was a hallway to the right, past the stairs leading down through the smoke and into the basement. She shouted directly into Abrams’s ear for him to guard them while she cleared a guest bedroom that had been converted into a home office and a master bedroom that looked like something out of a catalogue. Only actively burning. Wherever he slept, it wasn’t in there.

  “Watch the smoke!” Abrams shouted into her ear when she returned to the head of the stairs.

  It took her a moment to see what he meant. The smoke neither moved up nor down the staircase; it merely filled the space between the walls on the landing below.

  There was no airflow.

  The fires burning all around them were drawing air through the blast holes, through the broken windows, down the flue from the chimney. She could positively feel it rushing past her, feeding the flames that would soon consume this entire structure.

  The basement was sealed.

  Behrent nodded to Abrams and started down. One step at a time. Holding her breath in an effort not to cough, which made her chest lurch. She followed her pistol down to the landing, then around to the flight leading into the basement.

  The door at the bottom and the surrounding wall were covered with blown insulation secured by a layer of foil. The door itself had a pressurized seal and a wide handle and reminded her of the kind they manufactured for industrial coolers. It made a popping sound when she pulled it open.

  The air screamed around the seal and past her face, sending her cap bounding up the stairs. She braced her feet and lowered her shoulder to absorb the impact with the door, which nearly knocked her to the ground.

  She stepped out of the way and it slammed into the wall hard enough to embed the handle in the drywall.

  Behrent stared into the unblemished darkness with cool air that smelled of damp earth buffeting her in the face.

  Sighted down the barrel of her Glock.

  Swallowed hard to stifle a cough.

  And advanced into the pitch black.

  X

  The rushing sound of blood in her ears metered the high-pitched ringing.

  She swiveled from left to right, praying to see anything at all. Her sense of hearing was shot and she couldn’t see a blasted—

  A beam of light streaked across the basement from the mini-Maglite in Abrams’s hand as he pulled the door shut behind them, sealing off the smoke and the flames. He flashed it quickly from one side of the basement to the other, then more slowly back again.

  Insulation that had to be several feet thick covered the walls and the only windows were sealed with metal sheets screwed into the frames. Skeletal framework cast long, thin shadows across the floor leading up to what she at first mistook for an indoor garden.

  Carefully tended bonsai trees and ferns grew from a rich medium of black soil and sphagnum moss. Running water flowed along the ground between them in a wide, winding oval shape, in the center of which was a small pond with stagnant water and lily pads. Abrams shined his beam down into it and inch-long nymphs wriggled down under the rocks.

  Behrent took him by the wrist and raised his arm so the beam pointed into the trees. There were large beetles everywhere. Crawling up the trunks and on the branches, on the undersides of the leaves and all over one another. She leaned over and touched one with her index finger.

  Its hind end emitted a greenish glow as it took to flight.

  The response spread through the startled fireflies until the entire room lit up like it had been strung with Christmas lights.

  She shuddered at the thought of what Moore intended to do with them.

  There was a lone egress behind the habitat. Another freezer door set into the insulated wall. Abrams’s beam focused on the handle as they worked their way around the habitat and the banks of lights and filters that serviced it. Behrent reached it first and closed her hand around it.

  Cool to the touch.

  Abrams shined the beam around the seams. No indication of tripwires or other rigging. They could easily be on the other side, though.

  Along with her sister’s murderer.

  Behrent pantomimed for Abrams to step to the opposite side of the door while she swung it outward toward her. He’d go through low while she came high around the open door.

  She held up five fingers.

  Four fingers.

  Three.

  She finished the count silently while Abrams watched her lips.

  Two.

  Adjusted her grip on the handle with her left. The Glock with her right.

  One.

  Pulled the handle. Fought the suction. Felt the release. Swung the door wide open.

  A blur of darkness as Abrams ducked around the wall and across the threshold.

  Behrent shouldered past the rebounding door and registered a flickering reflection from the wall of glass at the back of the room. Smelled a petrochemical accelerant. Raised her Glock. Shouted for Abrams.

  He turned to his right. Brought his pistol around.

  Too slowly.

  She saw another reflection on what she recognized as a trophy case, the reflection of a man in shimmering silver. He stepped forward from around the corner and the nozzle of a flamethrower appeared, a tongue of fire protruding it. Mere inches from Abrams’s head.

  The expulsion of flames was blinding. A molten liquid wrapped around his skull and filled the doorway. He screamed and threw himself to the ground. Covered his head with his arms, which only started to burn, too.

  Deep black smoke billowed through the doorway as Behrent shoved through, bringing her weapon to bear on the golden face shield of the silver fire entry suit. She saw her distorted reflection in it. The flames burning up the wall behind her. Her wild eyes. The barrel of her Glock.

  Searing heat encircled her abdomen. Her skin blistered and her clothes ignited.

  She screamed and pulled the trigger.

  The pistol bucked.

  A black hole appeared in the golden mask. Cracks spread away from it.

  A starburst of blood spattered the wall behind the silver hood.

  The report was deafening.

  The impact lifted the man from his feet. Slammed him against the wall. He lost his grip on the flamethrower and the molten rainbow splashed across the floor toward the glass case. He toppled to the ground with the clanking sound of the tanks on his back striking the concrete.

  Behrent fell to her hands and knees in front of him, her entire midsection engulfed in fire.

  She screamed as the pain took root beneath her skin.

  Fell to her chest. Rolled over and over. Smothered the flames. Ignited the nerve endings.

  Struggled to all fours. Crawled toward the man slumped against the wall in his silver fire entry suit. Pulled off the hood. Looked into his eyes. One was bloody and misshapen and fringed with bone shards; the other barely acknowledged her before rolling upward under the lid. Blood ran down his cheek and dripped from his chin.

  “Not yet!” she screamed and crawled back out through the doorway. Every muscle in her abdomen and lower back sang in pain. Fluid dripped from burns that felt as though they’d eaten clear through her. An icy sensation crept upward from her toes. “You don’t get to die yet!”

  She found what she needed and dragged herself back to where the liquid fire spread across the floor toward the trophy case. Crawled into the murderer’s lap. Felt his legs tremble. Pulled herself up his chest. Opened his one good eye as wide as it would go. The iris slowly rolled down until she saw the pupil and the fading light in its depths.

  Behrent held up the object so he could see it. Watched its reflection as revelation dawned, before being eclipsed by sheer terror.

  Epilogue

  Colorado Springs, Colorado


  August 3rd

  Behrent sat on the back porch of her rented house, watching the shadows of the trees lengthen across the mat of brown needles and leaves. The first stars twinkled through the upper canopy of the pines even as the crimson sun set behind the Rockies on the other side of her house. The night air felt divine in her lungs, and even better against the skin underneath her T-shirt. For a while she thought she might never feel anything other than pain again. The doctors assured her the skin grafts were healing nicely, although they still had a patchwork look to them. Not that she was complaining. Abrams had gotten the worst of it and it would be months before what was left of his face would be healed enough to even attempt a graft. Longer still before he’d be released from the plastic isolation chamber in the burn unit. He served as a daily reminder of just how lucky she’d been.

  Weston Franklyn Moore wasn’t quite as fortunate. He hadn’t been able to reach the escape tunnel from the back room in the basement, which would have allowed him to pop up outside of the police cordon and vanish forever. No one was entirely certain whether he’d stuck around to finish off his pursuit or to protect his case full of trophies. Likely, no one ever would. As it was, the teams from Behavioral had their hands full trying to make sense of everything they found down there, including an altar of sorts to his father—a firefighter who died in the line of duty—he’d built back in the trees surrounding the small pond, and the decomposed remains unearthed from the fertile soil filled with firefly cocoons. The working theory was that they belonged to Moore’s stepmother, who’d married his father after his mother’s death, when he was a child. While the results of DNA analysis were still pending, the pictures of her they were able to find showed a woman of the same approximate height and bone structure, natural red hair, and a string of Japanese characters tattooed above her left breast. It took a matter of minutes to translate the word “Firefly,” but the implications would forever be the subject of speculation. As would his reasons for killing Carol and Raymond Waldon—his longtime friend and employer—who could easily have stumbled upon a picture and an insect in the glove compartment or a fire entry suit in the trunk of the company-leased vehicle and innocently enough asked why they were there.