by Dean Koontz
He leaves the truck stop not by its exit lane, but overland. Her Explorer faces due east. He passes behind her, a hundred yards to the west. She can see him, if at all, only in the rearview mirror.
He crosses the fifty yards of open land and drives between two live oaks, under massive anaconda limbs of hardened sinuosity. He negotiates a long slope—a carpet of beetle-shaped leaves crunching under the tires, scaring squirrels up tree trunks—and descends into a realm of Gothic shadows, the dark ground patterned by a scattering of sunlight configured by the branches and leaves overhead.
At the bottom of the glen, he drives east until the blinking indicators on the GPS display—red for the Explorer, green for his Rover—are parallel, whereupon he stops and switches off the engine.
The slope to the north is maybe two hundred feet long but not too steep to climb. When he gets to the top, there will be about a fifty-yard length of open ground between him and the Explorer.
The pistol he’s carrying is a Colt .45, but he doesn’t want to take her down with that. He needs to capture her, not kill her, if he’s going to learn where to find her child and where she’s stashed the evidence that might convict some Arcadians.
He gets out of the Rover and lifts the tailgate. He zippers open a shotgun case and removes a wireless Taser XREP 12-gauge. This pump-action weapon provides a five-round magazine and fires an extended-range electronic projectile that weighs less than an ounce but delivers a twenty-second, five-hundred-volt shock.
A classic Taser arcs up to fifty thousand volts, but this slug does more with less, because the waveform is precisely shaped to match the electric signals in the human nervous system. The four barbed electrodes on the nose of the slug hook to skin or clothes, causing intense pain and muscle paralysis, incapacitating the target with little chance of permanent injury and hardly any risk of death.
With her vehicle screening the assault from those at the truck stop, he needs to disable her only long enough to cuff her wrists and ankles, and then administer chloroform with an inhaler.
Ivan is at least a hundred pounds heavier than she is, slabs of muscle. He can easily carry her into the trees, and then either continue carrying her or drag her down the slope to the Range Rover.
He ascends through crackling drifts of dead leaves. The ground is blanketed in a camouflage of oak shadows and glimmering shapes of sunlight. It would be easy to put a foot wrong and sprain an ankle. He takes longer to reach the crest than he expected.
The delay works to his advantage. When he arrives at the rim of the glen and shelters among the last trees, he sees that he needn’t worry about the passenger-side window being open to allow a clear shot at Jane in the driver’s seat. She’s out of the SUV, kneeling on the blacktop, hammering what might be a disposable phone.
Although a standard Taser with wires can disable a target up to thirty-five feet, the XREP 12-gauge has an effective range of one hundred feet. He’s about half again that distance from the woman and needs to close the gap before he fires.
When he steps out of the cover of the trees, there is a danger that she will see him, even as distracted as she is by the phone. The field before him bristles with weeds and parched ribbon grass; but he will make little noise forging through it.
He moves fast, holding the gun with both hands, a few inches above his waist, ready to bring it up and halt and tag her with the laser sight before he fires. The powder in an XREP round is less than in a standard shell; the slug, which is comparatively light, never achieves a velocity that will kill or seriously injure.
The slug is a wonder of miniaturization: three fins that deploy when it leaves the muzzle of the shotgun, enabling it to spin to stay on target; circuitry nestled inside shock-absorbing plastic; a microprocessor that commands a voltage capacitor to fire while also modulating the shape, intensity, and duration of the current; two tiny lithium batteries to power the microprocessor and provide the disabling electrical charge; a transformer to convert battery energy to stunning effect.
He is maybe 120 feet from her, hasn’t yet drawn her attention, and decides to close to eighty, just to be sure to drop her with the first round.
Then she sees him.
22
UPON GLIMPSING THE MAN IN her peripheral vision, Jane might have dropped the hammer and gone for the Heckler in her shoulder rig. But intuition inspired her instead to throw the hammer as she pivoted toward her assailant.
He wasn’t holding the weapon as if he expected a hard recoil. The sound of the shot wasn’t as loud as it ought to be, and Jane knew at once that this was a Taser XREP.
Fractions of a second mattered now.
When she moved to throw the hammer, the laser dot on her breast had been displaced to her left arm, but the shooter had squeezed the trigger just then, as the hammer left her hand.
Instantly she began to shrug off the sport coat.
On impact, four electrified barbs on the nose of the projectile hooked the coat sleeve, near the shoulder, instead of piercing her thin T-shirt over her breasts, where it would have administered a disabling shock.
Even as the projectile’s chassis separated from its nose to dangle on a copper wire, exactly as it was designed to do, Jane cried out at the initial—and smaller—localized shock to her left biceps, conveyed through her clothing. But the satin-lined sleeves were already sliding off her arms.
Nearly all people, when hit, instinctively grabbed the dangling wire—which was called the “hand trap”—to tear out the barbs that were delivering the painful localized shock. But if she grasped the live wire, her hand would contract involuntarily. Clenching the wire tightly, unable to let go, she would receive a much bigger shock as electricity flowed through her body. She would spasm, fall, lie paralyzed for twenty seconds, and be disoriented thereafter.
If she didn’t grip the wire, six longer barbs would pop through the fabric of her sleeve and deliver the disabling shock anyway.
Half a second after the nose barbs hooked her coat, even as the chassis of the projectile was separating from the nose to offer the live wire, her right arm was free. As her left arm slipped out of that sleeve, a brief hellish current stung her fingers, but the garment puddled to the ground, sparing her from the full power of the initial shock.
Although she couldn’t feel the laser dot on her body, she knew her assailant must be squeezing off another round. She dropped as she drew the Heckler, the second projectile shattered against the Explorer, and she rolled toward the front bumper.
23
THIS HATEFUL BITCH, THIS SELF-RIGHTEOUS self-appointed save-the-world bitch, this counterrevolutionary pig, has the reflexes of a cat, a damn hyperactive cat.
She’s twisting away from the laser dot and shrugging out of the coat even as Ivan is pulling the trigger, so just for insurance he at once fires again.
He’s not thinking about the hammer; it’s a wild pitch meant to distract him, and Ivan Petro won’t be distracted, hell if he will, he’s focused on her, he squeezes off a third round.
Her aim is almost as good as her reflexes. The tumbling hammer, like some instrument in an Olympic event, arcs high and spins down to strike him just as he fires for the third time. It clips his left hand, with which he holds the slide handle that chambers each round.
The pain brings with it an instant numbness, so that he can’t keep a grip on the shotgun with his left hand. And he can’t operate it with only his right.
Two rounds remain in the Taser, useless to him for the moment. The bitch is on the ground, a difficult—almost impossible—target from this distance, when he has only one good hand. She rolls and then squirms along the blacktop toward the front of the Explorer, seeking partial cover from which she can rise into a genuflection and open fire; she’s seconds from using him for target practice. He has no prospect of cover in this open field, only below-the-knee weeds and ribbon grass. Instead of drawing his p
istol, he throws down the Taser 12-gauge and runs in a crouch toward the oaks.
24
A CLOUD OF MIDGES BESTIRRED FROM the grass, circling around her head like some crown of damnation predictive of imminent death, the sun seeming much hotter than it was a moment earlier, and yet a thin cold sweat on the nape of her neck…
The low-velocity rounds from the Taser 12-gauge wouldn’t have drawn the attention of anyone at the distant truck stop, not with the growl of half a dozen eighteen-wheelers coming and going at any one time. The crack of the Heckler, however, might penetrate the truck drone and alert someone.
Anyway, she didn’t dare risk killing the bastard. She needed to take him down, get some answers from him. How did he find her? Was there a transponder on her Explorer? If so, who else knew about it? How many others were coming?
Holstering the pistol, she scrambled to her feet, stomped on the chassis of the Taser projectile that was attached to her sport coat and trailing at the end of the copper wire. She crushed it and stomped again, separating the nose from the wire, protected by the rubber soles of her sneakers. She snatched up the coat, shook it, casting off the debris, and sprinted after her attacker.
He was a big bull on two feet, a minotaur without a labyrinth. She needed to avoid getting close-up physical with him and take him by surprise instead.
She thought the hammer had struck him, might have done some damage, which was why he’d cast aside the Taser 12-gauge and fled.
Fast for his size, with a substantial head start, he would reach the cover of the trees well before she did. If she plunged into the woodlet in his wake, she’d likely plunge as well into a bullet.
She hesitated at the dropped Taser shotgun but then snatched it up to be sure he didn’t return for it. She angled west of him and demanded more speed of herself and hoped that she made the tree line before he dared to stop, turn, and see where she had gone.
After the bright sun, the sudden shadows pooling in the broad glen seemed to have substance, a palpable darkness that was cool on her skin and a pressure on her eyes, its weight imposing a stillness in the oak grove and stifling all sound except her breathing.
She put down the Taser 12-gauge and slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat and stood with her back to a massive tree trunk. She drew the Heckler and held it in both hands, arms close to her breast, muzzle directed toward the crosswork of layered limbs above, her stalker somewhere behind her, fifty or sixty feet to the east.
Waiting for her wide-open eyes to become dark adapted, striving to quiet her breathing, she listened intently but still heard only the distant Peterbilts and Macks, nothing nearby. The trucks were so far away that, instead of growling, they made a throaty, threatening purr, as if they were massive saber-toothed tigers that had crossed a gulf of time to hunt long after the extinction of their species.
Alert for any sound from her stalker, she knew that he likewise listened for the smallest revelation of her position. Cautiously she leaned away from the tree and turned her head to look around it.
If the canopy of oaks hadn’t allowed a brace of sun spears to stab down on the black Range Rover, she might not have seen it at the bottom of the glen, about sixty feet to the east and south of where she’d parked her Explorer. The vehicle waited, glossy-dark and as ominous as a hearse, shapes of sunlight in its windows like the pale, luminous faces of the long departed.
The lower half of the south wall of the glen, rising beyond the Range Rover, lay under a heavy thatching of branches. Those shadows were unrelieved. She liked those shadows, the cover they offered.
He would avoid the vehicle, figuring that she’d expect him to make for it and would then draw down on him while he was exposed. For the same reason, he wouldn’t imagine that she would go near it.
Moving anywhere was tricky, because the ground lay strewn with dead leaves that announced her when she stepped on them and with loose stones that would clatter out from underfoot.
The big man’s silence suggested that patience was one of his virtues. Evidently he was content to wait her out.
She couldn’t afford patience. If he had called for backup, a small army of these Arcadian creeps might be en route.
She put her back to the tree again and thought about the Range Rover and the dark slope beyond it. She looked downhill to study the frequency of trees and patted her sport-coat pockets to check where everything was stowed.
She holstered her pistol and sat on the ground and quietly removed her sneakers and pulled off her socks and slipped her bare feet into the shoes and tied the laces tight. With her switchblade, she cut a hole in the ribbed top of one sock. Working quickly, she knotted the toes of the socks together, extracted one of her plastic zip-ties from a coat pocket, freed it from the rubber band that kept it tightly coiled, put the zip-tie through the hole she’d made, and cinched it tightly to that sock. She coiled the plastic once more and stuffed it, with the socks, down the front of her jeans.
She got to her feet and stood with her back against the tree once more and took slow deep breaths and tried to think of another plan. There wasn’t one.
25
EGON GOTTFREY AND HIS CREW of eight descend on Longrin Stables in five vehicles, fast along the approach lane, clouds of dust roiling in their wake, as if they have ignited a prairie fire.
This once-failed property is now a thriving horse-breeding business built on sweat equity, producing standardbreds for harness racing, show-quality Tennessee walking horses, and the National Show Horse, a breed that combines the Arabian and the American saddlebred.
Gottfrey doesn’t care about the Longrins’ hard work or about the beauty of the horses, or about the dust that shrouds him and his crew as they slide to a stop in the receiving yard and pile out of their vehicles, a few of them sneezing.
He cares only about discerning what the Unknown Playwright’s script requires of him next. He’s pretty sure they’re here to find Ancel and Clare Hawk at any cost, and they must knock heads and break knees if necessary.
They are not wearing Kevlar because the law-abiding Longrins aren’t likely to instigate violence. Each of them wears a hands-free earpiece walkie-talkie, and each knows what he or she needs to do.
The last vehicle in the procession, the Cadillac Escalade driven by Paloma Sutherland, parks across the lane, barring exit. She and Sally Jones bail out and take up positions, pistols drawn.
Chris Roberts and Janis Dern park at the Victorian-style house and move fast to mount the porch steps, he at the back, she at the front of the residence. She pounds hard on the door. “FBI! FBI!”
Pedro and Alejandro set out to locate the stable hands and corral them in the fenced exercise yard outside Stable 5.
Gottfrey, accompanied by Vince Penn and Rupert Baldwin, makes his way quickly to Stable 3, where Chase Longrin has an office at one end of the building, opposite the tack room.
Vince is sneezing, and Rupert is cursing between violent fits of coughing. Gottfrey keeps trying to spit out the taste of dust.
The yellowish clouds drift with them; they aren’t able to walk into fresh air. The persistent aggravation of the dust might make a lesser man than Gottfrey concede its reality. However, he’s annoyed not with the dust, which is no more real than the stables, but with the Unknown Playwright who suddenly seems intent on furnishing the scene with more realistic detail than has lately been his style.
When they enter Stable 3, with stalls to both sides and curious horses attendant to their visitors, the smells of manure and straw and horseflesh form a fragrance divine compared to the dust outside. They breathe deeply as they stride toward the end of the structure, and Gottfrey calls out, “Chase Longrin? FBI! FBI, Mr. Longrin.”
Chase Longrin—six feet two, sun-bleached hair, sun-bronzed face—stands at the desk in his office, facing the open door, his expression as hard as that of a defender of the Alamo.
&nb
sp; Entering the room, with Vince and Rupert close behind him, Gottfrey says, “Egon Gottfrey. FBI,” as he holds up his ID.
“Yes,” says Longrin, “so I heard. You sure did make a splashy entrance. Mr. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.”
“We have a warrant for the arrest of Ancel and Clare Hawk.”
“You’ve got the wrong ranch. They live on the other side of Worstead, about nineteen miles by the state route.”
“They came here by horseback after two o’clock this morning. Before you deny that, Mr. Longrin, I must advise you that it’s a crime to lie to an FBI agent even if you’re not under oath.”
Looking Rupert Baldwin up and down, Longrin says, “Didn’t the FBI used to have a dress code?”
“We’ve found satellite video, infrared that tracks them all the way from their place to yours,” Gottfrey lies.
“I’d like to see your warrant, Agent Gottfrey.”
“The arrest warrant is for Ancel and Clare Hawk, not you.”
“I mean the warrant to search my property.”
“We are in active and urgent pursuit of suspects in a matter of national security, with reason to believe those we seek are on these premises. We’re operating under a broad FISA court order. A post hoc copy of the warrant is the best you’ll get.”
Rupert Baldwin, pinch-faced perhaps because he’s taken offense at the dress code remark, taps Gottfrey on the shoulder. He draws his boss’s attention to the computer screen on Longrin’s desk.
The screen is quartered into four images, each a security-camera view of part of the property, including the receiving yard where the dust has settled around the Rhino GX and other vehicles.
“Mr. Longrin,” says Gottfrey, “keeping in mind it’s a felony to lie to an FBI agent—where is your security-system video archived? We need to review Ancel and Clare Hawk’s arrival last night, so that we can determine if—and in what vehicle—they left here.”