Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “You were a glorified lab rat, Carter. As a street agent, you’re a joke.

  You’ve got the situational awareness of a tree. I was standing in that doorway the whole time you were taking a shower.”

  “Enjoy the view?” Janet asked.

  The woman cocked her head to one side and gave Janet the once-over, staring at her body just long enough for Janet to blush.

  “You’re nicely made, for a breast-Fed,” she said.

  “Was that why they sent you to get close to Kreiss?”

  “That probably wasn’t their brightest idea,” Janet said, trying to feel how much give there was in the yarn. Not very damn much.

  The Agency woman laughed once.

  “Edwin Kreiss has zero time for amateurs,” she said.

  “Of any stripe. What’d they do—tell you to show a little leg, bat your eyes at him?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Janet asked again, trying to strain against the sticky web without showing it.

  “Because now you’re just another annoying civilian who’s getting in my way. Stop testing the curtain. You can permanently damage your circulation.

  Lie still. Rest your eyes. Take a nap. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

  The woman left the room, and Janet immediately tried to move her hands. The sticky rubbery substance clung to her skin like shrink-wrap, but it did give when she pushed out with the back of her right hand. But when she relaxed, it tightened, and she realized that it was now noticeably tighter than it had been. She thought about several coils of the chemical yarn around her throat and involuntarily swallowed. Then she remembered the discussion in Farnsworth’s office about the capture curtain, and the fact that it was water-soluble. If she could roll off the bed and get to the bathroom without Medusa out there hearing her, she could get it off.

  She looked around, trying to figure out how to move quietly with her legs bent sideways like that, and saw the three strands that went around the right-hand bedpost. Shit. So much for that idea.

  She closed her eyes. Okay, she thought, so make the call. Do what this bitch says. Hell, Kreiss might not even answer the page. She opened her eyes, suddenly afraid. He’d better answer the page, she thought. She wondered where he was.

  Kreiss was sitting in the parking lot of a fast-food joint three blocks from the Beltway interchange with U.S. Route 1. He was munching on a lukewarm, well-oiled three-dollar heart attack when he heard the pager chirping in the duffel bag behind his seat. He put the grease burger down and turned around to get at the pager. He’d forgotten he had it. The number in the window made him sit right up, though: It had been his own unlisted office number when he was at the Agency. Now who the hell was sending this little summons? He didn’t have to write the number down, so he simply cleared the pager, which beeped at him gratefully. There was a phone booth at the edge of the parking lot, but there were two very fat teenaged girls hanging on it, so he went back to his gourmet extravaganza. He had been through all the truck stops and terminals on the northern Virginia side and was now working up the nerve to cross the Wilson Bridge, Washington’s monument to uncivil engineering. He had planned to wait another half hour for rush hour to subside somewhat and to make sure no big semis had fallen through the bridge deck today.

  The girls finally left the phone booth in gales of laughter, multiple chins jiggling in unison. He started to get out but then hesitated. It was just after 6:00 on a Monday evening. The pager had belonged to Janet Carter, which meant it was Bureau equipment. Now someone had called it and left a northern Virginia phone number on it that no one in the Bureau should have had access to. Ergo, this wasn’t a Bureau summons.

  He turned on the cabin light and examined the pager for signs of a second antenna, something that might transmit his location when he had acknowledged the message. Then it occurred to him that this might be about Lynn. Hell with it, he thought.

  He got out and went over to the phone booth, which reeked of chewing gum and cheap perfume when he cracked open the door. He dialed the number. It rang four times before being picked up, and, to his surprise, it was Janet Carter.

  “Is this about Lynn?” he asked.

  “I have a message for you,” Janet said in a wooden voice.

  “From whom?”

  “The message is as follows: Tenebrae factae sunt.”

  “What—” he said, but the connection had been broken. And then the message penetrated. Almost in slow motion, he put the handset back on the hook and backed out of the booth. He walked back to the van, got in, and started it up. Hamburger forgotten, he drove out of the parking lot, turned left when he came to Route 1, and headed south, away from the Beltway.

  Well, well, well, he thought. Tenebrae factae sunt. Darkness has fallen.

  Misty’s coming. That was the nickname she’d been given, in memory of the psychotic woman character who kept calling Clint Eastwood to play “Misty” for her in that movie. The message was her trademark. It was supposed to spook him, and in a way, it did. Misty was in her fifties, looked forty the last time he had seen her, and had been the preeminent stalker in the stable, bar none. Kreiss had concluded a long time ago that Misty had a Terminator personality. She was either sitting up there on her shelf, like some neighborhood black hole, absorbing light, motion, sound, everything that was going on around her, with those disturbing black eyes staring into infinity with perfect indifference, or she was on the move, morphing through keyholes or running down cars, a human Velociraptor, leading with her teeth. She tracked like a damned adult mamba, moving fast through the bush on a molecular prey trail, its head and upper body occasionally coming up and off the ground, testing the air with its tongue, looking, eager to deliver a fatal strike, hunting because it liked to.

  He had trained under her supervision for two years before getting his first operational assignment, so there was nothing that he knew that she didn’t also know. Well, maybe a couple of things, he thought hopefully.

  But realistically, he was now, officially and irrevocably—put it on the evening news, folks—in deep shit. He would have to abandon

  immediately his pursuit of Browne McGarand and look to his own defenses.

  Maybe head out to Dulles and get on the evening flight to Zanzibar, or, better yet, lower Patagonia. That would be about the right distance.

  Except he’d probably just be finishing the evening meal when she appeared out of the cockpit. The only chance he had was if Misty was going solo and had not brought along a cast of thousands. Given the history, she might well be solo. Misty was a sport.

  He drove down Route 1 for twenty minutes until he came to the entrance to Fort Belvoir, where he turned in. Belvoir was an open post, the home of the Army Corps of Engineers School, so there were no gates or guards. But it was still a military reservation, and it seemed safer to stop there than out on the street. He drove around the cam puslike facility for a few minutes before parking the van in front of the main post exchange complex. He shut the van down and closed his eyes, commanding his brain to organize and think about his situation.

  Misty was coming. She’d used Janet Carter as her messenger, which meant that Janet was having a bad evening. Daniella Morganavicz was her real name. Her parents had supposedly emigrated from Serbia, and she had clearly inherited the ruthless faculties of that bloody-minded tribe.

  Somebody at Langley must be really worried if Misty had been put in play.

  Then the pager went off again.

  He looked down at the little device and thought about throwing it out the window. The first page had been the warning; was this one Misty making a tracking call? He looked at the number in the window. It was the Roanoke area code and a number he didn’t recognize. Carter again?

  He had rented a cell phone with the van, but wanted to save using that for when he was certain someone was hunting him. How certain do you want it? he thought, remembering the warning. He looked around for a phone booth and finally saw a bank of them by the exchange entrance. He looked at the
number again and then turned the pager off without acknowledging the call. He got out, threw the pager into a concrete flower planter, and walked over to the bank of pay phones. He dialed the number, entered his credit-card number, and waited. The credit card would tie him to this place, but he hadn’t really begun to run and hide yet, so that shouldn’t matter. Emphasis on the shouldn’t. It was Carter who answered.

  “Sorry about being rude,” she said.

  “That goddamned woman was here. Do you know whom I mean?”

  “Oh yes,” he said.

  “Tallish? Black eyes? Absorbs ambient light?”

  “That’s the one. Said you would understand that message to mean she was coming for you.”

  “Clear as a bell. Why are you calling me?”

  “I’m on a pay phone. My phone is being tapped, I think. I called because I need to talk to you, first about your daughter, and second about what’s going on.”

  He felt a clang of alarm when she mentioned Lynn.

  “What about Lynn?”

  “She’s awake. I was there when she came around. I think she’s going to be fine—no apparent mental damage. We talked. She told me what happened out there at the arsenal. The other two kids apparently got caught in some kind of traps and were drowned by a flash flood.”

  “Yes, I found leg traps.”

  “Well, she also told me some stuff about the guy I think you’re hunting.

  It involves a bomb, and I think I know what it is. I—” “Hold on a minute, Carter. I’m not hunting anyone.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation.

  “I think you are, or at least you were,” she said.

  “I think you were hunting one Browne McGarand, because he kidnapped Lynn. I also think you did something to his grandson, Jared.”

  She stopped talking, but he decided to remain silent.

  “This woman—is she a real threat?” Janet asked.

  “What do you think?” When she didn’t answer, he explained her nickname.

  “Scared me just to look at her,” Janet said.

  “I think she took it as a given that you’d be afraid other, too.”

  “Which is why I have to go now, Carter.”

  “I’ve quit the Bureau,” she said.

  That surprised him.

  “What happened?”

  “They wanted me to do something that I didn’t want to do. They wanted me to page you for the Dragon Lady.”

  “But you did anyway.”

  “Because she showed up here at my house and dazzled me with her personality and some nasty little number you people call a ‘retinal disrupter!”

  Then she trussed me up in some kind of sticky shit and told me that things would go poorly for me if I didn’t do what she said. I elected to do what she said.”

  “That was the correct decision. Carter.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Humiliating, maybe, but ultimately smart.

  But that was only the half of it. I quit because, originally, they wanted me to tell you they’d found Lynn but that she had not survived.”

  It was his turn to be silent for a moment.

  “Sweet,” he said.

  “Well, it kind of offended me, too. But I was able to talk Farnsworth out of that. Games like that—not my style. Then this shit with Dracula’s daughter. Even Farnsworth wouldn’t mess with her.”

  “Your boss knows the real thing when he sees it,” he said, looking around at the darkening parking lot. If Misty had been in Roanoke at 6:00 P.M. he had a few hours before she could be here, but no more than that.

  Unless she had helpers, and of course she might. Time to go. And yet—he owed this woman.

  “You really put a snake in a guy’s car?” Janet asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  Ransom, he thought.

  “No, a tape of a snake. But you’re asking about Misty? She likes things visual. She cut the rattles off a snake and stuffed the thing into the back pocket of a guy’s bucket seat. He never heard it buzz, of course, but he did get to see it in his mirror just before it slid over his shoulder and dropped into his lap. What’s this about a bomb?”

  Janet filled him in on what she had been doing since Kreiss had pulled her out of the tunnels. She emphasized McGarand’s ties to the Waco disaster.

  Krless didn’t say anything when she finished. The bureaucrats never change, he thought. He wondered if he should tell her about the propane truck.

  “Are you still there?”

  “I have to go,” he said, cutting her off.

  “And I dumped your pager. It’s in a flower planter in front of the main exchange at Fort Belvoir, if you’re interested.”

  “Do you think that McGarand’s taken a bomb to Washington?”

  “It’s possible. But that’s not my problem anymore, Carter. You recovered my daughter, like you said you would. I thank you for that. I’ve got other problems right now.”

  “But—” “Does that woman know about Lynn?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. She was there in the Roanoke office when I got there. I don’t know what Farnsworth told her. But why—oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.”

  Another silence.

  “Would you like me to go to the hospital? Stay with her until you can get back here?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but in what capacity? You’re not with the Bureau anymore.”

  “Everybody tells me I was a shitty agent. How about as just a human, perhaps?”

  He laughed but hesitated. If he went back to Blacksburg, he might walk directly into a trap. But if he didn’t, and Misty took Lynn, then he’d have no choices at all. Carter was no match for Misty, but she might be better than no one at all. And Misty would never take Carter seriously, so Carter, suitably warned, might have a chance to do something.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said.

  “I have a neighbor out there near my cabin.

  Name’s Micah Wall. He has a phone. And he’s got lots of kinfolk, as they call them. They’re mountain people. They’re pretty decent people, although they don’t look it. If Lynn can be moved, maybe you could get her out of that hospital and into Micah’s hands.”

  “I can sure as hell try,” Janet said.

  “If they’ll release her into my custody.”

  “Lynn’s over twenty-one. Technically, I think she can release herself, as long as there’s no medical issue. Take her to my cabin, make sure you’re not followed, and then call Micah. I think he’ll know what to do, and I’m also pretty sure he and his boys can make it tough for Misty if she tries them on. But you’ll have to move fast.”

  “I will. Now, how’s about a quid pro quo: I seem to be the only person down here who thinks McGarand has gone to D.C. on a bombing mission.

  My bosses, my ex-bosses, are suddenly not interested in hearing that, based, I think, on guidance they’re getting from Bureau headquarters.

  If you have something, some evidence, I can give to Farnsworth, and then maybe I can ask that they protect Lynn in return.”

  Kreiss shook his head slowly in the darkness.

  “You are depressingly naive for an ex-special agent,” he said with a sigh.

  “Your boss has been told to assist this woman who is coming after me, not get in her way.

  Those orders probably came from Bureau headquarters, if not Justice. At this juncture, I’ll bet Farnsworth won’t even take your calls.”

  “But that explosion at the arsenal was huge. If there’s anything like that being planned for Washington, we have to do something!”

  “Look, Carter. If there’s a bomb here in Washington, that’s your ex employer problem. Or actually, it’s aTF’s problem.”

  “But they won’t even admit the possibility, or at least that’s their official stance. They keep saying there’s no direct evidence. Please, can’t you tell me something?”

  Kreiss thought about it. Carter sounded frantic, and she still cared, even if she had left the Bureau. And she was going t
o help him with Lynn.

  “Okay. Tell ‘em this: McGarand left Blacksburg driving a propane truck. I saw that truck at the arsenal, inside the power plant.”

  “Propane truck?”

  “I’ve got to roll, Carter. Listen to me: If Misty needs a distraction to get Lynn out of that hospital, she’s most likely to start a fire. So be prepared.

  Take a gun if you have one.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” Janet said.

  Her best shot, he thought, giving a mental sigh. Right through her foot, probably.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And whatever happens with Lynn, thank you. Big-time.”

  “Can you stop McGarand?”

  “Stop him? I can’t even find him.”

  “But if you do, you can do better than revenge, Mr. Kreiss. You might prevent a tragedy. You say he has a propane truck. I think he has a truckload of hydrogen. That would make a helluva truck bomb.”

  “This what you really mean by quid pro quo, Carter? You get my daughter out of harm’s way if I’ll prevent a bombing?”

  “I’ll try to help your daughter regardless, Mr. Kreiss. But right now, the people who mean you harm are depending on your staying true to form: an eye for an eye, blood for blood, heads on pikes. Why don’t you try doing a good deed for once? Think of how badly that would confound your enemies.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Impudent goddamn woman.

  “Now that you’re a civilian, you’re getting devious, Carter,” he said.

  “Hey?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You ever going to call me by my first name?”

  “Don’t know you well enough,” he replied.

  “Gotta boogie.”

  He hung up the phone and strode back to the van, kicking an empty Coke can halfway across the parking lot. He got in and slammed the door shut.

  Decision time. Ever since his termination, he had had some preplanned disappearance arrangements in place. But until he knew that Lynn was safe, he wasn’t really free to move. The next twenty-four hours would be crucial. Misty was already in Roanoke, and he had not been exaggerating about her starting a fire. Even in a hospital, it was what he would have done. He hadn’t given Carter anywhere near enough