Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  “We’ll find that with our feet. Douse the light. They can’t see us without it, not until they come down the slope. We need time to get across this thing and out of range of any guns.”

  Lynn complied, and the dog stopped barking. Janet led the way, stepping down into the icy water, her left hand held out on the rock wall. Her feet found the ledge, which was about a foot underwater. She explored with her toe to see how wide it was; not very, she decided. She was wearing sneakers with a hiking tread, which gave her pretty good traction. She started forward, keeping her hand on the wall, leaning into it actually, while trying not to think of what a full-body plunge into that water would feel like. She sensed Lynn was behind her, but she did not turn around.

  She slid her feet forward, rather than taking steps, to make sure the ledge didn’t end suddenly.

  The dog barked once more from the top of the slope, tentatively now that there was nothing to see. Then Janet heard a familiar sound, that of a tactical radio. The sound seemed to be coming from ahead of them, and she hoped that it was just the tricky acoustics of the cavern. If their pursuers had managed to get ahead of them here, they were screwed. She heard Lynn’s lantern tap the rock wall.

  “Okay?” she said softly “Yeah,” Lynn whispered.

  “Cold.”

  The water was extremely cold, and Janet’s ankles were getting numb.

  She had no idea of how far they had gone, when, from way above and behind them, beams of white light shot out. She looked up out of the corner other eye but kept going. She thought she could see the ceiling of the cavern, but there was something odd about the shape of it. The dog started barking again, and then there were two dogs, getting excited now.

  The light beams came down onto the lake and played about, and she could hear men’s voices, and more radio noises. Inevitably, one of the light beams found them.

  “Halt!” a man shouted from up on the slope.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot.”

  “Fuck you,” Lynn said matter-of-factly, her voice carrying clearly over

  the water. Janet squinted her eyes against the reflection of the flashlight in the water and kept going.

  “Send the goddamn dogs,” a man ordered.

  “It’s straight down,” protested a second voice.

  Janet and Lynn were a good fifty yards off the rock beach by now, but Janet had no idea of how far they had to go. She dared not light a lantern.

  The men argued, and then there was a yip from one of the dogs, which was followed by the sounds of a small-scale avalanche. Janet realized someone had pushed one of the dogs over the cliff, and it was coming down the slope. There was a loud splash, more yelping, and then the dog was out and casting about on the rock beach. A second dog came crashing down the slope. Janet kept going, taking bigger sliding steps now, determined to get off this ledge. She didn’t think the dog could follow them out here, but there was no telling. Then the flashlights came back to them, illuminating them both. Whether the dogs saw them or picked up their scent, they gave cry and came bounding down the gravel beach to the spot where the women had gone into the water.

  “Git ‘em, Tiger,” a third man yelled.

  “Go on, boy, git ‘em!”

  From the sounds of it, the dogs were unwilling to plunge into the water and were milling about on the beach behind them, barking excitedly. Not small dogs, Janet thought as she pressed on. Her front foot slid out onto nothing and she barely got stopped in time. The ledge had ended.

  “What?” Lynn asked as she came right up on Janet. The man up on the top of the slope was still urging the dogs to go after them. Their lights were weaker now that the women had progressed farther out into the lake.

  “No more ledge,” Janet whispered.

  “I think we’re fucked.”

  “Are you sure?” Lynn asked.

  “I’ll hold your hand. Reach way out.”

  Janet leaned against the rock wall and extended her foot as far as she could. She thought she felt something, but she couldn’t quite reach. The flashlights were still on them. There was more light reflecting off the black water than shining directly on them.

  “It’s a giant step,” she told Lynn.

  “If it’s not the ledge, I’ll fall in.”

  There was more noise from up on top of the cliff. And more lights.

  “You have to try,” Lynn said.

  “I can’t get past you.”

  “I can’t do it with the lantern,” Janet said. Then she had an idea.

  “Give me a match.”

  Lynn passed her a match and asked what she was doing.

  “I’m going to light this and set it afloat. That might distract them.

  It’ll look like we’re not getting anywhere. I have to ditch it anyway to make this step, so what the hell, okay?”

  She struck a match and lit the lantern. Immediately, there was more noise up on the cliff, with another voice telling them to halt or he would shoot, Janet set the lantern into the water; the weight of the base kept it upright, the wick assembly just out of the water. She gave it a gentle shove, took a deep breath, and stepped way out. Her foot hit ledge and she took a giant step across the gap. She moved forward one step and then told Lynn to pass her lantern over. The lantern in the water bobbed gently from side to side in the ripples coming from the dogs, who were splashing in and out of the water somewhere behind them. Lynn stepped across the gap, and they hurried on, getting farther from their pursuers and the bobbing lantern. The ledge actually began to get wider, and Janet, greatly relieved, was able to step normally now instead of slide. Lynn picked right up on it, and they made better progress.

  Then they heard the sounds of men coming down the slope, accompanied by several avalanches of rocks, sand, and gravel and lots of shouting.

  It sounded like at least half a dozen men were coming. The dogs stepped up their own noise, eager to continue the hunt but not sure how. Janet bent low after bumping her forehead on an overhang of rock that had appeared out of nowhere. She warned Lynn, but Lynn bumped her head anyway and swore.

  “There’s a ledge!” a voice shouted.

  “C’mon. We can follow them.”

  Someone else back on the gravel beach punched on a much more powerful flashlight, which just reached the two women, and once again warned them to halt or he would shoot. Janet tied to ignore the noises behind them, but it sounded like both men and dogs were coming, the dogs swimming now and the men coming out along the ledge. Then a second light found and pinned them in its beam; at least one of them had remained back on the beach. There was a great splash and some excited yelling behind them as one of the men fell in, swearing furiously about how cold it was. Janet had to duck even farther under the overhang, which now stuck out almost three feet. There were more splashes, and it sounded like most of their pursuers were now in the water, thrashing about, trying to find the ledge in the darkness. The two bright white beams stayed on them, however, and the big voice warned them one more time.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot. I mean it, goddamn it. Stop right there!”

  “Keep going,” Janet whispered.

  “Unless they have rifles, we’re too far.”

  She was wrong, she realized, as a gun boomed behind them and a heavy round spanged off the rock face above them and slashed into the water.

  The booming sound reverberated in the cavern. The powerful lights never wavered. Janet took two more steps and then a second round came, hitting between them and causing Lynn to cry out in fright. Janet stopped and turned around, blinded now by the bright light. Some of the men were still in the water behind them, apparently thrashing back toward the stone beach. Whoever had the lights on them was definitely down on the beach at the foot of the cliff. The sound of the shot reverberated in the cavern.

  “Now what?” Lynn whispered.

  Janet was about to answer, when there was a sudden noise in the water, about ten feet off. Then another, and another. Janet recognized it as the sound of something heavy and s
harp hitting the water like a champion diver, a wicked slashing noise that was instantly covered over in a small boil of foam. Janet flattened herself against the rock wall under the overhang, pulling Lynn back with her. Then it was raining heavy objects, and a man screamed way behind them. A second man screamed, and the lights suddenly went out as a hail of stalactites came down from the ceiling of the cavern like a shower of stone knives. A dog made a horrible noise as it went under, still screaming. The rain of stone intensified for a few seconds, seemingly covering every inch of the lake before it stopped, leaving only an occasional cutting splash way out in the lake. Behind them, all was silent. Janet strained to see in the sudden silence, and she thought she saw a single flashlight pointing out into the water, but it was not moving.

  Nothing appeared to be moving behind them anymore.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lynn murmured. She lit her lantern.

  “Micah said not to shoot off a gun down here,” Janet said.

  “Let’s get going before they regroup.”

  As they started forward along the ledge, one last immense stalactite came down, way out in the darkness. Lynn raised her lantern, but the ceiling was still too high to see. Moments later, actual waves washed against their feet. The silence behind them was absolute; Janet didn’t think they would be regrouping anytime soon. She pressed forward, shivering, and soon they were at the other side of the lake. Behind them, there were no further signs of pursuit.

  When Kreiss saw the first road signs for Blacksburg, he pulled into the parking lot of the next convenience store that came along on Route 11

  and placed a call to Micah Wall. He used the rented cell phone this time:

  They could get a number off a tap, but it should trace back to the Washington calling area. He looked at his watch while the phone was ringing:

  It was 8:30. He had taken back roads all the way down from Washington, and it had nearly doubled the time for the trip. But there were too many people hunting for him now. The Bureau would be after him for what he done to john stone and Lanny boy. The aTF would want to question him further in connection with the bombing of their headquarters building.

  He had listened to news reports of the blast on Massachusetts Avenue.

  They had apparently listened to his warning, but McGarand’s bomb had done its job. The attack would really shock them, he thought. The aTF was a tiny organization compared to the Bureau, but they had been a pretty high-profile group lately. The field agents he had known were competent people who were sincerely trying to make the country a safer place. But their policy people in Washington were another story, especially when a “situation” developed. Then too many of them wanted to play John Wayne.

  And the Agency? That posed a trickier question. He suspected that some senior devils in Main Justice and Langley had decided to eliminate their Edwin Kreiss problem once and for all. If so, his maneuvering room was shrinking fast. Right now, he needed to know where Lynn was. And his favorite ex-special agent, for that matter. Someone picked up the phone at the other end and he asked for Micah.

  “Who’s callin’?”

  “The lion keeper,” he answered. The man told him to hold on, and he could hear the sounds of an urgent discussion in the background. Then the man came back.

  “Pap’s done gone. Buncha damn revenuers into them caves under Pearl’s Mountain. Pap says they’s hunting’ kin o’yourn. Pap’s up on the back ridge, with some a the boys, waitin’ on ‘em. Ain’t had no word back yet.”

  Revenuers? He wondered what the aTF was doing going after Lynn.

  Unless they were trying what Misty had tried—take the daughter, bag the father.

  “Was Janet Carter with her? When they went in?”

  “Don’t rightly know. They was two wimmen, all’s I know.”

  “Did these people show any identification? Warrants?”

  “Don’t know who they was. Pap said they didn’t bring no warrants.

  They was wantin’ to come in here, search the whole damn place, but Pap and Uncle Jed took the ten-gauges out, tole ‘em to git on out a here.

  They went on back down to the road. Then they come back, with ‘em dogs. It was ‘em dogs took ‘em to the cave. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of ‘em since.”

  Micah had shown Kreiss the cave hideout up behind the cabin and the junkyard. He had implied there were passages leading back from the tiny hut, but he hadn’t volunteered any further information, and Kreiss hadn’t wanted to pry. Now he needed to tell Micah where he would be hiding, but he knew the government people would have put a tap on Micah’s line.

  “All right. I appreciate it. Tell Micah I’m back, and that there’s a bunch of revenuers after me, too. Tell him I’m going to lay up in that place he and I talked about, last time he heard the lions.”

  “Awright.”

  “And one more thing—the government is probably listening to this conversation. Tell your Pap to stay shy.”

  There was a soft, contemptuous guffaw on the phone, and then the man hung up.

  Kreiss pressed the button to end the call and turned the phone off. He had to assume there was a government signals intelligence van somewhere, listening to that entire conversation. What had they learned? Kreiss was in the area. He was working with Micah Wall. He was going to lay up somewhere that Micah would recognize. Ergo, they would want to talk to Micah, who would tell them zip-point shit, assuming they could even find him at all. Right now, there was a probably a lanky, bearded figure with a rifle humping it up the ridge to find Micah and deliver the warning.

  He leaned back in the driver’s seat and rubbed his eyes. He needed some coffee, but the convenience store was shut for the night, its doors and windows barred, security lights burning, and the gas pumps locked.

  The Virginia countryside and backwoods were apparently no longer places of safety and sociable trust. And the hills were alive with the sounds of—what? Federal agents, with dogs. Hunting two women, one of them an ex-federal agent. Which government law-enforcement agency was it?

  The Bureau? The aTF? Or could it even be the Langley crowd? He still wanted to settle accounts with Browne McGarand for what he had done to those kids, but McGarand was probably long gone, or being hunted by the feds himself.

  He took a deep breath, let it out, and started the van. First, he needed to make sure Lynn was safe. For that, he would have to get in touch with Micah. He couldn’t exactly go home, and he couldn’t go to Micah’s. If the feds had real coverage of the Blacksburg-Christiansburg area, he couldn’t go to a motel, either. He

  had stashed the essentials of a base camp at the arsenal the first time he’d gone in. He had his crawl suit in the bag, his sound equipment, and this time he had a gun. He decided to make one stop for a meal and some extra drinking water, and then he’d go to ground in the last place anyone would expect him to go: back to the Ramsey Arsenal.

  Janet and Lynn flopped down on the cave floor when they finally reached the flat wooden door. The rising passage had been covered in smelly, slippery clay, and they were both filthy with it. They were also very thirsty, having taken no water with them. The lantern was guttering, which meant it was nearly out of fuel.

  “What time is it?” Lynn asked.

  Janet looked at her watch. She could feel the moisture in the clay seeping into her clothes, but she was so tired, she didn’t care. She was already covered in mud from head to toe anyway. The passage up from the subterranean lake had climbed forever, through some incredibly narrow cracks, and one scary part where the ceiling had come down to within two feet of the floor, an area that they’d done on their backs. She blanked that part out other mind with a shiver.

  “Ten-thirty. At night, I think.”

  “So what do we do now?” Lynn asked, holding her side. She sounded as exhausted as Janet was.

  “Just go out there and see who’s waiting?”

  Janet looked over at the girl. She looked like she had been camouflaged for hunting, but there was also some pain showing in her
face.

  “That wound hurting?”

  “Ribs, mostly,” Lynn said.

  “Plus, I wasn’t a hundred percent when we left that hospital.”

  “You’ve done amazingly well. I want to open that door and get out of here, but I have this nightmare that goddamned woman will be sitting on a stump out there, looking at her watch as if we’re late.”

  Lynn grinned.

  “Then you cap her ass, Special Agent. I need a shower and a hot meal.”

  Janet patted the .38 that was still strapped into her waist holster.

  “She’d probably catch it in her teeth and spit it back at me,” Janet said.

  “But actually, it should be Mr. Wall out there. Presumably, no one else knows where this cave comes out.”

  “They discovered where we went in,” Lynn pointed out.

  “They had dogs; the dogs followed our trail to the cave.”

  “Where’s my father, I wonder,” Lynn said, rolling over on her side.

  “Last time I talked to him, he was still in Washington, looking for

  McGarand. But he said he was coming back down here. Apparently, the Bureau picked him up in Washington, but he got away from them. Which is why I’m worried about that woman being out there when we open the door.”

  “She doesn’t want me—she wants him?”

  “Yes. But don’t ask me why. Whatever it is, my boss got some pretty high-level guidance, because at one point, he wasn’t willing to cooperate in moving against your father, and then all of a sudden, he was.”

  “And that’s why you quit?”

  “Partially. They wanted me to do some things that I thought were wrong. It involved that woman. When Farnsworth—that’s my boss in Roanoke—couldn’t or wouldn’t explain why, I quit.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I have a Ph.D. in forensic sciences from Johns Hopkins. I can do anything with that.”

  “Wow, I guess you can. The Bureau won’t queer the deal for you, will they? Because you quit?”

  “You mean when I go looking for a job? No, I don’t think so. I have pretty damn good performance evaluations, and I also have worked inside the laboratory. I don’t think the Bureau would want any more publicity about its laboratory just now.”