Breaking Cover (Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn)

by J. D. Rhoades

  “Sir?” Arrington said.

  “All teams,” Buckthorn said into the mike clipped to his shoulder. “Report.”

  “Team one,” the deputy in charge of the three covering the front door said. He was in the car next to Buckthorn’s, the two vehicles blocking the driveway. He was close enough that Buckthorn could hear him without the radio. “In position.”

  “Team two.” The voice was scratchy over the radio, but Buckthorn could hear that the man was out of breath. When this is over, Buckthorn promised himself, we’re going to see about getting Reggie Comer on the treadmill a few times a week. “Moving . . . into position,” Comer panted. Through the speaker, Buckthorn heard a grunt of surprise; then a loud hissing sound erupted from the woods on one side of the house. Everyone flinched as a bright white ball of flame erupted from the tree line, arcing high into the sky.

  “Shit!” someone yelled. Out of the corner of his eye, Buckthorn saw the nearest weapons tracking toward the disturbance.

  “Hold fire!” he bellowed into the radio. “Hold fire!” He could feel the tension crackling in the air like dry lightning, but no one fired. “What the hell was that?” he barked into the mike.

  “Some kind of booby trap,” Comer panted. “I tripped over a wire or something.”

  “Then he knows we have a team headed for the back,” Arrington said glumly.

  “If it’s the guy we think it is,” Blauner said, “he will have figured it out already. He knows the doctrine. Close off the perimeter, then negotiate.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Buckthorn said. “He knows too damn much.”

  “What worries me,” Blauner said, “is that that alarm rocket had to be preset. Your guy said he hasn’t been out since taking the people indoors. He couldn’t have seen this coming, so he had to have had that rocket in place before any of this happened. He’s worried about people sneaking up on him through the woods. Why?”

  “So we could be dealing with some sort of paranoid? A mental case?” Buckthorn demanded.

  “A very highly trained and competent mental case,” Blauner said.

  “Great,” Buckthorn muttered.

  “Team two in position,” Comer said. “We’ve got the back door sealed up.”

  “Any sign he may have already bolted?”

  “Negative,” the reply came back. “There’s lots of brush and leaves back here, and a creek running at the foot of the hill. Nothing looks like it’s been disturbed.”

  “Ten-four,” Buckthorn said. “Now for phase two.” He picked up the mike.

  WOLF HEARD the voice booming from the loudspeaker down below. “We have the house surrounded,” the voice said, the words echoing from the tree line.

  He tore the last strip of duct tape with his fingers and patted it into place at the back of the cameraman’s head. “Can you breathe all right, Howard?”

  Howard glared at him over the tape that covered his mouth and chin. He nodded his head in a quick angry jerk.

  In the kitchen, the phone rang. “That’ll be the negotiator,” Wolf said. “Everybody works off the same playbook.” He turned to the woman. She was still seated where he had put her, back against the wall. “Time to go,” he said.

  She looked up at him, her face a picture of terror and misery. “Go where?” she said softly.

  Wolf walked over to a door at the end of the hallway where Howard sat, bound to a chair. He pulled the door open. Howard tried to turn his head at the sound but couldn’t get turned around enough to see.

  “The basement,” Wolf said.

  The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “No way. I’m not going down there with you.” Howard’s muffled protest behind his gag of duct tape indicated he didn’t think much of the idea, either. The phone kept ringing.

  Wolf sighed. He drew his pistol from his waistband. “Miss . . . Torrijos, is it?” She nodded.

  Wolf pointed down the darkened stairs with the pistol. “I’m going to ask nicely. But I’m only going to do it once. Stand up and walk down those stairs. Please.”

  Slowly, the woman got to her feet. She shuffled toward the door as if it had an electric chair behind it. Wolf stood back to let her pass, far enough that she couldn’t reach him.

  As she started down the stairs, Wolf turned to Howard. “They’ll be here soon,” he said. “Just sit tight.”

  Wolf couldn’t clearly make out what Howard replied through the duct tape, but it sounded a lot like “Fuck you.”

  “HE’S NOT answering,” Ross reported.

  “He’s not shooting, either,” Buckthorn said. “That’s something.”

  “He’s not shooting yet,” Blauner said. “You’d best sit tight and wait for our team to get here.”

  “How long will that take?” Buckthorn asked.

  “They just went wheels-up from Andrews Air Force Base,” Ross said. “They should be at Raleigh-Durham in an hour, hour and a half. Then figure forty-five minutes to an hour drive. If they can’t locate a chopper. I’m working on that now.”

  Buckthorn considered. “And then what?”

  “Then they’ll probably want some intel about what’s going on inside. Dispositions, locations of hostages, stuff like that.”

  “Right,” Buckthorn said. “I’d like to know about that myself.” He raised his voice. “Duane!”

  A short, slender deputy with a dark complexion trotted over. He was dressed head to toe in black tactical gear. He had a stubby CAR-15 assault rifle slung on his back. He was grinning like a child taken to the zoo for the first time. His nameplate read willis.

  “What you need, Tim?”

  “You think you can get up close to the house? Maybe take a look-see?”

  Willis looked toward the house. “Don’t see anyone in any of the windas,” he observed.

  Buckthorn nodded. “If we see him, we’ll let you know. If he looks to be making a hostile move, we’ll lay down suppressing fire.”

  Willis nodded. “You be sure and do that, hear?”

  “Don’t worry,” Buckthorn said. “I let anything happen to you, your mama won’t bring me any more of those good tomatoes from her garden.”

  Willis grinned. “Roger that.” He started toward the house, unslinging the rifle.

  “Duane,” Buckthorn said. “No shooting. Recon only.”

  Willis looked unhappy but nodded and slung the rifle across his back. He moved toward the house in a low, nervous crouch. Nothing moved behind the windows. Buckthorn realized he was holding his breath as Willis picked his way slowly up the driveway. He forced himself to take slow, even breaths, but as Willis reached the porch, he found that he had stopped again.

  Willis crept onto the porch, avoiding the field of fire from the front door. He drew himself up to a sitting position beside the door, took something from a pocket, and fiddled with it for a moment. When he was done, he was holding an extensible metal rod with a mirror on the end. He held the mirror up to the front door glass. Nothing happened for a few moments. Then Willis lowered the mirror and keyed the mike on his shoulder. His whisper came through the cheap speakers as a harsh rasp. “No sign of our subject,” he said. “But we got a problem.”

  “What is it?” Buckthorn said.

  “He’s got a hostage tied up in the hallway. And there’s something sitting on the floor in front of him.”

  “What?”

  There was a pause. “I think it’s a claymore mine.” “Holy fuck,” Buckthorn said.

  Blauner looked at him. “What’s that?”

  Buckthorn shaped a semicircle in the air with his hand. “Antipersonnel weapon,” he said. “It’s a shaped plastic explosive charge with, like, ball bearings imbedded in the front. When it goes off it sprays a whole area like a giant shotgun.”

  Blauner looked at Buckthorn soberly. “If that thing goes off right in front of a hostage,” he said, “they’ll be scraping him off the walls.”

  “Duane,” Buckthorn said into the mike, “are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure
,” the answer came back. “I worked with ’em when

  I was in the marines. Nasty little critters.”

  “Ask him if he can see the trigger,” Blauner said. “Is it wired to anything?” Buckthorn passed the question on.

  “I can see a string or wire or something leading to it,” Willis came back, “but I can’t see where it goes.”

  “He’s probably got it wired to the door,” Ross said. “Shit,” Buckthorn muttered. “This guy is nuts.” “But where is he?” Blauner said.

  WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Gaby asked. “Why are we down here? What’s going to happen to Howard?”

  The man didn’t answer. He prodded Gaby gently in the back with the pistol. “Go sit over there,” he said.

  She looked where he was pointing. The cellar was damp and cool, with brick walls that looked ancient. The floor looked like clay.

  “I’m not sitting on that floor,” she said positively. She took hold of the lapel of her suit jacket. “This is a Donna Karan. It cost me damn near a month’s salary.”

  The man stared at her for a moment in disbelief; then he laughed sharply. “Okay, then,” he said. “Stand. But be quiet.” He walked over to a wooden rack on the wall. Various rusted tools and dusty glass jars lined the shelves. He set the pistol on one of the shelves and stepped to one side. Gaby tensed slightly, trying to decide whether to try to flee. He whipped the gun off the shelf so fast she barely saw the movement until the weapon was pointed at her again. “Don’t” was all he said. She froze. He put the gun back down and began tugging at one side of the shelf. It slid away from the wall slowly, the glass jars rattling and clanking against one another. Gaby saw a door-sized hole gaping in the wall behind it.

  “Wh—what’s that?”

  “It’s the reason I rented the house,” he said. He picked up the gun and reached into the darkness. He came out with a flashlight in one hand. He turned it on. There was a tunnel in the wall. The flashlight beam only pierced the dusty gloom for a few feet. “After you,” he said.

  “I can’t go in there,” Gaby said. “It looks . . . it looks snakey in there.”

  “It’s safe,” the man said, “and there aren’t any snakes. At least not the last time I checked it.” He motioned with the gun again. “We need to get a move on,” he said. He held the flashlight out to her. “You go first.”

  Gaby considered turning and running and taking her chances. She considered grabbing the flashlight and trying to club the strange man with the gun. She remembered his quickness, however, and knew it would be suicide. She walked to him and took the flashlight. She shined it into the tunnel. It was lined with the same old brick as the cellar. “Where does it go?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  “The old toolshed, behind the barn,” the man said. He poked her in the back with the gun, not too hard. She took a deep breath and walked inside. The ceiling was low and the walls close, and Gaby fought back a swelling of panic.

  “Interesting story, actually,” the man said. His voice was matterof-fact, as if he were giving a lecture in a schoolroom. It was a deep voice, almost soothing. Gaby tried to focus on it as she picked her way down the tunnel.

  “The house was built in 1864,” the man said. “During the Civil War. News was coming in about a Yankee general named Sherman, rolling across the land with an army, tearing stuff up, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and most of the stuff that could be pried up. The guy who built it decided he wanted a way to get his woman and children out if the Yankees came calling.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “The real estate agent told me,” he said. “She spun it as some sort of legend, said she’d never seen the tunnel herself. But I poked around a little and found the loose bricks where they’d tried to wall it up. I figured it might be useful.”

  It seemed to Gaby as if they’d been walking for hours, even though she knew it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. The tunnel suddenly ended in a wall. There was a wooden ladder attached to it. The ladder looked as if it had been built recently. Gaby looked up. There was a brick shaft above. She felt the gun in her back again. “Up,” he said.

  “I don’t think I can climb in these shoes,” she said. She heard him sigh. “I didn’t expect to be doing this sort of thing, you know!” she snapped.

  “Okay,” the man said. “Take the shoes off. I’ll carry them up.” She was numb with terror and fatigue. She slipped the shoes off and started to climb. The wood felt rough beneath her feet, but she didn’t catch any splinters. There was a wooden hatch over the top of the shaft. She pushed at it experimentally. It moved easily, silent on well-oiled hinges. She emerged into the cool darkness of a small wooden building. Fading light came through chinks in the wood siding. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she whirled to slam the lid back down on the shaft and run. But the man was so damned fast! He was already up and sitting on the edge of the shaft. He grinned as he handed her her shoes.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “The barn.” He gestured to the door with his gun.

  The small tool shed was directly behind a bigger structure. “We need to be quiet,” he told her. He opened a door in the back wall. At his gesture, she preceded him into the barn. The large space inside was mostly empty except for a rack of tools on the wall, a homemade work bench beneath the rack, and the car that sat near the closed front door. The man went to the door and peered out through the cracks. He nodded in satisfaction. He walked to the back passenger side and opened it. “Get in, please,” he said. She got in, ducking her head as she did so. Just as she noted the fact that the rear doors had no inside handles, the man reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. She tried to push her way past him, out of the car, but he had locked one cuff around her right wrist. She struggled briefly against him, opening her mouth to scream, but then the gun was at her temple. Tears ran down her face as she let her wrist go slack. He fastened her wrists together.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please . . .”

  The man put a finger gently against her lips. “Shhhhhh.” The man quietly opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel. He picked up a small object like a remote control from the front passenger seat. As he turned the car ignition with one hand, he pressed a button on the device with the other. There was a sudden flurry of loud noises from outside.

  BUCKTHORN’S STOMACH seemed to leap into his throat as a series of bangs and flashes erupted inside the house. It was like a thunderstorm behind the downstairs windows.

  “He’s killing the hostages!” someone shouted. Everyone was yelling at once. Buckthorn keyed his mike. “All teams!” he barked. “Move in! Take the door!” Two of the black-clad figures near him bolted for the house, awkwardly carrying a heavy iron ram between them. Others kept their weapons trained, moving back and forth, searching for targets or fire to suppress. But no fire came from the house. The next noise they heard was the roar of a large automobile engine, coming from the small barn off to one side. Then the barn door seemed to explode off its hinges as the vehicle inside burst into view. The assault teams stopped dead in their tracks. The covering teams hesitated, confused by the threat coming from the unexpected direction. By the time the first deputy recovered his wits enough to fire, the car was halfway down the drive. The first shots went wild, and by then the car had veered off the driveway into the grass. They could see a figure in the backseat, a woman with dark hair. One of the hostages.

  “Hold fire! ” Buckthorn bellowed instinctively, then reversed himself. “Aim for the tires!” The conflicting commands only served to increase the confusion, and the guns fell silent. The car threw twin rooster tails of earth and grass behind it as the tires clawed for purchase in the soft grass beside the blocked driveway. Then it was past the barricading cruisers and slewing back onto the drive. Now it was clods of dark red clay that sprayed behind the roaring vehicle. There was a scream of rubber as the car hit the hard road in a vicious turn that caused it
s rear end to fishtail wildly before the driver stomped the gas pedal and straightened out. The vehicle roared and was gone.

  In the silence that followed, Buckthorn stood, looking back and forth from the house to the road. He had the poleaxed look of a man experiencing total sensory overload. The he shook his head and started barking orders. “Somebody get after him!” he snapped. The deputies looked at each other, unsure of which one he meant. “Arrington!” Deputy Ollie Arrington jumped as if he’d been kicked. He dove into the driver’s seat of the nearest cruiser and cranked the engine. “Secure the house!” Buckthorn ordered the assault team lying prone on the front lawn. “But don’t open that front door,” he added. Slowly, the team got to their feet, looking at the house uncertainly. Buckthorn resisted the temptation to throw his hat on the ground and curse. He could see Blauner approaching. “Don’t you say a goddamn word,” Buckthorn snarled at him.

  OLLIE ARRINGTON had always liked to drive fast. Even before he’d gotten his license, he’d snuck out with his daddy’s car and gone tear-assing down the back roads of Gibson County, loving the vibration of a big engine and the rush of acceleration on the straightaways, the gut-dropping shiver of delicious fear that ran through him when taking a curve, putting the car right on the edge of losing control. But he was cocky; he knew his abilities and the vehicle’s, and like any young man, he knew deep in his bones that nothing bad would ever happen to him. Lucky for him, he’d gone to school with most of the guys in local law enforcement, and the rest knew his family. It was all that had kept him from getting worse than a series of warnings. Then he’d gone on the sheriff ’s department, where sometimes he was actually expected to drive fast, and that was about the coolest thing he could think of. Like now. He was doing at least a hundred down the long straight ribbon of State Road 1282, hanging a mere dozen yards off the back of the Ford. Dang, Arrington thought, what the heck’s he got under that hood? He considered his options. The easiest thing to do would be to simply punch the gas, give the Ford’s rear bumper a little pop, send him into a spin. He’d gone to the law enforcement driving school up in Salemboro; he knew how to do it. But it looked like the driver had a hostage with him. So that was no good. He could try to get ahead, muscle the other car off the road with his own, but he frankly didn’t know if the cruiser had enough juice and weight to pull that off. He saw the brake lights come on, so he backed off a few more yards. They were coming up on the curve by Otter Pond. The brake flashed again, then stayed on. The back of the car began to drift as the wheels locked. Arrington tensed up and backed off farther. He’s losing it. At the last second, the Ford straightened out and accelerated through the turn. Dang, Arrington thought again as he entered the turn. This guy’s good. He realized too late that he’d gotten distracted. He stomped his own brakes and jerked the wheel over, a second too late. The cruiser’s tires shrieked as he began to spin. He let up and stomped the gas. Still too late. The back tires were still trying to get ahead of the front. The car went sideways, the back half off the road. Finally, the tires grabbed in the soft dirt and the cruiser roared back onto the road. But the front was no longer pointed straight down the road, and the acceleration carried it across and off the other side at an angle. Arrington jerked the wheel again, but not before the tires on the right side caught in the drainage ditch on the inside of the curve. The car slewed sickeningly and went the rest of the way into the ditch. There was a horrible crunch of rending metal as part of the front grille struck a concrete culvert. A huge white fist seemed to come out of nowhere and punch Arrington backward into the seat. The back of his head rebounded off the headrest. Everything went gray. He could hear the hissing of steam. It seemed to be coming from a long way away. There was another sound as well, a deep rumble that seemed to vibrate beneath his feet. Radiator’s busted, he thought muzzily. Radiator’s busted. Engine’s on. Turn it off. The big white fist that had hit him was gone. He tried to lift his arm, but the limb seemed to be receiving garbled instructions from his brain. It moved slowly, spastically.