The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  Wherever the multiple shootings in Rapid City had been reported, the adjective “senseless” headed up the trail with grim inevitability. And they were senseless, in the moral sense. Utterly so. But despite that, the atrocity had accomplished exactly what Wardell had intended it to: He’d demonstrated how powerless we were—to us and to the world. If it was intended to unnerve us for the job of protecting Hatcher, it was working. He’d made a point of telegraphing it in code, like a cocky pool shark calling his next bank shot.

  The color blue. The number six.

  The last question of his telephone call to Whitford. The last question to the waitress he’d terrified in Rapid City. He’d made a point of doing that, so those particular details would be remembered and commented upon and analyzed for meaning. And then he’d gone out and calmly killed ­exactly six people, chosen for no other reason than because they were all wearing the color blue. It sent a message. It said, “I control the rules of this game.”

  And now here we were, in place for the next move in Wardell’s bloody game. I wasn’t worried about a misdirect anymore. He wasn’t interested in giving himself a handicap. He was far too arrogant for that. His play with the waitress was evidence of that: She’d called the cops as soon as he’d walked out of the diner. She’d been far too late to prevent the slaughter on Main Street, but her account of the experience meant we now had an up-to-date, detailed description of his appearance, purely because he’d wanted to show off. But if my instinct about his arrogance was right, then what did that say about the red van?

  The door opened and Castle walked in, his hair soaked. He was loosening his tie with his right hand. “How was it?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I told him, which was the truth. From the perspective of catching our man, it was neither a positive nor a negative. It was just something he’d needed to get out of the way. I understood the need for regular media briefings, but I also completely understood Castle’s loathing for them.

  “Not bad, Castle,” Banner agreed. “You’re almost starting to look like you’re not in the tenth circle of hell every time somebody points a camera at you.”

  Castle allowed himself a brief but genuine smile, and I found myself starting to like him a little for it. It vanished from his face as the door opened and a tall female agent entered, her hands filled with three Kevlar vests. “Sir?” she said, as though offering canapés at a drinks reception.

  Castle stripped off his jacket and lifted one of the vests. Banner and I followed suit. I looped the straps through the buckles and fixed the Velcro tabs, feeling the weight settle on my upper body.

  “Back in the city,” Banner remarked as the agent who’d brought the vests disappeared back into the corridor, “Wardell chose head shots around eighty percent of the time.”

  “Thanks for the statistic,” Castle said.

  “Any trace of him so far?” I asked.

  Castle shook his head. “We know he’s in the area, of course, but it’s a big area and there’s a shitload of trees out there. Our search helicopters would have their work cut out for them even without this goddamn rain. Rapid City is shut down. Half the state is shut down.”

  I believed him. Banner and I had driven up to the house following the shootings, and the roads leading out of the town toward the Black Hills had been utterly empty. It was eerie, like the town and its surrounds had been evacuated before an imminent nuclear meltdown.

  Castle continued. “The only road in here is blocked at the highway, and we’ve got surveillance every quarter mile up to the house. For all the good that’ll do us.”

  “It pays to cover the bases,” I said.

  Like Castle, I doubted Wardell would use the road, not when there was an infinite variety of off-road approaches. The house was built on a plateau midway up a steep incline into the hills, and it faced onto the lake. There were thick woods on the other three sides, encroaching to within a hundred yards of the building—Hatcher had picked an interesting location in which to build his home, given how the profits that enabled it were generated. It was an ideal spot from the point of view of any attacking force. I wondered if any of the multitude of shrinks currently drawing network television consultancy fees had noticed this and what conclusions they might have drawn.

  The advantage we had was manpower, and for the first time we had been able to focus that resource on a clearly defined area, one that we could be reasonably certain was the right one. Had we been resisting an attack from an army, we’d have prepared differently—laying fortifications, barricading the doors, arranging a ring of men around the three land-facing sides of the house, patrolling the front with gunboats. But none of that would do any good against a sniper intent on taking out a specific target.

  There was a strange atmosphere about the house as the agents on Castle’s task force carried out their duties, one that either hadn’t been present until tonight, or that I hadn’t ­noticed. It wasn’t the usual tension that saturated the prepar­ations for a big event, it was more like the vibe in the locker room of a world champion sports team that finds itself losing badly going into the second half and not knowing quite why. The storm and the claustrophobia of the woods didn’t help. Maybe it was the sheer number of kills Wardell had racked up in less than four days, but it seemed like everyone was having to make a conscious effort to remember that they were engaged in a manhunt, not a siege.

  The task force had focused on making life difficult for Wardell by boarding up the windows and stationing tactical teams throughout the woods around a half-mile radius. A couple of helicopters circled the lake, casting search beams on the choppy waters as small motorboats swept across the surface. We were about as well prepared as it was possible to be, and now we were going to discover just how good Caleb Wardell was.

  There was an antique grandfather clock in the south corner of the study. Banner eyed the clock face as the minute hand clicked up to read quarter to twelve.

  “You think he’ll really come at midnight?” she asked.

  “We’re expecting midnight,” I said, “so the smart thing to do would be to let us wait, get tired, come in at two or three. But I wouldn’t bet against midnight.”

  Castle’s cell rang. He answered it immediately. He listened for a second, asked a couple of questions, and then said he wanted the last of the boards up on the lake-facing windows. The windows on the other three sides had been attended to hours before. A minute later, a dressed-down agent with his sleeves rolled up beneath a Kevlar vest arrived, holding a cordless drill. We watched as he screwed sheets of plywood into the PVC window frames.

  “How’s Hatcher?” Banner asked.

  “Why don’t we go see him?” Castle said. “You can ask him yourself.”

  As the three of us left the study, I cast a glance over my shoulder in time to see the last rectangle of rain-soaked night shut out as the final piece of plywood fitted into place. It made a sound like the lid closing on a coffin.

  44

  11:57 p.m.

  Now, this was more of a challenge.

  The rain, the woods, the pursuit, had all created a different environment from that which Wardell was accustomed to. He had experienced similar conditions during basic training in Virginia, but never during actual warfare. In Iraq, rain had been as scarce as mercy. He was no meteorologist, but he guessed it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that South Dakota had soaked up more precipitation in the last twelve hours than that godforsaken dust hole saw in the average year.

  The ponderosa pines closed around him, blotting out the sky and filling his field of vision with shadows and random movement—again, the diametric opposite of the blinding, blazing desert heat. And he was alone. In the war, he’d fought in a small unit, often with just one partner, and that had been against impersonal, almost random targets. Now he faced an army of a different kind. Without backup.

  He couldn’t think of anywhere in the world he’
d rather be.

  He’d chosen his observation position that morning, a couple of hours before he’d made his midday trip to town. The spot was ideal: a tiny crevice under an overhang created by the gap left by some long-forgotten landslide. The ground that had given way had exposed the roots of a fifty-­foot pine that still stood, reaching out over a sixty-degree incline, defying gravity. Wardell had nestled between the roots, camouflaging his position with sticks and dirt. He’d smeared mud on his exposed skin and around the hollows of his eyes. From the crevice beneath the tree, he could see only the southwest corner of the house. That meant it was no good for taking the shot, but it was an excellent spot from which to sit and patiently survey the feds laying their traps and looking in vain for traces of him.

  They were doing a decent job, to give them their due. The FBI tactical teams patrolling the strike zone were well drilled and were leaving no easy gaps. Maneuvering out of range of one team would bring him too close to the next. It was a tight net. They had countersnipers of their own, too. He’d spotted a few of them hunched down in makeshift hides. It had been tempting to kill one or two of them, or maybe a member of a patrol, but Wardell had held off all day, keeping his powder dry. He wasn’t hunting brain-dead shoppers now, and taking out one of the feds would put an end to the evening’s performance.

  They’d made the house pretty secure, all in all. Boarding up the windows—all of the windows—had been an excellent move, if not an unexpected one. It meant he was going to have to find a way of flushing Hatcher out, and perhaps more worthy targets.

  More worthy targets; he paused to think about that again. His initial list was getting shorter. Nolan was history, and if all went well, Hatcher would join him within the hour. That left two names, and he’d discovered earlier today that one of them—the late Detective Stewart—was entirely beyond his reach. Room for some new recruits.

  Agent Castle from the television interviews seemed like a good candidate, him and perhaps the woman who sometimes appeared alongside him, Banner. Wardell was almost positive that had been her back in Rapid City, the one who’d returned fire from the kill zone. He’d had her in his sights; she was even wearing blue. It was a pity he’d already claimed his six victims. On the other hand, there was always next time. Taking out one of the task force leads would certainly throw a wrench in the works of their manhunt. And then there was the man from the cabin, of course.

  He wasn’t sure if they’d managed to sneak Hatcher out of the house, but in truth he’d started to question whether Hatcher was even worthy of killing. He was a phony, a minor irritation when you really thought about it. Wardell was more interested in taking out somebody of substance this time, even if it meant relinquishing his stated goal, diverging from the plan. Dwight Eisenhower once said that plans are often useless, but planning is indispensable. Wardell had no great liking for generals, still less for presidents, but as a motto he couldn’t fault it.

  He’d had the germ of that plan before he’d seen the house in real life. He thought back to the truck stop in Kentucky, the morning after his escape, how he’d flicked through Hatcher’s book with amusement.

  The selection of photographs reproduced in the middle of the book had been predictable, some from the aftermaths of his shootings intermingled with pictures of the key players and a whole lot of pictures of Hatcher himself. The final one had shown Hatcher in front of his house: a sprawling wood-clad building on the shores of Pactola Lake. Wardell’s eye had been drawn by the small outbuilding visible in that shot. Having had time to think and to survey the house, he was convinced that this outbuilding would give him the opening he’d need. But only if he could get a little closer—because this was one task he couldn’t guarantee executing at long range.

  The major problem was the tac teams. The net around the house was a little tighter than he’d anticipated. That was his own fault, of course. He’d told them exactly where he’d be this time, allowing them to focus their manpower without spreading themselves as thinly as they had before. Had he been overconfident? He doubted it. Confidence and over­confidence were essentially the same thing. It was only after the fact that you could tell one from the other. No, he would adapt and triumph once again. After all, he’d been looking for a challenge this time, hadn’t he?

  He checked his equipment again. Much of what he’d taken from the steel trunk in the shack was stashed at his camp, deeper into the hills, but he’d brought the essentials. The most important item was, of course, the Remington 700. It was a top-of-the-line civilian model, and Wardell had to admit Nolan had done well on this: It bore a close similarity to the M40 that Wardell was accustomed to from the Corps. Nolan had accessorized it with a high-spec bipod, a decent scope, and a sling, too. Whether or not the Remington was superior to the PSG1 was a matter of opinion, but Wardell preferred it. It just felt better in his hands.

  Added to the rifle were tools for a variety of jobs. For close-range encounters, he’d stowed the AK in favor of a SIG Sauer P226, chambered for nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds, which was holstered at his hip. If things got even closer, he had a stag-handled bowie knife strapped to his boot. He was dressed in woodland combat BDUs with a multitude of pockets containing all kinds of useful things, like a compass and utility knife and what they’d referred to in the Corps as a blowout kit: a first aid pack specifically for treating gunshot wounds. In a green waterproof drag bag, he had four decently assembled pipe bombs. He’d inspected all of this equipment earlier, of course, and had concluded with some surprise that Nolan had actually done a pretty good Boy Scout job.

  Wardell put his eye to the scope of the Remington again and tracked the closest tac team, weighing up his two options. He’d probably be able to get past them, but it wasn’t a dead cert. If they saw him, he’d be a rat in a trap. But even so, he liked it better than the other option, which was to pick off every member of the closest five-man team before the alarm could be raised. He wasn’t worried about the shooting, because he knew he could take all five out in three and a half seconds, but there was the rub. Three and a half seconds was a hell of a long time for trained men expecting just this sort of attack. No way he’d get all of them before somebody yelled or returned fire. Once that happened, he’d be faced with two more options: fall back and hope he’d get another chance later, or hold his position and engage the incoming backup teams. Sooner or later they’d pin him down, and that would be that. And Wardell wasn’t quite ready for that to be that.

  He looked at his watch, saw it was nearly midnight. It looked like he’d have to go with the stealthy approach.

  But then providence lent a hand. The leader of the nearest tac team put a hand to his right ear. The body language was crystal clear: Somebody at the command center was giving him an instruction. What followed made the content of the instruction just as clear. For some reason, the tac team closest to Wardell, the one he was most worried about, had been ordered to move out of position.

  Scarcely able to believe his luck, Wardell watched as the five-man team moved quietly northeast. He reached for the drag bag, flattened himself to the ground, and began to low crawl down the incline.

  DAY FIVE

  45

  12:02 a.m.

  We passed through so many rooms and corridors that I began to wonder if I should have left a trail of bread crumbs. Eventually we emerged into a tall, wide entrance foyer. The polished hardwood floor was covered in the center by a gigantic Oriental rug. Several doors on each wall led back off into the interior of the house, and a big wooden spiral staircase in the center of the room accessed a mezzanine level, on which I could see more doors and corridors leading off at each side. The place had looked big from the outside, but from within it seemed positively cavernous.

  Two agents, evidently chosen for their powerful builds, guarded the door leading to the basement level, where Hatcher was hiding out in a games room.

  As Castle led us down into the bowels of the build
ing, I was struck by the contrast with the rest of the house. Although the basement space was well appointed with a pool table, big-screen TV, and even a small bar, the decor seemed deliberately unfinished. The walls were bare concrete, and the struts and beams supporting the house above were left visible. As a bunker, it was actually pretty effective, nestled in foundations of three-foot-thick poured concrete. And it was windowless.

  Hatcher was a big man, and I immediately sensed that he was someone used to getting his own way. He was working the pool table all by himself, knocking the striped balls into the pockets with increasing ferocity.

  “I thought you guys were moving me,” he said again. Castle had told me this was something of an about-face from his earlier requests.

  Banner said, “Given the weather conditions and the events in Rapid City earlier, we felt it would—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hatcher said, cutting her off mid­sentence and holding a hand up as if to ward off further words. “Why don’t you—”

  “Wardell’s out there right now,” I cut in. “He’s out in those woods and he’s ready to put a bullet in you. Any ­vehicle leaves this place, he’s going to know exactly who’s in it.”

  Hatcher snorted and put the cue down on the edge of the table.

  “And, in point of fact, you probably wouldn’t make it to the vehicle,” I continued. “Likely as not, he could drop you as soon as you stuck your head out of the door.”