by G. M. Ford
“Sorry about the truck,” I said.
“Just stuff,” she said grimly as she daubed at Gabe’s wound. “They’s lots of trucks.”
“They’re gonna be lookin’ for the Taco Brothers here,” Gabe said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“You get the info to Eagen?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tim’s on it. Cavalry will be on the way by now.”
“Never been so glad to hear the cops were coming before,” Gabe joked.
“You think maybe we ought to try prying this thing outta here?” Betty asked, pointing at the decorative shard of metal protruding from Gabe’s leg.
“Within a half an hour, this place is going to be crawling with aid cars and every kind of cop there is. I think we ought to let the pros do it.”
Looked to me like Gabe was definitely in favor of the idea.
I reached down and picked up the assault rifle.
“Got about half a clip left,” Gabe said.
I tried to hand the shotgun to Gabe.
“Take it with you,” Gabe said. “Probably best neither of us is heeled when the cops get here. Give ’em something to figure out on their own.”
I started for the taco truck.
“Where ya goin’?” Betty asked as I slid into the driver’s seat.
“Soon as they find out we got away, those skinhead bastards are gonna hotfoot it out of that camp. They’ll try to send as many teams as they can out to kill people. I’m gonna see if I can’t slow those fuckers down a bit,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be goin’ lookin’ for old Curly Hair, would you?” Gabe asked.
“Only if I’m right up in his face,” I said. “I get a chance at him, it’s gonna be up close and personal. He’s gonna know it was me.”
You forget how many stars there are when you live in the city. You gotta get away from all the man-made lights before the twinkling carpet stretched out above you blinks into view. I suppose mental health professionals would say I was in denial as I raced down that country road. But, the way I saw it, I was simply enjoying the view.
I was about five miles out from Conway when the radio crackled. Scared the hell out of me. I hadn’t noticed the handheld mic clipped to the dashboard.
“You get ’em?” a voice crackled. “Trace . . . you boys get ’em?”
I grabbed the mic and pushed the “Send” button. I worked up a little phlegm. “It’s done,” I gargled into the mic. “On my way back. Be there in five minutes.” At which point I turned the radio off.
Never got a chance to go back to admiring the stars. The lights of Conway came into view, spilling a dull yellow glow over the roadway about a half a mile in front of me.
I slowed and made the turn into town. Nothing. No trucks, not a soul in sight.
I gave the taco truck some more gas and went rolling through town, aimed at the compound’s driveway directly in front of me. I was trying to remember exactly how far the gate was from the main road, when a movement in the corner of my eye brought my foot down on the brakes.
The kid from the tavern. The one with the dog. I skidded to a halt. Set the E brake and got out of the truck. The kid was trying to back away from me, but the dog didn’t want to go. “Rusty, isn’t it?”
He stopped backpedaling. “Who are you?” he wanted to know.
“From the tavern earlier today. I was talking with Betty . . . remember . . . when you tried to bring the dog inside.”
“It’s a service dog,” the kid insisted.
“Well, I’ve got a service you and him can do.”
“It’s a her,” he corrected.
“Okay . . . her.”
“What kinda service is that?”
“There’s gonna be all kinda cops and firemen and other guys about to show up here. You gotta tell them not to go into the compound. That the place is wired with all sorts of explosives. Can you do that?” I pressed.
“Really?”
“Say it.”
“Stay outta there ’cause they might get blown up,” the kid said.
“That’s it,” I said. “They’ll probably give you and your dog a medal. He’ll . . . She’ll be the most famous service dog in the country.”
“Really?” the kid yelled at my back as I sprinted for the taco truck. “Really? . . . a medal . . . oooowee.”
I hopped up into the seat, shoved the truck into drive, and went boiling up the compound’s private road. I picked up the automatic from the floor and stuck it out the window in case I had to shoot my way in, but the gate was unmanned.
They’d chosen a good place for the security gate. Squeezed in among an enormous copse of old-growth timber. You were either leaving through the narrow aperture where the gate stood, or you weren’t leaving at all. I skidded the taco truck to a stop on the pine straw. Backed as far as I could in one direction, gained an inch or two, reversed again and I had it wedged so tight between two stout sugar pines—less than a foot from either one of them—that the only way anybody was getting in or out was on foot.
I gathered up the weapons. Set the brake, locked it up, and threw the keys into the gloom. I hung the assault rifle around my neck, grabbed the shotgun, and loaded it. Four loud booms and the tires were blown to pieces.
I helicoptered the shotgun out into the woods, emptied my pockets of shotgun shells, and started jogging into the compound. That’s when I heard the voices. Lots of them. Everybody talking at once. Sounded like it was coming from the clearing where the cars had been parked.
I got the hell off the road and crept soundlessly through the grove of cedar trees that surrounded the parking lot. The voices got louder. I peeped out from between a couple of scrub oaks. The gang was all there. The Voice was standing on something, talking through a handheld bullhorn. Phil Hardaway was just off his right shoulder, in his George Patton stance. “We have unconfirmed reports that those two spies have been dealt with,” the Voice said. “Once we get confirmation, we will commence operations on a greatly accelerated schedule. All events will begin today.”
That was all I needed to hear. I backed out of the foliage and started running, only to skid to a stop less than a hundred yards down the trail.
Whatever I’d eaten last rose up into my throat. Ben. They’d hung him up by the feet from a tree. I pulled Bickford’s sheath knife from his coat and walked over and started sawing the yellow plastic rope until I could lift him down and carry him across my shoulder. No way was I letting anybody send him home to his parents in Bloomington like this. No fucking way.
I could hear engines roaring now, the sound of churning tires. My legs were getting to be like spaghetti. I was beginning to wobble as I walked, so when I caught sight of the ruined garage where the FedEx truck had been, I staggered in that direction.
I peeked in the window of the truck. Keys still in the ignition. I walked around the back of the truck, pulled open one of the doors, and laid Ben on the floor beside four hundred or so pounds of plastic explosive.
As I came around the passenger side, which really was the driver’s side, a silhouette appeared in the mouth of the garage.
“What?” was the only word he managed before I stitched him up like a quilt.
I launched myself into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine turned over but didn’t start. Tried again. Nothing. Third time was the charm. The truck sputtered for a second or two and then roared to life.
I could hear shouts, angry voices coming my way. Lots of them. I dropped the truck into low gear and came bouncing out into the night. Instead of following the path that had been cleared from the front of the collapsed building up to the paved road, I plowed straight ahead. Smashing through the undergrowth, swerving around trees as I bounced across. I heard gunfire. Felt the bullets smashing into the back doors of the truck as it plunged through the woods.
And there it was. Hadn’t moved a muscle. The long, low bunker where they’d stored all the ordnance they’d stolen from the armory. I
’d say I drove through the back wall, but truth was, the FedEx truck was just too damn big to fit. Damn near tore the roof off the thing. We ended up half in and half out of the building.
I reached down next to my seat and tried to undo the metal band holding the red trigger handle to the floor. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t get the strap undone. I sat back in the seat and tried to get a grip on myself. That’s when I had my first lucid thought in several months. What if? What if Christian Conscience from Banks, Idaho, was never intended to survive their mission? What if there was no six minutes to get the hell out of the vicinity? What if I pulled the red handle and the fucking thing went off like a roman candle? No muss, no fuss, no questions, no witnesses. Clean as hell.
I gave it ten seconds of serious thought and decided I didn’t give a shit. Way I saw it, either way they wouldn’t be using their arsenal to kill people.
Took me two more tries to remove the metal band. I heard a crackle of electricity run through the truck. Closed my eyes and steeled myself for oblivion. Nothing happened.
My thoughts scattered like windblown leaves, until a single syllable was all that was left inside my head. Run. Neon red. Blinking somewhere in my mind’s eye.
I had the keys in my hand as I stepped through the back of the truck and let myself out the back doors. Locked them, precisely as I’d been instructed, and heaved the keys off into the darkness. Then . . . I ran.
Wasn’t sure which direction I was running, but at that point it didn’t matter a whit. All I wanted was distance between me and that truck. Then I had a thought and pulled up short. If I could draw my pursuers here, they might suffer the same fate they’d planned for the first responders. Seemed fitting to me.
I stepped up onto a semirotten stump and emptied the assault rifle in their general direction. Shouts, orders, curses rang from the forest. I dropped the rifle, picked up the shotgun, and sent a couple of slugs surging through the shrubbery. I hopped to the ground and took off running again, legs churning, arms pumping.
Behind me I could hear bullets slamming into the FedEx truck and the sound of lead bees buzzing through the vegetation around me.
It was slow going. The voices behind me sounded closer. Since the alternative was an agonizing death, I kept plowing farther into the thicket, finally falling into a deep brush-encrusted gully. An eight-foot depression in the natural topography that, in the final offing, saved my life.
I’d scrambled to my feet, checked for broken bones, and was about to climb out the far side when FedEx made its final delivery.
Nothing in my previous experience had prepared me for the initial burst of explosives. It was as if the universe suddenly sucked back all its air, leaving the world still and silent. And then . . . a white flash and a high-voltage crack.
And then . . . BOOOOOM.
The forest lit up like Safeco Field. Even eight feet below ground level, the concussive force of the explosion tore the air from my lungs, then picked me up and slammed me into the far bank. A plume of fire rose hundreds of feet into the sky. And then another smaller explosion and then another. It went on and on for what seemed like an hour.
My nose was bleeding, entire trees came raining down, dirt, rocks . . . what looked like a human leg . . . all of it blown to bits and showering back to the now-flaming earth. I covered my head with my arms and waited for it to be over.
That’s when I realized that my left arm felt hot. Not because I’d broken it when I’d fallen, but because my fucking sleeve was on fire. I beat it out with my bare hand, caught my quavering breath, and clawed my way out of the gully.
The forest was mostly gone. What wasn’t shredded or vaporized was on fire. Coupla hundred yards on all sides of the truck, nothing but a flaming desert remained. Massive trees had been shattered like balsa wood. Blown to splinters along with everything else. Looked like The War of the Worlds. I heard a groan. And then what sounded like a death rattle. Then more airborne debris sinking back to the shattered ground.
Wasn’t till it stopped raining forest that the crackling sound of burning wood reached my ears. I know I should have run the other way. Run until my legs gave out and then run some more, but I couldn’t do it.
I was drawn like a lemming back toward that flaming wasteland I’d created. The earth beneath my boots felt loose and granulated like sugar. The surrounding air was alive with floating embers. My lungs hated it, trying to cough it out as fast as I pulled it in, but I kept forcing myself forward until I was back where I reckoned the FedEx truck had been sitting. A smoking fifty-foot hole in the ground was all that remained. The ordnance bunker I’d crashed the truck into had disappeared from the face of the earth.
I gave Ben Forrester a two-fingered salute and looked around. The carnage was mind bending. It was like walking into a slaughterhouse. Bodies and parts of bodies littered the ground like discarded children’s toys.
Forty yards in front of me, a big Douglas fir, maybe six or eight feet around, had been blown to oblivion. A body was impaled on the splintered stump. One leg pointing in each direction like he was running a race. Looked like he’d been blown up into the forest canopy and come down on top of what was left of the tree. The face was so twisted in agony as to be unrecognizable, but I knew the curly hair.
I stood there for quite some time. At first I was angry. I’d wanted to kill him myself. Make sure he knew it was me, come back from the grave for vengeance. But the longer I stood there, the more I realized another part of me didn’t like the sound of that at all. Something inside me didn’t want me to be a guy with that much malice in his heart, so I stepped over a chunk of burning bark and walked away.
Off in the direction of the gate, I could hear the roar of engines and a chorus of angry, frightened voices. The survivors were trying to get out. Farther out, the sky was alive with pulsing lights. Red, blue, white, red, blue, white. I sat down on the blackened earth and looked around. Without wishing it so, I began to cry.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Special Agent Cummings, but I don’t see how going over these same questions for about the thirty-fifth time is going to accomplish anything.”
“I’ll decide when enough is enough,” he snapped in that pinched little voice of his.
He snatched an iPad from the metal table and pushed a couple of keys.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked for about the fifth time that morning.
“I’ve told you before, Mr. Waterman, you’re being held as a material witness,” his partner, Jennings, said.
They were slick; I’ll say that for them. Good suits, good educations, and a really fervent desire to get to the bottom of whatever had happened up there in the woods.
I was being polite because the FBI wasn’t bound by the legal constraints that local and state cops faced. Most important, they weren’t required to either charge you or release you within seventy-two hours. These guys could hang on to you until you grew moss on your north side. Nor were they required to let you make a phone call, so I was being as nice as I could be under the circumstances . . . those circumstances being that I wasn’t telling them anything they wanted to hear.
Rumor had it that the blast had separated me from all memory. Don’t even remember how or why I got there. Never even heard of Conway, Washington. That was my story, at least. Bare bones. Nothing to conflict with anything else. All nice and neat and dumb. They’d made only one interrogation mistake so far, but it was a big one. Early on, Special Agent Cummings had tried to scare me by telling me that I was gonna take the rap alone because Gabriella was in another room coughing up the whole story.
Since the chances of Gabe telling them one goddamn thing were about equal to my chance of winning the Powerball lottery, I knew right away they didn’t have shit to go on and were trying to screw something out of me as a last resort.
I mean, it just made sense. Yeah, I was found on the premises, but anything resembling forensic evidence had surely been blown to hell and gone. I wasn’t even wearing my own clothes when the
y found me, and since I was the only one who knew what had actually happened, as long as I kept my trap closed, sooner or later they’d have to let me go.
What I really wanted to know was to what degree they’d managed to stop the terrorist attacks. They just kept telling me it was an open investigation and they couldn’t discuss it with me. What they really wanted to know was who had set off the explosion, so they could fix the blame rather than the problem. It’s the American way.
Cummings started to read from the iPad. “As of this moment, we have sixteen confirmed dead. Another eleven hospitalized, three of whom are not expected to live, and the smoking remains of an explosion that was heard sixty miles away, and you mean to tell me that you don’t recall a single thing about it.”
“Really?” I said. “Sixty miles? Must have been a hell of a boom.”
It went on and on. Same shit, different day. I’d spent the first two days in a federal medical facility somewhere in Alderwood, then had been passed hand to hand from the local cops to the Washington state troopers, and finally on to the Bureau, who’d spirited me off to the downtown federal building, where they’d been busting my balls for the better part of two days now.
The door to the room eased open. A uniformed Washington state trooper, Smokey Bear hat and all, leaned in and whispered something in Special Agent Cummings’s ear. Cummings set his jaw hard enough to press license plates. I could feel his frustration boiling from across the table. I swallowed a grin and waited for cartoon steam to come out of his ears.
He got to his feet, snapped the iPad shut, and put it under his arm.
“Your attorney, Mr. Diaz, has obtained an injunction . . . ,” he began.
Which in itself was interesting, since I had no idea who this Diaz guy was, never heard of him in my life, but it told me what was going on outside. It told me they’d let Gabe make the obligatory one phone call, and of course, Gabe had called Joey Ortega, at which point Joey had loosed a battalion of lawyers onto the system. It also explained why they’d shunted me from place to place trying to keep me under wraps. Cops are like that. They just hate losing to the robbers.