Lone Wolf

by Sara Driscoll

  It was a bad situation everyone was frantically hoping wouldn’t get worse.

  The pictures before them told the tale. Heavy double gates closed off a short driveway that led to a two-story white clapboard farmhouse with a broad wraparound porch. Fences completely surrounded the property, containing the few cows visible in the pasture. But where the livestock couldn’t get out, the agents couldn’t just stroll in. Outside the gates, cars, SUVs, and trucks lined the driveway. Behind them, an ever-growing mass of media types stood at the public road, struggling to get closer to the action, damn the risk if there was a possible Pulitzer up for grabs. Local law enforcement was apparently in charge of keeping them back, but was clearly having trouble considering the growing crowd and the constantly shouted questions and pleas for interviews.

  Near the gates but behind the cover of a hulking SUV, a crowd of agents in blue windbreakers with block yellow letters spelling out “FBI” huddled together, conferring.

  “They have to get this under control,” Craig growled. “They’re doing everything in the public eye. Hell, Skinner is likely watching what’s going on from both sides—out his window and then from our side on CNN and every other network there that has a live feed direct to TVs across the nation.”

  “They need to do something,” Lauren said, her eyes locked on the screen. “Our hesitation makes us look weak.”

  “No, it makes us look careful,” Meg said. “You heard what someone said. The negotiator is on his way up. He’s the best we have and they have to get him there, which takes time. That’s the only thing they’re waiting for. What you can’t see are the snipers they’ve lined up in trees or on hillsides surrounding the property. Right now they’re trying to determine who’s on the property and what the threat level is. And those snipers are their eyes inside that house.”

  She knew what it was like to perch on the top of a building or in a bush. To see your entire world through the circle of your scope, to concentrate with every cell in your body on that one tiny view with the voice of your orders in your ear. To trust that voice implicitly, knowing your line of sight was incomplete and someone else with a wider worldview needed to make the call. To obey without question, even when someone’s life might be on the line.

  She’d done sniper training as part of her work with the Richmond PD. She was good with a gun, but better with dogs, so in the end, that was the road she took. But she remembered what it was like as if it was yesterday.

  “At Ruby Ridge, a fourteen-year-old boy was shot in the back as he tried to run away, and a woman holding an infant was shot and killed when a sniper shot missed his target,” Meg continued. “These aren’t mistakes they’re going to make again.”

  “Especially right in front of the media,” Brian said. “So I guess we’re on hold until they figure out how to deal with this.”

  “Some of the news agencies are still going to spin it to make us look weak,” Lauren insisted.

  “Then they’ll just have to correct themselves later. We’re big boys and girls, we can take the heat.” Impatient and feeling like an overwound watch spring, Meg turned back to her desk, pushing through papers on the surface to look busy while she calmed herself. She understood everyone else’s stress—they were reacting to the pressure of not just today but of the past week. However, she needed to dial it down for her own sake, and even more for Hawk. All the dogs were sensing the tension in the room, and it showed in their restlessness. They couldn’t settle either.

  “Hawk, here boy.” She held out her hand and the black lab trotted over to her. She bent down, ruffling his fur and murmuring to him. His coat still smelled of the vanilla and almond shampoo she’d used on him after the second bombing’s fire scene. The familiar scent felt like home, and partially calmed her jangling nerves.

  Hawk nuzzled his damp nose against her throat and exhaled, blowing warm air over her skin and tugging a small smile from her lips. “Good boy. Now, down.” He dropped down at her feet, comfortably crossing his front paws and resting his head on them. She ran her hand over his shiny coat one more time and then straightened.

  A glance at the screen showed her the negotiator had yet to arrive, so she picked up her cell phone, glanced up to see if anyone was watching. As everyone was focused on the screen, she typed out a quick text. McCord had let her know he’d received the message and, in return, it only seemed fair to let him know it was now official FBI news.

  Saw the message. Task force briefing.

  She hit send. The pause that followed her text went on long enough that she was about to slip the phone into her pocket, but then it vibrated in her hand.

  Figured you’d see it sooner rather than later.

  Meg glanced up again. Still no action in the standoff. She turned back to her phone.

  He sounds pissed.

  He sounds unstable, McCord responded.

  We knew that already. He’s killed forty-eight people, Meg texted back.

  “Look at those vultures.”

  Meg’s eyes rose back to the screen at Brian’s words. The milling crowd of reporters filled the field of view, most of them jostling with each other for a spot closest to the line of cops who held them back. Her eyes narrowed on the screen, to the dark blond head toward the back of the crowd, the face angled down instead of staring at the house and the FBI around him. Suspicion dawned and she turned back to her phone to type out a short text.

  Where are you?

  Can’t you guess?

  She glared down at the screen. This was not the time to play games. Her tolerance for it this week was already buried in the basement.

  Humor me. Where?

  With your buddies in Virginia.

  Her head snapped up to stare at the screen, but the camera was now focused on the road. In the distance, a dust plume rose as a vehicle approached the group.

  “That has to be the negotiator,” Craig said. “Finally.”

  Meg slid her phone into her pocket and rejoined the group. A dark SUV threaded its way through the parted crowd of reporters, down the drive and then up between the cars to pull in directly in front of the gates. An older man with a lined face and a neatly trimmed Vandyke climbed out and shook hands with one of the FBI agents. There was a brief conversation—bringing him up to speed—and then he was handed a bullhorn.

  The negotiator walked around the SUVs to stand exposed by the gate in full view of the house. In full view of a gunman’s sights. He raised the bullhorn. “Mr. Skinner, my name is Senior Special Agent Phillips and I’m a negotiator with the FBI. I’d like to speak with you.”

  One of the front windows slid up a scant inch, and a voice with a thick Appalachian accent boomed through. “Don’t want to talk.”

  “We know you’re in there with your wife and children, Mr. Skinner. Let’s keep this from getting out of hand, because we don’t want anyone to get hurt. Come out and they’ll remain unharmed. Right now we just have some questions for you. We don’t want to make this bigger than it already is.”

  “Too late. You Feebs will do anything to bury a hardworking, honest American who just wants to be left alone. Gun charges are the least of my worries.”

  “Not true. But you’ve turned this into something bigger by firing at federal agents. Come out peacefully with your hands up. You know this can’t end well otherwise. We have the property surrounded. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

  “You take me, I’ll just disappear into one of your jails, never to be seen again.”

  “This isn’t Russia, Mr. Skinner. That’s not how our system works. Our system is innocent until proven guilty. And your family will know where you are at all times. Think about this carefully. The decision you make now could affect you and your family forever.”

  Seconds ticked by with no response, stretching out into glacial minutes.

  “Christ, this is taking way too long.” Lauren tapped a pen against her left palm to relieve the tension.

  “He has to give him time to make up his mind,” Meg s
aid. “He’s trying to avoid a bloodbath. But this can only go on so long. Phillips has to know that he’s got some very twitchy agents surrounding the house and—”

  She was cut off by an indistinct shout overlaid with a heavy layer of static. Nevertheless, the sniper’s words were clear enough. “He’s going for his rifle.”

  Phillips snapped to attention. “No, wait!”

  The unmistakable sound of a shot ripped through the air. Even through the muffled mono of low fidelity audio, Meg recognized the sound of a sniper’s high-powered rifle.

  All hell instantly broke loose. Gunfire blew out the front window of the house, glass arcing in an outward spray to land in glittering fragments all over the front grass. The brutal slice of bullets into the metal of the FBI vehicles reverberated through the air only a millisecond before every agent had his or her gun out and was firing at the house.

  In the office, the reaction was immediate but downplayed for the sake of the animals. Craig hissed epithets while Brian paced back and forth, his eyes never leaving the video feed. Meg automatically dropped a hand down onto Hawk’s back, wanting the connection for both of them, but her attention stayed locked on the negotiator. He was crouched down in the lower left corner of the screen, his face white with fury as he screamed at the agents around him, his words lost in the sound of gunfire. His gaze dropped and then fixed on something off screen. Ducking, he scrambled out of the frame before popping back up, the bullhorn held in a death grip.

  “Stand down! I repeat, stand down!” Phillips roared, his voice magnified to be heard over the din. As the nearby agents complied, lowering their guns and sinking back down under cover, Phillips dropped the megaphone, whipped around and glared at the lead FBI agent. “Tell your men to stand down,” he snarled. “Before they get one of us or the suspect killed. No one dies on my watch. And someone report in—does anyone have eyes on the suspect?”

  There was a crackle of static, then, “I have eyes. Suspect is down, lying under the living room window. Family members are still in the back of the house.”

  Meg didn’t need audio to understand the full brunt of Phillips’s anger, but she got it anyway. Just as he was unleashing every iota of fury on the unfortunate sniper who fired the first shot, a voice interrupted. “Wait! He’s moving. Crawling toward the back of the house, dragging his rifle behind him.”

  Phillips apparently didn’t need any more reason to proceed. Dragging open the door of his now riddled SUV, he wedged himself between the body of the car and the open door, propping his megaphone in the V. “Mr. Skinner, please step away from your weapon and let’s avoid another episode like that. Your wife and children are safe. Let’s keep it that way.”

  The voice that floated through the now shattered window was dripping with scorn. “What’re you gonna do with them when I’m in custody?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Skinner. We’d like to talk to your wife, but there is no suspicion pointed at her. She and your children are safe to remain at home.”

  What’s left of your home, Meg thought ruefully.

  As the silence stretched longer, tension curled tight knots through Meg’s shoulders. Come on, come on. End this now. You know you can’t win this, and the longer you wait, the higher the odds you’ll die today.

  “All right. I’m coming out. I’ll be unarmed. Don’t shoot.”

  The cool wash of relief surged through Meg. Thank God. . . .

  With a buzz, the front gates swung open. Seconds later, a man appeared at the door of the house. In his midforties and of medium build, he wore dirty blue jeans and a ragged T-shirt. A furious scowl cut through the wiry beard covering his jaw and cheeks. Big, rough hands were held out on either side of his head, fingers splayed.

  Agents streamed through the still widening gates and sprinted up the walk. Spinning Skinner around, they jerked his hands behind his back and cuffed them before hustling him down the front walk. They marched him to an SUV farther down the driveway—one that likely had avoided any bullets—and closed him in, leaving two agents standing outside the vehicle, watching him.

  The sound of reporters screaming questions jerked Meg back to the fact that McCord and any of a multitude of other media types could have been hit. The agents were trained and prepared for gunplay, but a bunch of journalism majors were not. She pulled out her phone and typed quickly.

  You okay?

  Her question was followed by dead air for more than a minute. Just as she was starting to think more had gone wrong at the scene than they were aware of, and she was forming the mental picture of scattered reporters laid out bloody on the ground, he finally answered.

  Yes. Minus a year or two shaved off my life.

  Anyone else hurt?

  Not that I can see. We all hit the dirt pretty fast when the first shot was fired.

  Send the trigger happy sniper your dry cleaning bill. I guarantee that wasn’t how the negotiator wanted that to go down, Meg texted back.

  From his reaction, I think you’re right. Coming back to town now. Any tips for a guy who just got shot at?

  She couldn’t help the smile. So far, he was the one providing all the information. She couldn’t give him anything yet, but she had to give him marks for making the attempt.

  Try to stay away from angry farmers with guns.

  Thanks, that’s really helpful. Over and out.

  Meg looked back to the screen. FBI agents swarmed all over the property now, and a woman and two school-aged children were being led out of the house. Meg glanced at the clock on the wall. It would be hours before the agents got back with Skinner, and hours more still to interrogate him.

  She could only hope this was truly the end.

  Chapter 14

  Refind: Search dogs alert their handlers in two ways—they can stay with the subject and bark, waiting for the handler to come to them, or they can return to the handler and give some indication (jumping, tugging, circling, etc.) that they have made a find. The handler then follows the dog as it returns to the find.

  Saturday, April 15, 9:12 PM

  J. Edgar Hoover Building

  Washington, DC

  Meg moved silently through the empty hallways, past darkened offices and conference rooms. At this time of night, the Criminal Investigative Division was mostly deserted. The main bull pen was still active—an organization like the FBI was never truly closed—but the peripheral offices, especially those of the brass, were all dark.

  But the division offices were not her goal. She was headed for the interrogation rooms.

  She’d gone home earlier, shared a late meal with her sister, and then had tried to settle in for the evening. Cara sat hunched at her desk in the corner of the living room doing the financials for her training school on her laptop, a task she hated, which meant she was forever behind on them. Meg sprawled in the recliner.

  She was too tired to do anything productive, but too wired to sit still, so she settled for flipping through TV stations. Blink drew her attention as he jumped up onto the sofa across from her, nosing at Hawk to make room and then shoehorning his skinny body between Hawk and Saki where they dozed companionably together.

  Meg found herself smiling at the contented pile of dogs. Some days she wished she could live as simple a life as Blink’s. While Hawk and Saki were working dogs, Blink lived a life of leisure. After unspeakable horrors at the racetrack, he deserved nothing less. She turned back to the TV and her smile slipped away as she passed station after station of reality TV or political pundits, both of which she hated with an unbounded passion.

  “Three hundred channels and nothing’s on,” she muttered.

  Cara glanced sideways at her, one eyebrow cocked as her hands froze over the keyboard. “Why don’t you just go back? You know you want to.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, as Maimeó would say,” Cara deadpanned, referring to their beloved Irish grandmother. “You’re practically crawling out of your skin. Just go.”r />
  “It’s not really my place.”

  Cara pushed back from the desk, rising from her chair to sit on the arm of the couch, absently running her hand over Saki’s smoky fur. “That’s BS and you know it. You’re part of the task force and no one on the team has been more affected by the victims than the Human Scent Evidence Teams. You’ve been hands-on with those victims, both those who made it and those who didn’t. No one knows more about what they suffered than you. Not to mention that you’re already making inquiries on the down low. So if you want to see this through to the end, why shouldn’t you?”

  “Okay, maybe you have a point. But either way, I’m here and the suspect is probably just arriving now.”

  Cara glanced across the room to the antique captain’s clock over the mantel. “Which means you can be there in about twenty minutes. You’ll have hardly missed anything.”

  Blue eyes met blue for the space of a few heartbeats, and then Meg was out of the chair and tossing the strap of her shoulder bag over her head to lie across her body and grabbing her keys. “Don’t wait up.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” her sister called after her, a smile in her voice.

  Here she was twenty-five minutes later, hurrying down the corridor to the suite of interrogation rooms within the Criminal Investigative Division. As she got closer, a buzz of voices could be heard down the hallway. When she stepped into observation, she could see why—the room was packed. She scanned the faces, seeing a number of SACs, SSAs, and ADs as well as other task force members. Then her gaze fell on Craig. He was near the window, looking into the interrogation room, so she sidled over to him, slipping through the groups of people huddled in twos and threes.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she said in an undertone to him.

  “Couldn’t stay away either?” The strain was starting to wear on Craig; his skin had lost some of its usual ruddy warmth and harsh lines carved deep around his eyes.