Cold Frame (37 page)

He then turned his back on them and walked back down the hall into the gloom at the other end. To his immense satisfaction he heard them scampering out the front doors.

He glanced up at the surveillance camera at the end of the hall. “Oscar, yes?” he asked the watching Thomas. “At least an Emmy.”

He could hear Thomas laughing all the way from the comm center.

Back in the communications room Thomas had been watching the scene unfold at the front gates as the Fairfax County police argued with all the unmarked federals. Hiram wished he had an audio feed from the gates. Then a second news chopper appeared, this one a bit more bold than the first one. The aircraft swooped down over the trees along the river and then came slowly up the wall with its landing lights on. The first helicopter immediately maneuvered to take advantage of the lighting to film the entire cluster-fuck going on out on the lane. They'll all be bailing out pretty soon, Hiram thought. The black world of counterterrorism feared nothing so much as the sudden arrival of the media.

“Boss?” Thomas said.

Hiram turned around and looked at the screen. A ghostly green figure was moving up the western side of the defensive garden.

“Well, well,” Hiram said. “All the Hollywood out front was, what—a diversion?”

“Apparently so,” Thomas said. “But look where he's headed.”

“Ah,” Hiram said. “You know what, Thomas? These people are beginning to annoy me.”

“God help them, then,” Thomas muttered.

*   *   *

Av felt the aircraft settling in altitude as it flew in what seemed like pretty much a straight line. His back was against a bulkhead, and he was still hooded. No one had done anything to restrain him, but he felt the presence of large men in tactical gear sitting on either side of him. The inside of the helicopter smelled of sweat, gun oil, hydraulic oil, and ozone in about equal proportions. That side hatch was still partially open, which helped.

He forced himself to relax. They were waiting for me, he thought. As soon as he'd made it halfway across the river, there they were, and probably a good thing, too. He'd been a lot closer to that dam Thomas had warned him about than he'd known. He could still see the little boat going over what looked like a nothing waterfall and just disappearing in a roil of shiny black water.

So: who were “they”? Mandeville's people? Tactically trained operators from the other side of that mythical Chinese wall between the DMX and the real work?

He felt the men on either side of him move away from the bulkhead.

“We're going to land now,” one of them said, leaning in to speak through the hood. “Then we're going to get out. Do we need to restrain you?”

Av said no. The hood was secured by tight elastic around his throat. Where was he going to go?

“Be cool,” the man said. “Don't make me break one of your legs.” As if to emphasize the point, the invisible man tapped what felt like an iron rod on his shinbone. Av resisted the impulse to cry out. That really hurt.

The helicopter did some banking and turning and then pitched up slightly, the rotors gaining power as the machine flared out to make its approach. A moment of sideslipping, lots more noise from the rotors, and then he felt the aircraft bump gently down onto the ground. Almost immediately the engines began to whine down. The rotors followed suit, spinning down from full RPM to an almost gentle whop-whop as they shed lift and airspeed. Av could almost see them starting to droop.

He heard doors sliding fully open on both sides of the aircraft and then he was hoisted upright. Someone removed his sheath knife.

“Steps,” the man said. “Wire handrails on either side. Go down, slowly.”

Av stepped out and down onto the first step. He reached for the wires and found them.

Once on the ground, both of his escorts moved in and walked him up what felt like a grassy slope. He could still smell the jet engine exhaust through the rough cloth of the hood. Then he stumbled when his right foot hit concrete. The men kept him from falling and then told him to stop.

“Bench,” one of them said, turning him around and then pushing him down onto what felt like a wooden park bench. The other one took hold of Av's right forearm and pressed it down onto the bench. Av felt some kind of restraint slip over his hand and then click down onto the bench. Then he sensed he was alone, although the two men made no sound as they walked away.

It was cool, wherever he was. The helicopter was silent now, although not very far away. He could hear its engines clicking in the night air as the turbines cooled down. He thought he could hear another, lower-register sound in the distance. The river? Yes, that's what it was. So they were somewhere along the Potomac, probably on the Virginia side since the river noise seemed to be coming from way below where he was sitting.

Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes, but then he heard the sound of a heavy automobile crunching its way over gravel and coming in his direction. The vehicle stopped not too far away. He waited for the sounds of doors opening, but now there was just the sound of the river pushing through the palisades. He heard some radio communications chattering from a speaker in the direction of the helicopter. He caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, which told him that whoever was nearby, they weren't exactly excited by what they were doing.

He surreptitiously tried the arm restraint, which seemed to be working just fine. The bench was rock solid and probably bolted to the ground. Not going anywhere soon, he thought. Still no noises from the vehicle, but definitely more cigarette smoke. They were obviously all waiting for someone. He thought he knew who that someone was going to be.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Hiram picked up the phone and dialed a number. While it rang he asked Thomas if he'd managed to put the tracking button somewhere in Av's clothing. Thomas nodded.

“This is Ellen Whiting.”

“We got him out onto the river and we've dealt with the clowns they sent to grab him here,” Hiram said.

“The HRT has him,” she said. “With any luck it'll be going down in about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

“Where?”

“Fort Marcy Park,” she said. “Off the GW Parkway. You know, where that Clinton lawyer supposedly shot himself.”

“Do you have any kind of support?”

“Couldn't reach out to anybody federal beyond the HRT, not for this, but the sergeant's partners are with me. If he comes, he won't come alone, but I think we can handle it.”

“Very well,” Hiram said. “I've got one loose end to deal with here, and then we'll be right along.”

“Loose end?” she said.

“I think the first intrusion was a diversion. The real deal's here now. One guy.”

“Watch yourself,” she said. “But hurry.”

“This won't take long, Special Agent. He's about to enter the snake pool garden.”

“Jesus, Hiram,” she said. “
Snake
pool?”

“Just a figure of speech, my dear,” Hiram said and then hung up.

He turned back to the big screen, while keeping one eye out for any activity on the front-gate display, visible on the right-hand screen. The figure creeping through the woods was clearly visible. Adrenaline, Hiram thought. Warms you up. Who are you?

“How far from the edge?” he asked.

“Thirty yards, maybe less. Looks like he's checking a weapon of some kind.”

“Close in.”

The telephoto function revealed the man checking a semiautomatic handgun with a bulb of some kind at the end of the barrel. “Silencer,” Thomas said. “Start the warm-water matrix?”

“Yes. Add ten percent nitrogen and UV lights as well. Stir those things up. That's a killer out there.”

Thomas punched control orders into his console, and eighty-degree water began to push out to what they called the snake garden. There were no snakes, of course, or at least none of theirs. Surrounded by strategically placed Spanish dagger plantings was an Olympic-sized pool with what looked like a narrow, grass-covered footbridge across the midpoint. Based on where the intruder had gained access to the grounds, there was really no other covert way to go if someone was trying to get near the house from the direction of the river without a lot of backtracking, other than taking a very exposed walk up the gravel walk between the cascading pools.

It was what was inside this pool that made it a wholly different proposition than the scary monsters on the landward side of the estate. The pool was roughly rectangular and twenty feet deep, and filled with a species of African water vine that had evolved to trap and feed on animal proteins. They grew just below the surface of still water and created a great mass of vines, tubes, and tendrils, all rooted in three feet of muck. They fed during the daytime, hence the injection of warm water into the pool and the rise of the UV radiation would stimulate their tendrils to secrete a water-impervious sticky substance all along the vines. Hiram had nurtured this particular specimen because it, of all his plants, acted most like it had a brain of some kind.

The figure stopped when he encountered the pool and the footbridge. He turned to his left but then saw the wall of Spanish dagger. He was wearing night vision gear with its own illuminator, which made it easy for the estate's IR video system to track him. The man then went to his right and found the second stand of Spanish dagger plants. He came back to the footbridge across the pool.

He clearly did not want to cross that pool.

“This one senses the trap,” Hiram observed.

“Then we need to motivate him,” Thomas said.

“Right, do it.”

Thomas activated the line of small speakers that had been mounted in trees down near the river. He selected the program that would make the sounds of a group of men starting to spread out in the woods and then come forward on the trail of the intruder. The sounds were started at a very low level, barely audible behind where the intruder was now, unless he was listening very carefully. They'd continue, gaining slightly in volume, then stop suddenly for a couple of minutes as the search team “froze” for some reason. Then they'd resume, getting louder now but still barely audible. If that didn't do it, Thomas could add the whining of eager but still restrained search dogs to the mix.

The posse program, as they called it, had run only for about sixty seconds when the intruder made his decision.

*   *   *

Hurry up and wait, Av thought. Just like being back in the Marines. He felt himself getting sleepy. He yawned. He was bushed.

A part of his brain reminded him that he'd just been plucked out of the river by some kind of military team, blinded by a black hood, and then deposited on the ground, only to be handcuffed to a park bench. He tried to recall how all this had started.

The McGavin thing. Then he tried to make sense of it. He couldn't. He mentally recited his mantra of protest: I'm just a drone in the Metro PD's Briar Patch. So why the hell am I sitting here, waiting to be reintroduced to some maniac on the National Security Council?

A cold sensation settled over him. You know exactly why, he realized.

*   *   *

The intruder pulled a length of white rope out of his backpack, fastened a loop around his chest under his arms, and then tied one end off to a tree near the edge of the pool.

“Good thinking,” Thomas said.

“That won't save him,” Hiram said. “Look at the IR signature from the pool.”

“Oh, boy,” Thomas said. “I must say, boss, that I've never quite been able to get my head around the concept of a plant having a brain, but this one…”

“Is hungry, unless I miss my guess,” Hiram finished for him. “Ah—showtime.”

The intruder advanced across the footbridge, which had been built with a slight arch. His weapon was no longer in evidence, and he had both hands on that rope as it uncoiled behind him. He stopped a few feet from the top of the gentle arch in the bridge.

Hiram's eyes gleamed as he watched. One sentient being—on the bridge—had just sensed another sentient being—under the bridge. He was convinced of it.

Then the bridge broke in half and dropped him into the water.

The man disappeared for a moment but then surfaced in a froth of water between the two segments of the bridge, which were sagging out of sight in the water. The piece of the bridge nearest the intruder's start point snagged his rope, broke it, and pulled it underwater.

The man frantically tried to clear it, but not before the bridge had pulled him almost underwater. Then the rope snapped clear, but it was too late. The great mass of vines, sensing prey, had uncoiled a sponge of sticky tendrils.

The green man struggled in the water, pulling hard on his rope, but the mass of vines beneath him far outweighed his efforts to escape. He pulled harder, and then, taking a deep breath, dropped beneath the surface to get some leverage on whatever had his legs and then resurface and pull himself out.

He did not reappear. The two of them watched, waiting for the tell. Finally it came—a mass of bubbles surfaced on the pool. After that, nothing moved.

“Okay,” Hiram said. “Another bad guy returned to the biomass. Let's go.”

Hiram checked the front-gate cameras before going down to the lab. The circus out by the gates had wound down to the point where only two Fairfax County cruisers were parked out front, and the cops appeared to be doing paperwork. The federal posse had decamped when the second news chopper showed up, and now both helicopters were also gone. Thomas had done one final perimeter scan and found no more intruders. One of the hydroponic lines was losing pressure, possibly from that burst of gunfire out in the defensive gardens.

Down in the lab Hiram went to one of the glass-fronted refrigerators and pulled out a short-stemmed white carnation that was standing in a solitary test tube. There was a clear plastic bulb at the base of the stem, filled with an amber fluid. He picked up the test tube and then he took the elevator back up to the main floor, where he went to the hall closet. There he shed his tweed jacket for a black frock coat that had been tailored for his towering frame. Steadying his hands, he extracted the flower and slid that stem into the boutonniere slit in the coat's lapel He picked up a walking stick and a black homburg and then walked down to the front doors.