Prey (21 page)

“I'll get you for this, Cantrell!” Roche hissed. “I'll track you to the end of the world if I have to.”

“Have fun doing it. Now walk out the back door and get in that panel truck you used to haul me out here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You'll see.”

“Where are my men?”

“In the basement. Move!”

Barry glanced at a wall clock. It was one-thirty. The speeches should be over and the marchers getting cranked up in high gear by now. This should work out just fine.

Standing on the back porch in his pajamas and bare feet, Roche said, “Cantrell, don't be a fool. Work with me and end all this chasing about. Sooner or later you know I'm going to get you.”

“Roche, I could end it right now, you know.”

“But you won't, Cantrell. For you are, among other things, an honorable man. You could no more kill me in cold blood than you could one of your dogs.”

“Move, Roche. You're right, I won't kill you. You haven't driven me to that point yet. And I stress yet. But I can and will hurt you. Now shut up.”

Barry drove to a spot about halfway between where the president was staying and town. He pulled off onto an old logging road, turned around, and parked facing the blacktop.

“What are you doing?” Roche asked, looking all around him. “Why are we stopping here?”

“We are going to wait for a passing parade, and then you're going to join that parade.”

“In my pajamas?”

Barry grinned. “Not really.”

Roche was silent for a moment then he flushed. “You dirty son of a bitch! You wouldn't do that, not to me?”

“You want to bet?”

Will helped Ki back to his truck and headed for town. Ki's mouth hurt her, but that didn't prevent the woman from cussing a blue streak.

“Did these men say why they grabbed Stormy?” Will finally managed to ask when Ki paused for a breath.

“No. But I think I've seen a couple of them before. I know I have.”

“Can you remember where?”

Ki frowned as she held a now bloody handkerchief to her split lips. “Yes,” she replied after a moment. “I saw two of the men out at Vic Radford's place the last time Stormy and I drove out there.”

Now it was Will's turn to cuss. “That Nazi-lovin', dumb son of a bitch! I knew he was stupid, but not this stupid.”

Will suddenly whipped down a gravel road and headed for his store. “We better try for the store, Ki. Call from there. It'll be faster. Don's gonna be escortin' all those idiots marchin' out this way.”

“That's right. I didn't think about that. They'll come right by the store, won't they?”

“Unless they start fighting' 'fore they get this far.”

Will slid to a halt at his store and quickly unlocked the front door. There were half a dozen customers waiting impatiently for shiners and worms.

“Where the hell you been, Will?” one man asked. “The fish are bitin' to beat the band.”

“Hep yourself, Jesse,” Will told him. “And don't bother me. I got things to do.”

“Well, you don't have to get uppity about it!”

Will ignored him and headed for the phone. “Hazel,” he spoke to dispatch. “This is Will out to the store. Can you patch me through to Don?” A pause. “Well, hell yes, it's important, woman. You think I'd be callin' if it wasn't? Don't tell me to keep my britches on. I 'member ‘bout five years ago when you was in an all-fired hurry to get 'em off.”

Ki's eyes widened, and she smiled around the pain in her mouth.

“Don? This is Will, out to the store. I got Miss Ki with me. Listen, Stormy's been kidnapped.... That's what I said. Kidnapped. Now, you just turn that screamer on and get out here.”

“Who's been kidnapped, Will?” Jesse asked, standing by the counter, his mouth hanging open.

“Go fish, Jesse,” Will told him. “This ain't none of your business.”

“I swear, Will. Five more years and you're gonna be the most crotchety old bastard in the county.”

“Goodbye, Jesse,” Will said. “And try to stay inside the boat. Don't forget, you never learned to swim.”

* * *

The unrelenting heat of the late summer afternoon took some of the pep out of the marchers, but still they prodded on, and so far, without incident.

But all that was about to change.

Don Salter, upon hearing the news of Stormy's kidnapping, put on the siren and went screaming past the marchers, heading for Will's store, with several FBI agents, including Inspector Van Brocklen, right behind him.

Alex Tarver and his group had kept up a running barrage of insults directed against the gay activists and Abudu X's people, and tempers were heating up as the long line of marchers continued on toward Congressman Williams' house and President Hutton.

Alex dropped back in the line and marched alongside a man carrying a sign that read MORE MONEY FOR AIDS RESEARCH.

“That money would be better used stuffin' it down a rat hole,” Alex told the marcher. He glanced at his watch. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

“Why don't you take your ignorant mouth and go right straight to hell?” the activist told him.

“Hey,” someone hollered. “There's a naked man standing in the middle of the road!”

Insults were forgotten for the moment as all eyes turned to stare at Robert Roche, standing stark naked in the middle of the blacktop, both hands covering his privates. Barry had shoved him out just seconds after Don's unit and the two FBI cars had gone rushing past his location. Barry had then pulled out and followed the police and Bureau, curious as to what was going on.

“Maybe he's really one of you fags and decided to advertise,” Alex told the activist. “Why don't you get nekked and run on up there and pull his tally-whacker a time or two, and you can both get off? That'd be a real sight to see.”

That did it.

The activist tossed his placard to the road and gave Alex a solid right fist to the jaw, knocking the skinhead to the blacktop. He jumped on top of the skinhead and proceeded to beat the shit out of him. Just about that time, a young boy about eleven years old, standing by the road, tossed a string of firecrackers into the line of marchers. Everybody thought they were under attack, and many of those who had guns—which was a considerable number of folks—pulled them and the fight was on.

Alex managed to get to his hands and knees, bleeding from a busted lip and a bent nose, and the activist took aim with one stout walking shoe and kicked the skinhead right in the ass, sending him rolling into a ditch, which was filled with water. Alex thrashed around in the muddy water for a moment and then reached for his gun. But it had fallen out of his pocket, and Alex couldn't find it. He decided that his contribution to the fight was over and stayed in the ditch. After all, it was a hot day and the water was cool.

Bubba Bordelon found himself facing a black man who, at least to Bubba, looked to be about seven feet tall. Two very nervous national guardsmen, both armed with M16s, were standing very close to Bubba, and the Klansman did not want to pull his pistol and get quickly filled with .223 holes. He looked at the black man, who was smiling grimly down at him.

“Aw, shit!” Bubba said, just as a huge fist exploded against his jaw. Bubba's feet left the blacktop, and he joined Alex in the ditch.

“This ain't exactly turnin' out the way we planned, is it?” Alex questioned.

Luckily, Bubba was lying half in and half out of the ditch, his face pressed against the coolness of the grassy bank. He did not reply. He was out cold.

The FBI had been closely watching the Aryan Brotherhood members and moved in on them before they could do anything. They were now lying facedown on the side of the road, their hands cuffed behind them.

Carl Radford ran through the crowd until he found Willie Abudu X Washington, who was frantically trying to keep his people out of the growing melee.

“Now by God!” Carl shouted. “You and me gonna finish what we started a few years back.” He stepped in close and gave Willie a solid left to the jaw.

But Willie was no longer a frightened boy; he had grown into a very angry man. He shook off the punch and returned it with a vengeance, rocking Carl back on his heels. Then the two went at it, cussing and flailing away under the hot Arkansas sun.

Robert Roche was dancing around on the road, the blacktop hot under his bare feet. “Will somebody give me some pants!” he shouted.

Nobody paid any attention to the billionaire, except for a little redheaded boy whose family lived along the road. The boy had just received a BB gun for his tenth birthday . . . and several very long tubes of BBs. The boy took careful aim and gave Robert Roche a BB to the butt, at close range.

“Wow!” Robert hollered, his voice lost amid the several hundred shouting, cussing, angry voices of the marchers. Robert did another little dance on the blacktop as a second BB impacted against his butt. Robert thought he was being attacked by a swarm of bees or wasps and began slapping at himself. It was quite a performance and one that would be recorded for posterity by several farm families along the way who were armed with cameras.

The fight ended when several shots were fired from within the brawling mob. The mass of protestors suddenly parted like Moses commanding the waters, and a dozen or more guardsmen, troopers, deputy sheriffs, and federal agents were knocked flat by the stampeding marchers trying to get clear of the gunfire. The only people left in the road were Robert Roche, while yelling and hopping around in his birthday suit still being butt-shot by BBs, and Carl Radford and Willie Washington, who were still duking it out, oblivious to anything else.

The shoulder-fired rocket blew the left front tire off the president's limousine, knocking out the engine, bringing the heavy limo to a halt in the middle of the road and pinning the driver in the front seat. The second round tore off the rear door, and hot shrapnel wounded President Hutton in the leg, leaving him unable to walk. The lead Secret Service car and the car following the limo were hosed down with automatic weapons' fire, trapping the agents and wounding several.

A second team of hired terrorists hidden in the brush by the side of the road rushed the limo and looked inside.

“The bastard's still alive!” one yelled.

“Blow the door and take him!” he was ordered. “This may work out to our advantage yet.”

While the Secret Service agents were pinned down, an unconscious President Hutton was yanked from the limo and dragged off into the brush.

At almost the same time, Congressman Madison's caravan was under attack. That attack killed two federal marshals, one of the Speaker's aides, and wounded a Secret Service man. The Speaker was blown out the side of the car and slid down an embankment, badly hurt, but still alive. A hitchhiker came ambling along about two minutes after the attack, just in time to look inside the car as the gas tank blew and seared him beyond recognition. But he was about the same height and weight as the Speaker.

Cliff Madison, Speaker of the House, lay some forty feet away and below the roadbed, in a pile of brush, alive, but unconscious.

When the news of the dual attack reached the officers at the scene of the recent scuffle between marchers, they dropped everything they were doing and left in a rush, a mob of reporters right behind them. The reporters had gotten some excellent footage of the brawl, and also of Robert Roche in his altogether.

Roche had been jumping around in a borrowed pair of pants and house shoes, loaned him by a farm family who lived nearby, demanding that the FBI go after Barry Cantrell and arrest him for kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and a dozen other charges. No one paid any attention to him, and that just made the man angrier.

Then all the officers roared away in a scream of sirens and left Robert Roche standing by the side of the road.

In a shirt that no self-respecting bum would wear to a hobo's convention, jeans that were four inches too short in the inseam, and ladies pink fuzzy house shoes, Robert Roche turned and began the long walk back to his rented lake house. Robert Roche was not a happy man.

The scientists had pooped out about two miles from the road and could go no farther, which was just as well, for Jacques Cornet had sensed great danger ahead and had veered off, shifting into his Other and heading for the timber. The scientists had heard the faint sounds of gunfire, but to a person, they were just too tired to go on. They had lost the track of the big jaguar and were a discouraged bunch when they decided to head on back to camp. None had any idea they were about to be right in the middle of the biggest manhunt ever conducted in North Arkansas.

When the news of the kidnapping of the president and the assassination (they thought) of Congressman Madison reached those lawmen at Will's store, the FBI left immediately for the scene of the ambush. Finding Stormy, at least for the moment, was going to be left up to Sheriff Don Salter and his people.

The National Guard was ordered to escort the marchers and protestors back to town. They were not told what they were supposed to do with them once they got them there.

To say that for a time chaos reigned king in the area would be an understatement.

The van Barry was driving did not have a radio, so he had no idea what had taken place. He pulled into the parking lot of Will's store about a minute after the FBI had roared away and before the dust had even had time to settle.

“Where the hell have you been?” Don asked.

“It's a long story,” Barry replied. “What's going on here?” He looked at Ki's swollen mouth. “What happened to you?”

Ki briefly explained, Barry's face turning harder with each word.

“Can you take me back to the exact spot where you were confronted by the men?”

“Sure.”

“Let's go. We'll drive to where you parked your rental car, and I'll leave Roche's van there.”

“What are you doing in Roche's van?” Don asked, becoming more and more confused.

“He had his men kidnap me, right after I left you this morning. They hit me with a tranquilizer dart, and I was out for a few hours, being held at Roche's lake house.”

“I see. I think. Do you want to file charges against Roche?”

“No. I've got to find Stormy.”

“I'll assign a man to go with you.”

“No,” Barry was adamant. “I want to handle this alone.”

“This thing has to be handled legally and by the book, Barry.”

“You handle it legally and by the book,” Barry told him. “Just stay the hell out of my way.”

Before Don could object, Barry and Ki were out the door and driving away.

“I believe,” Will said, “I'd concentrate on finding the president and leave Barry Cantrell alone.”

“I wasn't invited to go along with the Bureau,” Don replied shortly.

“It's your county, ain't it?”

* * *

Ki filled Barry in on the other attacks as she led him straight to the spot where they were attacked by the men. Barry immediately dropped to all fours and began sniffing the ground. After a moment, he stood and looked at her.

“Go back to town, Ki. See a doctor about that lip and get some rest. I'll find Stormy.”

“What if they put her in a car, which they surely did, and drove off?”

“I'll still find her. Go on. Stay clear of the countryside. There are a lot of people with itchy trigger fingers searching everywhere.”

Barry walked her back to her rental car and waited while she drove away. He trotted back to the ambush site, stood for a moment sniffing the air, and then moved out. Ever since moving into this area, he had been prowling the country for miles around as his Other. He knew all the little hidden places, all the caves, all the shady glens, and more importantly, he knew where the red wolf and coyote packs lived. He had visited them, and they knew him as a friend. They would know anything alien that moved in their territory. Barry would find Stormy, and after he had found her, he would find the president. He would personally deal with her kidnappers and the president's and the Speaker's attackers, and the law be damned. Then he would vanish again.

* * *

A local cop kept telling the commanding officer of the National Guard detachment that what they were doing was not legal, but the captain did it anyway. First, he put the gay activists back on their buses and told them to get gone and don't come back. Since they had made their point, they were probably ready to leave anyway, so they went without any argument. He then informed the new KKK people who had arrived that if he saw any of them hanging around the next day, he would file federal insurrection charges against them. That charge sounded really serious, so they left without incident. The Aryan Nations people who had been staying out at Vic Radford's place (those who weren't already in jail for their part in the blacktop brawl, as some members of the press were calling it) got the message without being told and left quietly. Carl Radford was cooling his heels in the small city jail, and so far his dad had made no attempt to bail him out.

That was due in no small part to the fact that the FBI and the Secret Service had hauled Vic Radford in for questioning and were really sweating him.

“I don't know what the hell you people are talkin' about!” Vic yelled for the umpteenth time that late afternoon. “I didn't have nothin' to do with the kidnappin' of the president or the murder of Congressman Madison. Do I look stupid to you guys?”

All the agents in the room had a comeback for that line, but let it pass for the moment.

Vic took a sip of water. “I don't know anything about none of this, guys.”

“Let's take it from the top,” an agent said. “Again.”

Vic sighed wearily.

* * *

President Hutton's leg had been tended to and crudely bandaged. They had given him nothing for the pain, and his face was shiny with sweat. He had tried to talk to his captors, but if they answered at all, it was with grunts that gave away nothing. President Dick Hutton wondered if they were going to kill him.

* * *

Stormy had been blindfolded almost immediately and had absolutely no idea where she was taken. She knew only that she had to walk for what seemed like a very long time through some very rough country. She had fallen down several times, and the men seemed to think that was very funny. Stormy did not see the humor in it.

* * *

Cliff Madison stirred and came to consciousness in a hot flash of intense pain. He thought for a moment the pain might drop him back into darkness. He resisted the urge to slip back into the relief of unconsciousness, struggling with all his might to stay alert, and won the battle. He relived those horrible few seconds of the attack over and over again. Then, mustering every ounce of strength he could gather in his torn and battered and broken body, Cliff began to inch his way out of the brush. The smell of burning rubber and scorched metal and seared human flesh still hung in the air. He began to crawl, digging his fingers into the gravel and dirt, pulling himself along with his arms and dragging his useless broken legs.

“I am going to make it,” he whispered. “I am going to make it.” He would repeat that phrase many times over the next few hours.

* * *

“I don't believe they got out of this area,” Van Brocklen told the senior FBI officials and representatives from the U.S. Attorney General's Office who had just arrived from Washington after a very fast flight. “In less than half an hour, we had every road blocked within a fifty-mile radius of this area. Absolutely no one,
no one
has reported seeing any low-flying aircraft, fixed wing or helicopter. Within an hour, we had extended our roadblocks to a circle a hundred miles out in all directions. The governors of both Missouri and Arkansas immediately—within five minutes of our request——called out every national guardsman available to them, and there isn't a pig-path in either state that isn't covered like a blanket. We are questioning every known member of any organization who might be remotely connected to any militia or survivalist group, anyone that we know of who has ever written a letter critical of the government or has vocally espoused views critical of the government. We've pulled in half a dozen writers who live near this area who have written books or articles critical of the government. . .”

“And ... ?” the director of the FBI asked, an impatient tone to his voice. He had personally flown in to take charge, much to the chagrin of most agents, who rightly felt that the director didn't know hog jowls from horse shit about real police work.

“Nothing,” Van Brocklen said quickly and harshly.

“I am stripping every office nationwide of personnel,” the director said. “In addition, I have requested authority to bring in military personnel: Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and Rangers, Marine Force Recon, et cetera, to start a house to house search. I am considering a request to have this entire area, for a hundred miles around, placed under martial law. I believe that request will be granted within the hour.”

“That's going to anger a lot of citizens,” it was pointed out.

“Too bad,” the director said, and walked out of the room.

* * *

Barry had immediately gone to see John Ravenna. But the immortal held up his hands and said, “I didn't do it, cousin. I was sent in here to kill both the president and the Speaker. I will openly and freely admit that to you, but this happened before I could make my move. Do you think I would be fool enough to harm your lady? Knowing that would put you on my trail for all time? Worrying me forever?” He shook his head. “And I don't think Jacques Cornet had anything to do with it. I work alone, cousin. You know that. I have never hired others to do my work for me. Never!”

“Who hired you, John?”

“I don't know. It was done through an intermediary. A very nervous type. But I will tell you this: after he left my hotel room, I followed the careless fool back to the airport and watched him board a shuttle for Washington, D.C. Does that tell you anything, cousin?”

Barry did not reply. He turned to leave. John's voice stopped him. “I am going to disappear, Vlad. There is no point in my remaining in this area. But before I go, I want to hear you say something.”

Barry faced the immortal.

“Do you think I had anything to do with the events of this day?”

Barry stared at the man for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I don't. It was too clumsy. You're an assassin, but you take pride in your work. Besides, I've had my own suspicions for several weeks. Things are not as they seem in this community.”

“No, they are not. Goodbye, cousin. I hope I never see you again.”

“The feeling is very mutual, John.”

Barry walked out of the room.