Sweepers (56 page)

A decision crystallized in her forebrain like a bright sunrise. She didn’t give it a second thought, just like when Jack had run his mouth.

She pulled the .380 out of her right pocket, pointed it right in front of the driver’s face, and blasted tworounds through his side window, sending the rounds about one inch in front of the big man’s nose. The window exploded.

With a shout of fear, he slammed on the brakes, bucking up against the wheel as he did so, because he had not put his seat belt on. She fired again, this time behind his head, screaming at him, “Stop the car! Stop the car. Now, get out! Get out of the goddamn car! Now! Do it!”

She fired once again just past his head. The man was white-faced and screaming back at her, a series of

“Hey!

Hey!” and then he was babbling incoherently. She could barely see in all the gunsmoke, but he got the car stopped, and then he was pushing the door. open and rolling out onto the pavement, still yelling as he scrambled away from the car’s rear wheels as it continued to roll forward. Karen unsnapped her belt and grabbed the wheel to pull herself into the driver’s seat. She slammed the door and pulled the big car around in a tire-screeching U-turn, the right-front tire banging off the culvert. She caught a glimse of the terrified agent rolling into the ditch, and then she was blasting back down the hill, nearly losing control as she floored it.

She had to stomp on the brakes-thank God for antilocks-to maintain control through the first curve, ignoring the flare of headlights and taillights from the chase car that had pulled out of her way. Goddamn them! Goddamn them!

Absolutely typical. They’d lost control of one, of their supergoons, and now innocent people had to die so they could cover up their latest mess.

The whole thing had been a setup, right from the beginning. Goats staked out in the jungle, that’s all they had been. Bait for the tiger-Galantz.

She saw the white blur of the trash piles just in time to slam on the brakes. She barely made the hard left turn onto the dirt road. There were more lights behind her now, but she didn’t care. She had no plan, no idea of what she was going to do up there, but she was god damned if she was going to let them just nuke the place to get Galantz. She blasted bags of trash all over the entranceway as she made the turn, and the big car’s V-8 screamed when she lost traction momentarily in one of the ruts, but then she was banging up that hill, accelerator mashed flat down. The car flew past the bikers’ trailer, went off the road into a stand of small trees, and then back onto the road briefly before swerving off on the other side. She fought the car’s wheel viciously, then realized she still had the accelerator mashed all the way down.

Control, she thought. Control-slow the hell down!

The car fishtailed three or four times as she took her foot off the gas, and then it settled into a banging, bumping track up the dirt road, until she finally saw the big dead tree.

Again, she didn’t hesitate. She hauled on the wheel and drove off to the right, around the tree, fishtailing again in the bushes; except this time, the rightrear wheel hit a soft spot and started spinning helplessly. She banged her fist on the wheel and gunned it, but it was over. Her headlights were pointed directly up the hill, unnaturally high. She cursed the hill, the car, the FBI and every other government agency she could think of, and then shut the car down, tears of pure frustration in her eyes.

After a minute, reality settled onto her shoulders like a cold, wet towel. What the hell was she doing? She was a Commander in the Navy, a commissioned federal officer, an officer of the court. She had shot at an FBI agent, driven through a law-enforcement cordon, and now what?

Going to charge up San Juan Hill here guns blazing, like Teddy Roosevelt? And accomplish what, exactly?

She suddenly felt a wave of nausea sweep through her as’ the adrenaline, started to crash. She punched off the headlights and opened the door. A small cloud of gunsmoke puffed out of the car, along with a few shards of glass from the shattered window. She reached over for the .380 and wondered if there were any rounds left. She swung her legs sideways and sat with her head down, half in, half out of the car, holding the smooth steel of the automatic against her belly and taking deep breaths of rain-cool air. She never heard the man who stepped out of the woods until he called her name.

She looked up in shock. It was Mcnair, walking carefully through the rain toward the car, his hands held out at his waist, one eye on her face and the other on that .380.

“Commander Lawrence? Karen? It’s me, Mcnair.”

She stared dully at him. He was dressed in khaki pants, a white shirt under a dark bulletproof vest covered by a khaki windbreaker, and what looked like combat boots. He had some kind of automatic weapon strapped across his back, the barrel just visible over his right shoulder. He wore a khaki baseball cap on his head. He stopped a few feet from the car and showed her his hands, wiggling his fingers to make sure she saw they were empty. But his left hand wasn’t quite empty, there appeared to be a flip phone in it.

“Commander?” he said again in a soft voice … “We okay here? This is just a phone, okay?”

She”Stared at him, her fingers closing unconsciously over the automatic in her lap. He saw her hand move, and he stopped short, his eyes locked on the .380.

“What’s going on up there?” she spat. “And who and what the hell are you, Mcnair?”

He nodded slowly, acknowledging that he had some explaining to do. She was dimly aware that there were cars andsome flashing blue lights down at the base of the hill, although they did not seem to be coming up. She had to wipe her eyes, but she never took them off Mcnair.

“I know, I know,” he.said. “But look, there isn’t much time. He’s holding Sherman and von Rensel. The kid’s in there, too. Galantz is offering a deal.”

“A deal? A deal!” She shook her head to clear the sudden wave of fatigue sweeping over her, compounding the nausea. “What the hell are you talking about, Mcnair?

Aren’t you people about to drop a bomb or something up there?” He took a step closer. “We will if we have to,” he said, his voice a lot less solicitous now. “But he says he’ll come out–on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“You have to go in. He says he needs you as a witness.”

“A witness? To what? And if I don’t? I mean, why the hell should I put my life in that killer’s hands again? Or yours, for that matter? I can’t trust him, and I sure as hell can’t trust you people, can I? You get us all in there, then drop your bomb or whatever it is you’re planning, and all the potential talkers are in the grave, right?”

“We wouldn’t do that,” he said. “We can’t do that.”

“No? You cops have let this guy run loose so far, ever since this crap started. Why should I believe you?” And then it hit her with the force of a hammer. “You’re not a cop, are you, Mcnair?”

“Actually, I am. I told von Rensel that I did some moonlighting.” He looked right at her. She was shocked by the in his face. No more congenial detective.

Somebody very different, with steely eyes and the flat, hard edged face of a killer. Then she really understood.

“Oh my God, you’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re one of those sweepers!”

Mcnair shrugged and looked down at the ground for a moment, the leftover rainwater spilling off the bill of his cap. She couldn’t read his expression in the dim light from the car’s cabin, but she could see he was struggling with something. She sensed now that there were other people out in the woods, out of sight, but not from the car.

“Okay,” he said, looking up at her. “You’re right. You can’t trust Galantz, although I know the guy, and I’d trust him with this. Hell, he knows it’s over. This has to do with Sherman, not you, or von Rensel.

But we won’t move against all of you. There’s a lock.”

“A lock? Stop talking in code. What the hell’s a lock?” “Your people know what’s going-on here. That one of ouguys has gone seriously wrong.

Our people know the real reason why your people pulled the plug on your investigation. But we made a deal that neither of you would get hurt. I

“By you or by him?”

“Well, we can’t speak for him, but since nobody wants any of this to come out, that’s a lock.”

Carpenter, she thought. The blocked file. “And what’s the FBI doing here?”

He sniffed in contempt. “They’ve homed in, mostly to watch us squirm and, someday, to extract something for their silence. We have this tradition.”

“If you knew where he was, why didn’t you move? Before we even got here?” She could hear the shrill note of frustration in her own voice.

“Because von Rensl is in there. And because we had to work some stuff out with the Feebies. Perimeter, comms, who would do what to whom.” He had the grace to be embarrassed. “What can I tell you, we’re all just a bunch of armed bureaucrats.”

She shook her head in disbelief. Two innocent people had been murdered, and all they cared about was protecting their turf? “And on the basis of that, I’m just supposed to go up there?”

“That, and the fact that he says he’ll kill von Rensel if you don’t.

Look, Commander, time is kinda short. There are some people here who really are disposed to use a bomb.”

She felt the icy hand of fear grip her stomach. She had actually forgotten about Train. So she really didn’t have any choice, did she?

She stood up, her legs shaky. Mcnair put his hand out, and she hesitated, but then she handed over the .380. Mcnair actually grinned then, the way a coyote might. “You should have heard the Feebies on the radio,” he said. “That guy’s still shittin’ and gittin’.” d at him, dry-mouthed and wanting But Karen just stare the gun back. He saw her expression and his grin died. She looked up the long, dark hillside. The dark bulk of the ruined house was almost invisible among the trees. “I just walk up there?”

“I’ll call him. Tell him you’re coming in. We’ve got long guns all around it, so if it looks hinky as you get close, they can do something.”

“But once I’m inside?”

He just looked at her. He didn’t have to say it. Then the phone in his hand began to chirp. He flipped it open and answered it, then listened for a second. “She’s coming up the hill right now,” he said. He listened for another moment and then snapped the phone shut. “He said come in the front why.” door and then close your eyes. Said you’d understand “oh yes,” she said, and started up the hill. Close your eyes, or he’d fire that damned disrupter again.. She wanted no more of that. Her eyes still hurt a little, and she hadn’t even been looking at it.

“Commander,” Mcnair called. She turned around, wipup the hill. ing her forehead. He was coming

“Take this.” He handed her something that looked like a television remote, only thicker.

“What is it?” she asked, but then she knew.

“It’s a retinal disrupter. There are two buttons. The big round button charges it. The little sharp button fires it.

Charge it, wait two seconds, and then it’s ready. Like he said, close your eyes.”

She took the thing from his hand and examined it. It was heavy, dense with latent energy. She looked up to thank him, but he was gone.

As she climbed through the tangled weeds toward the house, she tried to think of what might happen in there, and why. obviously, Admiral Carpenter had been running herno, had been running them like a couple of lab rats in a maze. And Sherman, too. Galantz’s owners had been desperate to corral him once the Walsh woman was murdered.

Mcnair, the sweeper, perfectly positioned in the Fairfax POLICE Department, had been activated. But how had. Cupen*. known what was really going on? The only one the cops had ever talked to in detail was Sherman. Unless there was some connection between the thing back in Vietnam and the admirals.

She found herself taking smaller steps as she got closer to the house, which was taking definition now that she was moving into the dripping trees. She could make out the sagging chimneys, but the crumbling mass between them was in deep shadow. She slipped the ‘disrupter into her pants pocket.

The wood planks on the porch were rotted through, for the most part, but she discovered a piece of plywood had been placed near the front door.

The front door itself was missing, and the doorway loomed ahead like the entrance to a mine tunnel. She hesitated. She really did not want to go in there. She looked back over her shoulder, but there was only the spidery trace of the trees showing against the night sky. The sound of the rainwater pouring through the holes over the porch obscured all other noises.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doorway, placing her feet carefully, but it felt as if there was more plywood inside the door. The interior of the house smelled of dry rot, insects, and bird dung, in equal proportions. She was in a central hallway. Ahead, to the left a stairway led up-to the second floor, but the stairs themselves had long ago fallen in. Beyond the stairwell the hallway ended in darkness.

Probably a door there.

She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the house, then remembered that she was supposed to close her eyes. She squinted, keeping them open just a crack, dreading another purple flash but not willing just to stand there with her eyes shut. The skin on her back was crawling, and she had to fight back her own imagination as to what might be approaching, or coming behind her. Then she heard a noise ahead-something being opened, a soft clatter of boards and debris, then silence. Then the darkness at the end of the hall dissolved into a grayness. Someone was standing there. She held her breath and kept her eyes just barely cracked open.

Karen-n-n.

She stopped breathing. Him, right in front of her. She surprised herself by wishing she had that big .45 right about now. He must have sensed her thoughts.

Open your coat and show me your hands. That horrible wheezing voice. She did as he asked. The shadow seemed to get smaller, and then she realized he was backing up.

Walk straight ahead. Keep your eyes closed I can see just fine, by the way. But if I see your eyes, I’ll use the disrupter. You remember the disrupter, don’t you?