break the news to Farnsworth.
“Hold up a minute,” Browne McGarand said. It was another cool, clear night, with moonrise not due until around midnight. The arsenal rail gates gleamed dully a hundred yards ahead of them. Jared stopped and looked back at his grandfather, who was scanning the gates and the dark woods around them through a pair of binoculars.
“You see something’?” Jared whispered.
“Nope. Just looking to see if anything’s different.”
“That counter’ll tell the tale,” Jared said, peering into the nearby trees.
“Unless he got by your little trap and laid down one of his own. He’s been using the same gate as we have. Okay, let’s go.”
When Jared finally read the counter, he swore out loud. Browne looked at it and let out a long sigh.
“Zero it, “he ordered.
“And then what? Twenty-six hits means thirteen people been in and out of here. That has to mean cops.”
“Or one guy waving his hand twenty-six times across the beam,” Browne pointed out.
“If he tripped your deadfall, all this means is that he got by it.”
“Why not a buncha cops?”
“Because there would have been a mess outside. Grass smashed down, vehicle tracks, cigarette butts. Cops come in a crowd; they leave sign.
There was no sign out there. Let’s go see your trap.”
They found the pile of pipes where Kreiss had left it. Browne got down on all fours and searched the concrete of the street until he found the dried bloodstains where Kreiss had lain stunned after the initial fall.
“Here,” he said.
“This mess got him, but he must have ducked most of it.”
“That there’s a coupla hunnert pounds a steel,” Jared said, looking up at the steam pipe overpass.
“I know. I carried it all up there.”
Browne was standing back up again, looking up the street, and thinking.
“One guy, not thirteen,” he mused.
“One guy who doesn’t belong here, just like we don’t belong here. And for some reason, he hasn’t brought cops. Now who could that be? I wonder.”
“Hell,” Jared said.
“After this here, he might be back.”
“Yes, he might,” Browne said.
“Or he might be here now, watching us. Let’s go exploring tonight. I want a look at these rooftops, see if he’s been laying up, watching us.”
“What about the girl?” Jared said, lifting the sack of food and water.
“Later. Leave it here in the middle of the street so we don’t forget.
She’ll be out of water by now.”
“Rats’ll git it,” Jared said.
“Chemicals got all the rats twenty years ago,” Browne said.
“And all the other critters, too. Hasn’t been anything living in this area since the place closed down. Come on.”
The first thing Kreiss did was to release the dogs. He climbed up on the side of the pen, ignoring the lunging, barking beasts below, and then blew hard on a soundless dog whistle. The dogs shut up immediately and began to run around the pen to get away from the painful noise. Then he tripped the pen’s door latch and swung the door open, blowing the whistle hard as he did it. The dogs bolted into the woods and then came back to bark at him. He laid into the whistle again. This time, they yelped and took off into the darkness to do what they liked to do most— hunt. Within minutes, the sound of their baying was coming from over the next hill and diminishing as they went.
He climbed down off the pen, watching to make sure that one of the dogs hadn’t doubled back, and then he went to the trailer. The telephone repair van was there, but Jared’s truck was gone, which he hoped meant that he and his partner were up at the arsenal, doing whatever they did up there at night. And trying to figure out the number on that counter, and whether or not he or a posse of cops was waiting for them in the industrial area. He needed about an hour to get set up inside and outside the trailer, and then he would wait for Jared to return from his nocturnal operations.
Then he would find out what Jared and his friend knew about Lynn and her friends. He dismissed the possibility that they might not know a damn thing.
Browne called it off at around 10:30. They’d looked over several of the buildings and found nothing, although Browne thought that some of the ladder rungs looked scuffed. Someone or thing had obviously tripped the deadfall. There were some stains on the concrete that could have been dried blood, although the darkness made it difficult to tell. The only other hard indication they had was the gate counter. Jared was still perplexed by the deadfall.
“That shoulda got him,” he kept saying.
“He might have sensed it coming, or heard something above him and jumped back,” Browne pointed out.
“Or only part of it got him. If those stains are blood, it didn’t do much damage.”
Jared could only shake his head. Browne decided that they should stay away from the site during the day on Saturday. Let the whole area cool off. He told Jared to check the power plant while he took the food and water to the girl. Then they’d leave, and come back two hours after sunset on Saturday night. They’d do a quick night-vision sweep, and then Browne would run the hydrogen generator all night while Jared either patrolled the industrial area or hid out on one of the rooftops to spot any intruders. He told Jared to just leave the pipes out in the street, but Jared pointed out that if the security truck came on Saturday, they would see them and wonder what the hell had happened. Browne concurred, and they spent fifteen minutes moving the pipes into an alley. Then they split up, agreeing to meet up at the main gates in twenty minutes. Jared suggested setting one more trap, in case their intruder came back Saturday.
“This time, I got just the thing,” he said.
Janet got back to the Roanoke federal building and drove her Bureau car into the security-lock parking area. She parked it near the vehicle-search rack and shut it down. It was Friday night, so the chances of finding one of the surveillance squad techs were slim to none. She was anxious to see if she could find the bug herself, but she knew she should let the pros have a clear field. If there was a bug under there, she’d have to call the RA. And he, of course, would want to know how the meeting had gone. Oh, just wonderful, sir. He told me that he didn’t need any help from me and that I was much too inexperienced even to be out on the street by myself without a nanny. He saw through those two Washington wienies and didn’t believe a word about the so-called bomb plot. Other than that, we bonded very
well and formed an effective and maybe a productive partnership. And I did manage to get him to take my pager along with him.
She leaned back in the seat and tried to think it out. They talked, and then he left to do—what? He’d said earlier that he was busy tonight.
Doing what? Going where? To Site R? What would he be doing down at the Ramsey Arsenal on a Friday night? Crashing the AntiAbortion League’s underground bomb makers’ happy hour at the abandoned munitions factory? The place was a mothballed military installation, for Chrissakes.
Why the hell didn’t Farnsworth and his new playmates just send in the army and rake through the place with a few hundred guys and see what’s what?
Because Foster and Bellhouser were blowing smoke. Kreiss was right:
Their interest was in him, not some outlandish bomb plot and the mysterious message that didn’t get delivered. He had ducked her question on that at the bar. There was a lot more going on here than just some simple bomb plot. That was why they didn’t want aTF in on it. She exhaled forcefully, trying to clear her mind. For
