thought as she slipped off again.
Browne waited until dark to go back to the Waffle House on Route 11 to retrieve his pickup truck. Earlier, he’d driven the propane truck out
to the interstate and five miles north to the big TA truck stop, where he’d parked it among a hundred other big trucks that were idling out at the back of the cinder lot. He’d cooled his heels for an hour at the truck stop before hitching a ride back down 1-81 into Dublin, south of Ramsey. From Dublin to the Waffle House on Route 11 had been a four mile walk. He’d seen all the emergency vehicles running up and down Route 11, so somebody must have finally opened the door to the power plant. His suspicions were confirmed when he went into the Waffle House for a cold drink and everyone was talking about the big bang out at the arsenal.
As he drove his pickup back to Blacksburg, he was satisfied that any evidence of what they had been doing out there for all those months, including the retort, the pumps, the generator, and even the acid tank were now somewhere in low earth orbit. He’d also put enough acid down that tunnel to obliterate any trace of the security truck and any number of intruders.
Leaving the girl… well, he’d done what he had to do. Regrettable, but necessary. That nitro building’s big vertical expanse of concrete wall facing the power plant should have taken care of the girl once the explosion occurred. Keeping her had been a dumb idea all along, he thought now. It was just that he had never been quite able just to shoot her. He was ashamed about Jared fooling around in there. He should have known that would happen. He would go out to Jared’s this afternoon, find out why that oversexed young pup hadn’t shown up. William had been headstrong, but he would never have taken advantage of the girl that way.
The thought of his dead son stole some of the satisfaction out of what had happened out at the arsenal. The radio was talking about aTF agents.
These were the same federal cops who’d killed William. But two weren’t enough. The goddamned government, with all its alphabet soup of cops, was out of hand. Killing women and children in the name of the law, sending snipers to gun down women with babies in their arms, then lying through their collective teeth about it, then being exonerated in court.
He’d followed the Waco standoff on the television, but had missed the exact moment when they drove their tanks into the building and burned those deluded bastards out. He was convinced that there was the mother of all coverups in place over Waco. William, William, William, he thought sadly. Why did you have to go down there? Why did you join up with such a bunch of misguided fools? I lived for the day I could get you back. And now you’re nothing but a pile of greasy ashes out in some dusty field near Waco.
He took a deep breath to calm himself. Remember what you’re going to do, he told himself. You’re going to show those bastards that they’d killed the wrong man’s son. The arsenal was just the beginning.
His plan now was to wait twenty-four hours to let the hubbub surrounding the arsenal explosion subside, and then he’d head north with the propane truck for the final stage. There was only one thing that could link him to what happened out there, and for that, they’d have to go through every one of the nine hundred ammo bunkers out on the back reservation.
Bunker number 887 looked like every other bunker—partially buried, 150 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 20 feet from floor to the top of its curved ceiling.
It contained his post-attack getaway stash: cash, clothes, passport, food and water for two weeks, and even a car. Assuming he got clear of what he was going to do in Washington, he would come back here, hide out in the bunker for a while, and then disappear. There were people in splinter groups of the Christian Identity network who would help him hide.
What he had to do right now was to make jared understand he needed to keep his head down and his mouth shut from here on out, no matter what happened up in Washington. He’d deliberately not told jared specifically what he was going to do with the hydrogen. What the boy didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. The propane truck was safe for the moment—just one more truck parked at a truck stop, right out in plain sight, which effectively made it invisible. The only other person who knew anything was dead. Just like his William. Fair was fair.
He crossed the New River bridge and headed north toward Blacksburg.
He decided he would go directly to Jared’s trailer before going home. See if the dummy had disentangled himself from his current whore long enough even to know about what had happened out at the arsenal.
Kreiss ended up going back to his cabin. He had driven down Canton Street where Browne McGarand lived and had seen the house. It was a medium-sized two-story brick house on a half-acre lot in a well-kept, heavily treed neighborhood. He had spotted a detached garage at the back of the house, and the yard looked well attended and free of trash. An elderly man had been raking his lawn next door when Kreiss drove by. He had glanced at Kreiss’s truck, but he had not really looked up. One more pickup truck going down the street was apparently not remarkable. There were other people about, and he heard some dogs barking when he stopped at the corner, as if checking a set of directions. There had been
no sign of the tanker truck. He turned at the next corner and discovered an alley that ran behind the houses on Canton Street and the houses on the next street over. The property lines were marked by clusters of metal trash cans standing guard along the alley.
He had decided not to go past twice, not with that geezer out there.
Old people noticed things, and, unless Kreiss was willing to stop and go knock on the door, he didn’t want to be remembered. It looked like a quiet middle-class neighborhood, which told him absolutely nothing about the occupant of number 242 Canton Street. He would come back tonight and try for that alley. He might need to create a diversion of some kind. If the neighbors were mostly elderly, there would be people about, not to mention dogs. A NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH sign emphasized the point. He saw what looked like a mom-and-pop corner gas station one block down from Canton Street where he might be able to park when he came back at night.
After cruising Browne McGarand’s house and neighborhood, he decided to drive out to the area of jared McGarand’s trailer. On the way out there, he thought he heard thunder, but the sky seemed to be clear.
When he approached the intersection of jared’s road with the state road, a Highway Patrol car was blocking the entrance. He kept right on going, catching a quick glimpse of more flashing blue lights back in the trees.
Okay, he thought, Jared’s demise is no longer a secret. He drove on down the state road and turned onto Highway 460, which would take him back toward his own cabin. He decided to go home, catch a quick nap, and then he had some preparations to make for his call on the other McGarand. Maybe this guy would be more forthcoming, and would live long enough to give him what he needed to know. Given the man’s cold, quick decision to begin shooting out there at the arsenal, he might be a tougher nut to crack than the beer-guzzling Jared.
Focus, he reminded himself. The objective is not revenge, the objective is to find Lynn, and this bastard probably knows where she is. As he drove home, he turned on the truck’s radio to get a weather report, and he found out that it had not been thunder he’d heard earlier.
Janet was fully awake in a semiprivate room at the Montgomery County Hospital when Farnsworth showed up with a small crowd that included the red-faced Mr. Foster. Her ribs had been taped, and there were bandages on some of her bandages. The most painful points on her body were actually where the IVs had been. Sounds still echoed in her ears, and she felt as if she had been pummeled all over. The other bed was empty,
and the RA sat down on the edge of it. His expression was somber, and then she remembered that Ken Whittaker had been killed, along with those two kids, the rent-a-cops. Farnsworth was accompanied by Ben Keenan, who was his number two in the Roanoke FBI office. Keenan, who had been away on annual vacation, had come back in after the explosion.
There were three other men, whom she did not recognize, but they looked like feds. They filed in behind the RA and gathered around the end of the bed. She saw a state trooper standing on guard outside her door before Farnsworth shut it. She was almost glad to see them, until Farnsworth introduced the three other men as being from the ATE Two of them appeared to be in their early thirties, and the third was much older. She nodded carefully as each was introduced, then promptly forgot their names.
“How’s Ransom?” she asked, remembering his crumpled form.
“Not terrific,” Keenan said.
“Took a piece of re bar through the head.
