propane truck. I think he has a truckload of hydrogen. That would make a helluva truck bomb.”
“This what you really mean by quid pro quo, Carter? You get my daughter out of harm’s way if I’ll prevent a bombing?”
“I’ll try to help your daughter regardless, Mr. Kreiss. But right now, the people who mean you harm are depending on your staying true to form: an eye for an eye, blood for blood, heads on pikes. Why don’t you try doing a good deed for once? Think of how badly that would confound your enemies.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Impudent goddamn woman.
“Now that you’re a civilian, you’re getting devious, Carter,” he said.
“Hey?” she said.
“What?”
“You ever going to call me by my first name?”
“Don’t know you well enough,” he replied.
“Gotta boogie.”
He hung up the phone and strode back to the van, kicking an empty Coke can halfway across the parking lot. He got in and slammed the door shut.
Decision time. Ever since his termination, he had had some preplanned disappearance arrangements in place. But until he knew that Lynn was safe, he wasn’t really free to move. The next twenty-four hours would be crucial. Misty was already in Roanoke, and he had not been exaggerating about her starting a fire. Even in a hospital, it was what he would have done. He hadn’t given Carter anywhere near enough
information to prepare herself for what Misty might do. He considered calling her back, then decided against it. His using the telephone credit card would bring someone here pretty quick. He had to move. The question of where didn’t matter all that much right now.
But what to do about McGarand? He was not about to indulge in altruism at this late stage in his life. On the other hand, Carter was right from a tactical standpoint: Misty and company would expect him to bolt, to go to ground, possibly to a hidey-hole they already knew about. If instead he continued to hunt McGarand, that would be unexpected. He’d already spun his wheels looking for that truck. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Instead of looking for a rolling truck bomb, maybe he ought to look for the truck bomb’s target. If this was about Waco, that left two possibilities, both of them easy targets for a determined truck bomber. He started up and drove out of the exchange parking lot, heading back to Route 1 and Washington. He thought about Carter. She’d do, for an amateur.
Janet hung up the phone and got back into her car. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater, having had to take a second shower to get all that sticky crap off once the woman had released her arms and hands. She drove back to her town house from the convenience store. Propane truck, she thought. Hydrogen bomb. She shivered at the thought. That aTF expert had said it had been a gas explosion. Okay: A propane truck was designed to carry gas, or at least she was pretty sure it was. Or was propane a liquid? Damn! But she’d been right: Kreiss had gone after McGarand, which, as far as she was concerned, confirmed that McGarand was already in Washington. With a propane truck fall of—what?
Propane? Or hydrogen? Either one, she thought. Either one would generate a real crowd-pleaser.
She got home, parked, and went in. She went through the house to make sure there was no one else there. Situational awareness of a tree-bitch had hurt her feelings. So what was the target? Lynn had said the bearded man claimed to be going after a “legitimate target.” As in, I’m going after combatants, not innocent civilians. McGarand had lost his only son at Waco. Son of a bitch, she thought with a sudden cold certainty:
He’s going after Bureau headquarters. The FBI had been in charge at Waco, at least by the time the Mount Carmel compound had been torched. Aided and abetted by their smaller cousins, the BATE She looked at her
watch: It was almost seven o’clock. She went into the kitchen and dialed into the Roanoke FBI office, got the after-hours tape, and hit the extension for the RAs office. There was no answer, then main voice mail. She hung up, remembered he’d given her his home number, but then couldn’t find it. The number was in her case notebook, which was in her office. Her ex-office, she reminded herself. She looked Farnsworth up in the phone book for the Roanoke area. Not listed. She called the Roanoke office number back. When the tape came up, she hit three digits and her call was forwarded to the day’s duty officer, an agent who worked in the felony fraud squad. His phone was in use, but she did get his voice mail. She groaned, then left a message that she needed to get an urgent message to the RA about a possible bomb threat against Bureau headquarters and gave her home number. Then she hung up and went to make a cup of coffee. The phone rang in five minutes, and it was the duty officer, Special Agent Jim Walker.
“Got your call,” he said.
“Called the boss, gave him your message and your phone number. But don’t hold your breath. Is it true you resigned today?”
“Yes, I did, but I have new information.”
“Well, um, what the boss said was, and I quote, “Janet Carter no longer works for the Bureau, and one of the reasons is that she’s become obsessed with this notion of a bomb threat to Washington. I may call her and I may not.” Okay?”
His tone was faintly patronizing, with none of the familiar agent-to agent courtesy. It pissed her off, but she held her anger in check.
“No, not okay,” she said quickly.
“Please, would you make one more call?”
“Hey, Carter—” “Please! I know you think you’re dealing with a hysterical female. But look, if there is a bombing, do you want to be the one link in the chain of precursor events that did not pass on vital information? When some independent prosecutor comes investigating? Remember Waco? This involves Waco.”
Walker didn’t say anything, and she knew she’d touched a nerve. These days everyone in the Bureau considered his or her every action in light of what might happen later if the case, investigation, or operation recoiled on them. She pressed him.
“Just call Farnsworth back and tell him that Browne McGarand, that’s Browne with an e, went to Washington with a propane truck. That the hydrogen bomb isn’t a nuclear device—it’s hydrogen gas, which is what probably did the arsenal power plant. Got all that?”
“That explosion at the arsenal? Hydrogen bomb? Are you fucking serious?”
“Please, Jim, just make the call. Please? Tell him exactly what I just told you.” She repeated it.
“If he chews your ass for bothering him, tell him you’re so sorry, hang up, log the call, and go back to watching TV. But then if something happens, it’s on him, not you, right?”
Walker reluctantly agreed to make the call and hung up. Janet let out a long sigh: She had done the best she could. If they chose to ignore this, then it would indeed be on their heads. She wondered if she shouldn’t put a call into Bureau headquarters operations, but then she realized she didn’t have the number. It was in her official phone book at her office, at her ex-office, she realized again. She’d get what any civilian who called the Bureau headquarters would get: a polite tape recording introducing the caller to a menu labyrinth. Life was going to be very different now that she wasn’t part of the most powerful law-enforcement organization in the country. Those FBI credentials had given her almost automatic entree into any place or situation. Now she was just Janet Carter, unemployed civilian. She almost felt a bit naked. But at least now Kreiss would have to stop calling her “Special Agent.”
She went into the kitchen, wanting a drink, not coffee, but satisfied herself with the coffee. She was hoping the phone would ring again, with Farnsworth on the other end this time. But he didn’t call. That damned Kreiss. She started pacing her kitchen floor. How long should she wait?
Kreiss had been pretty specific about her moving quickly to protect his daughter. That might end up being a tough play, especially now that she no longer had any standing as a law-enforcement official. On the other hand, Lynn had seemed pretty strong, and stashing the girl with a bunch of mountain hillbillies might be the perfect answer, especially if they were his friends.
She got out the area phone book and found a number for an M. Wall on Kreiss’s road. The phone rang, but there was no answer. She wrote down the number on a scrap of paper, put it in her pocket, finished her coffee, and went back upstairs to her bedroom. She took out the Detective’s Special hidden in her sock drawer and then rooted around in the closet until she found the waist holster for it. She checked to make sure it was loaded, then clipped it
