Having been a chemical explosives engineer, McGarand was surely qualified to construct a truck bomb. Look what McVeigh and company had done in OK City. If they had filled a propane truck with that much C-4 or even dynamite, it would be enough to put the Hoover Building out onto the Beltway.
Even from half a block away, he could see the array of security cameras on the building’s corners, and there were probably others right over his head. Most of downtown Washington was covered by surveillance cameras, and the Bureau’s headquarters was undoubtedly well covered. Some steely-eyed agent in the security control room could probably see him even now, standing out here on a street corner at 10:30 at night, looking at the headquarters. He started walking down the block toward Ninth Street, trying to act like a tourist, out from his hotel, taking a walk, getting some fresh air. He looked mostly straight ahead, but
he was able to scan the Constitution Avenue side of the Hoover Building without being too obvious about it. When he got to Ninth Street, he dutifully waited for the crosswalk signal. If anyone was watching him, that simple act would brand him as a definite out-of-towner. He kept going east, leaving the building behind him, passing the huge National Gallery of Art on his right, until he reached Fourth Street, at which point, he sprinted across Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues and then walked back northwest up Pennsylvania. This would take him along the diagonal segment of the headquarters building, where once again the pronounced overhang of the upper floors made the place look like a fort. But it was a fort with the same terrible vulnerability to a large truck bomb, and McGarand probably knew this. The question was, Did McGarand plan to make this a suicide bombing, or was he going to try to survive the operation?
He kept going up Pennsylvania, assuming he had been tracked along the sidewalk by the television cameras, until he was out of sight of the building. Then he cut back down along Fifteenth Street, walking by the White House and the Treasury Building, where the security forces were very visible. All the immediately adjacent streets near the White House were blocked off with large concrete objects in all directions, in celebration, no doubt, of the president’s popularity among the lunatic fringe. He kept his hands in his pockets and walked briskly down to Constitution, where once again he waited for the crossing signal.
He had seen dozens of no trucks signs on the bridges and along the main downtown streets, but he had also seen a large heating-oil tanker truck, bearing the logo of the Fannon Heating Oil Company, maneuvering into an alley behind the Smithsonian Building institution, across the Mall. So the propane truck would not have been an automatic stop for the local cops. McGarand must have known this, too. But getting a heating oil truck up next to the Hoover Building would require a ton of paperwork and advanced scheduling. Then a cop car swung in alongside the curb, going the wrong way. The driver’s window rolled down.
“Help you, sir?” the cop asked.
“Nope,” he said.
“Out for a walk. Got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m nervous as hell about it. This area’s okay, isn’t it?”
“If it isn’t, we’re all in big trouble,” the cop said, nodding his head back toward the White House.
“You have a good evening.”
The light changed and Kreiss crossed Constitution and headed back to the van. The Hoover Building might be the target, but, based on what
those cops had just done, it was also within the security envelope of the White House. A thought had occurred to him: Given that McGarand’s motive might be Waco, there was another possible target.
Janet drove carefully down the darkened mountain road, alert for deer on the road and lights in her rearview mirror. She had seen neither since turning off 460, and she hoped to keep it that way. Lynn was dozing in the passenger seat, the hospital blanket wrapped around her, despite the car’s heater being on. Janet’s clothes were just about dry, and she had the .38 out on the seat beside her. The girl had saved them both with that fire extinguisher trick, and perhaps had disabled their pursuer, at least for the night. It would depend on what kind of extinguisher that had been. A blast of CO2 in the eyes ought to do some damage.
She glanced into the rearview mirror again, but it was still dark. She woke Lynn.
“Do you recognize where we are?” she asked.
Lynn blinked and watched the headlights for a minute. They descended a steep hill and crossed a creek. Green eyes blazed at them from the creek bed and Janet tapped the brake.
“Yes, we’re about ten minutes from Dad’s cabin. Micah’s is a half a mile beyond. Nobody following us?”
“Not so far,” Janet said, looking in the mirror again. It would have been pretty damned obvious if there had been a vehicle back there. The night around Pearl’s Mountain was clear, but there was no moon, and the surrounding forest was dense and dark. She would not have liked to have driven that road without headlights.
“We’ll have to be careful going up to Micah’s,” Lynn said.
“That’s sometimes a crowd that shoots first, asks questions later.”
“What are they so sensitive about?”
Lynn laughed.
“They’re Appalachian mountain people. They distrust anyone who spends more than an hour a day walking on flat ground.
They make their own clothes, grow most of their own food, and hunt down the meat they eat. They also make their own whiskey, grow their own dope, and operate a pretty interesting black economy of barter and trade, for which they pay no taxes.”
“Sounds pretty good.”
“Well. It does, until you get a close look at sanitary conditions, pediatric health, the death rate from cancers caused by chewing
tobacco, the infant mortality rate, the prevalence of incest and other self-destructive practices. Paradise it is not. But they hew to their way of life, and treat outsiders poorly.”
“How did your father come to fit in?”
“Think about it, Agent Carter. Dad was a professional hunter. He’s a loner. He’s more than a little scary to be around. I think they recognized one of their own. Plus, he saved Micah Wall’s youngest son from a bad situation, literally the day he moved into the cabin.”
Janet braked hard to allow three small deer to bound across the road.
“What this guy Wall like?”
“Micah Wall is a damned hoot. He’s got this dog—it’s like a Jack Russell terrier mix? The dog’s idea of fun is when Micah brings out this huge old western-style Colt .45 and sits on his back porch. The dog takes off and Micah shoots right in front of it, and the dog chases the bullets when they go ricocheting around the back sheds and all the junk out there. He calls the dog Whizbang.”
They went down a long, dark hill, crossed another creek, and began to climb again. As they rounded the hairpin turn that came up just before the entrance to Kreiss’s cabin, Janet swore and braked hard again, this time to avoid a large white Suburban that was parked partially across the road, with only its parking lights on. There was barely enough room for her to pass the larger vehicle, and she would have to stop first to manage it. As she got her car stopped, two men got out of the Suburban. They were wearing windbreakers with aTF emblazoned in reflective tape, khaki pants, and ball caps with the aTF logo. She could see a third man inside the vehicle when they opened their doors. There were several aerials on the top of the Suburban, but no police lights.
“Shit,” Janet murmured.
“What do we do?” Lynn asked, gathering the blanket around her.
“Hold on to this,” Janet said, passing the .38 to Lynn as she rolled the window down. Lynn reached under the blanket and put it in her lap.
Then Janet reached back into the seat-back pouch and pulled out her own ball cap, which had FBI emblazoned on it. The men came up on either side of Janet’s car, but Janet told Lynn not to roll her window down.
“What’s going on?” she said to the man who came up to the driver’s side. He was a large black man, who kept one hand in his coat pocket.
She put both hands on the top of the steering wheel so he could see them.
“Evening, ma’am. We’re with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms.” He glanced nervously at Lynn’s hands resting beneath the blanket. Then he saw Janet’s ball cap.
“You’re Bureau?”
