“That’s right. Special Agent Janet Carter, Roanoke office.” She normally would have asked for his identification, but since she no longer had her own credentials, she had to finesse it.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re on orders to apprehend one Edwin Kreiss. Subject’s wanted in connection with a federal homicide warrant. Who is this with you, Agent Carter?”
“She’s my niece, visiting me from Washington.” The second man was standing three feet back from the right side of her car, in position to handle any sudden emergencies. Lynn was keeping her mouth shut and her hands were still beneath the blanket.
“And you’re going where?”
“I’m going to my uncle’s house; that’s a mile beyond the Kreiss cabin.”
“That… place? With all the junk? That’s your uncle?”
“Micah Wall. Her father, my father’s sister’s brother. We’re not necessarily proud of him, but, well, what I can I tell you? Now you know why I’m assigned to the Roanoke office.”
He nodded, obviously trying to sort through the father-brother-sister lineage.
“Would you mind waiting right here, please, Agent Carter? I have orders to call in anyone who comes down this road. There’s a pretty big manhunt up for this Kreiss guy.”
Janet shrugged.
“Sure, but can we make it quick? We’re late, and I’m tired of dancing through the damned deer on these mountain roads.”
He promised that he’d be right back and walked over to the Suburban, taking down her license plate number as he did so. The other man kept his station on the edge of the road, slightly behind her line of vision. She couldn’t see the third man inside the Suburban until the black man opened the door on the driver’s side.
“Hand me the cell phone,” she said quietly, “and hit the recall button and then the one for send when you do it. Move slowly.”
Lynn did as Janet asked, and Janet put the phone up to her ear. The man outside shifted his position when he saw Janet’s hand leave the steering wheel. The phone rang. C’mon, she thought urgently. C’mon. I need you to answer this time.
“Micah Wall,” a gnarly voice spoke into her ear.
“Mr. Wall, this is Janet Carter. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Edwin Kreiss. I have Lynn Kreiss in the car with me and we’re in trouble with the local law. We’re about a mile south of your place,
and we need somewhere to hide. And we may have some company on our tail when we get there.”
“Lynn Kreiss? She gone missin’,” Wall said. Janet handed the phone to Lynn, then leaned over to listen to what he said.
“Micah, it’s me. Dad’s in trouble and I need a place to hide.”
“How’n I know it’s you?”
“Lions, Micah. Dad’s cabin has lions in it.”
“Yeah, it does. C’mon, then. You got cops on your tail?”
“ATE”
There was a short laugh.
“The revenuers? Bring ‘em bast ids on.”
The connection was broken and Janet put the phone down. The black man was half in, half out of the Suburban, talking on either a radio or a phone. She could see him better now because there was suddenly more light, and then she realized there must be a vehicle coming up behind them, and coming fast. Really fast. She saw the man silhouetted in the right mirror moving back, his hands waving, and decided this was the moment. She slammed the car into drive and accelerated right at the Suburban. The black man looked back and then dived into the front seat as she clipped his door and roared past, fishtailing all over the place. She thought she heard a gunshot but it was hard to tell with all the gravel flying everywhere. She rounded the next curve as the other vehicle’s lights flooded her mirror, but then the hillside obscured them.
She took her foot off the gas momentarily to keep control of the car as she pushed it up the winding road.
“How far?” she asked Lynn, but Lynn didn’t answer. She glanced over and saw that Lynn was sagging against the opposite door, a confused look on her face.
“I think I’ve been shot,” she said in a weak voice. She pulled her right hand out from under the blanket and it was shiny with blood.
Janet swore and accelerated.
“Where are you hit?”
“I don’t know,” Lynn said in a dreamy voice.
“Back, I think. Side, maybe? It’s not too bad. Feels like I got kicked by a small horse.”
There was a brief flare of bright lights behind her, but then she rounded the next curve and hurried past Kreiss’s driveway. The next turn again blocked out the pursuing headlights. Another half a mile. She took it up as fast as she could. She couldn’t believe it—one of those aTF agents had fired at an FBI agent’s car? Even if they had found out she’d quit, they shouldn’t have been shooting. Unless-The bright headlights came up again in her mirror, and she realized the
aTF agents could not have gotten that big Suburban turned around and headed after her that quickly. This was the other car, and she had a sinking feeling she knew exactly who this was. She nearly lost it on the next curve, again shooting gravel and other roadside debris out into the woods.
“Hang in there, Lynn. Can you reach the spot? Can you feel where you’re hit?”
“No. I can’t—can’t move my right arm all that well anymore.” Her voice was drifting.
“Right side. My side is hurting real bad now.”
A straightaway opened up and Janet accelerated, trying to think of something she could do to slow down her pursuer. But then she came into the next turn, too fast, spinning the wheel, hitting the brakes, anything to get control, but the car spun out and actually rolled backward for a moment, tires squealing, before shooting ahead again back down the way they had come. She was about to slam on the brakes, but then she had an idea. She doused her headlights and braked to slow down. The sharp curve was dead ahead, behind which the loom of bright white lights was rising. She got it stopped right at her side of the curve, found her .38, and rolled the window back down. Holding one hand on the brights switch, she reached out with her left hand, extending the pistol and resting her wrist on the little metal valley formed by the mirror housing. In the next instant, the pursuing vehicle came sweeping around the curve. Janet flipped on her bright lights and opened fire with the .38, deliberately aiming low, right between the approaching headlights, letting off five rounds before diving down behind the steering wheel. There was a screech of brakes, an instant of silence, and then the roar of the other vehicle’s engine racing as it went crashing down into the scrub woods, smashing into rocks and small trees and then flipping partially over on its side in a hail of gravel and a spray of window glass.
Janet raised her head to look. The other car was a hundred feet down the embankment. Its headlights were still on, pointing up into the pine trees. Its left front wheel was spinning furiously. Janet did not hesitate.
She turned her car around and sped up the hill as fast as she could go, aware that Lynn wasn’t making any noise at all.
Browne McGarand got back to the propane truck at 11:30, after spending the afternoon and early evening asleep in a motel room. He was dressed in a set of dark coveralls that had lots of pockets. All of the equipment he would need was in the cab of the truck. He had made a detailed map of his
approach routes to the aTF building, and he had laid out a couple of possible escape routes once he’d abandoned the truck. The fake delivery manifest was on a clipboard by his side.
The night was cloudy, and the lights on the Pentagon building were fuzzy in the mist blowing in from the river. There had been no traffic in the approach roads to the Pentagon when he had walked over from Crystal City. He looked around the deserted parking lot and sighed. This was the moment he had been working toward all these months. Now there was nothing more to do than to get going. He got in, started up the truck, backed it across the parking area, and drove out onto the approach road, turning right to go under the elevated highway, then taking the tight ramp up to get on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. Big trucks were generally not allowed into the District, but fuel trucks were an exception. He was hoping not to be stopped. The manifest should get him by a cursory police
