“Ed Kreiss, he did me a real big favor, back when he first moved up here on the mountain. Didn’t even know me or none of my kin, and he saved one a my boys. His name’s Ben. He’s a big’ un but Ben, he’s a mite simple.
Three old boys from the Craggit bunch over on Moultrie Mountain took it into their rock heads to whup Ben’s ass. They caught up with him out on the county road and was fixin’ to flat bust his head with some tire irons. Don’t rightly know why. Old Ed, he come up on it. Said Ben was rolled up in a ball under his truck, and them bast ids was yankin’ on him.
Old Ed said they was fixin’ to kill him, most like. Old Ed, he went after them bast ids with his truck, knocked two of ‘em clean off the road and down into Hangman’s Creek. Third one run off. Then he brung Ben home.”
“Tell her about the Craggits,” Lynn said.
Micah grinned again.
“Oh, yeah, them Craggits came around, goin’ to git ‘em some ree-venge on Ed Kreiss. He heard ‘em comin’ somehow, turned that big fifty-cal loose on the Craggits’ pickup trucks. They went a-howlin’ and a-yellin’ out into the woods, and then old Ed, he cut loose with them lion sounds into them woods. Them Craggits laid a trail a loose shit all the way back over to Moultrie Mountain. Time since, goin’ on four years now, old Ed’n me become pretty good neighbors.”
“I’m probably being impolite,” Janet said, “but I have to ask: What do you and all these people do up here, Mr. Wall?”
“We git by,” he said, revealing just a hint of a smile. Janet smiled back, understanding that was all she was going to learn.
“Well, look, there’s probably a warrant out for my arrest right now,” she said.
“I ran a federal roadblock last night. And I shot at—well, I’m not sure who the hell she was. But I suppose she’s federal, after a fashion.”
Micah spat onto the dirt floor of the hut.
“Them folks out there, they’s all gov-mint. Got the smell and the look about ‘em. Them people don’t belong up here. Never have, never will. One day, they gonna learn that.
These the same bast ids shot down that woman and chile up on Ruby Ridge. Too many of ‘em just killers with badges is all. They chasin’ that boy Rudolph down in Carolina?” He spat again.
“Shee-it. They ain’t never gonna find that boy. Mountain folk got ‘im hid and hid good.”
The agent in Janet got the better of her.
“That guy Rudolph set bombs that killed and maimed some people,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what they say. But you willin’ to bet they gonna take him alive?”
“Well, if they catch up with him, he’ll certainly get that option,” she said.
“You reckon? Them folks at Waco, they didn’t git that option,” Wall said.
“How’s a man gonna git his day in court, when them revenuers come a-shootin’ first an’ asking’ questions later?”
Janet had no answer for that one. Lynn was looking down at the dirt floor of the hut.
“Now I’m sorry we put you in this fix, Mr. Wall,” Janet said.
“They might try to arrest all of you, take you off the mountain for obstruction of justice.”
Micah nodded.
“I reckon we’ll do the best we can, they come for us.”
He straightened up.
“Meantime, y’all lay low in here, till old Ed comes for you. And, like I said, keep an ear peeled for any dog ruckus up at the front.
Trap’ll slow ‘em down, but y’all gotta go if they hit it.”
“What kind of trap is it?”
“When I leave, my boys’ll take a hornet nest we sacked last night. Set it up in the passage. Them hornets, they gonna go for the lights.”
“Big nest?”
‘“Bout a million,” Micah said, eyes twinkling.
Janet grinned in spite of herself. She could just see it.
He gathered up the bag.
“Now, lemme show you something’ else. Them people out there—if they come in a-shootin’? That’s different. You open that trapdoor, grab you some lanterns; then you light this fuse right there—you see it? There’s the matches. Light it; then pull that trapdoor down. Then y’all git on down that passage till you get to the first turn.
They’s a dead-end branch passage, goes to the right. Git in that, git down, and stop up your ears.”
Lynn, who had been listening to all this, was nodding her head. Micah checked to see that the lanterns had fuel, then stepped back out the front door of the hut and disappeared into the front passage. Janet examined the fuse, but she wasn’t so sure about doing what the old man had recommended.
Just last week, she could have been one of the people coming in here. On the other hand, somebody seemed to be rewriting all the rules when it came to Edwin Kreiss and his daughter. Just like they did at Waco, she thought. That fire in the hospital, for instance. That had been way out there. And that guy Browne McGarand, going up to Washington with a truckload of hydrogen to blow something up. This old man could crack wise about it, but these people up here were obviously convinced that the government and all its works could not be trusted. If they came in with tracking dogs, looking, they ran into bear grease and
hornets. If they came in with snipers, flash-bangs, and tear gas, as they had proved they could from time to time, they’d get the cave dynamited down on their heads.
Lynn said she was going to explore the trapdoor at the back and make sure they could get it open. Janet sat down at the tiny wooden table and put her head in her hands. Her people had to know she was up here in the mountains with Lynn Kreiss. They’re not your people anymore, are they?
a little voice in her head reminded her. Micah Wall and his people were protecting her until—what? Until Kreiss could get back? She felt as if she were out on the moon somewhere. Last week, she had been a federal agent; now, in the space of a day and a night, she was a federal fugitive.
She began to understand the meaning of the phrase “out in the cold.” She wondered what Farnsworth and her coworkers at the Roanoke office were doing right now: Combing the hills for the two of them? Sitting back and pretending that she did not exist? Waiting for instructions and the spin d’jour from the bosses in Washington? The same bosses who wouldn’t listen to warnings of a bomb plot, and who were apparently more interested in embarrassing another government agency than in protecting peoples’ lives?
What she instinctively wanted to do was call into the Roanoke office and check in, talk to somebody, see what the hell was going on. But whom could she call? Not RA Farnsworth. And not Larry Talbot, who would be too scared to take her call. Not Keenan. She didn’t know anybody in the ATE And not Edwin Kreiss, who was God knew where, and who had at least the Bureau hunting for him, if not the ATR And the Agency, don’t forget the blessed Agency.
Lynn, who had gone through the trapdoor, squeezed back into the hut.
“I left a couple of lanterns and some matches in the passageway. He wasn’t kidding about narrow.”
“Make sure we have that map,” Janet said.
“If we have to escape that way, I want to be able to find my way back out of this mountain.”
“I’ve got it right here, next to the door. You suppose this fuse goes to dynamite or something?”
“Yes. It will probably bring this part of the cave down.”
Lynn came over to the table and sat down, wincing when her ribs touched the table.
“I wish I knew where my father was,” she said.
“And what the hell was going on.”
“That makes nine of us,” Janet said.
“I’m almost tempted to go back out front, see if I can find a phone.”
“Whom would you call?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t exactly know who my friends are right now. Or who’s chasing us. Where the hell does that woman get off, anyway—starting a fire in a fucking hospital! Those Agency people aren’t even supposed
