rat’s ass if there’s some kinda heavy-side layer developing on this case.
I want to know the who and the how of what happened to Walsh and Schmidt, even if we locals do end up getting shut down here.”
He was looking straight at Train, his body language sending a pretty clear signal. Train said he understood. As Mcnair walked away, Train checked that Gutter was still in the back of the car. He waved to Mcnair, who was now talking to Lieutenant Bettino, got in, and backed up to turn the big vehicle around. He drove past the patrol cop who was watching the front gate, then headed for the village of Great Falls, where he parked in the shopping center parking lot. Once parked, he got on the car phone and called the office. One message-from Mccarty: “Check in when you have something to report. The admiral is very upset.”
Train thought about that. I’ll just bet he is. The admiral had charged him with keeping Karen safe. Now she was missing. He put a call into Captain Mccarty. The yeoman said that the EA was in a meeting with the admiral but that he’d left a message for Mr. von Rensel in case he called.
“He said to read it to you, sir. Verbatim.”
“Shoot.”
““Orders from JAG. Back out of the Sherman matter.
Focus on the Lawrence problem exclusively until you receive further orders.’ “Say it again, please.”
The yeoman read it back to him. “That’s all of it, sir.
Uh, the EA wanted to know that you understood.”
“Okay, reply as follows-. Orders understood. Will com. I ply”
Movement. Karen felt movement in the haystack. Her heart quickened. Had the police found her? Or was this her abductor coming back? She fought down the urge to thrash or struggle. Go limp, she commanded her body. Go limp and maybe Definite movement. The weight on her chest eased, and then the nearest bales were being removed. One at a time, not the urgent scrabbling of rescuer’s hands.
Damn. Wrong finders.
A bale was lifted off the edge of her face. Now the one on her hips.
Then the one across her thighs. Breathe. Control. In. Hold it. Out, slowly.
And then all the weights were off. She could feel the solid blocks of hay all around her, as if she were lying in a shallow grave in the middle of the haystack. The image spiked her fear, but she gritted her teeth and clamped down on it.
Control. She could feel but not hear. It was maddening.
Total helplessness.
Then there were hands, strong hands, under her shoulders and at her feet, lifting her out of the grave-no, the cavity in the haystack. Get that word grave out of Your mind. If they were going to kill you, they could have done it long ago. They. Had to be two of them. But they’re not going to just kill you. They could have done that by simply leaving you there, trussed, taped, utterly helpless in a rubber bag, and closing the zipper.
Control. Breathe. In. Out.
She felt herself being lifted and then carried, and she tried to visualize where they were in the hayloft. There had been at least four hundred bales of hay up there the last time she had dropped hay into the service room. About twenty square feet of bare floor around the trapdoor, the rest covered in piled bales. Were they going to drop her?
The trapdoor was the only way out of the hayloft, not counting the conveyor used to load the hay up into the loft-Then suddenly she was vertical, the strong hands letting go of her shoulders and holding what had to be straps on the bag, her feet no longer supported, but jammed down into the bottom of the bag by her own weight. She tensed, waiting to be dropped, but no, she was being lowered, bumping her back along the rungs of the ladder that came up through the trapdoor. She felt her feet hit the concrete of the ground floor, and then she was falling, sideways, into a heap on the floor. She grunted in pain as her left hip hit the cold concrete, but at the last instant, she remembered to go limp, protecting her head and shoulder.
She lay on the floor, her thoughts whirling. They were taking her somewhere, but where? And how? Was there a car pulled into the aisleway of the barn? What time was it?
Was it dark? Then, partially lifted by those shoulder straps, she was being dragged across the floor, her calves bouncing hard against the doodamb of the hay service room. Out of the service room and into the aisleway. Then she was dropped again, and this time she did bang her head.
Silence. Damn them for putting cotton in her ears and then taping it.
She was in nearly total sensory deprivation.
Eyes, ears, and mouth taped off, hands and feet immobilized. All the movement had produced a sudden, desperate need to urinate. How long had she been in the bag? What time was it now? What were they going to do with her?
Panic rising again. Control. Breathe. No point in struggling.
Hold your strength in reserve. Maybe they’ll free you, and then, then you can-what? One level of her mind was spinning out images of her coming out of the bag and surprising them, lashing out, hitting someone and then running away.
But below that level, her cooler subconscious mind knew that was all a pipe dream. She would come out of the bag with her joints stiff and rubbery and her muscles weak and spastic. Then they picked her up again, and she was being carried, carried like … well, a body. She went limp, waiting to be dropped again.
Train decided to drive back to Karen’s house after his call to the Pentagon. Twenty minutes later, he changed his mind and pulled into the rear parking lot of the French restaurant that Karen liked at the end of Springvale. There was a wall of Dumpster’s at the far end of the lot.
He parked near them to hide from any passing cops. He assumed the cops would be gone by now, but it was better to be safe. It was full dark as he shut down, and he waited to get his night vision adjusted.
He pulled a canvas satchel out from behind the driver’s seat and opened it. He shucked his coat and tie, then pulled on a large olive drab Marine Corps woolly pully sweater.
He exchanged his office dress shoes for a pair of well-worn -topped hiking boots. The suit pahts would just have to’t their chances.
Now for the good stuff. He double-clicked on the switch of the electric door lock and a panel toward the bottom Of the left-front door edged open. He removed a bolstered black Glock pistol and a four-inch sheath knife from the compartment in the door. He attached the sheath knife to the top of his right ankle. He eased the pistol out of its thin canvas holster and checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he stuffed the bolstered automatic into his waistband, at the small of his back, snapping a small canvas flap through a belt loop and covering the rig with the sweater. Not as good as a shoulder holster, but certainly along for the ride.
He pulled a small Maglite from the glove compartment and then stopped to think. Gloves, and something to cover his chrome dome. He fished around in the bag and then rooted in the side pockets of the front doors before finding a pair of black leather gloves and a black knit Navy watch head. cap. He pulled the cap over his He got out of the car, released Gutter from the back compartment, told him to heel, then broke into a casual jog through the big oaks surrounding the back of the parking lot and reached the verge of Beach Mill Road. There was no sidewalk, but most of the traffic was coming from behind him, homeward-bound, so he only occasionally had to leap out of the way of a car coming toward him. He actually passed another jogger going the other way. The guy was dressed out in a Day-Glo orange vest and was looking nervously at the big Doberman trotting along beside the even bigger man in the dark sweater and watch cap. Train wondered what warp factor the jogger could achieve if he turned around and started to follow him. He pressed on. It wasn’t far from here.
She was lowered, not dropped. But not into a car. What was it? They were turning her on her side and then bending her in the middle, forcing her into something, bending her trussed legs back toward her hips in an accordion fold. She couldn’t figure out what they were putting her in until suddenly she was jerked up into a slant, head up and her knees wedged down against the sides of something. The cart, the big Garden Way cart that sat in the aisle. They had dumped her into the cart and now she was rolling. She could feel the bumping through the bottom of the cart, almost hear the rumble of the wheels. Then a big bump. They had to be outside now, rolling over the rougher ground. But where?
Where were they taking her? It felt as if they were hurrying.
When Train passed Karen’s driveway, the gates were closed and appeared to be chained. There was a strip of yellow crime-scene tape fluttering behind the gates. He jogged on past for about two hundred yards, and then,
