“That’s Lynn Kreiss,” she said, pointing into the car.
“I think she’s been shot. We need some help.”
“Who done it?” an authoritative voice asked from the darkness.
“A federal agent who was chasing us. I forced her off the road about a half a mile back there. But if she isn’t seriously injured, she’ll be here very soon.”
“She?” The voice sounded incredulous.
“That’s right. Please? We need to see to Lynn. She’s bleeding.”
Micah Wall materialized out of the darkness and introduced himself while three men went to the other side of the car and lifted Lynn out.
Janet told him her name, shook his hand, and then went around the front of the car. The girl groaned but did not resist when they laid her out on the ground on her uninjured side, illuminated by the wedge of light coming from the car’s interior. One of them lifted the back of Lynn’s shirt, revealing an entrance wound on the lower-right side of her back. A second man grunted and leaned forward, a long knife suddenly glistening in his hand. Before Janet could object, he probed the wound and then lifted out a spent bullet. The bleeding increased immediately, as if blood had been dammed up behind the bullet, but Janet realized that the wound was not significant. The bullet’s passage through the car’s metal body and the upholstery must have slowed it down.
“Less’n there’s another one, this ain’t too bad,” the man with the knife said. He had a full black beard and a face like a hatchet. He
pulled out a handkerchief, folded it, and pressed it against the wound. Janet hoped it was cleaner than the surroundings.
“Take her up to the house, Big John,” Wall said.
“Tommy, Marsh, y’all help him. Git some sulfa dust and a real bandage on that. Rest of us, we gotta git ready to met this lady badass, supposed to be comin’ round the mountain any minute now.”
Janet told him about the fire in the hospital, and her suspicion that the woman had started it deliberately. Micah nodded slowly, looking around at the dark woods.
“Yonder girl’s daddy, he kept some interesting company.
Why’n’t you leave your car here, go on up to the house. See to the girl. Boys’n me, we’ll wait and see what comes along.”
“Be careful,” Janet said over her shoulder as she stepped past the telephone pole.
“This woman was Edwin Kreiss’s instructor.”
“That so,” Micah muttered.
“Well, then, I wish I had me some other daddy’s lions. Or maybe that there Barrett. Spread out, boys.”
Browne McGarand awoke at just before 2:00 a.m. and sat up in the seat.
The truck’s windows were all opaque with dew. He leaned forward and hit the wiper switch for one cycle to clear the windshield, then rolled down his window. The same windows that had been showing lights before in the aTF building were still lighted, which meant that they had simply left the lights on. He reached up and picked the lens cover off the interior cabin light and took out the bulb. Then he opened the door and got out.
The temperature had dropped noticeably, and the night was now clearing.
There were no traffic sounds coming from Massachusetts Avenue below, and the remaining cars on the roof deck had fully opaque windows.
He walked to the back of the truck, stretching his knees, and then to the very back corner of the parking deck. He put his head over the low concrete wall and listened. The sound of vent fans coming from the HVAC building in the alley was much reduced. Good, he thought. They had put the system on low speed for the night. Blocking one of the intake screens wouldn’t raise any system alarms at that fan speed. He checked the time again and then went back to the truck. The hose reel on the back unrolled in the direction of the aTF building. There was a modified brass connector nozzle on the end he was going to lower. At the truck end, the hose was not connected at all, leaving it open to the atmosphere.
He began pulling hose off the reel, being very careful not to damage the modified brass connector nozzle. He hefted it over the concrete wall and let it down into the darkness. After a few minutes, the
weight of the hose began to pull itself off the reel and he had to go back to the reel and set the brake halfway to keep it from running away. When a white blaze of paint on the hose showed up, he set the reel brake all the way and then checked the hose. The gleaming brass connector was hanging just a few feet above the surface of the alley. He resumed letting it out until a second blaze of paint marked the length he needed to get the nozzle over to the intake screens. He reset the brake.
He knew that he was entering the period of greatest exposure, because now he would have to go down, enter the alley, attach the plastic tarp to the one screen to blank it off, and then attach a second tarp, with a nozzle receiver fitting sewn into its center, to the second screen. At that point, all the intake air for the ventilation system would be sucked through that one fitting. If it wasn’t big enough, he should see a lot of strain on both tarps.
If he had to, he could peel back two or three corners to keep sufficient air moving. Then he would attach the end of the tanker’s hose to the fitting on the tarp and trip the discharge lever. As long as the two tarps and the receiver nozzle let in just enough air, he could go on back up. After that, it would be a matter of choosing the best time to begin sending in the hydrogen gas. He wanted as many of those bastards in the building as possible when the hydrogen reached critical volume, but the more people that were around, the higher were the chances of someone discovering the rig.
Ideally, he wanted the blast to take place as close as possible to 8:00 A.M. Based on his calculations it would take around ninety minutes to fill the building with an explosive mixture, so gas injection had to begin no later than 6:30. It would still be dark at 6:30, but not for long. He wished now he had some way to spark the mixture from outside the building, if for some reason it didn’t ignite, but they had not been able to devise anything that would do that. Besides, he did not plan to hang around. He checked his watch again: 2:35. The minutes were passing slowly. He wanted to get going, but he knew that he would have to be patient and flexible. Hooking up the hose would be relatively easy: If they hadn’t spotted the hose coming down into the alley, they probably would not spot him. Then it would all depend on the whole lash-up remaining invisible until 8:00 a.m. He made sure the hose brake was secured, then unstrapped the five-gallon gasoline can he’d mounted on the back step of the truck. He took it to the cab, set it down in the middle of the bench seat, and taped on the ignition device, setting it for 8:00 A.M. That would take care of the truck if
the building explosion didn’t. Then he closed the doors, locked them, walked over to the interior exit ramp, and started down into the darkness of the parking garage.
It was just after 4:00 A.M. when the two agents finally signed Kreiss out of Metro Police custody. After retrieving the envelope with his wallet, watch, and keys, they escorted him out of the building. Then the agents put him into the backseat of their four-door government sedan, which was parked in the lot for patrol cars at the side of the station. They made him sit right in the middle of the backseat, and they kept him cuffed.
Lanny buckled both rear seat belts around him, so that if he tried to move, there would be two latches he would have to undo. Kreiss was perfectly happy with this arrangement, and even happier that there had been no hookup wire to which he could have been cuffed in the backseat.
While Lanny waited in the car with Kreiss, Johnstone went back into the precinct station and came back out with two coffees. The two G-men sat in the car with their coffee for a few minutes, making a point of enjoying it while Kreiss went without. Then Lanny called into their operations center on the car’s radio and reported that they were transporting the subject to Langley, as per previous direction. The ops center acknowledged and told them to report when delivery had been made. Lanny rogered and hung up.