P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“So, sport, who won the war up there?” he asked. The dogs greeted him warily-they didn’t like surprises or cigarettes.

“How’d you find us?” I asked.

He grinned, knelt down, and pulled the tracking transmitter from under the front wheel well. “Would you believe, federal voodoo?” he said. “For your own safety, you understand.” He put the thing back on the frame and stood up, dusting off his hands. “And where’s the rest of’us’?”

I put my stuff in the back and then sat down on the back bumper to tell him what had happened up there, and what we’d learned from Nathan about their child-trafficking business. I’d expected complete shock, but this only seemed to fulfill his worst expectations for the mountain criminal crowd.

“Parts? Human parts? From kids? A new low.”

I nodded. It was getting dark, and I was suddenly tired. We could hear the drone of another helicopter going over the ridge. I knew I needed to beat feet if we had any chance at all of saving the rest of the kids.

“There should be a fresh one in that glass hole or lava tube, whatever you want to call it,” I said. “Carrie’s up there leading the SBI through it. Assuming that they can retrieve a child’s body from that formation, and that Nathan is ready to come clean, they’ll finally have some physical evidence.”

“A body in something like that might never be found,” he said. “You know-bodies sink initially and then gas up a couple days later. But if that tube goes way down, it may not be possible to get it back. From what you’re saying, that thing could be several hundred feet deep.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, and explained about the light coming in from the main lake. “But it will take time and some specialized equipment, which is why I cut loose from the goat-grab up there.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’m headed for Grinny Creigh’s. There are five more kids still adrift, if Nathan was telling the truth.”

“Why not wait for the cavalry?”

“Same reason as last time-she hears Nathan’s in custody, she has to make those children disappear, and I’m betting they have other places where they can make that happen. Or she might run.”

He shook his head. “She’ll never run. Never in a million years.”

“Well, good, then I look forward to getting up with her,” I said.

He thought about that for a moment. “Want some backup?” he said finally.

“Where’s your crew?” I asked.

“I’m solo on this,” he said. “We’re not supposed to know you anymore, so I can’t involve my guys. They brought me up here when I found out that Mose had taken you into the hills. I actually came up to talk you guys into leaving this mess alone, but… kids?”

“We tried to tell people,” I said. “I’m not especially comforted by my government’s reluctance to jump into this with both feet. And from what Carrie found out, the federal response is being dictated more by turf boundaries than any sense of real urgency.”

“I know, I know,” he said, kicking a clump of grass. “I talked to my boss. At length. But he’s a fucking wimp. Keeps saying: Where’s the drug-enforcement angle in this? If she’s kidnapping children, then call Charlotte. If she’s moving meth, go catch her at it.”

It was my turn to think. Then I had an idea. “I was told there’s a hundred pounds of crystal meth in the escape tunnel behind the Creigh cabin.”

He looked over at me with visible skepticism. “Told? By whom?”

“Can’t say,” I said. “Have to protect my sources. But it’s a hundred pounds, all wrapped up for sale in the big city. Sounds like she’s moving meth to me.”

“That’s laughably weak,” he said. “My boss would throw you out of his office for bullshit like that. For bullshit less than that. Nobody wraps meth.”

“But your boss is a wimp,” I pointed out.

“Why, yes, he is,” Baby said.

“So: You want to go along? Explore this anonymous hot tip? Make it official?”

“Duty calls,” he said.

It was close to eleven that night when we reached the north end of that ridge-line crack above the Creigh place. Our vehicles back on the mountain had apparently not been disturbed, so I’d left a note for Carrie saying I was going to Grinny’s to find the missing kids. I left out any mention of Greenberg’s participation. I was counting on their not going back to retrieve Mose’s vehicle until they’d settled the various scenes up on the mountain, because once they did, and found the note, they’d have people all over Grinny’s. I wanted to have our one shot before that happened. I thought Baby was right: She’d corner up and fight, not run.

The night was cool and clear, and there was enough of a moon up to see pretty well. The shepherds were ready for some work, and so was I. We hunkered down in the Creigh-side end of the crack and scanned the cabin and buildings below. They were all dark, as usual, and there were no police vehicles there anymore, or none that we could see. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a deputy parked up under a tool shed down there, but the only police presence I could see was the occasional glimpse of a new tape line fluttering around the front of the main cabin. I also looked hard for sign of dogs-I think I was a lot more afraid of the Creigh dog pack than any lurking cops.

We still had the same problems with respect to approaching the cabin down that open hillside, so my plan involved getting back into that escape tunnel, whose entrance was beneath the lone tree fifty feet away. I pointed it out to Greenberg, who was duly impressed with the Creighs’ tunneling ability. I’d brought a shotgun instead of my rifle, and we each had a handgun. I had mine in my utility vest, along with a flashlight, extra ammo, a knife, and some water. Baby had his Glock in a hip holster and a flashlight. I wanted to get back into the house via the escape passage, make sure Grinny and her prisoners weren’t actually just sitting there in the kitchen, and then explore some of those other passages we’d seen on our way out.

With all that blubber onboard, I couldn’t feature Grinny Creigh making it through that narrow passage up to the main escape route, so I was pretty sure that she’d never left the Creigh compound. The house, maybe, but not the clutch of buildings. Nathan’s henchman had obliquely confirmed that when he told us Grinny had deliberately pointed us away from the cabin and out to the glass hole. Even a sheriff’s office forensic team hadn’t been able to find the escape tunnel, so I figured there had to be other hidey-holes buried back there behind that cabin. They’d had decades to dig and hide, and this couldn’t be the first time they’d had to go to the matresses in all that long history of smuggling and worse. Wherever she was holed up, it probably did not involve a lot of physical exertion to get there. On the other hand, I had to admit that she could just as easily have gotten into a vehicle right there at her front door and been driven off to Arkansas. But my instinct was that she was lurking in a hole somewhere, like the spider she was.

I’d asked Baby on the way over how in the world a bunch of drug-running hillbillies had managed to get into the horrible trade in pediatric organs. He surmised that they’d started by peddling kids to the truck-stop pimps throughout the South, then graduated into selling them into organized kiddy-porn and pedophile sex rings, the bulk of which operated in or around New Orleans.

“All those semis,” he said. “You know, with the big living quarters behind the cab? Perfect way to transport thirteen-year-old girls and boys across the country. There’s a known market for blue-eyed blonds in Washington, no questions asked and big money. Probably only been a matter of time before someone with connections in the courier systems approached them about upping the ante.”