William Krueger - The Devil's bed

“I talked it over with David. I pointed out to him that it would probably come down to a question of his word against the Jorgensons’. In a trial, all the sordid details of his own past would become public knowledge. Did he really want that? He looked at me, and he asked, did I believe him?”

After a few moments of silence, Bo said, “Did you?”

The priest contemplated the last of his beer and thought awhile before he answered. “I’ve worked with troubled kids most of my life. Every once in a while they’ve fooled me, but not often. Yes, I believed him. Or believed, at least, whoever it was who attacked Kate Jorgenson, it wasn’t David. But I also believed absolutely Tom Jorgenson wouldn’t assault his own daughter. So there didn’t seem to be a clear truth anywhere. This much I did know. Once a jury heard David’s history, there was no way in hell they were going to believe him. In the end, I told him it didn’t matter what I thought. But I did suggest that going away was an answer that would hurt no one. He looked at me as if I’d simply washed my hands of him, abandoned him completely. Shortly after that, I signed his enlistment papers.” The priest finished his drink and shoved the empty glass away. “Now you tell me these things about David, and how can I not believe I had a hand in shaping him to this?”

The priest looked ready to slide under the table.

“Father Cannon, if David Moses has revenge on his mind, you may be in danger, too.”

The priest waved off his concern. “I corresponded with him briefly after he left. I told him I prayed for his well-being. He wrote me back saying that he felt no animosity toward me. It was the Jorgensons who’d betrayed him.” He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Mr. Thorsen, I’m tired. Is there anything more I can do for you?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve been helpful.”

The priest picked up his ball bag and started out. He turned back. “What we are, we are forever. David may have done some horrible things, but inside him somewhere is still a remarkable human being. Please, whatever it is you ultimately have to do, try to keep that in mind.”

The priest left through the lounge door and pushed out into the warm, dark night, leaving Bo to wonder what, ultimately, it was that he would have to do.

Nightmare checked his watch. Ten-forty. Sixteen minutes until the moon set. It was time.

He lay in the orchard grass, beyond the range of the motion detectors and the infrared cameras mounted on the stone wall. He wore midnight tiger camouflage fatigue pants and a T-shirt of the same design. The exposed skin of his face and arms was painted with a tiger stripe pattern of dark blue and black to match his clothing. Something fluttered among the trees behind him. Nightmare glanced back and watched an owl swoop and snatch up some small animal, then flap away, a black shape across the stars.

A dark figure walked along the edge of the orchard. Nightmare flattened himself against the ground. As soon as the patrolling agent had passed, Nightmare lifted the sod that covered the wood cap over the entrance to a tunnel just over two feet wide, and he reeled in his field pack. He’d crawled through the tunnel from the other side of the wall, dragging the pack that was tethered to his ankle by a short length of nylon rope. The weather in the two weeks since he’d completed the digging had been clear, and the passage under the wall was dry. The tunnel was exactly thirty-four feet long. He knew the capability of the motion detectors, and he’d placed the entrance and exit just beyond their range. Tom Jorgenson’s lax concern about his personal safety had allowed Nightmare the freedom to construct the tunnel, which had taken him nearly three weeks, working nights after his shift at the hospital. He’d intended from the beginning to fall back on an assault against Wildwood if the hospital bombing plan had to be abandoned. From the pack, he drew out his Beretta 92F and the suppressor, a 7.4-inch M9-SD silencer. He fitted the suppressor into the muzzle of the Beretta and gave it a quarter turn to lock it in place. He slipped off his T-shirt and donned a dark blue Kevlar vest. It was uncomfortable against his bare skin, but it was essential. He pulled his T-shirt back on over the vest, hefted the pack onto his back, and began to track the agent who’d passed only a minute before. He knew the agent had night-vision goggles. Nightmare carried nothing of the kind, for to him the dark was an old friend.

The agent had no idea an intruder was at his back and made no sound when the silenced round entered the back of his skull. Nightmare knelt and from the belt of the fallen agent unclipped the transmitter that sent a location signal back to the Op Center. He pulled a battery-powered vehicle the size of a loaf of bread from his pack. It was a mechanism of his own construction, built from components he’d ordered from Radio Shack. It consisted of a powerful little motor and receiver on a chassis that would roll across the ground on small tank tracks. The receiver was set to follow the signal of a tiny homing device Nightmare had secured to an overhanging tree limb near the end of the orchard a few days earlier. He’d adjusted the tanklike mechanism so that it would travel at about the speed a careful agent might keep in making rounds. With a bit of duct tape, he affixed the agent’s transmitter to the chassis and sent the device rolling forward under its own power along the same course the agent had been walking. For approximately eight minutes, the dot on the screen of the Op Center that monitored the agent’s position would continue to move. Once the little tank passed under the tree limb where the homing device had been secured, it would stop. Three minutes later, the Op Center would try to make contact to ascertain the reason for the agent’s pause. That gave Nightmare eleven minutes to complete his mission.

He sprinted across the orchard, ducking branches that bent low under the weight of ripening fruit. He knew that although the agents varied their rounds along the perimeter, they attempted to maintain their position relative to each other. Knowing the location of one, Nightmare could make a good assumption about the location of the other, and he moved to intercept.

He took the second agent down from the side with a single shot through the temple. As he’d done before, he snatched the location transmitter and taped it to a second motorized vehicle that he sent rolling through the orchard toward a homing device on the same heading the agent would have followed. Then he turned toward the main house.

He knew the range of the cameras mounted around the compound, and he’d already selected the best location for the next shot that night. He took up a position behind a gnarled old apple tree at the edge of the orchard behind the house. Sighting carefully on the camera mounted under the eaves that gave the Operations Center a view of the back door, he squeezed off a round and the camera jerked. He waited. Within a minute, the door of the guesthouse opened and an agent emerged. The agent went to the barn and came out with a ladder that he carried to the back corner of the house. He placed the ladder against the wall and shined a flashlight up at the camera. He unclipped a small walkie-talkie from his belt.

“Russell here. I can’t tell what the problem is yet.” He lifted his foot onto the first rung.

Nightmare put a round squarely between the man’s shoulder blades. The agent went forward, as if shoved from behind, bounced off the aluminum ladder, and fell back in a heap. Nightmare ran to him and put another round between his eyes. He grabbed the walkie-talkie and spoke in a rough approximation of the agent’s voice. “Squirrel damage.”