Greg Bear - Quantico

The Impala’s engine died.

Matty and Al-Husam gave chase on foot and took up positions on both sides of the gummed car. Pistols poised, they ordered the occupants to stay where they were and keep their hands in view or they would shoot. Finch and Greavy joined them, happy as larks at having expended precious FBI resources, and with such a loud bang, too.

The actors, barely visible through the pink strands and paintball splatters, raised their hands. They would have to be cut out with box knives. Right now, they weren’t going anywhere. Al-Husam kept his gun trained on them.

Rowland stood by William and watched as teams three and four joined Al-Husam and Matty, taking up front and rear.

‘Goddammit,’ William said, over and over, rolling back and forth, clutching his shins.

‘You okay?’

‘I should have seen it. I should have seen it coming. Fucking cholo car.’

‘You need a medic?’

‘Christ, no, it was just a rubber hose. I’m fine.’ He glared up at her. ‘Don’t you goddamn laugh at me. It hurts.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks.

‘Nobody’s laughing,’ Rowland said solemnly. She sat on the curb beside him.

‘I’m toast,’ William said.

Farrow seemed to come out of nowhere. He was trying hard to hold a grim face. Clearly he was enjoying this. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine ,’ William said, pushing up to his feet. The whites of his eyes showed like a skittish horse.

‘It ain’t over until it’s over,’ Farrow said in a low growl. He held up a box-cutter and thumbed out a length of blade. ‘Get those bastards out of that vehicle and make your arrest. Pick up your pieces and finish your job. Tonight, meet me in the motor pool garage. You’re gonna buff and scrape my car until it shines. ’

Washington State

Griff looked over the map he had drawn. It showed places on the property where they had seen children playing or people walking. Little x’s peppered the paper, safe places and paths to the houses, the barn, just in case. He drew lines, boundaries.

The children tended to stay away from the barn.

Everybody stayed away from the barn.

Only a crazy man would mine or booby trap the yard where his own children and grandchildren were playing, right?

After all the years Griff had been tracking the Patriarch, he still could not say, with certainty, that they could rule out that possibility.

They had been ready to move out when edicts had come down simultaneously from FBI headquarters and the Attorney General-no big raid, no massive force maneuver, on any date that anyone by any stretch of the imagination could say was Good Friday. If something had gone wrong-or even if they had done their jobs perfectly, and nobody had died-then the headlines could wreak havoc with federal law enforcement in general. The whole country was on edge. It had been on edge for over thirty years, worried and challenged and bitten from without and within. America was half-crazy with suppressed rage.

They didn’t have much time. The Patriarch would surely find out something in the next couple of days, and there were any number of ways he could slip out of the farm and get clean away.

A small white bus drove onto the farm during the midmorning. While Griff notified the incursion team at the trailhead, Rebecca counted the women and children boarding the vehicle, parked just yards from the main house’s front porch-two middle-aged women in long dresses and six younger children dressed in their best church clothes. The children boarded the bus with cheery energy.

Griff played back the digital video record and counted heads again, to be sure.

Cap Benson, Charles Sprockett of the ATFE, and SAC John Keller, Griff’s Seattle boss, climbed into the tower at ten thirty and looked over the evidence. They conferred briefly.

‘Are we sure that’s all the dependents down there?’ Sprockett asked.

‘No,’ Griff said. ‘Jacob thinks there might be two young adult males, and so do I, based on those bank robberies. They’re not on the bus. There might be two more kids, and we’ve been talking over the possibility that the males have girlfriends or wives. We haven’t seen the kids all together to count them, but-’

‘There’s a redheaded girl, and maybe a white-blond boy of five or six. We did not see them get on the bus,’ Rebecca said. ‘Younger than the others. They may be the Patriarch’s grandchildren. They may all be living in the rear house.’

‘Why wouldn’t they go to Easter services?’ SAC Keller asked.

Levine shrugged. ‘Some sort of sharing of familial power. Training his sons to be heads of households. Or, they’re just figments of the light and our imagination.’

‘Well, his two sons are certainly not on that bus,’ Keller said.

‘What if they start firing back? The kids, I mean,’ Levine said.

‘You think they’d do that?’ Sprockett asked. ‘You think he’s trained them all to fight?’

Levine rubbed his forehead with two close-spaced fingers. ‘Chambers is hard core. The Big Time’s coming, and a White Christ out of the north is going to scourge the ungodly and drive the Mud People into their graves, from which they will be resurrected as the zombie slaves of true Aryans everywhere. Anybody who doesn’t defend themselves will be raped and eaten alive by the Mud People.’

‘No shit,’ Cap Benson said.

‘He’s off the main sequence, philosophically speaking.’

Keller said, ‘Griff, you’ve tracked him for two decades. This may be the best opportunity we’ve got. We can’t afford to lose him to old age…or let him bomb a few more clinics, if he’s so inclined.’

‘Or worse,’ Rebecca said.

‘Are your seriously thinking there’s a bioterror operation going on down there?’ Levine asked. ‘I have to say, that just isn’t the Patriarch’s style. He’s classic. He loves to blow stuff up.’

Rebecca smiled sweetly. Keller said, ‘Washington doesn’t want a raid. They’re afraid we’ll hurt some kids down there.’

Griff rubbed his cheek stubble. ‘Obviously, I’m going to have to go in alone and reconnoiter.’

‘The hell you say,’ Keller commented dryly.

‘It’s worth a shot. We’ve never actually met. He let the deputy go in and out-offered him coffee and biscuits. I think I could go in and take a closer look, ask some questions, and come out alive.’

‘On what pretext?’ Keller asked.

‘I’d have a better chance,’ Rebecca said. ‘A social worker. Census-taker. I look less like FBI than any of you.’

‘The Patriarch hates social workers,’ Griff said.

‘She might try for the harem,’ Sprockett said. No one seemed to think that was a good idea.

‘Can you make me look like an aging yardbird?’ Griff said. ‘I already have a few tats.’

Sprockett and Keller stared at him.

‘Time’s short,’ Griff said.

‘Shit,’ Sprockett said.

Keller got on his cell phone to issue instructions. Sprockett and Rebecca, working different phones, told the agents in town to let them know when the bus arrived.

Griff took a deep breath. He hated wearing body armor-especially the new reactive stuff. It was thin but it wriggled whenever you walked. Made him feel like he was in a living straitjacket.

‘You are what you eat,’ Rebecca told him as she followed Griff down the steps to the first landing. ‘What’d you have for breakfast this morning?’

‘Flakes,’ Griff said, grinning back at her. He then paused to look through the trees. His eyes were wide and he had difficulty taking a cleansing breath. What would it be like after they suited him up?

Over the next few hours, they procured a beat-up Ford pickup, a pair of denim dungarees, a T-shirt, and three quick forearm tattoos, on top of the two he already had, courtesy of one of Cap Benson’s backup team who moonlighted as a makeup artist. Benson called up Monroe to find out the latest trends in jailhouse art. Ten minutes later, they sent him some scans. Skulls, ripped hearts, Jesus on the cross, scorpions, and chains were still big. For some reason, fat seated Buddhas were having a good run-wearing berets and cradling Tommy guns in their ample laps.