Greg Bear - Quantico

Sam did not have a quick story to soothe Tommy-or himself. He stared at the radio, then out the window.

Tommy said, ‘Oh my. Oh my. Sam, oh my.’

‘All right, Tommy. Pull over and I’ll drive for a while.’

Tommy’s nose was dripping and he was shaking badly. He had entered the land of Dipsy-Down and it was all he could do to stop the car without getting them both killed.

Washington State

Griff stripped off his shirt and body armor and handed it to the FBI evidence team. They whisked it to their van to offload the data and video contained in the vest. All of the police vehicles, at Griff’s request, stayed on the edge of the clearing, about a hundred yards from the house and the barn.

He walked back toward the house with Rebecca Rose at his side. They stared at the barn. Griff’s nostrils flexed and his upper lip twitched as if he were about to sneeze. The breeze was cool against his naked upper torso. He slipped an Underarmor T-shirt over his head. Jacob Levine joined them and handed Griff his own purple vest. Griff declined. Even chilly, he refused to go that far.

‘Becky,’ he said, ‘Chambers kept looking at the barn.’

‘Yeah,’ Rebecca said.

‘I think you might want to get back with the others.’

‘I will if you will,’ Rebecca said.

‘Don’t be an asshole,’ Griff said. ‘I’ve done this kind of stuff for decades.’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘I’ll need to see what’s in the house and the barn ASAP. Then we’ll know what to do next.’

Levine held his ground, too. ‘Have you heard?’ he asked them.

‘Heard about what?’

‘The bus never made it to town. It stopped and the families loaded into three cars. They diverted at a side road and threw off the tracking vehicles. Some of them may be headed east to Idaho.’

Griff rubbed his upper lip, first checking to make sure there was no blood on his finger. ‘He knew about us all along. He saw us cut down the tree.’

‘Makes you wonder where his righteous sons are,’ Rebecca said.

They both stared into the far stands of cedars and larches.

Griff cringed as a helicopter passed slowly overhead. Even at three hundred feet, the steady beat of the rotors thumped the barn and the ground under his boots. Three crime scene techs came around the main house, stringing yellow tape. The tape flapped and curled in the downdraft. There was a news station imprint on the chopper’s side-KOMO Seattle. Someone must have radioed the pilot that the scene was unsecured and dangerous, for the helicopter abruptly backed off and swung around, heading west over the woods to the highway, probably to take more pictures of the base camp.

Cap Benson approached bearing in his arms a more suitable blue blazer he had pulled from the trunk of his car. Griff slipped the blazer on over the T-shirt and decided he looked if anything even more ridiculous than he would have wearing Levine’s vest.

They all stood in the broad, scrubby front yard of the old farmhouse. Inside, the Patriach still lay sprawled on his stomach in a pool of blood, cuffed, awkward and bedraggled and not giving a damn one way or the other. Griff could see him like an after-image over the barn. He had killed three times-four, now-in his FBI career. Six or seven times before that, in the Navy. Much more than the average. He did not enjoy the distinction.

From the road, blowing in on a westerly breeze, they could hear the faint sounds of big trucks on the move. Washington State Patrol, FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, whatever.

Dogs running to sniff at the old man’s kingdom.

‘That’s one big barn,’ Benson said. ‘Wonder what’s in it?’

‘Why don’t you go have a look?’ Griff said. He would have to re-evaluate the entire scene. If Chambers had known he was being watched for several days, who knew what he could have accomplished? What chain of events he could have started by making a few night visits to the barn, or the second house…?

Chances were, with all the kids, there would not have been tripwires or other traps spread around the yard, or in the houses…but Griff just could not be sure.

He turned to the north. Several techs in white plastic suits and hoods were swabbing samples of powder off the distant trees. ‘Your people?’ he asked Rebecca. She nodded. ‘What do you think they’ll find? Chambers said they had sprayed for pests.’

‘I doubt that,’ Levine said. ‘He hated pesticides. Called them a conspiracy by the Jews to help feed the Mud People of the world.’

Rebecca looked amused. Griff did not know what to think about the world’s evil. Another tech closer in had climbed a ladder braced against one of many wooden poles around the property and was attaching a multimeter to the wires suspended overhead.

‘How many long arms of the law do you have back there, Cappy?’ Griff asked.

‘There’s me and my boys. ATF has pulled back, I don’t know why.’

‘Bureau asked for primacy. We still have some chips to play.’

‘I don’t see your boss, Keller,’ Benson said.

‘He was called back to Washington, DC,’ Rebecca said. ‘He’s going to testify before some senate committee.’

Griff sucked that back in. Not even collaring the Patriarch stopped the wheels of partisan politics, trying to grind down the FBI. Trying to kill it and hand its responsibilities over to others. No matter. His retirement was secure. One more year and he would cross the boundary of GS-1811-into mandatory retirement.

Benson continued, ‘There’s Sergeant Andrews and four guys from the state inter-agency bomb squad. We got Dan Vogel from the K9 explosives unit. I saw Child Protective Services hanging around with nothing to do, and one black girl in a leather jacket, like a goddamned Black Panther, but I suppose she’s one of yours.’

Griff nodded.

‘And two other feds I don’t recognize.’

‘Homeland Security and Bureau of Domestic Intelligence,’ Griff said. ‘They’d love to horn in. I want Dan and his dog to sweep the main house, then the second house, in that order.’ He waved his hands, drawing a plan in the air.

‘Not the barn?’ Benson asked.

‘Griff thinks the barn is rigged,’ Levine said. He paced in a small circle, eyes on the ground, sweat on his forehead despite the chill.

‘Bots coming soon?’ Griff asked.

Benson nodded.

‘Send a bot into the barn. And get some more troopers into those woods. His sons could be drawing a bead on us right now.’ He closed one eye and cocked his finger at Levine.

‘Hell, they would have taken you out after you killed their pappy,’ Levine said. ‘The sons are long gone.’

‘Maybe.’

Griff did not think the houses were rigged with explosives. Kids had been there too recently; tough to control kids, keep them from setting something off. No one had seen anybody walking outside to the rear house after the bus had departed. Still, it would be necessary to thoroughly check for both explosives and kids in hiding-and the K9 could do that.

He now stood with hands on hips and faced his main nightmare directly. The big sliding barn door had been left open six or seven inches, not enough for a man to easily squeeze through. He did not want to touch that door. It was too much like an invitation.

‘The Patriarch would plan for bots, don’t you think?’ Griff asked Rebecca.

‘Sounds like,’ Rebecca said. ‘X-ray triggers. Trip mikes tuned to machine sounds.’

‘All these wires,’ Griff said. ‘What the hell are they for? What level of paranoia should we consider unreasonable? He’s been at this for fifty years, right?’

‘We should wait,’ Rebecca said. ‘Less chance of someone clumsy hitting a tripwire.’