Glass House (42 page)

Hanley wasn’t concerned with the finer
details after that. He surveyed the scene outside. The garage was
completely destroyed, its walls scattered across the lawn in
pieces, large and small, and the hulk of a broken car burning
inside it. A freezer, hatcheted open from the inside, was tight
against a tree in the front yard.

Hanley checked it all quickly, unconcerned
about the particulars and intent only on finding out what happened
to Megan Davis. The bloody handprint was a man’s, and Hanley was
guessing that might be Finn Garber. But there was no sign of her.
Nothing good and nothing bad.

He thought the meaning of that was clear.
After all his time watching and following Waldoch,
maneuvering
with Waldoch, Hanley could only imagine one
place that the man would take Megan. So he worked the phone. He
placed calls to local and state police and asked for bulletins to
be issued, but those were precautions more than anything.

Then he checked the flight records. The
airfield in town, plus the tower at KCI.

The Bombardier jet registered to DMW had
flown out within the hour, with no flight plan filed. All that
anyone knew was that the plane left Lawrence, was picked up by air
traffic control in Kansas City, and was headed south and east,
toward the Atlantic coast.

That got Hanley his own plane. With the head
start Waldoch had – the hour lead plus another hour before
they left behind him – Hanley knew he wouldn’t catch him in
the country. Not without a military force down he didn’t have the
pull or legal cause to get, in any event. But the Bureau still had
one advantage.

Hanley bent to the window, where he saw the
Atlantic seashore of southwestern Africa. He picked out the
features of the familiar coastline to rough-figure his location and
how long it was until touchdown in Upington. He checked his watch
and worked the timeline as best he could.

Waldoch had a two-hour lead and a Bombardier
jet. But the Bureau did all right in response to that. The three
agents Hanley had brought to Megan’s house were with him on the
plane. In effect, he’d commandeered them, pressing them into a
service they certainly never expected. Each of them was strapped
into one of the seats that lined the side of a stripped-down,
extended-range Boeing 767 airliner operated by the federal
government.

Waldoch had his start, and the speeds were
roughly even, but he didn’t have the range. Not with confidence
anyway, and that meant he had to stop somewhere.

Hanley eyed the coast. He listened to the
chatter in the cockpit as the pilots tried in vain to find out if
anyone had a fix on Waldoch’s Bombardier. The Bureau had a
potential time edge on him. As the plane angled and tipped farther
in its descent, Hanley was counting on that edge.

Advance

The Consortium had arrived at Laurentian
Mines. They had eighteen pickup trucks. Three bulldozers that were
hauled close to the mine and dropped off. Twenty-two all-terrain
vehicles. And three helicopters.

Men in the helicopters were laying down a
suppressing fire at the front gate. The security guards once
stationed there fled early on, the booths they occupied shattered
into splinters with the gunfire from above.

Four Laurentian Land Rovers were burning on
the roadway that led from the mine’s main facilities up to the
gate. A fifth was struggling to get around them as the hail of
bullets from the helicopter guns rained down on it. The Rover
veered around one of the burning cars, traveling too fast for the
corner it was taking. It tipped precariously to one side, looked
like it might right itself, then lost the battle and fell over. The
men on the side that faced up threw the doors open and scrambled
out of it.

Better than half the Consortium pickups were
positioned at the mine’s rear gate. They had taken up on both sides
of it, working a crossfire at the exit that stopped anyone trying
to leave.

The rest were at the front. Like those in
back, they were situated carefully so the men in the pickup beds
could lay down overlapping lines of fire.

With the front blocked by the gunfire and
the flaming hulks of the Rovers, the bulldozers were advancing
toward the series of fences erected around the mine and facilities.
The scoop diggers had been removed from the front ends and replaced
with flat push blades. At the first line of fencing, the dozers
pressed through without a pause. The fence sprung from the ground
and draped across the fronts of the machines like a weightless
string.

They cut the second fence down the same way,
then advanced on the third. Another pair of Rovers was moving out
of the mine facility by then, but the Consortium trucks angled to
cut them off. Between the pickups and the helicopters, the Rovers
didn’t stand a chance. Both of them tried but failed to circle
around the mess at the gate, hesitated and started to turn when
they couldn’t make it, and died in the delay. Four men poured from
each, but none got farther than a dozen feet.

When the third and final fence collapsed,
the trucks swarmed into the open area at the front of the facility.
The men in them jumped from the pickup beds and started toward the
administrative buildings, intent on cutting off Laurentian’s head
before its body could respond.

They reached the main building just as
Laurentian’s workers were starting out. They came in a growing
wave, led by a few who peeked from doorways and, surveying the
worsening scene, decided to take their chances while they still
could. Others followed, a small number at first and then a sudden
rush, as those behind weighed the actions of those in front and
decided to break with them.

Krelis Hoopmans’s orders had been clear.
Anyone in a Laurentian security uniform and anyone who was armed
were fair game. Everyone else was to be left alone, and the
Consortium did precisely that. As the trickle of people from
Laurentian became a flood, the men from the Dutch Consortium
stopped and held their ground. They studied the oncoming crowd
carefully, watching for weapons, but they didn’t otherwise move.
They let the swelling mass sweep around and past them.

Under the unexpected, full-on attack by the
Dutch Consortium, Laurentian was emptying out.

The
Box

Krelis was advancing rapidly at the head of
the Consortium men. They entered through the main door of the
management building, their push halting and reversing the onslaught
of people trying to get out. The Laurentian workers saw them,
registered the sight of the weapons, and turned down other hallways
trying to get away.

The press of people trying to escape from
Laurentian was enough to keep any more effective response at bay.
With the facilities clearing out, any security forces bold enough
to stay would have had to cut through the crowds of their own
people to take action against the Consortium.

Krelis hadn’t seen any of that, but he
wasn’t exactly looking for it, either. In the entire mass of
people, he was searching for only one person.

He knew where Peter Rupert’s office was.
He’d been there a couple times before, and he headed that
direction. The men moving with him opened every door they passed,
checking inside and chasing any stragglers out, then shutting the
doors behind them. They were clearing the building, just as they’d
clear each of the buildings at Laurentian.

After that, they were planning on returning
the favor that Laurentian delivered to them, though with far
greater impact, Krelis expected. Where Laurentian had collapsed the
Consortium mine into itself, Krelis was only going to be content if
he took out the Laurentian facilities themselves. The management
building and its offices, the worker and screening areas, the
laboratories and analytical centers, the crushers and sorters. He
wanted to destroy it all, and he planned to do exactly that.

But he wanted Rupert first.

The superintendent’s door was open when they
reached it, and the room itself was empty. Papers were scattered on
the floor. The telephone receiver hung by its cord.

“Spread out,” Krelis told the men with him.
“Break into pairs and search the entire floor. Move to the next one
after that, if you need to. I want him found.”

It took exactly fifteen minutes for a call
from one of the men.

When Krelis reached the location, he entered
slowly through the steel door that set the room off. He came in
with his eyes squinting in the dim light and studying the bare
features and wide open space.

“We found him in the corner.” It was Denys
Ronhaar, the Consortium assistant super. Krelis turned and saw
Ronhaar standing over a man squatting there, his back against the
wall. “Would have missed him at a glance,” Ronhaar was saying.
“Just gave a quick check in and didn’t see anything, because there
didn’t seem to be anything to see. Took another step in, though,
and spotted him then. Just like he is now.”

Krelis looked at Rupert. Seeing him, Rupert
straightened slowly, standing and returning the stare.

“When it comes to it, you run and hide in a
corner,” Krelis said distastefully. “Coward that you are.”

“I’m no coward,” Rupert replied, but the
conviction he tried to find was absent. “Can’t abide thugs like you
is all.”

“Thugs, is it?” Krelis stepped forward. He
moved so close to Rupert their chests almost touched. “Then at
least you’re among your own kind. Put him there.” Krelis pointed
toward a chair that was centered in the room. Ronhaar dragged
Rupert to it and sat him down.

“Turn him around.” Krelis passed his weapon
to one of the other men. He went to a hose, spooled in the far
corner, and he straightened it, pulling it out to its full
length.

Ronhaar lifted Rupert from the chair and
faced him the other direction, sitting him backward on the seat. He
pushed him forward until Rupert’s arms draped over the chair’s
back.

Krelis had the hose flying before anyone
realized what he was doing. It whipped across Rupert’s back with a
cracking snap and a spit of water from its open end. Rupert howled
in pain and started to shoot up from the chair before Ronhaar
reached and pushed him back down.

Krelis gave another lashing, and Rupert
jolted again. Then another, with a matching cry from the Laurentian
superintendent.

Krelis hesitated, the hose dangling from his
hand. Its metal screw tip was red with blood and white with a piece
torn from Rupert’s shirt.

“One for each,” Krelis said. The room was
silent except for his muttered words and Rupert’s gasping breath.
“That’ll be one hundred and seven in all.”

Ronhaar looked at Krelis, his friend, and he
smiled grimly. “Everyone in Consortium Number 2.” Krelis
nodded.

They switched off, taking turns with the
hose. Rupert was delirious by forty and unconscious by eighty. His
back couldn’t be recognized when they were done.

Krelis pulled Rupert’s head up by the hair.
“There were always rumors about a room at Laurentian,” he said
softly, as though Rupert could understand. “People used to whisper
about this place and what it was for. We can confirm that for them
at last.” And with that, he pushed the screw head of the hose into
Peter Rupert’s mouth.

“Turn the water on,” he said to a man in the
corner.

Upington

Upington was a risk.

Waldoch might land anywhere. Upington and
Kimberley were the two airports in the Northern Cape Province that
were big enough for the Bombardier, but Hanley figured Kimberley
was too far from Laurentian. In the Western Cape, he supposed
Saldanha was a possibility, and Cape Town itself wouldn’t be out of
the question. But both were south along the coast, in higher
population and traffic areas. Upington was closer, with fewer
difficulties, fewer people to get past, fewer explanations to make.
But there weren’t any guarantees, and Hanley knew that.

They’d cleared the runway as soon as they
landed, setting up in a hangar, arranging for cars, and waiting on
a hoped-for appearance by a man last seen leaving a courtroom half
a world away. As the time passed and the lack of word remained,
however, Hanley was doubting and cursing himself. He was imagining
Waldoch in any number of other places, in South Africa or not.
Maybe in the States after all. Or somewhere between here and there,
having a last comment and laugh before he rid himself of Megan,
who’d done what few others ever had by getting the better of
him.

Hanley stared at the closed hangar door,
willing a call to come through and the door to open. Looking left
and right, he studied the line of cars that was sitting ready and
waiting for that to happen. Assuming Hanley’s gamble paid off, the
plan was to get Waldoch on the ground and shut down before making
any move. No one was at the end of the runway, waiting for the
plane to land. No one would be rushing out before it was fully
stopped. They would simply track the touchdown, wait for the
Bombardier to come off the field to them, and then go in.

One of the agents who’d come with Hanley
tapped his shoulder. The agent was closing a cell phone.

“Yes?”

“South African Air Traffic and Navigation
Services picked the Bombardier up on a pass-off from air traffic
control in Windhoek. The ETA at this point is ten minutes.”

Hanley smiled despite himself. He’d gained
the lead at the end after all. It turned out to be exactly
forty-two minutes.

_______________

When the plane reached the end of the runway
and slowed, Waldoch dragged Megan to her feet, and Chilcott pulled
Finn to his. They kept them a few feet apart, Waldoch leading the
way up the aisle and Chilcott coming behind him as the plane taxied
off the runway and toward the terminal and hangars.