The Library at Mount Char (28 page)

“Yeah? No shit?”

“No shit.”

Erwin considered. “That's unusual.”

“I thought so too.” Steve shrugged. “Don't argue with Santa Claus, I guess.”

“You think them lions have mebbey got something to do with this Carolyn chick of yours?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Hmm. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second.”

“Sorry. Dumb question. Do they…Hang on.” Erwin put his hand to his ear. “I'd love to keep chattin' with ya, but them cops are getting antsy outside.” He lifted his wrist and spoke into his sleeve. “Yeah, ah, suspect in custody and shit.”

Two seconds later, the front door burst open. Half a dozen sheriff's deputies flowed in, guns drawn.

“Easy, fellas,” Erwin said. “Everything's fine. Federal custody, remember?”

“I remember,” said a guy with a lot of stripes on his sleeve. He spoke through gritted teeth. “What about the lion?”

“It's asleep,” Erwin said. “Havin' an operation. That's why he came here.”

“Don't hurt her, OK?” Steve said.

“What?” The cop looked at him like he was a bug on the road.

Steve felt his inner peace slip a notch. “Pretty please?”

“Animal Control is on the way. Can't keep a lion as a pet in this town, son,” the cop said. “City ordinance.” A couple of the other cops snickered.

Steve felt his rage boiling. “Erwin?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember what we said.”

“I remember.”

“Good. If you want, I can take you to where they—” The phone clipped to his waistband started ringing.

“Who's that?”

Steve thought frantically. “It's her, probably. Carolyn. She gave me the phone. She's called a couple of times already. Want me to talk to her?”

Erwin considered this. “Nah. We'll be seeing her in a minute anyway.”

“You
already
know where she is?”

“Oh yeah. Nice little neighborhood about two miles from here. We've had the place surrounded since around lunchtime. We're waiting until we get all the neighbors evacuated, then we're going in.”

“You don't sound too enthusiastic.”

Erwin gave him a long look. “Fact is, I'm not.”

“What's the matter?”

“I'm just not sure what—” Erwin cut himself off. “That's not true. I am sure. Something bad is going on, I just don't know what. I feel the way a rat must feel sniffing the peanut butter on a trap.” He looked at Steve. “Is your buddy in that house?”

Steve looked at him blankly.

“The guy with the knife thing. The one who broke you out of jail. Is he there?”

“Oh. His name is David. Yeah, he's there. Last time I saw him, anyway.”

Erwin frowned. “I was afraid of that.”

“He's not my buddy, though,” Steve said. “You're wrong about that. I've got no idea who those people are or what they want from me. And that guy's crazy. He scares the crap out of me. He scares the rest of them too, I think.”

“The rest of who?”

Steve opened his mouth to speak, shut it. “What about Naga?”

“The lion? I'll try the zoo.” Erwin sounded a million miles away.

Steve gave him a skeptical look.

Erwin glanced up. “You got my word. I'll figure something out.”

Steve continued to look skeptical.

With a sigh, Erwin turned to the guy with all the stripes on his sleeve. “Frank? Listen up. That lion is evidence in a federal investigation. Take good care of it.”

“Her,” Steve said.

“The hell you say,” Frank said.

“No,” Erwin said. He turned to face the man. He spoke quietly. He was polite. But in that moment Steve understood for the first time how extraordinarily dangerous Erwin truly was. “I
do
say. You call the fucking zoo, you call Animal Control, you call whoever you need to call, but if anything happens to that animal…you and me, we're going to have a problem.”

The cop was an inch or two taller than Erwin. When the two of them locked eyes, he was looking down. He held Erwin's gaze…but only for a moment. Then he withered visibly. His chest un-puffed. He averted his eyes. His men watched this. “All right,” he said. “Yeah. OK.”

Erwin turned back to Steve. “That good enough?”

“Good enough,” Steve said. His mouth had gone dry. He swallowed hard. “Thank you. OK, I don't know a whole lot. The first time I ever saw him was the same time you did, at the jail. I saw what he did in the hall”
—ropey guts dangling from the fluorescents
—“and started squirming. He got pissed off and knocked me out, I think. I woke up in the house a couple miles from here, like you said. There were a bunch of them there. Carolyn said they were her brothers and sisters, but they didn't look like family to me. There were two black guys that looked like twins, and a creepy lady who smelled like dead ass—I think she was, like, Polynesian or something, except she was so pale her skin was almost blue. But I dunno, maybe they're adopted. They all spoke the same language, anyway.”

“What language? Could you tell?”

Steve shook his head. “I never heard anything like it before. Maybe a little bit like Vietnamese? Except not.”

“Are they like him? Carolyn and the rest? Dangerous? I'll tell you for free if my guys go in there and get hurt because you lied to us, I'll go hard on you.”

Steve considered the question, and not just because Erwin had
threatened him. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I don't think so. They all seem really afraid of him.”

“Good,” Erwin said. “I'll—”

“But I think they might be dangerous in other ways,” Steve said. “Everything I told you about Carolyn was true. Everything. She's not like that David guy, but I think she's got…something.”

“Got something?”

“I don't know. She just doesn't seem, I dunno, helpless. Some of the others, sure. A couple of them I'm pretty sure
I
could take. But not that David guy, and not her. There's something about her…” Steve shook his head. “I don't know. I'd be careful, is all.”

Erwin was studying him. “How many of them were there? The family?”

“I'm not sure. I didn't count. About a dozen, I think, give or take. Plus the old lady who owns the house. She's normal, not one of them.”

Erwin clicked his tongue, deep in thought.

“Don't you believe me?”

“Yeah,” Erwin said. “I think I do. A couple hours ago we had an RC-135 do a flyover. Infrared showed thirteen people inside. You didn't know that. If you were going to lie about something, that would have been a good place to start.”

Infrared?
But that raised another question. “Hey,” Steve said, “how'd you find me, anyway?”

“You brought a lion into the vet, son. Even without the gun, a thing like that is bound to cause talk.”

“So…you were just here on vacation or something?”

“Oh, I gotcha. No. I'm in town as sort of an expert advisor with the strike team. I'm the only one we know of who's seen him and lived. Besides you, a'course.”

“ ‘Strike team'?”

“Oh, yeah. Lotsa heavy hitters in town today. Delta, couple snipers from SEAL Six, even some Marine recon. Your Miss Sopaski, she's about to have company.”

“How'd you find her?”

Erwin frowned. “Crazy bitch called up the White House. Can you believe that?”

E
rwin walked Steve out of the vet's office and left him, handcuffed, in the backseat of a squad car for half an hour or so. At Steve's request Erwin cut off the plastic cuffs behind his back and re-cuffed him in front. That was a lot more comfortable.

Steve found that half hour or so weirdly relaxing. It was a nice autumn day. The car window was cracked enough to let in the breeze. He wasn't in immediate mortal danger. There weren't any big decisions to make.
Also, I don't have to worry about getting caught anymore. There's that, too
. He didn't quite sleep, but he might have dozed a little. Erwin did paperwork and argued with the cops. After a little while a truck stenciled with the words
EASTERN EXOTIC CAT SHELTER
pulled up. Steve smiled at that.

He was hoping to see Naga again, but before they brought her out Erwin opened the door of the squad car. “Wakey-wakey.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out.”

Steve blinked. Maybe he
had
slept, a little. “Where to?”

“My car.”

“This isn't your car?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“Actually…”

Erwin gave him a look.

“No,” Steve said. “Of course not.”

Erwin nodded. He took Steve by the shoulder and walked him over to a nondescript Ford sedan parked thirty yards away.

“This is a State Department car. I signed for it.” Erwin peered at him. “You gonna give me any shit?”

“I'm not planning on it.”

“OK. You can ride in front if you want. I gotta leave the cuffs on, though.”

“Sure, I understand. Hey, am I still bleeding?”

“A little. Not much. Actually…” Erwin rooted around in the backseat, grabbed a newspaper. He unfolded the paper and laid the sports section across the passenger side of the front seat. “OK. Sit on that.”

Steve looked stung.

“Son, your shirt's a mess. And you need a fuckin' shower. Any stains get on that upholstery, I gotta clean 'em. No offense.”

“Nah,” Steve said. “It's OK.” By now it was getting to be late afternoon, 4:13 p.m. according to the dash clock in Erwin's car. They turned out of the parking lot and headed back down Highway 78. Steve gave Monsieur Taco a longing look as they drove away. He was getting hungry. “Where we going?”

“DC.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup. Lotta people want to talk with you.”

“About what?”

Erwin looked at him like he was an idiot.
Which
, Steve thought,
I suppose I am
. “Sorry. I guess what I meant was, ‘What do they expect me to be able to tell them?' I'm as confused as anybody. More so, probably.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm what?”

“Just hmm. I sort of believe you, I guess.”

“Yeah?” Steve felt absurdly grateful to hear this. “I appreciate that. I really do.”

Unexpectedly, Erwin turned off the main road and rolled to a stop in the parking lot of a lumber yard on top of a hill. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, but mostly the place was empty. “What are you doing?”

“Well, like I said, I'm taking you to DC. This is just a little detour.”

“Detour?”

“Yeah. The Delta guys didn't want me riding along with them, even as an observer. I'm here to ID that David fella.”

“They had cameras at the jail. When he broke me out, I mean. I saw them.”

“Yeah. Funny thing about that. They didn't work. They were fine
when I was talking with you. But when the big asshole showed up, them cameras just kinda magically broke.” He gave Steve a look.

“That's kind of weird, isn't it?”

“I'd say so, yeah.”

“OK, so that's why you're in town. But why are we in the parking lot?”

“Well,” Erwin said. “Nobody said I couldn't watch.” He pointed. They were on the edge of a steep bluff, maybe a hundred feet high and almost vertical. Below them and about a half a mile away two military vehicles were pulling up outside of a small subdivision.

“Are those
tanks
?”

“Nah. A tank's got a bigger gun. That there's a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. It's for carrying soldiers, mostly.”

“What are they doing?”

“It's called ‘going in hard,' ” Erwin said. He pulled a big green knapsack out of the backseat and rummaged around in it, coming up with a pair of field binoculars. “I got a night scope too. You can borrow it if you want to watch. Don't need the starlight, but it'll magnify about six-X.”

“Sure.”

Erwin handed him a biggish rifle scope with
ATN
stamped on the side. Steve held it up. It magnified pretty well—too well, actually. It took him a couple of minutes of scanning to identify the house.

“What are those guys—”

“Shhh!”

Steve shushed. He heard a thumping noise, and looked up from the scope. Two black helicopters were flying in from the west, low and fast. He could see them clearly, but their rotors were muffled somehow. They weren't quite silent, but they didn't have the thunder you'd expect, either. A moment later the Bradleys started up with a puff of blue smoke.

The helicopters hovered just over Mrs. McGillicutty's house. Black ropes dropped out of each one. Men slid down the ropes, a dozen in all. Their synchronization wasn't quite perfect, but it was close—they touched ground within a second of one another. As Steve watched they lined up on either side of the French doors that opened onto Mrs. McGillicutty's back patio, black boots pounding silently over red brick in 6x magnification. The helicopters dropped back.

The men made hand gestures at one another. Two of them beat the doors in with a metal ram. A third man tossed something in. There was a flash and a bang. The men streamed into the house. Watching them, Steve thought of the dogs flowing out of the woods.

Muzzle flashes began, first one, then a long pause, then two more, then a fusillade. The explosive brightness was startling in the long, dreamy shadows of this suburban afternoon. The sound of the shots arrived a moment later, carried on still autumn air. One of Mrs. McGillicutty's windows shattered.

Faintly, from a great distance, Steve heard the sound of a woman screaming. An automatic weapon delivered a short burst of fire…then a much longer one. There was another scream, a man's voice. Steve heard something that sounded a little bit like Dresden's roar. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.