The Killing Season (24 page)

About twenty feet below me, the trees stopped and the slope leveled out. There was a little more light down there, and I could make out what looked like some kind of weird rock formation in a clearing. I wiped raindrops and sweat from my eyes and took a moment to check myself for injuries. I had an impressive collection of cuts and scrapes, my shirt was ripped in several places, and my side hurt like a son of a bitch, but other than that, I was okay.

I picked my way down the remainder of the slope and emerged into the clearing. I realized that what I’d been looking at wasn’t a rock formation at all, but a graveyard. A very old graveyard, by the looks of it. I thought back to earlier, when I’d looked at the house plans, which had included a map of the surrounding area. I remembered seeing something about an old gold mining town, now long gone. At least, the town itself was long gone. Evidently, its dead remained.

I squinted my eyes and peered ahead into the dark. It looked like the clearing occupied a natural plateau on the hillside. Uneven rows of subsiding and fallen headstones marched ahead for a couple of hundred yards before the pines closed in once more. There was a dirt track on the other side that disappeared down a farther slope, probably leading to was left of the mining town. I cast a glance back at the upper slope and realized it had damned near turned into a cliff at the point I’d fallen. It would take Banner’s people a while either to find another way down or to rustle up rappelling equipment. That meant there was no point waiting for backup, even if waiting for backup had been my style.

I began my advance toward the dirt track. The rain washed down unabated, turning the earth under my feet to sludge. I thought about the hundred-year-old remains six feet beneath me. I put my hand on a moss-covered marker to steady myself, and my breath caught in my throat as a figure stepped from behind a large monument at the far side of the graveyard.

Wardell. Fifteen feet away. Close enough to speak to without raising my voice, too far to do anything about the rifle that was pointed at my head.

“Evening, partner,” he said. His voice contained both tiredness and pain, but also something that sounded like camaraderie. “Persistent, ain’t you?”

49

12:40 a.m.

It was him: the man from the cabin. Wardell had known it would be, instinctively, when he’d heard the sounds of somebody crashing down that hill. Nobody on a fixed salary would risk following him down that lethal slalom on foot. He was pleased to see that he didn’t appear to have any serious injuries. A man this interesting didn’t deserve to go out breaking his neck in a fall. Wardell kept the Remington 700 trained on him, ready to put a round through his right eyeball. So why didn’t he? Because he wanted to know who he was first. That was harmless enough, wasn’t it? He’d have to kill him soon, before the feds had a chance to catch up, but they had a little time before that.

“Nice weather for ducks, huh?” he said.

The other man just shrugged in acknowledgment. He hadn’t put his hands up, hadn’t tried to beg or bargain. “We’re going to talk about the weather?”

Wardell felt a flash of déjà vu at the sound of the man’s voice. It seemed familiar somehow. Or was it the situation that felt familiar? Doubtful: Most of his targets were never aware that he had them in his sights, so this setup was a little out of the ordinary.

“Good to meet you again,” he said. “Name’s Caleb Wardell.”

The other man smiled thinly. “I know.”

“Then you have me at kind of a disadvantage, partner.”

“And here was me thinking it was the other way around.”

“Point taken.” Wardell chuckled. “What’s your name, soldier?”

“Carter Blake.”

“You’re not one of them.”

“I’m not one of them,” Blake agreed.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“We’ve met.”

“Refresh my memory.”

Blake stared at the muzzle of Wardell’s rifle. “This situ­ation was the other way around last time.”

Wardell’s mouth broke into a wide grin. Of course.
Now
he remembered. Mosul—right after he’d scragged all of those locals. Although it had led to his exit from the military, the episode bore nothing but fond memories for him. A dozen kills: a satisfying mix of distance shots and up-close action. Tying it up with the hit on Rassam had been smart—a legiti­mate target in the mix turned the civilians into straight collateral damage, gave him the freedom to go as far as he liked. Later, in Chicago, he had never been able to let himself so completely off the leash before they caught him.

“Get out of here! I knew I recognized that uptight face. I bet you’re wishing things had turned out different last time, huh?”

Blake said nothing.

Wardell nodded, remembering. Thinking about the nonuniformed man who’d appeared out of nowhere and interrupted his work, stopped him from going house to house looking for more victims. “You weren’t with
them
then either, as I recall. So what? Bounty hunter? Spook, maybe? You with Christians in Action?”

Blake shook his head. “Exterminator. They call me in when there’s a vermin problem.”

Wardell ignored that, flicked his eyes up at the hill and back. “How long do you reckon we have?”

“Not long.”

“Pity. You want to know something funny, Blake?”

Blake said nothing.

“I wish I didn’t have to shoot you. You were starting to make this interesting.”

“I can understand that,” Blake said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’d imagine it gets boring after a while, shooting unarmed twelve-year-olds and octogenarians.”

Wardell paused. Spoke more quietly. “And unarmed exterminators. Don’t forget those, partner.”

“Why do you do it?” Blake said. He was just playing for time, obviously.
Why did you do it?
had been the most frequently asked question of Wardell after his arrest. He’d never given anybody an answer to it before. But now? Why not? It wouldn’t take so very long.

“You ever hear the name ‘Juba’?”

Blake used his thumb and index finger to sweep water from the bridge of his nose. Seemed to consider the question. Then he simply said, “Sure.”

“And?”

“Juba was the insurgency’s very own Baron von Richthofen. Some kind of supersniper. They say he never missed. He popped up everywhere: Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul, Basra. Took out dozens of coalition troops. Came out of nowhere and vanished back into the desert like a ghost. Or a demon. One shot, one kill.”

“Not bad, Blake. Not bad at all.”

“There was only one problem with Juba.”

“Do tell.”

“It was all bullshit. There was no Juba. No unfailing, super­natural assassin. It was a PR thing—every time the bad guys managed to bag one of our people, they credited it to Juba. Built the legend of this ghost killer. Probably worked reasonably well to inspire their own people, the more impressionable ones at least. They released videos of some of the shootings, the way they always do. The guy playing Juba changed more times than James Bond.”

Wardell laughed out loud. He didn’t let his rifle muzzle waver, of course. “Very good, Blake. Very good. I’m really going to miss you. I mean that.”

“So that’s what it’s about? You think you’re Juba?”

“Juba was bullshit, Blake. You’re one hundred percent right about that. But all the same, there was something about it, you know? The legend. Your experienced grunts never bought into it, of course. Some of the new guys, though . . . you could see it in their eyes even when they laughed it off. There was a little bit of fear there. Just a little bit, but it was real. Like they were trading ghost stories over the campfire.”

“Ghost stories,” Blake repeated. Still keeping him talking. Wardell didn’t mind that. He was enjoying this. It was a shame it would have to end soon.

“Yeah,” Wardell said, his mind drifting to the cold, arid darkness of a desert night. “Of course, I never could believe it, not even from the start. Not just because I wasn’t a rookie. Juba was supposedly operating in my area of professional expertise, so to speak, so I could never feel it like those younger guys did. Or like the rank-and-file insurgents must have. But right from the beginning, I kind of loved the idea.”

“The idea of a boogeyman.”

“Exactly. I started thinking, in a weird way, it would almost be nice if it were true. You know what I mean?”

A wide grin broke out on Blake’s face, and Wardell thought for a second that he got it, that here was a true kindred spirit. “Wardell, I have absolutely no goddamn clue what you mean.”

Wardell nodded, disappointed but not entirely surprised. “No. No, you really wouldn’t, would you? Anyway, I got to thinking: If it worked for the insurgents, and if it made some of the guys on
our side
a little scared, what would it be like to do that back home? I mean it’s so simple: You pick a city, and you kill a few people, and all of a sudden, you’re—”

“Juba?”

“God.”

Blake’s face broke out in a grin, and he shook his head.

“Something funny, partner?” Wardell asked sharply. Blake didn’t seem to be at all afraid of him, and the guy was beginning to push the boundaries of his not-inconsiderable patience.

“It’s just, you’re describing it like it’s a new idea. The way you’ve been killing.”

“Nobody’s done what I’m doing, Blake.”

“You really think so? Disgruntled Marine sniper comes home and decides, ‘What the hell? Why not shoot a few people from a distance?’ Just off the top of my head, we’ve got Muhammad in Washington, 2002. Charles Whitman in Texas in sixty-six. And Lee Harvey Oswald, of course.”

“Marksmen, Blake, not snipers. There’s a big difference. I mean, Oswald? Not in the same class at all. I wouldn’t need three shots to kill a president.”

“Why not? You needed two to kill a fat, slow delivery guy.”

Wardell shook his head and tightened his finger on the trigger. “Time to say good night, Blake.”

“Wait a second,” Blake said hurriedly, obviously realizing he’d pushed his luck a little too far.

“You used up your last second, partner.”

“The red van,” Blake said quickly, giving Wardell a moment’s pause. “Haven’t you wondered about the red van?”

“Haven’t paid it much mind, to be honest with you,” Wardell lied. He glanced up at the hill as he heard the buzzing of one of the
FBI
helos. It sounded like it was a little closer. It was time to get moving.

“I don’t believe you. And that first call to the press, the one that blew the media blackout—that wasn’t you, was it?”

“Get to the point, Blake,” Wardell snapped. “You’re trying my patience, and I got places to be.” The chopper was definitely getting closer. In another few seconds it would be overhead, and it wouldn’t take long to pick them out with the searchlight.

If Blake had noticed, he gave no indication, just kept talking. “Somebody’s going out of their way to make things tough for the task force. To make things easy for you. Some­body with connections, inside knowledge.”

“So?” Wardell said, growing tired of the conversation. It was time to bring this exchange to a close. “Somebody’s helping me out a little. Maybe he’s a fan of what I do. Makes no difference to me.”

“Helping you out is one way of putting it. How about looking at it a different way?”

Wardell said nothing, waited for him to continue. Every instinct in his body screamed,
Do it now
. He held firm.

“I don’t think you’re being helped, Wardell. I think you’re being used.”

The helicopter broke the cover of the trees at the top of the hill, its beam directed straight into Wardell’s eyes. He jammed them shut and fell behind a tall monument as the beam continued its sweep for twenty yards before zipping back to his position as the operator tried to confirm what he’d just seen.

Wardell swore as he stuck his head out from behind the monument and saw Blake too had taken cover. The oppor­tunity for a clean kill had vanished. He’d played straight into Blake’s hands. There was one last ace in the hole. Wardell reached into the drag bag and withdrew the last pipe bomb. He snapped the fuse off close to the cap, leaving about three seconds, then lit it and tossed it to Blake’s last position.

An orange and black cloud of flame and grave dirt exploded up into the rain, forcing the helicopter to swing back and upward. It would be good enough for a distraction, to allow him to escape the chopper’s searchlight. It ought to take out Blake, too. It ought to rip that bastard into a few thousand bloody pieces and wipe that goddamn knowing expression off his face for good. But Wardell wasn’t counting on it. He wasn’t counting on it at all.

50

1:50 a.m.

Banner stood beneath the shelter of a tall pine as she watched the deluge continue, blurring the blue lights of the fire trucks and ambulances closer to what was left of the house. On the other end of the phone line, her sister’s voice was utterly devoid of its usual critical undercurrent.

“Thank God you’re okay, Elaine. Is everybody else . . . ?”

Helen’s sentence trailed off there, and Banner realized she already knew the answer to that question if she was within sight of a television. It was the reason Banner had called Helen as soon as she could, despite the hour. She had to avoid the possibility that she—or, God forbid, Annie—might hear about this on the morning news and fear the worst.

“No. We lost some people. Good people.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I saw on the news about Rapid City. They’re saying he killed a young girl this time.”

Banner closed her eyes, and the image of the girl in the blue raincoat flashed before them once again. She’d been seeing that image all day. It was one of the ones that would take time to go away, if it ever did.

“That’s right, Helen. She was only a few years older than . . .” This time, it was Banner who trailed off, unable to complete that thought.

“Elaine, I don’t know what to tell you. Part of me wants you to get the hell out of there. Part of me wants you to hunt that son of a bitch down.”

She allowed herself a smile. “Let’s go with the second option for now. Tell Annie I love her and I’ll call her ­tomorrow.”