Hunting Season

Beneath the rifle box was another, smaller box. From this, he extracted a black plastic device that looked like a television remote, and a battery pack, which he plugged into the device. He closed the boxes but left the tarp to one side. Then he lugged the huge rifle and the remote transmitter back up the slope to the trees, and once again he traversed the slope until he had a clear field of view of the back of the cabin and the clump of trees hiding the Bronco.

He checked the controller for electrical continuity with the battery pack, then put it down. He moved backward a few feet until he found level ground on which to set up the Barrett. He lay down beside the weapon, nestled the butt into his shoulder, and sighted down to the Bronco, aligning the crosshairs on the right side of the vehicle’s engine compartment. Even though it was a .50-caliber rifle, the recoil wasn’t too much more than that of a heavy shotgun, because the action was gas operated and the weapon itself weighed so much. The heavy

round would drop substantially at three hundred yards, so he adjusted the scope accordingly and re sighted He fitted the magazine and then racked one round into the chamber. He didn’t plan to use more than a few rounds.

He checked his sight line again. Then he got the remote controller, pulled out a tiny whip antenna, and aimed it at the house. He selected amplifier, power on, volume 9, and hit the red button at the top of the controller. Then he selected program 1, and again hit the red button.

There were twelve Bose speakers placed strategically down in the cabin, all connected to an antique Fisher vacuum tube-driven 2,000-watt audio-amplifier, which was set up in the attic of the cabin. Connected to the amplifier was a CD player with a single compact disc and the radio transceiver, which accepted commands from the remote. The program he had selected was the recorded sound of roaring lions, which let go at close to 150 decibels. The noise was huge, even at Kreiss’s position nearly one thousand feet away. Inside the cabin, it would be earsplitting. He could hear a chorus of dog howling start up from a mile down the country road, where Micah Wall kept a pen of coon hounds. The lion program ran for twenty seconds, and then it switched over to the second program, which erupted with the sound of a machine gun shooting out all the windows in a building. He shut it all down after another fifteen seconds and then sighted back through the scope on the Barrett as he settled himself into firing position.

Just before the machine-gun sounds ended, two men came tumbling out of the cabin’s front door, holding their ears and running for the Bronco. He let them get within twenty feet of the vehicle before squeezing off the first round, which went through the right-front fender, the engine block, the left side, and then tore off a tree limb fifty feet downslope from the vehicle. Well, maybe just a tiny bit more recoil than a shotgun, he thought as he fired again, this time moving the aiming point slightly to the left to hit the body, knocking a dent the size of a trash can’s lid into the right-front door as the bullet went through the Bronco like butter and spanged off a rock down by the creek before decapitating a pine tree on the other side of the road. The third round he put through the rear axle, blasting both tires down and exploding the differential housing out the back of the vehicle. By then, the two men were flat on the ground, trying to reach China. He stopped firing and rubbed his sore shoulder. He checked the sight line again, but the heavy barrel hadn’t moved.

He traversed the sight to where the men were. One of them sat up,

then got up and began brushing off his clothes. He then walked calmly out of the trees and up the hill toward Kreiss’s firing position, acting as if nothing had happened. As Kreiss watched through the scope, the other man stayed down on the ground, his hands over his head, one eye visible as he watched the other man go up the hill. Kreiss sat up and took his finger off the trigger. Coming up the hill was a large black man, who grinned when he saw Kreiss.

“Fuck a duck, Ed, lions? And where the hell did you get a Barrett?”

“Hello, Charlie,” Kreiss said.

“Just something I picked up along the way. And kept. How you doing?”

Charlie Ransom had been in the Agency’s retrieval Field Support Division for almost eight years and had worked for Kreiss from time to time.

He was a deceptively agreeable-looking man who was lethally effective in bringing subjects back from urban environments. He stopped when he got ten feet from Kreiss, showed his hands, and then carefully extracted a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. Kreiss watched him light up.

“Bambi bring you guys along?” he asked finally, once Ransom had his cigarette going.

“Yeah,” Ransom said, exhaling a cloud of pungent blue smoke.

“What’s Foster’s deal? He still Marchand’s toad?”

“I think so. The request for our services came from Justice, so I’m not sure what the play is here.”

Kreiss suddenly realized how badly he wanted a cigarette. He had quit smoking when he’d come down to Blacksburg. Now his neck hurt and he was aware that there must be visible bruises on his face. Ransom was looking him over.

“That was some sound show, man,” Ransom said.

“I think I pissed my pants when them lions did their thing.”

“Who’s the penitent down there?” Kreiss asked. He had not moved from his position behind the Barrett, which still had a round chambered.

“Nice young white boy,” Ransom said.

“Name’s Gerald Cassidy.

Career-minded. Married, too. I suppose that’s why he’s still grabbin’ dirt.

What do you think?”

“He’s taking a reasonable approach to the situation,” Kreiss said.