The Program

Chapter forty-six

At 7:12 P.M. Dray snatched the phone off the hook the instant it chirped, knocking over an untouched glass of vodka she'd poured and sat staring at since Bear phoned an hour ago to let her know the print from the car key was a seven-point match.

Bear said, "We didn't find him -"

Her breath pushed through her teeth like steam.

"- but Metro Division just got a hit on Leah's car."

"I could give a shit about Leah's car right now."

"They pulled a guy over off Florence downtown, pretty far afield from the ranch. Denley and Palton took over custody, picked him up from Parker Center. We've got him upstairs. Name of Leo Henderson." Bear cleared his throat, then cleared it again. "The thing is…"

"Yeah?"

"The thing is, we found some supplies in the trunk."

"Like what? Bear? Like what?"

"Heavy-duty garbage bags. Bleach. Lye. And a hatchet."

Dray let out a noise she didn't recognize.

"Thomas and Freed are working him."

She snapped into focus. "On what? They'd better not be mentioning Tom Altman or if Tim is still -"

"They're just questioning him on the car and the supplies. But he's not putting out. He sits there wearing this complacent smile. He's got the thousand-yard stare and everything. And his knuckles are bruised."

"He was coming from Tim." She drew a deep breath. "Or going back to him."

"Maybe he hasn't done it yet."

"I can't hear 'maybe' right now, Bear."

They both let the silence draw out and out until Dray almost forgot they were on the phone. Finally Bear grumbled under his breath, a litany of seething fricatives.

"Say I tell Thomas and Freed to take a coffee break. Say I go in there and me and him work some shit out."

Dray pressed a hand to the bridge of her nose. "No, no violence like that. The rules apply when it's our family on the line, too. If they don't, the rules don't mean shit. And we don't mean shit." She realized she was standing, and she eased herself down into a chair. A stampede of anxiety overtook her; she waited for the dust to settle. She couldn't survive another funeral. She couldn't endure identifying Tim's body, seeing the cold face beneath the Tom Altman-dyed hair and fake goatee. An idea sailed through her grief, setting her back in the chair.

"Bear?" Her voice was shaky, excited. "Bear, where's Leah's car?"

"Police impound lot. They towed it to the one on Aliso off Alameda. Why?"

"We gotta make a phone call."

Wearing dark slacks, twice-cuffed shirtsleeves, four-inch lifts, and a contentious scowl, Pete Krindon approached the heavyset city worker at the impound lot. The guy manned a station resembling a Hertz rental booth near the front gate. Behind the high-rising fences capped with barbed wire, Ferraris and Pintos commingled, an egalitarian paradise for the appropriated.

The worker tugged at his jowls and suspiciously regarded the biohazard-orange zippered bag swinging at Pete's side.

Pete's hand moved to his hip; a badge glinted, then disappeared. "Derek Cliffstone, Department of Homeland Security. I'm looking for a stolen Lexus IS 300, license plate four-xray-union-Paul-zero-two-two, impounded this A.M. from a Middle Eastern male, alias Leo Henderson."

"Leo Henderson?"

"Persian. They make 'em light-skinned, too, there, chief." Pete leaned forward in his oxblood loafers, the heel of his hand resting on his holstered Glock. He ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip and spit on the curb. "Sometime today might be nice."

Pete set the orange bag on the counter as the worker drummed reluctantly on a computer keyboard.

"You want a look, you're gonna have to produce a warrant – wait, wait, wait!" The guy scrambled back off his seat. "The fuck is that?"

Pete finished tightening the rubber strap on his gas mask. He dug through a selection of filters, mumbling under his breath, "Anthrax, smallpox, sarin nerve gas – a ha, VX." He screwed the filter into place beneath the nose cup. "Sir, we have reason to believe the trunk of that vehicle might contain some hazardous material." His voice sounded metallic and alien. "Parking-space number, please."

Ashen, the guy stared at him.

"Parking-space number, please."

His hands sprang forward onto the keyboard, knocking over a cup of coffee. "Three eighty-five. In the northeast corner."

"Thank you. Please do not move from this spot, sir." Pete presented him with a business card, the Homeland Security seal glimmering in gold. "This is my supervisor's telephone number. Should you hear an explosion, please contact him immediately."

Before disappearing behind the first row of cars, Pete offered a salute that the baffled worker returned. Then he tugged off his mask and smoothed his fire-red locks back into place.

He found Leah's car quickly. Wriggling beneath, he affixed a transmitter to the undercarriage. He whistled as he strolled back, a classical piece he'd picked up from watching Bugs Bunny.

The worker was standing precisely where Pete had left him, frozen like a timorous four-year-old regarding a jack-in-the-box. His hefty frame settled with relief at Pete's reappearance.

"Wrong vehicle, chief. My apologies." Pete took his sweat-slick hand, nodded curtly, and headed for the street. "Your country thanks you."

When Bear kicked open the interrogation door, Henderson bolted upright in his chair. On the opposite side of the scarred wooden table, Thomas and Freed stood.

"Leave us."

Bear remained stone still in the doorway as the deputies exited.

Henderson started breathing hard. "I said I want to call my lawyer."

Bear laced his fingers and cracked his knuckles.

"You can't just hold me here."

Bear snapped forward, flipping over the table with a swipe of his hand. It struck the wall upside down about five feet up. He seized Henderson's shoulders, shoving him back in the chair so the rear legs creaked under the weight.

Henderson finally opened his eyes. Bear's face was two inches from his. "You're free to go."

Henderson swallowed hard. "What?"

Bear released him, and the chair thunked down on all four legs. Bear strode to the glass, squaring off with his reflection. "The Hennings are not pressing charges. They've written their daughter off. And her car. It's your lucky day, scumsuck. Get the fuck out of here." He tapped his foot twice, then whirled around. "You waiting on an apology?"

Henderson scrambled off the chair and out the door.

By eleven-thirty, desperation had cast its shadow across Dray, leaving her scared and agitated. She'd put on her uniform in an attempt to feel tougher. A stroke of sage paint marked the back of her hand from painting the garage door yesterday morning. It seemed like months ago.

"What the hell's taking so long?"

Bear leaned back on his couch, readjusting the pump-action shotgun across his thighs. He'd already donned his black cotton gloves and steel-plate boots; his ballistic helmet, goggles, and tactical vest were piled on the floor at his feet. He'd informed Tannino that a confidential informant was phoning in a related tip, and the marshal had put the ART squad on high alert.

Bear said, "It probably took Henderson a while to get the Lexus processed out."

"I thought you called and took care of that."

"I did. They had a shake-up earlier, though, a bogus terrorist threat or something, got them a bit scrambled on paperwork."

"How do we even know we can trust this guy? I mean, what's our guarantee he knows what he's doing?"

"Pete Krindon," Bear said, "knows what he's doing."

The phone rang, causing Boston to startle up from his nap near the dog bowl.

Dray snapped it up.

"McKinley and Seventy-sixth," a voice said, and then the line went dead.

Bear knew better than to ask Dray to wait at home, but he told her she'd have to stay in his truck during the tactical strike. They drove over in silence.

A throw of storage warehouses were packed within a so-called industrial park that was neither industrial nor a park. Lots of parking lots and barbed wire. Bear cut the lights, and they drifted silently down the paved drive.

Aside from the van and the Lexus parked next to the primary warehouse, the area was deserted.

A great place to kill someone.

They left the truck behind the loading dock around back, then did some preliminary reconnaissance, taking note of voices and vibrations.

Within minutes the Beast rolled up to the staging point and disgorged the geared-up ART squad members, who mustered between the old retrofitted ambulance and Bear's rig. The deputies greeted Dray as if she were one of their own.

Brian Miller squat-leaned against the black-painted side of the Beast, POLICE U.S. MARSHALS rising over his head in white letters. At his side, Precious was locked on – no panting, no tail wagging, no growling – her wolf-yellow eyes standing out against her black Labrador coat. An Alpo-fueled early-warning system for rigged doors and booby traps, she was the top bitch on the Explosive Detection Canine Team. A Thomas Harris devotee, Miller had named her after Jame Gumb's poodle.

Maybeck reacquainted himself with his battering ram with a flurry of superstitious taps and squeezes, a ballplayer's on-deck bat ritual. He'd brought the damn thing with him from the St. Louis district; at Miller's promotion party, Maybeck's wife had joked that she'd caught him dressing it up in their daughter's Barbie outfits.

Thomas and Freed produced dueling pairs of night-vision goggles and eased around the corner, wind snapping at their block-lettered nylon raid jackets. The others circled up, the muzzles of their MP5s angled to the asphalt. Bear alone used a shotgun. Charged with double-aught buck, the cut-down twelve-gauge was fitted with a fourteen-inch barrel and a pistol-grip stock. The sight of Bear wielding it in full gallop was apocalyptic.

Miller unfurled a fax of a blueprint on the ground, pinning it open with a rock and his boot. Bear's gear rustled as he lowered himself over it. Speaking quietly despite the high wind and the hundred-yard distance to the target location, he conveyed where he and Dray had picked up activity within the building.

Miller nodded and took over. "We have a meat wagon on standby just outside the park in case of injuries. Metro's been alerted, but we don't have time to wait for them to set up a secondary perimeter outside the gates…?" He regarded Bear and Dray with raised eyebrows, and they shook their heads in concert. "We're gonna go in heavy, a ten-man no-knock." As he ran through the entry plan, he tapped the blueprint with a chewed nail, indicating the coverage areas for each two-man cell.

Thomas and Freed scurried back around the corner. Thomas's mouth was drawn tight, spreading his mustache, the cracks around his eyes pronounced in his weathered face. He handed off his night-vision goggles and gestured. Miller took a peek, grimaced, and handed off the NVGs down the line. Dray noted the way each deputy's face changed, and she pulled the goggles from Bear's hand and looked into the green-cast world.

A handsome, well-built kid was pacing outside an open door to the warehouse near where she and Bear had heard voices. Fuzzy streaks stained his hands to the forearms; blurry smudges marked his T-shirt, his jeans.

Red always came out hazy through night-vision optics.

The kid bent over and put his hands on his knees, as if fighting nausea. He retrieved a bottle of bleach from the trunk of the Lexus, steeled himself at the door, then reentered.

The next thing Dray knew, Guerrera's hands were under her arms and he was helping ease her the rest of the way to the ground.

"We don't know nothing," Guerrera whispered. "Not yet."

A flash of embarrassment cut through the agony grinding at her. She stood up but swayed on her feet, Palton and Denley stepping to her side.

"I can't go in with you, right?"

Miller's face said there would be no discussion.

"I'd better get the hell out of your guys' way then."

She pulled herself into the passenger seat of Bear's truck, leaving the door open.

They stacked up along the loading dock in their two-man cells, MP5s low-ready across their chests, waiting for Miller's go command.

The battering ram swung at Palton's side. Precious idled tight at Miller's legs.

Monsters with goggle eyes and Kevlar helmets, they seethed and bridled, body armor rustling.

Miller's raised fingers vanished one by one into his fist, and they were off.

Winona was squatting above the toilet, careful not to touch ass to seat, when she heard the faint shuffle outside. She jerked up her pants and hopped onto the sink, bringing her face to the window in time to see what looked like a geared-up SWAT team sweep past, quiet and lethal. She muffled a yelp with her hands.

She listened for maybe thirty seconds, then shoved open the window. Squirming out was easy, but the six-foot fall scraped her palms and jarred her wrists and knees. She ran down the length of the warehouse toward the front gates of the park.

She was just coming up on the loading dock when a dark form melted from the shadows and a female voice said, "I don't think so."

Winona swung blindly. A series of blows buffeted her – a forearm knocking away her punch, an open-hand strike to the side of her head that set her ears ringing. A boot clipped her knee, two hands locked behind her neck, and then she was ridden down to the asphalt with such force that all eight of her fingernails snapped on impact.

She whimpered into the ground as a knee dug into her back, and then her arm was wound behind her like a clock hand. Metal pinched her at the wrists, then the ankles.

Behind them, at the warehouse entrance, the world seemed to explode.

Miller yanked Precious clear. Maybeck took down the frame with the door, the battering-ram-propelled dead bolt blazing through the shoddy carpentry. He pivoted out of the way as Bear swept past in the number-one spot, holding the action back on the pump handle, Thomas and Freed at his elbows. Denley hummed a long-drawn-out hum as he always did on entry, though it was barely audible above the tramping of boots.

MP5 pressed to his cheek, Guerrera squared off with the darkness to their right, his weapon-mounted flashlight illuminating push doors and the warehouse proper that Bear and Dray had deemed empty.

The others swept toward the throw of light at the end of the hall. They flung around the corner as if propelled, immediately breaking toward the threats.

"U.S. Marshalsgetthefuckdown!"

Bear's mind raced to catch up with the gruesome tableau. Seven garbage bags tidily knotted. Crimson-tinged runoff spiraling down a drain. An ominous black doctor's bag. A soaked mop propping up the handsome kid from outside. Henderson backpedaling to a table bearing an array of pistols, one yellow dishwashing glove spinning to the floor, the other still encasing his left hand.

Bear's shotgun coughed out a shuck-shuck as his wide frame floated forward, his boots barely touching the blood- and bleach-slick concrete. To his side, Thomas and Freed hammered the kid, proning him out.

The discarded glove slapped the floor.

Stumbling to a knee, Henderson reached the table, his free hand grasping the nearest gun. The Magnum discharged into the far wall just as Bear's shotgun rammed into his face, the muzzle finding the hole of his mouth, splintering teeth and pinning his head to the floor. Bear's foot smashed down on his wrist, snapping it, and the. 44 bounced free.

Bear felt the bore of his Remington grind against the soft flesh at the back of Henderson's throat, and he thought about seven well-knotted garbage bags, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Henderson's eyes bulged until his lids disappeared, blood drooling from his split lips.

Bear stood poised over him, sweat hammering through his pores. His left ear rang – the ricochet had screamed right past his head.

Somewhere Precious was yelping.

He withdrew the shotgun from Henderson's mouth.

Palton flipped Henderson like a pancake, cinching flex-cuffs around his wrists.

The other deputies were fanning out, kicking doors, two cells peeling back to help Guerrera sweep the warehouse. A shard of the blacked-out window had fallen away beneath the bullet hole. Outside, Precious lay bowed on her side, hind legs scrabbling on asphalt; she'd taken the ricochet. Miller crouched over her, his eyes wet.

From a dark doorway, Thomas cried out, "Bear. Bear!"

Head buzzing, Bear trudged over. It was like walking through syrup.

He braced himself, forearm against the jamb.

In the center of the maintenance closet, a bloody face intercepted the dim plane of light from the open door.

His lower lip had come loose; a flap lay across his cradling palm like a cut of meat. He peered out from a black eye swollen to the size of an orange and rasped in a halting, just-audible voice, "Master Sergeant Tim Rackley, date of birth 10/4/69, service number five – four – eight – seven – nine – zero – five – three – three."