The Standoff Page 40

  The explosions BOOMED! in the cold, grayness, like a gas main exploding, but it was over and over.

  The Whites all stared in that direction at the wall. Walter covered his family and huddled them into him, pulling them down to the floor. He feared the worst. They all did. Abe scrambled to Abby and grabbed her, pulling her in and away from the explosions with a bear hug. Foster joined her parents. She turned her back to the fireplace.

  Flack hit the ground like someone had thrown a grenade into the house. It was automatic, as if PTSD had kicked in and caused him to react. Brooks stayed standing, unfazed by the explosion.

  Abel faced the front door, rage spilled across his face, but he also did not move.

  They all saw the light from the flames of multiple rushing fireballs that erupted straight into the air. The orange light was bright and fierce. It shone through the front windows and into the house.

  They heard shrapnel exploding outward, slamming into the sides of the barn, the vehicles, and the front of the house.

  The windows of the vehicles and some of the ones on the house blew out, completely shattering into thousands of fragments. The windows that shattered in the house exploded inward. All the ones in the kitchen went. They heard the glass rake across the kitchen tile.

  The fireball erupted into the sky like a car bomb, concentrated upward. Several old oak trees ignited in flames and burned and burned. They brightened the gray sky into a twisted medieval painting.

  The thing that none of them knew yet was that Walter’s Tundra was engulfed in flames. All the pipe bombs in the bed had exploded in rapid succession.

  Walter’s Tundra burned bright red. The flames leaped off the bed and onto the barn, setting it on fire. The cabin in the truck wasn’t on fire yet, but it would be in a matter of minutes. As of now, the interior of the truck was covered in broken glass and embedded fragments of metal from the pipes and packed shrapnel encased around the pipe bombs.

  Flack jumped back up to his feet, embarrassed that he had hit the deck so quickly.

  Brooks said, “What the hell was that?”

  Flack said, “It’s the pipe bombs.”

  “All of them?”

  Nobody spoke.

  DYLAN HELD his head down, next to his sister and his father. Maggie was across from him on the other side of the huddle. After the explosion ended, he saw his chance.

  They all stood back up, staring toward the front of the house at the bright orange and red hues dancing in their front yard.

  Dylan jerked on Walter’s shirt.

  “Come on! Come on!” he whispered to them.

  He pulled away and ran to the slider. He unlocked it and slid it open and took off running straight through it, leaving it open behind him, hoping his family would follow.

  As Brooks, Flack, and Abel stared at the front door, the White family took off running behind Dylan, all but Abby and Abe and Foster.

  Maggie took off after her son, followed by Lauren, holding her father’s hand. They all made it through the open slider.

  Abe pulled at Abby’s hand.

  “Let’s go!” he whispered.

  “No! I can’t! I can’t run! You go!”

  “No! I’m not leaving without you!”

  Flack was the first to react to the Whites’ escape. He stormed over behind them, blocking their way to the doors. He shoved his Glock into Abe’s face.

  “You’re not going anywhere!” he said.

  Brooks walked behind his boss and planted a slow hand on Abel’s shoulder.

  Abel turned around. His pale face was flush with rage.

  Brooks had never seen him so angry before.

  Abel stayed quiet. The anger, the rage boiled in his face. They all saw it.

  Brooks asked, “What do we do now?”

  “Kill them! Kill them all!”

  Chapter 54

  R IGHT BEFORE the explosion, Widow had taken Adonis out of the barn and to the bed of the Tundra. He lowered the tailgate.

  She said, “I saw them loading this at the abandoned farm down the street. What are they?”

  “It’s mail.”

  “I see that. But what’s in them? Anthrax? Drugs? Money?”

  Widow said, “Pipe bombs.”

  Her mouth gasped open.

  “Like the Unabomber?”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  She picked one up, carefully, and read the name and address off the label. Then she picked up another and read that name and address of the label.

  “I don’t know these names? Who’re they?”

  Widow didn’t have time to help her figure it out on her own, so he just came out with it.

  “These are all the names of current living and retired Army generals.”

  She nodded in agreement. He was right. She knew it instantly.

  “Abel’s planning to send a message by blowing up all the Army’s retired generals?”

  “It’s not a message. It’s petty revenge. Plain and simple. He blames them for ruining his career, I guess. Or some such bullshit.”

  “All of them?”

  “I guess. He’s twisted. Who cares? Right now, we’re going to use these to foul them up inside.”

  “How?”

  “Abel went through a lot of trouble to protect these. They blew up their own compound just to get these out. He abandoned his life and whatever else he had in there. This was the thing he chose to save. It must be important to him.”

  “So what do we do with it?”

  Widow looked at her. He cracked a slow smile. She saw mischief in his eyes like she would imagine on the devil’s face.

  He said, “We blow them up.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  She said, “But. This is evidence.”

  “We’re past that, Adonis. We’re past evidence collecting. He’s gotta go down. We need to do this. It’ll distract him long enough to make a difference.”

  “Okay. You’re right. How? Won’t that blow us all up too? That’s what happened in Carbine.”

  “No. The bombs in Carbine weren’t pipe bombs. Couldn’t have been. They were probably pressure-cooker bombs or C4. Either way, these bombs will explode upward because of the truck’s bed.”

  “There’re a lot of bombs here. Won’t setting them all off at once cause a huge explosion?”

  “Forty-one bombs. There’re forty-one.”

  She nodded and looked at them.

  She said, “One for each retired general. Forty-one names. Forty-one retired generals.”

  “Forty-two, if you count Abel.”

  She repeated her question.

  “Okay. Won’t the explosion be huge?”

  “It definitely will. The fireball will be big. The real danger is in the force behind the shrapnel. But pipe bombs don’t have internal shrapnel jammed into them. No room. Still, these are dangerous. What they did here was pack glass and metal pieces around the bomb inside the package.”

  “That sounds like it’ll kill all of us.”

  “It won’t. Trust me. They’re safe in the house.”

  “What about us?”

  “We’ll be behind cover. We’ll be safe. The vehicles are a different story.”

  “Let’s do it then. What do we do?”

  He explained his idea to Adonis in all its crude simplicity. He explained what they would have to do. She listened and got it and agreed.

  They left the packages stacked where they were. Widow closed the tailgate and they ran back into the barn, pulling the doors closed.

  Adonis took the shotgun and crawled back through the hole in the barn and ran back to the Whites’ house. She went around to the back, the same way they had run from, tracing over their footprints.

  She turned the corner and was lost to sight.

  Widow watched and waited for her to vanish behind the back of the house. He listened to the shouting from inside. He tried to imagine and time the Athenians running upstairs, checking out the bedroom, finding
their dead friend, and then clearing all the upstairs bedrooms until they realized that Adonis had escaped through Dylan’s unlocked bedroom window and climbed down the trellis. He imagined them returning to Abel and the Whites in the main room.

  Widow climbed a ladder in the barn up to a loft, not unlike the one he’d killed Jargo on.

  He walked to the loft’s window and stood close to the wall, as close as he could to provide some protection. He aimed the M4 at the back of the truck, and then he sidestepped completely behind the barn’s wall, keeping the rifle out, one-handed. He squeezed the trigger, firing blind.

  The bullets hit home.

  The pipe bomb packages exploded in a fiery heap. The packed shrapnel, and the bomb’s casing all exploded. The pressure wave swept up the front of the barn and slammed Widow’s location a fraction of a second after the heat and the boom from the explosion.

  The force expanded up and out from the Tundra. It slammed into the barn wall. Widow went flying back and away from the wall like a wave of boards had catapulted him off his feet. He dropped the M4.

  He fell back into the barn, landing on the floorboards of the loft. He hit his head hard and blacked out.

  Chapter 55

  A DONIS WATCHED from the back corner of the house. She flinched from the pressure wave and the boom and the bright fireball, but it was a reaction held over from earlier. Her muscle memory from watching her friends and colleagues explode around her in Carbine set off the chain reaction in her body that caused her to flinch.

  She was too far away from the explosion to feel it the way that Widow must’ve felt it.

  She saw him fire from the window of the barn’s loft. She saw the M4 rip from his hand from the explosion and she saw his hand vanish back into the interior of the barn. She waited for a long minute for him to come out, maybe stick his head out the window, but he didn’t. She watched the rear of the barn, expecting to see him scramble out from behind.

  But he didn’t.

  “Where’re you, Widow?” she muttered.

  He didn’t come out.

  From behind her, she heard the door at the back of the house slide open on tracks. And then she heard voices, scrambling and frantic. She heard someone shouting after someone else.

  “Dylan! Dylan! Wait!”

  Adonis looked back at the barn, one last time, hoping Widow was alive. But then she saw the front of the barn, the barn doors, the loft window, and the front part of the roof flame up from spitfire popping off the fire in the back of the Tundra. Then the Tundra itself exploded. The fire from the bombs had reached the gas tank. The whole thing went up into a fiery mess.

  The barn was burning and burning fast. She paused, thought about running back to see if Widow was all right, but then she heard the voices again.

  “Dylan! Come back!”

  She turned and watched a boy running off into the grayness, into a section of huge Christmas trees, bunched and growing so close together it was like a maze.

  She watched the White family running behind him. All of them vanishing into the gloom, the adults turned the wrong way and disappeared into a different section of trees. The boy was off alone, running for his life.

  They all ran for their lives.

  Widow came to mind one last time. Then she saw two of Abel’s guys dragging the elder Whites out of their own house. They dropped them down to their knees. Abel stood over them.

  She thought he was going to execute them, but he didn’t. He argued with his men for a moment. Then they took the Whites and locked them into a shed at the back of the house. Abel locked them in with a padlock and pocketed the key.

  The three Athenians took off, running into the maze of trees after the Whites. The only thing was, all three men went the same direction as the kid.

  Adonis ran to the shed first.

  “Mr. White,” she called out.

  “Agent Adonis?” he said.

  Abby said, “Oh, thank God!”

  “Let us out of here.”

  She studied the padlock.

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “Please, let us out!” Abe said.

  “I’ll get you out. Just hold on.”

  She stepped back, aimed the combat shotgun at the door, but she stopped. She thought about the ammo. She only had what was in the weapon. No extra shells. And there were still three armed and dangerous Athenians out there.

  The elder Whites were safe, for now. The others were in danger.

  She pounded on the door with a fist.

  “Don’t worry, now. I’ll come back for you. I’m going after them.”

  “No! Wait!” Abe shouted.

  “Get us out!” Abby shouted.

  They both pounded on the inside of the door and begged for her to let them out, but Adonis had already taken off running by then, after Abel into the maze of trees.

  Chapter 56

  D YLAN RAN and ran. He ran until he was out of breath and then he ran some more. Finally, when he thought he was relatively safe, he stopped and put his hands down on his knees, faced the ground and breathed.

  His breaths came in waves of exhaustion. He panted and huffed and panted some more, letting his body catch up to his breathing. He sucked the cold oxygen into his lungs and pushed it back out in steamy exhalations.

  He knew their farm well, but the snow and the wind and the lightning scattered him, confused him, turned him around. Now, he wasn't sure where the hell he was or where he was going.

  The grayness in the sky and the dark clouds made it impossible to gauge direction. North, east, west, and south were all spinning in his head.

  Which way? he thought.

  He was still in the trees. He knew which section of trees because of their heights. He was lost in the nine-year-old trees, the ones just before the section to be cut and sold the next year. The second problem was that they had large sections of trees. Knowing the section where he was lost didn't do much if he couldn't figure out where the edge was. He was right smack in the middle of the nine-year-old section or "The Niners" as his dad called them.

  Dylan's problems didn't stop at just two. He had another issue. He wasn't allowed to play in the sections over seven years in age because they grew larger, making it harder to find his way around. Abe and his father liked for him to stay out of the trees closer to being ready to harvest and sell. Even though he had broken this rule and he had snuck in the Niners before, it was the section he knew the least about. He could've gotten lost in them in broad daylight.

  Suddenly, he heard voices around him; only he couldn't tell which direction they came from. One seemed behind him, on his trail, and another seemed right in front of him.

  He didn't know where to run, so he took off east, thinking he was going north. He ran and ran and slammed right into something that felt like a tree.

  He sat up and faced a black man staring down at him in the gloom. It was Brooks.

  He bent over, took a hand off his M4, and bunched up the boy's collar. He scooped him up like a light backpack. He held him up in the air off his feet.

  Brooks said, "Where're you running off to?"

  Dylan couldn't answer. He was out of breath and frozen in terror.

  Brooks called out.

  "I got the boy."

  Flack came running up from behind and Abel walked in through the gloom. He walked right up to Brooks and stared into the boy's eyes.

  "Goodie. We got bait. Let's take him back to the grandparents. The others will come out of hiding."

  Flack said, "They took off to the north. I think. What if they kept on running?"

  "They'll turn around when they realize they lost this one."

  "Then what? They've blown up the pipe bombs."

  "I told you already. We kill them."

  Brooks lowered Dylan to his feet but kept a big hand around his neck. Dylan squirmed and struggled, but it was like being in a vise grip.

  Brooks loosened his grip enough so Dylan could breathe again, but that was all the slack
he got.

  Brooks said, "Maybe we should just get out of here now. You know? While we can."

  Abel turned and stared at his longtime number two.

  "Not you too?"

  "I just think that our operation is over. Why stick around?"

  "I call the shots, Brooks! Or have you forgotten your place?"

  Brooks stared into Abel's eyes. He had seen the general snap before. He had seen him with crazy looks in his eyes and on his face, but he had never seen the man make irrational decisions, not the kind of tactically ignorant kind, not like this.

  Brooks said, "The Whites are gone. The bombs are destroyed. The compound is gone. There's an ATF agent loose."

  Abel turned slow and paced back and forth, shaking his head, repeating the same word over and over.

  "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."

  He stopped dead center between Flack and Brooks.

  “You disappoint me, Brooks. I never thought I would live to see the day that you’d give up like this."

  "General, I'm not giving up. I'm just saying that right now, we've lost everything. And there's a helicopter back at that other farm. We can get away clean before the FBI figures out we're still in their dragnet."

  Silence.

  Brooks said, “Flack, you can fly the bird, right?”

  Flack said, “Yeah. Sure.”

  Brooks said, “We’ve got a pilot right here.”

  Abel looked like he was thinking it over.

  Brooks said, "General, we can get out now. Clean. We can rebuild somewhere else."

  "Rebuild? You want me to rebuild?"

  Flack said, "I can go get the bird right now. I can circle around back here and pick you up."

  Abel thought for a moment.

  Brooks said, "Just let him get the heli. We can still tear this family apart."

  Abel stopped and stared straight up to the sky. He breathed in and breathed out like a psychotic mental patient doing his treatments to help him come back from the edge of darkness.