Read Online Quantico by Greg Bear - Free Book Online Page B

Al-Husam kept his gun trained on them.
    Rowland stood by William and watched as teams three and four joined Al-Husam and Matty, taking up front and rear.
    ‘Goddammit,’ William said, over and over, rolling back and forth, clutching his shins.
    ‘You okay?’
    ‘I should have seen it. I should have seen it coming. Fucking cholo car.’
    ‘You need a medic?’
    ‘Christ, no, it was just a rubber hose. I’m fine.’ He glared up at her. ‘Don’t you goddamn laugh at me. It hurts.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks.
    ‘Nobody’s laughing,’ Rowland said solemnly. She sat on the curb beside him.
    ‘I’m toast,’ William said.
    Farrow seemed to come out of nowhere. He was trying hard to hold a grim face. Clearly he was enjoying this. ‘You all right?’
    ‘I’m fine ,’ William said, pushing up to his feet. The whites of his eyes showed like a skittish horse.
    ‘It ain’t over until it’s over,’ Farrow said in a low growl. He held up a box-cutter and thumbed out a length of blade. ‘Get those bastards out of that vehicle and make your arrest. Pick up your pieces and finish your job. Tonight, meet me in the motor pool garage. You’re gonna buff and scrape my car until it shines. ’

CHAPTER SEVEN
Washington State
    Griff looked over the map he had drawn. It showed places on the property where they had seen children playing or people walking. Little x’s peppered the paper, safe places and paths to the houses, the barn, just in case. He drew lines, boundaries.
    The children tended to stay away from the barn.
    Everybody stayed away from the barn.
    Only a crazy man would mine or booby trap the yard where his own children and grandchildren were playing, right?
    After all the years Griff had been tracking the Patriarch, he still could not say, with certainty, that they could rule out that possibility.
    They had been ready to move out when edicts had come down simultaneously from FBI headquarters and the Attorney General—no big raid, no massive force maneuver, on any date that anyone by any stretch of the imagination could say was Good Friday. If something had gone wrong—or even if they had done their jobs perfectly, and nobody had died—then the headlines could wreak havoc with federal law enforcement in general. The whole country was on edge. It had been on edge for over thirty years, worried and challenged and bitten from without and within. America was half-crazy with suppressed rage.
    They didn’t have much time. The Patriarch would surely find out something in the next couple of days, and therewere any number of ways he could slip out of the farm and get clean away.
    A small white bus drove onto the farm during the midmorning. While Griff notified the incursion team at the trailhead, Rebecca counted the women and children boarding the vehicle, parked just yards from the main house’s front porch—two middle-aged women in long dresses and six younger children dressed in their best church clothes. The children boarded the bus with cheery energy.
    Griff played back the digital video record and counted heads again, to be sure.
    Cap Benson, Charles Sprockett of the ATFE, and SAC John Keller, Griff’s Seattle boss, climbed into the tower at ten thirty and looked over the evidence. They conferred briefly.
    ‘Are we sure that’s all the dependents down there?’ Sprockett asked.
    ‘No,’ Griff said. ‘Jacob thinks there might be two young adult males, and so do I, based on those bank robberies. They’re not on the bus. There might be two more kids, and we’ve been talking over the possibility that the males have girlfriends or wives. We haven’t seen the kids all together to count them, but—’
    ‘There’s a redheaded girl, and maybe a white-blond boy of five or six. We did not see them get on the bus,’ Rebecca said. ‘Younger than the others. They may be the Patriarch’s grandchildren. They may all be living in the rear house.’
    ‘Why wouldn’t they go to Easter services?’ SAC Keller