Chapter 23

Chalk it up to impulse, a reckless streak, or the lingering effects of the gin he’d had earlier, there was no hesitation. No second-guessing. Not a doubt in his mind.

Connor followed it.

He gave the truck a good fifty yards before he fell in behind it. Lights off, not an issue at this early hour as both vehicles moved past the oaks and sweet gum until they hit a two-lane road that bisected the old maritime forest. The pick-up came to a rolling stop at the intersection, then turned right at the same instant its blue halogens flashed on. Connor hung back a few seconds, figuring at this late hour it couldn’t be too difficult to keep tabs on a single set of taillights a couple hundred yards ahead of him. His real problem was when to turn on his own beams which, with the lack of traffic, would immediately appear suspicious in the F-150’s rearview mirror.

He elected to keep them off until they came to the next major intersection. Following another rolling stop, the truck made a left turn onto another road that would take it toward the junction with Highway 17, the major north-south route through coastal Carolina. At that point the driver would either be forced to pull straight ahead into a residential neighborhood, or turn left or right. If he chose the latter, Connor would have a good idea where he was headed.

He did.

The traffic light turned red before Connor got there. He looked both ways, then blew through it, finally switching his headlights on as he completed the turn. Up ahead at the next intersection, the truck edged into the left lane and turned onto Highway 41, and once again Connor followed. For the next thirty minutes both vehicles cut through the darkness of the national forest, Connor taking care to hang back as far as possible until they got a few miles past the Jamestown crossroads. At that point he flicked off his lights again and inched up behind the F-150, waiting for it to make the turn off the main drag onto the county road he knew eventually would lead to the expansive tract of land owned by Lomax Industries.

The truck continued along the narrow blacktop a couple more miles. Then the brake lights blinked on as it swung onto a dirt track that cut off to the left and snaked through the pines. Muddy tracks indicated that several vehicles had driven through since the last rain had fallen, and even in the pre-dawn darkness Connor recognized it from his own excursion out here.

He drove right past, found the same hiding spot as last time on the other side of the road, and backed into the trees as far as his vehicle would go. By now he’d had close to an hour to sort through all the reasons why a Lomax pick-up had come to Sea Island Rehab in the middle of the night. Each time he concluded there was only one: to get to Cherine Dupree. Killing her in the hospital downtown might have proven to be difficult, but penetrating security at a small facility out in the middle of the boondocks? Not so much.

Which begged a further question: what was the commotion that had caused her to call Claire, who then had called Connor? Why had the cops been summoned? Had the man in the truck tried to gain entry earlier but maybe panicked, decided to make another attempt later, after the police were gone? And then got spooked, made a phone call, and drove all the way back out here?

Too many questions, and not enough answers. Certainly not one that would even come close to explaining what Connor was doing out here, and what he was about to do next.

The engine ticked as it cooled in the evening chill. Connor climbed out of the SUV, then gently nudged the door closed with his hip. He would have preferred to have locked it, but was concerned that the automatic chirp might pierce the silence of the woods. He moved as fast and stealthily as his swollen ankle and sprained ribs would allow, his eyes set on the gate where the F-150 had passed through just a moment before. He imagined the eyes of bears, coyotes, bobcats, even alligators fixed on him as he slipped across the roadway, nothing but a vast, haunting silence in all directions. Not a gust of wind, or a flicker of movement. Just an eerie, quiet stillness that had settled across the land.

He approached the gate, saw it was constructed of eight-foot hurricane fencing with a spool of razor wire coiled on top. Impossible to get over without a ladder or a length of rope, but boot camp had prepared him for such things. He looked left and right, arbitrarily settled on the latter and picked his way through the thick underbrush along the chain link until he eventually came to a water oak with a low limb that arced upwards and over the concertina wire. Even with his ankle throbbing he was up and over in under thirty seconds, easing himself to the forest floor with nothing more than a quiet rustle of leaves.

Once again Connor found himself crawling through briars and vines as he inched his way back toward the dirt road. He was just about to emerge from the brush when the scraping of boots alerted him to a sentry walking toward him. One slow step in front of the other, the glare of his cellphone illuminating his face. Paying no attention to his surroundings, working on a text to his girlfriend, or maybe playing Call of Duty.

Connor waited until the guy was a good fifty yards up the road, then followed along behind, keeping his profile low and muffling his footfalls. He kept close to the thick scrub in case he needed to make a quick retreat, but figured the guard was either too bored or too tired to spot him. Probably both.

He moved along the edge of the dirt track a yard at a time, keeping both ears tuned for the sound of voices or more footfalls. Twice he thought he heard the guard returning, causing him to duck into the underbrush, but both times turned out to be false alarms.

Eventually the trees gave way to a clearing about the size of four football fields. He crouched down as low as he could and tried to figure out what he was looking at: no lights, no trucks, no structures. Just acres and acres of unmown grass, and an array of earth mounds situated in a rough circle about a hundred yards across. The lack of light made it difficult to determine their size, but they appeared to be maybe fifteen feet high and twice that from one end to the other.

By now Connor was a good hundred yards inside the fence, thankful the clouds were cooperating but worried that first light might appear soon. His watch told him it was a little after five, and this time of year sunrise came before six. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he was beginning to detect a subtle definition to the trees in the east.

The air was cool and quiet. No crickets, no wind. Dark enough for the grackles and crows to be asleep, no food yet to be scrounged. Not even the murmuring of voices from the armed guards he suspected were in the compound with him. He hoped to hell they weren’t equipped with night vision glasses.

Connor slowly creeped his way toward the nearest of the earthen mounds, remaining as close to the ground as possible. His earlier height estimate turned out to be accurate, as it sloped gently upwards to a crest of about five yards at the summit. He edged around the low knoll, obviously manmade, spotted several trucks parked near a similar mound on the other side of the flat field. Including, it appeared, the F-150 Connor had followed from Sea Island rehab. There was no sign of movement, no lights, no odor of smoke that would suggest a fire or cookstove. Or cigarettes.

He retreated back to the far side of the mound and slipped into a tangle of brush and briars, just enough not to be detected by a passing guard. Something was gnawing at the back of his brain, something that reminded him of his FOB outside Kirkuk.

A few minutes later the sky to the east began to take on a lighter hue, and Connor heard the first stirrings of human life. A truck door slammed, and sixty seconds later a vehicle rolled around the edge of the encampment and pulled onto the dirt track that led back through the trees to the razor-wire gate out by the county road.

Connor didn’t know what he was seeing, and he realized it was pointless to hang around. He had sworn off this reckless craziness, yet he continued to place himself in situations that were beyond his control. He also seemed to have an angel sitting on his shoulder, watching out for him when he got tangled up in shit that wasn’t his. Problem was, he knew that someday that angel would give up on him and seek a more responsible subject.

He was just getting ready to pack up and go home when he heard another rumbling. This one was different: louder and throatier and smellier, as the first hint of diesel fumes hit his nose. He remained in the scrub, hunched as low as he could as it got closer and closer. Eventually the source of it came into view, and it was nothing that he’d been expecting.

It was a full-sized passenger bus, white with red and gold graphics on the side, large block lettering that read “American Trail Tours.” All but the front windows were covered with a material that Alex Reeves had described as vinyl perf, a material honeycombed with holes that adhered to glass so passengers could see out, but no one on the outside could see in. As it pulled close, he was convinced it was the same bus he’d seen being wrapped when Connor had swung by the vinyl shop over a week ago.

What was it doing here? Dropping off new recruits, or picking up trained soldiers?

The bus followed the ill-defined dirt road out of the trees and into the compound, bouncing over the hardened ruts toward the complex of mounds. Connor instinctively decided to follow it, moving along behind in a low crouch until it made a gentle turn and headed toward the clearing in the center of the complex. At that point he ducked in behind a cluster of fuel drums, spray-painted in military camo, providing good cover from which to observe whatever was about to go down.

The vehicle made a broad turn through the compound and eventually slowed to a stop in front of one of the mounds. Dawn was close enough to yield enough light for Connor to make out a set of steel doors, not unlike those of a metal shipping container, that seemed to open out from the large hillock. A few seconds later, two men dressed in camo fatigues climbed out of a matching SUV and approached the bus. The side door swung open with a hiss, and one of the men appeared to have a few words with the driver. The bus then pulled around the compound in a tighter circle, then backed it up until it was just a couple yards from the earthen bunker.

Connor expected to see passengers either emerge from the bus or file into it, but neither of those things happened. Instead, the vehicle idled there for a few minutes until the men opened the double steel doors, exposing a large storage area set into the side of the manmade hill. Someone flicked a switch and the interior was bathed in a low glow, revealing row upon row of stacked blue storage drums.

The driver climbed down from the bus, and soon all three men were using hand trucks to move the containers from the underground depot to a ramp that had been extended up through the front doorway into the bus. They maneuvered them one at the time into the darkness, until all of them had been moved inside. Sixty-four, at Connor’s count.

What the hell? he thought, and then his mind went back to what he’d read about Joey Barber’s fascination with Timothy McVeigh. The barrels of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and the manifesto he’d downloaded from the dark web. All apparently part of a thwarted plot to blow up a courthouse up in Columbia.

Connor had seen enough. If luck was with him, there was some sort of cell signal out here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. If he could make it back to the trees and dial nine-one-one. He was just starting to turn around to make his exit, when something hard came down on the back of his head, sucking his brain into a dark, black hole.