Kidd and LuEllen: Novels 1-4

by John Sandford

  “For what?”

  “Sell surveillance of Pakistan to India, and surveillance of India to Pakistan. Sell surveillance of Iraq to Iran, and Iran and Syria to Iraq; of Israel to Syria. Of Taiwan to China, and China to Taiwan.”

  “They’d get caught.”

  “I could tell you ten ways to do it, that they’d never get caught. That the buyers would never see the sellers. That’s what the Internet is for. Any buyer who’s getting this stuff . . . it’d be the biggest secret they had.”

  “Okay. So what next?”

  “Let’s go back to Austin. I need to do some shopping,” I said.

  “Always shopping.”

  “We’ll come back tonight.”

  “A scout?”

  “A scout.”

  In Austin, we went to an outdoor-sports store and bought a good compass; a GPS receiver with a map function; topographic maps of the East Waco area, including Corbeil’s ranch; and a cheap black daypack. At a building-supply place, picked up a builders’ protractor, a bubble level, and some duct tape. And in a sewing store, a card with five yards of elastic banding. I spent an hour in the parking lot with the GPS receiver, figuring out how to work it; especially interesting were the time and distance functions, and the backtrack function.

  Then there was the matter of the gun.

  “We need a better one,” LuEllen said. “Look what they did to Lane, and what they did to Jack. Those were executions, so they just don’t give a fuck. If we go on a scout, and they catch us, and they’ve got guns—this is Texas, Kidd—they’re going to shoot us down like dogs.”

  “Anytime you buy a gun . . .”

  “Ought to be easy in Texas,” she said. “Let me call Weenie.”

  It was easy in Texas. All we had to do was drive to Houston, which was a little better than two hours away, meet a guy in a parking lot near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and give him $600 for a cheap Chinese-made AK with two magazines, fifty rounds of 7.65 × 39, and a nylon sling.

  “That’s about a two-hundred-dollar gun in a store,” I told LuEllen, as we left the parking lot.

  “That wasn’t a store,” she said.

  “Hope it works,” I said. “Looks like it was made by a high school kid in a shop class.”

  At five o’clock we were back in Austin. In the motel room, I pumped some shells through the AK, bruised the tip of my middle finger with the firing pin, and eventually decided that the thing might work. We ate, and by seven o’clock, we were on the road again.

  The land around Waco is fairly lush. Waco is just about south of Dallas, and the really dry, sere land—serious prickly-pear country—starts an hour or two to the west.

  But the land just west of Waco, like lots of back-country in this day of Interstate highways, was lonely. All the land was used, in one way or another, but when we’d gone out in the morning, we’d seen only one person along the road, a woman walking out to her mailbox. In that kind of country, without the light pollution of the city, it gets dark.

  We’d picked a good night for it, windless, starlit, quiet. The moon was already slanting down in the sky when we drove past Corbeil’s. There were lights in the house, in the building that might have been an office or bunkhouse, and in the yard. A couple of cars were parked outside the garage, but we didn’t see anyone moving around. We made the turn on Beulah Avenue, west of the ranch, and headed north, until we found the track that headed back to the abandoned homesite that we’d discovered in the morning. Once there, we shut down the truck, spent a couple of minutes looking around, and mostly, listening.

  We heard nothing but insects, and the gravel underfoot. Ten minutes after we arrived, LuEllen broke out the taped flashlights, and we started back down the road toward Corbeil’s place.

  The walk took forty minutes, moving slowly, and stopping to listen and scan ahead with the night glasses. During that time, we neither heard nor saw another vehicle. At the corner of Corbeil’s property, where I’d followed the fence line in that morning, we stepped into the trees and with the flashlights, established our position on the GPS.

  “Ready?”

  “Go,” she said.

  We were both dressed from head to foot in black. In the city, we’d worn dark red jackets. They were nearly as invisible as black, when you were out of the light, and looked a lot more innocent to cops. Out here, if we were caught in the middle of Corbeil’s pasture with the AK, there’d be no point in arguing that we were there by mistake.

  We crossed the fence, with me in the lead, LuEllen following behind; the stars and fragmentary moon were just bright enough that we could see each other as shadows, and hear our feet swishing through the grass. When we’d walked a good distance up the hill, I moved over to the fence line, illuminating it with a spiderweb of light from one of the flashlights.

  With the night glasses, I could clearly make out the dish next to the water tank. Nobody around, though down the hill, I could see cattle, lying down, grouped together like pea pods on a table.

  “Anything?” The word was a breath next to my ear.

  “No. Let’s cross. Use the light and watch the barbs.”

  We crossed the fence and headed down the hill. The dish was two hundred yards away, and we took it easy, stopping often to listen. When we got close, we could hear trickling water, and then, even closer, a tiny electronic hum; the equipment wasn’t moving, but was turned on.

  I handed the AK and the night glasses to LuEllen; by agreement, she moved on down the hill about thirty yards, as a listening post. I took off the backpack and got the equipment out, marked our spot with the GPS, switched the GPS receiver to the time function, then started making measurements.

  The dish was in what appeared to be its “rest” position. With the compass, I measured, to within a degree or to, the direction it was aimed in—about 290 degrees, or a little north of west, and not at all the direction it had been aimed earlier in the day. When I was sure I had it right, I got out the duct tape, taped one end of the elastic band to the top rim of the dish, stretched it across the face of the dish, so I had a tight, straight line with no sag, and taped it to the bottom. Using the level to establish my earth-line, I measured the angle of the elastic, which essentially gave me the current azimuth of the dish. I wrote it down, and then sat down to wait.

  We’d agreed, earlier, that we’d wait for up to three hours for the dish to move. If it hadn’t moved by then, we’d bail. We’d be getting tired, and our edge would be gone. With the elastic stretched out, I laid back on the ground and got comfortable. Watched the moon going down, the stars popping out. The lights from Waco, to the east, were bright enough that you didn’t get the full clout of the Milky Way as you do up in the North Woods, but then, that might be northern jingoism; the stars were pretty good . . .

  I’d been there for twenty-five minutes when the dish motor burped—an electronic burp, a change in the hum, and I sat up, listening, to be sure, then quickly checked the GPS and jotted down the time. With the level and protractor in hand, I moved around to the front of the dish and quickly checked the azimuth. It hadn’t changed. But something was happening: the deeper note from the motor was unmistakable.

  I was worrying about that when I felt a vibration in the disk, and slowly, surely, it began to move, tilting back. I looked at where it was pointing, at the horizon line, but could see nothing but stars. Sometimes, on dark nights, you could see them, the satellites, like tiny sparks scratching themselves on heaven . . .

  I checked the azimuth, wrote down the GPS time signal. Checked the azimuth, wrote down the time. Checked it again, and again. Then hurried around behind it, got the compass, checked to make sure the direction hadn’t changed: it hadn’t. I went back to the dish and checked the azimuth as many times as I could until the dish was pointing at the local horizon, up the hill, and suddenly stopped. After taking the last azimuth, I ran around and checked direction again. Still the same. When I give the numbers to Bobby, I should have a straight line running through the sk
y from just north of west to just south of east, and even with the crude measurements of the protractor, should be able to give him a reasonably close approximation of times and azimuths.

  At the top of its arc, the dish stopped moving for thirty seconds, then slowly began turning, more to the north this time, as the dish began to come down in its arc. At the end of the movement sequence, it was pointing at the horizon at about 320 degrees, or about 30 degrees further north than before. I noted that, packed up my stuff, took the elastic off the dish, and walked south about fifteen feet, and whispered, “LuEllen?”

  A moment later, she was next to me: “Get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard you clunking around.”

  “Not too much, I hope.”

  “Not too bad . . . are we good?”

  “Unless you’d like to take a little walk.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Moving slowly, stopping often to use the night glasses, and staying as far away from the groups of cows as we could, we walked toward Corbeil’s farmhouse. We sat on one hillside for fifteen minutes, taking the whole country in, then crossed a wash and climbed the other side; and from there, we could see Corbeil’s clearly.

  “No dish,” I muttered to LuEllen.

  “So let’s go. We’ve been here too long.”

  “Let’s head over that way for a couple of hundred yards first, and then head back,” I said.

  “That way” was east, toward the eastern edge of Corbeil’s land. We first crossed back to the hill behind us, to get a little more distance between us and the house, and followed the backside of the ridge for four or five hundred yards. When the GPS put us three-fourths of the way across, we turned back up the hill. When we got to the crest, we looked down, and there, in a little hollow, was another dish.

  “That’s three,” I whispered.

  We crossed down to it, and I marked it on the GPS, and did a quick measurement: 320, just like the last one. Waiting. I considered waiting until it started to move, but we were running down. “Let’s go.”

  We took better than an hour to get back to the truck. We approached it slowly, listening, loaded up as quietly as we could, backed out, and headed south toward the highway. Once on the road, LuEllen said, “Nice night for a picnic.”

  “I’m a little kicked,” I said. She was driving, and I added, “When we get down to that old farmhouse, off on the side, if there aren’t any lights, stop at the end of the driveway; just for a second.”

  There were no lights, and she stopped. I stuck the GPS out the window, got a quick read, noted it, and said, “Let’s go home.”

  We took the county road south, then Highway 185 east, past Corbeil’s ranch. As we passed the ranch, we saw two men walking out to a car in the driveway. One of them glanced at us as we went by.

  “That guy . . .” LuEllen said. “The one on the right.”

  “Yeah. He’s limping.” We continued down the highway, and looking back, I saw the car pull out of the driveway, following. A few miles on, we stopped at an intersection before turning south toward Waco. The car followed, again.

  “Still behind us?”

  “Yeah, but they would be. There’s no place else to go.” They didn’t seem to be coming after us with any urgency. “Slow down a little; bring it down to about fifty-seven or fifty-eight,” I told her.

  She lightened up on the gas, and the car, a Buick, slowly crept up on us. When they were off our back bumper, they hung there for a while, then, at a flat spot, kicked out around us and accelerated away. I had the glasses ready, and picked out the tag number on the Buick.

  “Guy didn’t look at me,” LuEllen said.

  “Why should he? We’re just another truck on the open highway. Even paranoia has its limits.”

  “For amateurs,” LuEllen said. “Not for me. We wipe this truck, and take it back first thing tomorrow morning. Before the DMV opens, in case he can check the plate.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  23

  We went back to Bobby that night, and I summarized everything we’d figured out. From the GPS receiver, I’d worked out precise locations of the three satellite dishes we’d seen, and the distances between them, and also gave him the directions, azimuths, and times I’d taken from the dish.

  UNAUTHORIZED SATELLITE CONTACTS?

  POSSIBLE . CUSTOMERS COULD GET HIGHRES PHOTOS VIA THE NET WITH PAYMENTS SENT TO FRONT ACCOUNTS . NAMES IN JACK ’S FILE WERE ALL WEST AND SOUTH ASIA , ISLAMIC , AND INDIAN .

  MUST BE SOME KIND OF ACCOUNTING ON TASKS. HOW COULD THEY TASK THE SATELLITE WITHOUT NRO KNOWING?

  DON ’T KNOW .

  I WILL SHOW DISH DATA TO TWO FRIENDS IF OK WI TH YOU.

  MUST BE *GOOD * FRIENDS .

  BOTH *EXCELLENT* FRIENDS. BOTH KNOW SOME THINGS ABOUT SATELLITES.

  GOOD . ANY NEWS ON GREEN ?

  YES. ATTORNEY SEZ COPS PROBABLY DONE WITH GREEN.

  IS ROOM MONITORED ?

  WILL CHECK.

  ALSO CHECK LICENSE PLATE . . .

  I gave him the plate number and he said he’d get back. The next morning, we returned the truck, carefully wiped of fingerprints. The gun and other equipment we stowed in the back of the rental car.

  “I’d hate to have a cop look at that collection: night glasses, compasses, GPS, the rifle . . . he’d figure we were assassins,” LuEllen said as I put it all in the trunk.

  “Maybe we are,” I said. As the words came out of my mouth, I tried at the last minute to make them into a joke, but LuEllen looked at me with curious eyes. I had to be careful, now, around her.

  More waiting. We spent the day stooging around, checking with Bobby every couple of hours. LuEllen was tired of hitting golf balls with bad equipment.

  “Why don’t you learn how to play golf? We’re always waiting on these things, we’re always trying to figure out what to do, and you always want to draw or some shit. Why don’t you learn something social?”

  “Golf is for morons,” I said.

  “How would you know? You’ve never played.”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to have to turn you over my knee.”

  “Ooo. That could soak up a couple of hours,” she said.

  The only thing we got from Bobby in the morning was the ID on the car driven by the two men from Corbeil’s ranch. A William Hart, with an address.

  “Back at the beginning of all this, I got a letter from Jack that mentioned this guy. He said to be careful around him, because he’s an evil fuck, or something to that effect.”

  “So let’s be careful around him,” LuEllen said.

  Late in the day, Bobby had something:

  CAN YOU GO TO LITTLE ROCK?

  YES ? WHEN , WHY ?

  TOMORROW. PICK UP EQUIPMENT. NEED TO BUG DISH.

  OK.

  EXCELLENT. TALKED TO ATTORNEY. GREEN ROOM [348] PROBABLY NOT FORMALLY MONITORED. MAN IN NEXT ROOM [350] NAMED MORRIS KENDALL, HEAVY DRUGS FROM CANCER, PROBABLY DIE IN A DAY OR TWO, IF YOU NEED TO ASK FOR PATIENT.

  THANKS .

  We checked out of the Austin motel and headed back to Dallas, found another room in another anonymous motel, called the hospital for visiting hours, and were told we could visit until nine o’clock.

  “Tell me again what we can get from Green,” LuEllen said.

  “We can point out the benefits of stonewalling,” I said.

  “I’m sure he’s figured those out,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You’ve got something else working through your dirty little mind.”

  I nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah, I do; but I’m not going to tell you about it yet, because it’d probably piss you off, and then you’d piss me off, and I don’t have the energy for all that. Anyway, tonight, I’m going into the hospital alone. I’ll want you on the street, ready to roll, in case there’s trouble.”

  “Kidd, if you think there’s gonna be trouble . . .”

  “I don’t think there will be, but I’m more paranoid than our two friends at C
orbeil’s . . . Okay? Now, shut up for a while: I’m trying to think.”

  Something else was working through my dirty little mind, and I didn’t want LuEllen to know about it. Not yet, anyway. I’d figured out how to drag AmMath and Corbeil and his goons right into the shit, but I didn’t want LuEllen around when I did it. Texas was a bad state for all this . . .

  I went into Mount of Olives Hospital at eight-thirty that night, with LuEllen waiting in a parking spot on a street behind the doctors’ parking lot. If I had to run for it, I probably wouldn’t get out of the building; but if I did, and I could make it across the doctors’ parking lot, we could be lost in traffic in fifteen seconds.

  A gift shop was open just inside the hospital’s front doors, and I bought a bouquet of bright yellow flowers that looked something like daisies, but with a plastic sheen and a harsh odor. They came in a green glass vase; the whole thing looked cheap, but somehow right. I asked at the information desk for Morris Kendall’s room, got the number, and went up.

  The door to Green’s room was open, and a grim, heavyset woman was sitting in a chair looking into a bed at the far end of the room. There were two beds in the room. I could see only the end of the bed closest to the door, where I presumed Green must be. Nobody told me that his room was only semiprivate. Goddamnit. I went on to 350 and found Morris Kendall in what appeared to be a coma, dying all by himself, a drip running into an arm that was pockmarked with needle sticks. I put the flowers on a sidetable and tried not to look at him.

  After a couple of minutes, I went back out to the hallway and paced for a while. The woman was still sitting there, unspeaking, clutching a purse on her lap. She looked like she disapproved of this whole hospital thing. I went and sat with Morris for a couple more minutes, and in those two minutes, decided that when I got old, I’d lay in a lethal supply of sleeping pills, just in case. I didn’t want to end like this . . .