Wild fire

Saturday

UPSTATE NEW YORK

It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

– J.R.R. Tolkien

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Harry Muller parked his camper on the side of an old logging road and gathered his gear from the front seat, then got out, checked his compass, and headed northwest through the woods, wearing an autumn camouflage outfit and a black knit cap.

The terrain was easy to navigate, with well-spaced pine trees and ground cover of moss and dewy ferns. As he walked, daylight began filtering through the pines, revealing a thick ground mist. Birds sang and small animals scurried through the undergrowth.

It was cold, and Harry could see his breath, but the pristine forest was spectacular, so he was slightly more happy than miserable.

Slung over his shoulders were binoculars, a Handycam, and an expensive Nikon 12-megapixel camera with a long 300mm lens. He also carried a Sibley Guide to Birds in case anyone asked him what he was doing there, and a 9mm Glock in case they didn’t like his answer.

He’d been briefed by a guy known as Ed From Tech, who’d told him that the Custer Hill Club property was about four miles long on each side, for a total of sixteen square miles of private land. Incredibly, the entire property was enclosed within a high chain-link fence, which was why the Tech guy had also handed him the wire cutters that Harry now carried in his side pocket.

Within ten minutes, he came to the fence. It was about twelve feet high and topped with razor wire. Metal signs, about every ten feet, read: PRIVATE PROPERTY-TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

Another sign read: DANGER-DO NOT ENTER-PROPERTY PATROLLED BY ARMED GUARDS AND DOGS.

From long experience, Harry knew that warning signs like these were usually more bullshit than reality. In this case, however, he’d take the signs seriously. Also, it troubled him that Walsh either didn’t know about the dogs and armed guards or knew and didn’t tell him. In either case, he would have a few words for Tom Walsh on Monday morning.

He took out his cell phone and switched it from ringer to vibrate. He noticed that his phone had good signal strength, which was a little strange up in the mountains. Impulsively, he dialed his girlfriend Lori’s cell phone. After five rings, his call went into voice mail.

Harry said softly into the phone, “Hi, babe. It’s your one and only. I’m up here in the mountains, so maybe I won’t have good reception for very long. But I wanted to say hi, I got up here last night about midnight, slept in the camper, and now I’m on-duty, near the right-wing loony lodge. So don’t call back, but I’ll call you later from a landline if I can’t reach you by cell phone. Okay? I still need to do something at the local airport later today or tomorrow morning, so I might need to stay overnight. I’ll let you know when I know. Speak to you later. Love you.”

He hung up, took the wire cutters, sliced a gap in the chain-link, and squeezed through onto the property. He stood motionless, looked, listened, then put the wire cutters back in his pocket. He continued on, through the woods.

After about five minutes, he noticed a telephone pole rising between the pine trees, and he approached it. Mounted on the pole was a telephone call box, which was locked.

He looked up and saw that the pole was about thirty feet high. Approximately twenty feet up the pole were four floodlights, and above that were five strands of wire running along a crossbeam. One wire obviously powered the telephone and another powered the floodlights. The other three were actually thick cables that could carry lots of juice.

Harry noticed something unusual and focused his binoculars toward the top of the pole. What he’d thought were evergreen boughs from surrounding trees were actually boughs protruding from the telephone pole. But these boughs, he knew, were the plastic kind that cell-phone companies used to camouflage or beautify cell-phone towers in populated areas. Why, he wondered, were they here in the middle of the woods?

He lowered his binoculars, raised his Nikon, and snapped a few shots of the pole, recalling that Tom Walsh had said to him, “In addition to cars, faces, and plate numbers, photograph anything else that looks interesting.”

Harry thought this seemed interesting and good for the files, so he took his Handycam and shot ten seconds of tape, then moved on.

The terrain began to rise gradually, and the pines gave way to big oaks, elms, and maples whose remaining foliage were brilliant hues of red, orange, and yellow. A carpet of fallen leaves covered the ground, and they rustled when Harry passed over them.

Harry did a quick map-and-compass check and determined that the lodge was straight ahead, less than half a mile away.

He broke out a breakfast bar and continued on, eating, enjoying the fresh Adirondack mountain air while staying alert for trouble. Even though he was a Federal agent, trespassing was trespassing, and without a warrant, he had no more right to be on private, posted land than a poacher.

And yet, when he’d asked Walsh about a warrant, Walsh had said to him, “We have no probable cause for surveillance. Why ask a judge if the answer is no?” Or, as the NYPD liked to say about bending the law, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission now.”

Harry, like everyone else in anti-terrorism, knew that the rules had changed about two minutes after the second tower had been hit, and the rules that hadn’t changed could be broken. This usually made his job easier, but sometimes, like now, the job also got a little riskier.

The forest had thinned out, and Harry noticed a lot of stumps where the trees had been felled and carted away, maybe for firewood, maybe for security. Whatever the reason, there was a lot less cover and concealment than there had been a hundred yards back.

Up ahead, he could see an open field, and he approached it slowly through the widely spaced trees.

He stopped under the last standing maple and surveyed the open land with his binoculars.

A paved road ran through the field and downhill to the entrance gate, where he could see a log-cabin gatehouse through his binoculars. The road was lined with security lights mounted on metal poles, and he also noticed wooden telephone poles with five strands of wires coming out of the woods, crossing the field and road, and disappearing again in the woods on the far side of the road. This, he assumed, was a continuation of what he’d seen near the fence, and it appeared that these poles and wires circled the property, meaning the whole sixteen- mile perimeter was floodlit. He said to himself, This is not a hunting lodge.

He scanned the road as it traveled uphill to a huge two-story Adirondack-style mountain lodge that sat on the rising slope in front of him, about two hundred yards away. On the front lawn of the lodge was a tall flagpole from which flew the American flag and, beneath that, some sort of yellow pennant. Beyond the lodge were some utility structures, and at the top of the hill was what looked like a radio or cell-phone tower, and he took a telescopic photo of it with his Nikon.

The lodge was made of river stone, logs, and wood shingles, with a big columned portico out front. The green- shingled roof sprouted six stone chimneys, all of which billowed gray smoke into the air. He could see lights in the front windows and a black Jeep in the big gravel parking lot in front of the house. Obviously, someone was home, and hopefully they were expecting guests. That’s why he was here.

He used the Nikon to take a few telescopic photos of the parking lot and lodge, then he turned on his Handycam and took some establishing footage of the lodge and his surroundings.