Chaingang

no idea what a bodyguard he was. He looked up at the fireplace, noticing the pegs in the stone, as if an old musket might have hung there once. Even it was gone.

“Did you have a gun up there once?” He hoped it was still around.

“Yeah,” she said, “it was broken—didn't shoot.” Her mind was on other things. She was thinking about that money he'd borrowed. About what Marty Kerns had told her. “Something was broken off it. It was an old antique. It'd been Sam's grandfather's. I think he decided it would get ripped off and he put it in our cold storage box. I haven't seen it for a long time.

“I want to ask you something. When you borrowed that five thousand dollars ... it was for cocaine, wasn't it?'

“It was for gambling. I was supposed to scurry about and act like a junkie dealer would act. Trying to get his investment money together. It was all planned. But I had to make it look real. You were convenient, and I knew there was no risk—I wasn't going to lose.'

“How did you know that?'

“There was a dealer at this place—The Rockhouse—where all the stoners hung. This one dealer, she was one of us. She'd been put in place just to make sure I'd win my seed money.'

“So I was just a—somebody to be used, to you.'

“You have to understand, babe, when you think like that all the time, it becomes an unshakable habit. I'm a user. It's my nature. Did you ever see that movie with Charlie Chaplin—Modern Times? Remember the scene in the factory where Chaplin is caught between the gears? That's the way it is—the way it was—for me. You reach out for whoever or whatever is at hand, you know?'

“Yeah.” She knew.

27

NORTH OF WATERTON

Doyle Genneret, the belligerent, rich, and ruthless “cattle rancher” who was the owner of the “World-famous Genneret Ranch and Exotic Animal Farm,” was in the main office with a bookkeeper, Sally Peebles, and his hirsute foreman, Dean Seabaugh.

Genneret's background had been in livestock and farm machinery. He'd made a killing in the market and sensed an undeveloped category of stock sales: “exotics.” Giraffes, camels, lions, tigers, bears, kangaroos. “Lordee!” he was fond of saying. “If you don't see it here, it don't shit.'

His main customers were farm boys who wanted to show off for a good year in wheat, or play one-up against the neighbors, something for the grandkids to ooh and ah over. He was aware that a lot of these old boys were turning around and selling exotics themselves, some of them were in the breeding game. But he didn't mind—he knew what the market could stand, and it was fat and juicy. You could turn on the radio or the TV and hear what hogs was a-bringing', but they didn't have a quote on leopards or honey bears. He knew where the roof was on the prices—there flat wasn't one.

The primary cash producer was the Genneret auction, a monthly “Exotic Animal, Livestock, Gun Show and Auction.'

They'd had a few problems with some of them humane society dingbats, but nothing to worry over. He didn't even call ‘em animals, he called ‘em his “stuff.” He kept his stuff in a series of twenty-three overcrowded barns and corrals which required a staff of nearly two dozen hands. More when he went on the road with an exhibit.

His rule of thumb for hiring was simple: you got to be smarter than the stuff. Dean Seabaugh, his foreman was a like mind. He was infamous, even on the ranch, for having whipped a lion to death. He has a slight temper. He shared the boss's view that if them animal rights assholes want to worry about something, “let ‘em go take a tour through the freakin’ slaughterhouse. Whey do they think them streaks, ‘n’ belts, ‘n’ shoes ‘n’ crap come from?'

Magic Silo had come to the edge of the Genneret property line and flashed on a tubular opening in the thick, junglelike wooded area. His storehouse retained the images of masses of gigantic verticillate leaves, looped and whorled like huge fingerprints, that papered the walls of the jungle conduits similar to this one.

He looked closely. Something nudged him. Deja vu? The floor bore the signs of trail. He'd seen incredible “hardballs” inside natural tubes such as this one, ceilings with precisely carpentered dink bamboo. He touched a great leaf with a midrib like the rigid blade of an epee and saw his sign.

Saw the man-tracks the way he'd spotted trip wires and traps and deadfalls—saw the sign, felt the presence of some human intrusion. He, Daniel, was the grandmaster of concealment. Nobody could track a human being like him. He read sign in bright moonlight—but how?

He froze. Chilled those vital signs. Waited. Listening. Reaching out for the enemy who was somewhere near. Would the Genneret outfit have a security unit? At night? Working the woods?

He remained very still for a long period—motionless—barely breathing. He heard something and his face broke into a wide and dangerous grin. Slowly he eased into the pipeline, with the focused concentration that had kept him alive so long, moving through the shadows.

The Genneret outfit was forgotten the instant he saw the watcher and identified him. The farm and the cruel men would have provided him with a smorgasbord of wildly delicious opportunities. Another time—perhaps.

When he saw the movement in deep shadow, he froze again. The huge links of the yard-long, friction-taped killing chain dangled at arm's length.

Now he knew what the sound of the human voice he'd heard represented; it was a watcher whispering into some kind of microphone. A headset thing, maybe, with a transparent tube-type mouthpiece and connected earplug.

“Negative,” he heard the shadowman whisper, “Blue Leader, I do not have a visual.” Chaingang moved forward as the man spoke into his tiny plastic mike, the powerful right arm in motion as he moved, the massive tractor-strength chain moving through the air, propelled by a wrist and forearm and upper bicep of steel, a blur of snaking chain whirling into the deep shadow and connecting.

The chain made more noise crashing into the bushes than the man did falling. Only a hard splat, an off of air, a relatively quiet clump of dead weight—two hundred pounds plus machine gun—falling in a crumpled heap, marked the kill. It was a far more merciful extermination than Bunkowski would have been preferred, but this was no auction house security guard. This was one of them—the invisible eyes. If they were this close, and in the numbers that they would have to be, logic dictated that he expedite his plan's final stages.

He checked the fallen man for life signs. Quickly searched for ID and found neither vital signs nor identification. The weapon was ID enough. That and the commo gear. He was very still again, listening, his sensors scanning for the presence of a partner.

Satisfied after several moments, he eased his great bulk down to the ground beside the man, carefully inserting the earpiece, which he'd found near the watcher's bloodied head. The umbilical cord that connected the headset to the guts of the radio apparatus was too short to facilitate much slack, but with his head beside the inert man's, he was able to insert the earplug.

There was nothing. He waited. As the seconds ticked by, he wondered if they had decided to move in and take him. Were they though with him now? Had he fulfilled his function? Was this experiment or operation now to be aborted with extreme prejudice?

“Blue Leader to Blue Tracker Five—do you read, over?” He grinned into the dark silence, stifling a coughing explosion of mirth. He could utter words now, and the watchers would hear him. What of it?

“Blue Leader, this is Blue Tracker, did Five confirm a visual on Side Show?” The other voice was less clear, but he could hear it.

“Uh—Negative, Blue Tracker, stand by one. Blue Tracker Five, do you copy this transmission? Over.'

Chaingang removed the small earpiece and took the high-impact microphone between his thumb and index finger and squeezed. Crunch!

He silently backtracked his way through the pipeline to his vehicle, fighting to keep a damper on his rage, but