Elkins said, 'What good does that do us?'
'Up till now,' Lloyd said, 'I've been diverting, then sending on, because all I wanted was to read what everybody had to say. Now, I don't send it on.'
Wiss grinned. 'Like shutting off a faucet,' he said.
'Something like that,' Lloyd agreed. 'And from now on, if an answer is needed, I put together the answer myself, using all their passwords and technical footprints from their previous messages.'
Parker said, 'So that's what you can do. If they send out an SOS, it comes to you and nobody else.'
'By any means they want to try,' Lloyd said.
Elkins said, 'Except smoke signal.'
'That's somebody else's department,' Lloyd agreed.
Parker said, 'And the answer to the SOS they get is from you, but they think it's from their friends.'
'Exactly,' Lloyd said. 'They say SOS, strangers approaching the lodge, I say help is on the way.'
'Then we go in,' Parker said, 'and they don't send any more messages.'
'But I do,' Lloyd said. 'They're making hourly reports, up to eleven at night and starting at eight in the morning, what they're doing, what they found, what the situation is. Nobody wants to feel isolated up there, so they're in touch with every level of command from Havre to DC.'
Wiss said to Parker, 'And Larry does that, too, sends in the reports, long as we need to.'
Parker said, 'Tomorrow morning, we buy orange coats. Tomorrow afternoon, we go hunting.'
5
About a quarter after one the next afternoon, Parker and Elkins and Wiss climbed out of their gray Jeep at the top of Marino's road by the shack, well above the lodge. All three wore bright orange coats, red and black wool hats with earlaps, black corduroy pants, and tall brown boots. All three wore, in their right ears, under the earlap, a small transmitter from which the tinny voice of Lloyd spoke to them from time to time, down in his room at the motel in Chinook. Hooked to the underpart of the rigid brims of their caps were small microphones, so they could talk back to Lloyd. All three had Remington .35s broken open over their forearms, and fake hunting licenses in clear plastic packs fastened like targets to the backs of their orange coats. All three had black moustaches and black- framed eyeglasses.
'We're starting down now,' Elkins said.
Lloyd's little voice, like a leprechaun in the ear, said, 'Is it cold?'
Wiss, embarrassed for his protege, sounded irritated instead, saying, 'Of course it's cold, Larry. We're not here to chitchat.'
'Sorry.'
It was cold enough to see your icy breath, cold enough to make the gloves they wore necessary, though the gloves might cause a little trouble if they had to use the Remingtons. They walked down the paved road, ice crystals crackling with a dry rustle beneath their boots. Ahead the sentry towers loomed, lights off but cameras still on, looking inward.
'Frank!'
Not Lloyd, not the voice in the ear, but someone behind them. Parker and the others spun around, and a guy was there, on the road a few yards uphill from them, holding his arms well out to the sides, palms forward, to show he was unarmed. He was in a black pea jacket and black wool cap, a bulky guy, probably in his late thirties, with a big heavy-boned face.
Sounding astonished, and not happy, Elkins said, 'Bob! For Christ's sake—'
'Don't worry about us,' Bob said, patting the air to calm everybody down, while the voice in Parker's ear asked, 'What's happening? Bob? Who's Bob?' Nobody was going to answer Larry, because nobody was going to tell Bob there was another pair of ears here.
Elkins said, 'They're gonna revoke your parole, Bob.' He really didn't want this guy here.
'They did, yesterday,' Bob told him. 'I said to you, it was taking too long, Frank. Harry and me took off, so where else we gonna go?'
Wiss, sounding like a stern parent, said, 'Not here, Bob.'
'We won't horn in on you, honest to God,' Bob said. 'It's your play. Just so you know, Harry and me, we'll be up by your car. You need a hand, you can count on us. You want us out, we're out.'
'We want you farther out than this, Bob,' Wiss said.
Bob shrugged, turning mulish. 'Well, this is the way the hand plays,' he said. 'We'll stay up there till it's over, we'll help if we're needed, we'll divvy when it's done, you go your way, we'll go ours.'
Larry in the earphone had grown silent, so he'd caught up with what was happening. Wiss and Elkins looked at each other, then at Parker. Parker thought somebody around here wouldn't live through the day; too many people coming from too many angles. He said, 'It's okay. They'll stay up there, on deck.'
'That's right,' Bob said, and tried to toss a manly smile in Parker's direction. 'Thanks, pal.'
Parker shrugged. He said> 'Come on,' and turned away, walking downhill again. After a second, the other two followed, looking back uphill at Bob, who waved to them, then turned away, going back up the road toward his partner, Harry.
