Judas Horse

“He likes me, or he’s nuts.”

“Or he’s made you and is playing for time.”

My stomach flips. “I have no way of knowing, do I?”

Neither of us speaks. I am up in the hazelnut trees again, fussing with the traps for moths, and not liking the symbolism one bit.

“This is not a disaster,” Donnato muses, as if to assure himself. “We can piggyback on his wireless signal. Hear everything going on inside the house.”

“If he made me, he wouldn’t let you do that,” I remind him.

“Tell me this — where does he go every morning?”

“He started running and lost fourteen pounds. I told you, it’s a new ritual. I think he’s preparing for the Big One.”

“Does he always go by the front door?”

When I first came to the lost farm, the agent in the cherry picker who was dressed like a repairman, aside from wiretap devices, installed cameras on the telephone poles. Command center in Portland can see everything that comes and goes.

“Because we don’t always get a visual until he’s a quarter mile away from the house,” Donnato says. “How does he get out? Suddenly he pops on-screen, heading north. We don’t know how he gets there or where he’s going. Find out.”

At 7:45 a.m. the next day, Stone, wearing a fluorescent yellow Grateful Dead T-shirt, running trunks, and a belt holding a water bottle, heads out through the kitchen door. No big mystery about that. I watch from the second-floor window — careful to stay beyond the range of the camera installed in the German clock — as he jogs twice around the soft track of the orchard, then veers into the wooded parcel behind the house.

I’m out the kitchen door, across the overgrown garden, and on the trail, keeping a hundred yards between us. As we move through the woods, I can see his shirt flashing up ahead. Then I lose him, but he has to stay on the trail or run through scrub. When we come out at the cottonwood trees, I duck below the wash. Now he’s in open territory, looking like any other fitness runner, tuned in to his iPod, dark stains on the T-shirt, churning muscular calves. The music keeps him focused — eyes ahead, not even thinking of watching the rear — so I stretch out and match his pace as we come up to the muddy tracks of the wildlife sanctuary.

Against the sky, the matrix of power wires becomes more defined as we draw close. To my right is the plain where the blind foal was found. As Stone keeps on moving through the maze of manzanita, an epiphany of logic breaks over me like a cold shower: He’s heading for the shooting range where I found the.50-caliber shell.

This is where he practices shooting his weapons. Including the sniper rifle that killed Sergeant Mackee.

I am getting excited now. I wish to call Donnato, but I know there is no cell phone service here. The hard- furrowed roads are hazardous for turned ankles, and Stone is slowing down. No shots echo — it’s too early for your ordinary amateur shooter. I take a spur trail and circle around to where I suspect he’s going, accelerating to beat him and duck into a concealed position behind the Dumpsters overflowing with trash and flies.

He stops in the center of the firing range, heaving and throwing drops of sweat. He swigs water and spits it out while turning around in a 360, checking the perimeter.

Where does he hide the guns? A chest buried somewhere? A cave in the wash?

Now he slides a black-and-silver phone from the belt holding the water bottle and glances up at the sky, moving until there are no power lines above him. The phone is way too big to be a cell. I can make out the profile of an antenna, like a little finger pointing up. He is using a satellite phone to get past our wiretaps.

You can only use a satellite phone outside, with a clear view to the sky. That is why he comes to the shooting range.

“Gemini? It’s Taurus. What have you got? You’re the expert. You’re the one with access to intel, the off-site, the whole deal. Don’t leave me hanging out here with my pants down, buddy.”

He waits. I wait. My breath comes fast.

“You said you could get past the SAC. I’m counting on it.”

The cold shower of logic becomes a deluge of ice. It is unmistakable. Dick Stone is talking to someone inside the Bureau.

On an untraceable satellite phone.

Twenty-five

Once again, I am a passenger in the dark, being driven along unknown roads to an uncertain destination — just like in undercover school. As in undercover school, I have made the strategic decision to imbibe an illegal substance, meaning I am as stoned as the rest of them on some awesome weed.

That night, before I could alert Donnato to the discovery of the satellite phone, we learned through a posting on the FAN Web site that Lillian, the sweet old bird-watcher rescued from the mustang corral, was dead.

Dinner was quesadillas, and Megan was quiet.

“What happened?” Sara said. “I thought she was okay.” “She’d just had a heart-valve replacement and it got infected.” “Too bad,” said Stone with a mouth full of cheese.

“It was a direct result of the action,” Megan snapped. Her face looked slack, darkness beneath the eyes. “She was traumatized, and then she’s taken to a bad hospital in a piss-poor excuse for a town.” Slammer was jamming green apple halves and carrots into an industrial juicer.

“Do you have to do that?” Sara asked.

“Fiber, man.”

The juicer must have been outfitted with a jet engine.

Megan told Stone she was leaving for two days.

“Why?”

“Lillian’s memorial service.”

The juicer howled.

“Where?”

“San Jose.”

“Turn that thing off,” Stone shouted. “Fuck your fucking fiber.” The motor ticked to a stop. Slammer had extracted a quarter cup of amber-colored juice.

Megan put her head in her hand. I laid my arm around her shoulders.

“Megan’s upset. She saw the whole thing at the corral.” “Never should have happened,” declared Stone.

“The lady was too old to go on something like that,” Sara added.

“It wasn’t her being old.” Megan raised her burning eyes. “It’s us who were arrogant. We were breaking the law when—” “What’s the law anyway?” asked Stone. “Whatever the government decides. Arbitrary bullshit.” “I’ll be back late Sunday,” Megan said tiredly.

“You’re not going. It’s a trap. The feds will be there.” Megan stood. “That’s crazy!” She had gone shrill. “I am so sick of your paranoid fantasies. The world is fucked and we can’t save it. We’ve been living in fantasyland all these years, without one normal day. Without peace of any kind. Without family.” “We could have had a family.”

“All I ever wanted was a baby.”

“You could have had a baby.”

“No! I couldn’t! We were always on the run.”

“Hush up now!” Stone said menacingly.