phone from his pocket and punched up the number he’d been given.
He got an answer: “Paul Queenen.”
“Paul, this is Virgil Flowers. Where are you guys?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes south of town on 71,” Queenen said.
“Stay on 71 until you get to Country Club Road.”
VIRGIL GAVE THEM instructions on getting in and then Raines took the three of them to an electronics room to look at the security system. “We got some deer around, so we keep the audio alarms off most the time, but I’ve got them set to beep us tonight…”
Knox had a dozen video cameras set out in the woods, feeding views into three small black-and-white monitors, all of which were a blank gray. “When you hear an alarm, you get a beep and an LED flashes on the area panel,” Raines said. He touched a ten-inch-long metal strip with a series of dark-red LEDs in numbered boxes. Above the LED strip was a map of Knox’s property, divided into numbered zones that corresponded to the LEDs. “When you get a flash, you can punch up the monitor and get a view of the area… you almost always see a deer, though we’ve had bears going through. Sometimes you don’t see anything because they’re out of range of the camera.”
“But in the dark like this…”
“The cameras see into the infrared, and there are infrared lights mounted with the cameras,” Raines said. He reached over to another numbered panel, full of keyboard-style numbered buttons, and tapped On. One of the monitors flickered and a black-and-white image came up: trees, in harsh outline.
“You’ll notice that there isn’t as much brush as you’d expect-Carl keeps it trimmed out pretty good. The trees are bigger than you’d expect, because he has them thinned. He wants it to look sorta normal, but when you get into it, you can see a lot further than if it was just untouched woods.”
“How does it pick up movement?” Bunch asked. “Radar?”
“They’re dual-mode-microwave and infrared to pick up body heat.”
Raines had worked through a defensive setup. “Whoever’s covering the system has to know where our guys are at. You don’t want to be turning on the lights if you don’t have to, because you’ve got your own guys moving around. If somebody’s coming in with high-end night-vision goggles, some of those can see into the infrared. It’d be like turning on a floodlight for them.”
Virgil looked at his watch. “I don’t think they’ll get here until daylight anyway,” he said. “Not unless they flew, and then they’d still have to drive.”
They got a beep then, and Raines switched one of the monitor views, and they saw a fuzzy heat-blob moving across the screen. “It’s small-probably a doe,” he said. He flicked on the infrared lights and they saw the doe, wandering undisturbed through the trees.
“Hell of a system,” Virgil said.
TWO OR THREE minutes later, as they were headed back to the living room, the security system beeped again and they went back to look at the monitors. “Car coming in,” Raines said. He touched one of the monitors and they saw a truck coming toward them, down the driveway.
“Bemidji,” Bunch said.
“We oughta put the trucks in the garage-too many of them, they’ll get worried. If they spot them,” Jarlait said.
THE THREE AGENTS from Bemidji-Paul Queenen, Chuck Whiting, Larry McDonald-brought assault rifles, armor, and radios. With the handsets that Virgil already had, there’d be enough for everyone. They gathered in Knox’s den, where he had a Macintosh computer with a thirty-inch video display, and Virgil called up Google Earth and put a satellite view of Knox’s property on the screen.
“Overall, I see two possibilities,” Virgil said, touching the screen. “First, they come in by water, which wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve looked at this picture, and they probably have. They could grab a boat, or bring one-a canoe or a jon boat-throw it in the water, and drift right along the shore. They’d probably come in from the south, but they could come in from either direction, so we have to watch both. The second possibility is that all they’ve got is a car, or a truck, and they come in from the highway… but they won’t want to park in the open, so they’ll have to ditch the truck here or here.”
When he finished, one of the Bemidji agents said, “You know, there’re only two highways in here.” He tapped the screen. “If you put roadblocks here and here… they gotta hit them. If you had some guys hiding off-road, south of the roadblocks, and if somebody turned and ran, they could block them south. Trap them.”
“I thought of that,” Virgil said. “One problem: we’d have some dead cops. These people have no reason not to fight. They’ve already killed seven or eight people, they’re here illegally, and they could be considered spies. Probably would be. If we catch them, they’ll go away forever. So if they’re suddenly jumped by a roadblock, my feeling is that they’d go for it-they’d try to shoot their way through. And they might have any kind of weapons.
“The other problem is, we’ve got Canada here.” Virgil traced the border on the satellite view. “They could literally swim to a country where we have no authority, if they could shoot their way to the river. If they get to Canada, I have a feeling we lose them.”
“Probably would,” another of the agents said. “Their crimes are federal capital crimes. Canada wouldn’t extradite. We’d have to make some weird kind of deal. I don’t think the politicians would go for it-let Canada tell us what we could do.”
“One more thing,” Virgil said. “They’ve been working this operation for a year. They’re not stupid; they’ll have alternative plans. I thought about things like, what if they ditched all their weapons down in the Cities and flew into Fort Frances? They walk through Canadian customs, pick up a prepositioned weapons cache and a boat over there, cross the river, hit Knox, cross back, and head out.”
They all looked at the map, then Jarlait chuckled and said, “Wish you’d mentioned that sooner. If they did that, they could be here right now.”
“No. Not on the alarm system,” Raines said. “We’ll see them coming-might only have a minute or two, but we’ll see them.”
“Maybe they’ve got invisibility cloaks,” Bunch said.
Raines said, “Well, then we’re fucked.”
VIRGIL SAT staring at the map until Bunch prodded him and asked, “What do we do, boss?”
Virgil said, “Our biggest problem is that we don’t know the territory, and we don’t have time to learn it. Can’t see in the woods, but we can’t help it, because if they’re coming at all, they’re coming tonight. By tomorrow, they’ve got to figure they’ll be all over the media. That Knox will know that they’re coming and will get out. And I’ve set them up to think that I don’t know where this house is… if they’re still monitoring my truck. So: I think they’ll come in fast, but there aren’t many of them.”
He looked at Jarlait and Bunch. “I want you two guys at the corners of the property, on the river, looking for boats.” He touched the two corners on the video map. “I want you deep under cover, I want you to literally find a hole, and then, not move. Nothing sticking up but your head. They’ve got starlight scopes and night-vision glasses. If they come in, I just want a warning so we can reposition everybody else.”
To the Bemidji guys: “I want you three on the land side.” He pointed at the video display: “Here, here, and here.”
“I want everybody on the ground, hidden. Your main job will be to spot these guys so we can build a trap as they come in.”
“You mean, ambush them,” Whiting said.
Virgil nodded. “That’s what it comes to. I’m going to ask Sean to monitor the security system. If anybody sees or hears anything, you call on the radio. Bunch of clicks and your name. That’s all. When they come in, you let them past and then get ready to close from the back. Sean will vector you in behind them. If they come in spread out, that means they’ll be hooked up by radio. If they’re operating as a sniper team, I expect at least two will come together, a spotter and a shooter. Gotta watch out for the third one.
“If they come in from the river, I want the land-side guys to rally down here on the house; if they come in from the land-side, I want Jarlait and Bunch to rally up to the house,” Virgil said. “I’ll be here with Sean until something
