next time, we ought not to go shooting like that.”
“Paper said the FBI was lookin’ for them kids,” Jared said.
“That was almost a month ago; if the FBI thought those kids had come to the arsenal, we’da had a swarm of those sum bitches all over the place.
Hasn’t been anything like that. We just have to be extra careful for a while. We’re getting pressure in the tanker truck now. Won’t be much longer, I can do this thing.”
Jared passed a clunker out on Route 11. “Kinin’ those kids, that could be some serious heat,” he said.
Browne realized that the incident with the intruder must have spooked Jared a little more than he had anticipated.
“We didn’t kill anyone. That flash flood got ‘em. There wasn’t anything we could do about that. And we did save the girl.”
“Them was our traps, got them kids,” Jared said, slowing as he approached the darkened traffic signal marking the entrance intersection to the arsenal.
“They shouldn’t have been in there,” Browne said.
“The Lord sent that flood. It was their time, that’s all.”
Jared was silent as he pulled into the turn lane. There was no one coming the other way, so he was able just to make the turn and douse his lights as he went between the barrels. Browne bit his lip, thinking about what Jared had said. The real question now was what was he going to do about the girl when Judgment Day came. She’s insurance, he kept telling himself.
But if the cops came, and they were holding the girl, she could tie them to what had happened to the other two.
Jared drove up toward the main gate through a corridor of tall pines, then slowed to make the turn onto the fire-access road.
“The copper is over there,” he said.
“Behind that there transformer box.”
He stopped the truck, and they both got out. The night was still and clear, but with no moon. The only sound came from the night insects and the ticking noise of the truck’s engine cooling down. A big semi went whining down the highway below, but they were completely out of sight.
They loaded the heavy copper plates into the bed of the truck, closed the tailgate, and then drove on down the access road until they came to the rail spur gates, where they stopped. Jared began to unload the plates while his grandfather went to move the wire and unlock the interior gates. They hauled the plates through the two sets of gates.
“We’ve been usin’ these here gates for some time now,” Jared said when all the plates were inside the perimeter.
“Maybe we ought to lay down some things, like we got along the creek.”
Browne thought for a moment. That might not be a bad idea.
“Traps, you mean?”
“It’s all gravel and concrete from here on in. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of a counter. One a the guys in the Hats has one, Radio Shack ‘lectric-eye deal. Tell us if it’s just us chickens walkin’ through here.”
Jared belonged to a backwoods militia group, which called itself the Black Hats. They got together up on the West Virginia line to drink beer, tell racist jokes, and shoot up the woods, pretending they were guerrillas.
Browne thought they were all a bunch of beer-bellied retards. William would never have stooped to that crowd. Jared, on the other hand, probably fit right in, but he kept that sentiment to himself.
“I agree,” he said.
“Bring one next time.”
Edwin Kreiss was making his way from building to building along the shadows of the main street of the upper industrial area, when he heard the
truck. He had come up the rail spur from the switch point off the main Norfolk & Western line an hour ago. He had not discovered Browne’s arrangements with the rail gates; he had simply climbed the fence a hundred feet from the gates, covering up the barbed wire on the top with the rubber floor mat from his truck. He had come in to make a one-night reconnaissance, so he’d brought only water and a chest pack with some implements of his former trade. His plan was to creep the main industrial area to see if he could find any signs of human activity, especially over toward the ravine on the south side that contained the creek. He stopped when he heard the truck.
The engine seemed to slow down. The sound was coming from the direction of the rail spur security gates. Kreiss looked around and found a steel ladder leading up the side of a three-story windowless concrete building that faced the main street. There was enough starlight in the clear mountain air to allow him to read the sign on the building, which said ammonia concentration PLANT. One of the complex’s internal rail sub spurs ran directly behind the building, and the ladder went up the side of the building to its roof. He listened again. The engine was quiet, or perhaps idling. Then he heard it start back up, rev for thirty seconds or so, and then shut down. They were parking it. And coming in?
He tested the ladder. It seemed to be firmly mounted. He listened again, but there were only night sounds in the air. He made his decision and hoisted himself up onto the ladder and began to climb. At the top, the ladder rails curved up and over the edge of the roof. He stepped carefully out onto the roof, until he realized that it, too, appeared to be made of concrete. There were three large skylights embedded in the center of the roof, and he went over to one and looked down. The glass was clouded with grime and dust; below, there was only darkness. He thought about using a light, but not if there was the possibility that someone was coming.
He felt a slight breeze touch his neck. He went back to the front edge of the roof, where there was a three- foot-high parapet. He knelt down behind the parapet and unzipped his chest pack. He pulled out a stethoscope, a flat cone-shaped object, and a small wire frame. He squeezed the cone open, creating a speaker-shaped object some twelve inches in diameter at the large end and one inch at the small end. He fit the cone into the wire frame and set it up on the parapet, pointing up the main street toward the rail gates, which were some three hundred yards distant. Then he screwed the acoustic diaphragm of the
stethoscope into the back of the cone and put the sound plugs into his ears. There was a faint chuffing background noise sound of the night breeze, but otherwise nothing. He waited, keeping his head down behind the parapet in case someone down below was using a nightscope to scan the darkened buildings.
After five minutes or so, he detected the first footsteps, small, regular crunching sounds coming from the direction of the gates. He smiled in satisfaction as he listened. Two sets of steps, walking slowly, close to each other. They stopped, and there was the sound of some heavy objects hitting the ground. He wanted to take a look, but the cone was telling him what he needed to know. The footsteps resumed, coming up the main street, their boots making clopping noises on the concrete, alternating with a clanking cadence when they crossed the big metal plates in the street, until they passed beneath the cone. While he waited for them to pass, he pulled out his own nightscope. He attached its external power cord to a slim battery pack in his chest pack. He gave them another minute and then rose up behind the parapet and swept the street below.
He almost missed them as they turned the corner a block away, went between two large buildings, and disappeared. Confirm two, and each of them was carrying something under both arms. One much taller than the other. He swept the street back in the direction of the rail gates, but there seemed to be nothing else stirring. Time to get back down on the ground.
He packed up the listening cone and his nightscope and climbed back down the ladder on the side of the building. Without making any noise, he moved as quickly as he could to the other side of the street and then down to the corner where they had turned. A quick look around the corner revealed a cross street with large-and medium-sized buildings on both sides. At the end of the street, about three blocks away, was what looked like a power plant. The street and the bottom of the buildings were all in shadow. He pulled out the nightscope and made a quick sweep, but no figures showed up. So they had gone into one of these buildings.
He reversed course and crept back across the front of the building on the corner, then down the alley along its side wall. He found a steel ladder, but then he hesitated, because the building next to this one on the side street appeared to be taller than the corner building. He scanned the alley and then went farther down. The alley was
