bedroom, and squatted
down in the doorway of the trailer’s second bathroom. The footsteps stopped. It sounded like the bastard was outside, right at the back of the trailer. Amazingly, the next sound he heard was that of a Zippo-type cigarette lighter cap being flipped back and the flame ignited. Bold as brass: The guy was lighting up a goddamned cigarette! Which meant at least one hand was occupied.
Jared stood up and moved swiftly down the hallway to the edge of the kitchen, where he popped his head quickly around the corner for a look and then withdrew it. Nothing but the orange glow of the security light in the window; no silhouettes.
He waited. He was beginning to perspire, and his sweat smelled a lot like beer. Maybe he should call his grandfather. The phone was in the kitchen. He would have to go into the kitchen to reach it, but he knew the trailer’s squeaky floors would give him away if he tried that. The next sound caught his breath right up in his throat: a shotgun being racked, again, somewhere out behind the trailer. He immediately got down on the floor, really sweating now. What the fuck is this? Then footsteps crunching again, but getting quieter, as if the guy was circling the trailer.
After hearing the shotgun, Jared was afraid even to put his head up.
Sumbitch had let his dogs loose so he’d be free to walk around out there. Shit!
Get to the fucking phone, a voice in his head told him. Call the old man. Hell, call 9 II! He crept around the corner of the entrance to the kitchen, trying to keep the floor from creaking, and reached carefully for the phone, listening very hard for sounds from outside. It was just out of reach. He grabbed a magazine off the table, rolled it up, and then used it to tip the phone off its wall jack, catching it just before it could clatter onto the floor. Then he hit the red button on the handset and heard the welcome sound of ringing. He felt a wave of relief.
“Nine one one. What is your emergency?” a male voice asked.
“Guy’s outside my trailer,” he whispered as loudly as he dared.
“Bastard’s got a gun, I need some help out here.”
“Sir? I can’t hear you, sir? Give me the address please and state the nature of your emergency.” The voice sounded unnaturally loud, and he squeezed the earpiece to his head to keep the noise down.
“I need a deputy!” he said.
“There’s a guy with a fuckin’ shotgun outside my trailer. One three eight County Line Road.”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” the voice said, and then, to Jared’s horror, there came the booming laugh of a fun- house scary monster. The huge sound reverberated in his ear as he swore and dropped the handset on
the floor like a hot potato. The laughter went on, loud, very loud, as he backed away from the phone, waving the .45 around him, like cops did in the movies, until he was back in the hallway again, down on all fours, scrunching backward like a baby toward his bedroom.
Then a sound. Behind him. Something behind him.
He whirled around, and there was an enormous figure all in black looming over him. It was wearing a hideous mask, and there were bright round mirrors where the eyes should have been. Jared gasped but didn’t hesitate. He brought the .45 up and fired, but all that came out was the pop of a primer. Then from the figure came the loudest sound he had ever heard, a roar, a lion’s heart-grabbing, ear-pounding roar. The sound was so loud that Jared dropped the useless gun, clapped his hands to his ears, and scooted backward, nailing his way back into the living room, rounding the hallway corner on his hand and knees, scuttling toward the front door, which he never used, the bottom of his jeans warm and wet. There was a nightmarish scramble to get the door unlocked and open as a second roar came down the hallway, louder than the first. He screamed and then tumbled through the doorway, right into a tangle of wet, rubbery strands. It felt like a huge spiderweb. He fought furiously to get away from it, but the more he fought, the tighter it enveloped him, until he could do little more than twitch, and then the horrible mirror-eyed figure was filling the doorway and pointing something at him, something shiny and bright. He knew he shouldn’t look at it, but he couldn’t help it. There was an incredibly bright flash of purple light and he was just gone.
Kreiss pocketed the retinal disrupter and stripped off the hood and mirror-eyed horror mask. He looked down from the trailer’s doorway at the stunned figure of Jared McGarand, balled up in the capture curtain at the side of the steps. Then he stepped past Jared and picked up a garden hose that was attached to the end of the trailer. He turned it on and sprayed water all over Jared and the curtain until all the sticky strands had dissolved, after which, he dragged Jared under the end of the trailer that was perched up on the cinder blocks. He positioned him so that his body was under the trailer, with his head just outside the metal edge of the trailer’s frame. He went over to the engine-hoisting A-frame and brought back a large five-ton hydraulic jack stand, which he positioned under the edge of the trailer, about two feet away from Jared’s head. He pumped the jack stand until it engaged the bottom edge of the trailer and then actually
lifted it. Keeping an eye on jared’s inert form, he got a four-by-four from a stack of junk lumber and battered down the two cinder-block support columns until the trailer was supported entirely on the jack stand. Then he lowered the stand until the bottom of the trailer came to rest just barely on jared’s chest, pinning him firmly to the ground.
He went back inside the trailer. In the kitchen, he got the telephone recorder to play back Jared’s calls. There was only one: to that second man. He listened to it twice, then disconnected the telephone dial intercept equipment, the recording device from the kitchen phone, the four inside speakers, and the breaker box diversion switch. He turned the lights back on in the trailer. The television boomed to life and he shut the obnoxious noise down. He gathered up all his equipment and Jared’s .45, which he had previously disarmed by unloading it, leaving one shell case with no powder or bullet under the hammer. He spotted Jared’s truck keys and wallet on the kitchen table, and he took those, too. Then he went out the back door, climbed up to the roof edge, and retrieved the sound box.
He listened for the dogs, but the woods were still quiet.
He took all his equipment and Jared’s weapon out to the truck and then took off the disposable blackout suit, under which he had been wearing khaki pants and a plain white shirt. He put on a dark ball cap with an extended brim, which he pulled down low over his face. He put on a pair of blocky black-framed glasses, which had a mildly reflective coating on the outside of the lenses. The glasses were magnifiers, which distorted the image of his own eyes while allowing him to see very well up close. He strapped a voice-distortion box onto his chest, put on a wire headset with a very thin boom mike in front of his lips. He pulled on rubber gloves and retrieved a box-shaped battery lantern from the truck. That’s when he noticed the cover on the license plate.
He swore and bent down to examine it. It was not the plate cover that had been there originally, although it was very damn close. It was too new-looking, the metal too bright. He got out a Phillips screwdriver and took off the plate and its cover frame. He separated the plate from the frame and examined the back of the frame. He found the two stub antennas at once. Son of a bitch, he thought. This is a surveillance tag: Based on those antennas, it probably responds to a satellite interrogation signal. He looked down at the rear bumper. Gets its power from the plate light by induction. There were four rubber buttons glued onto the plate mounting to insulate the plate frame from the truck’s frame.
He stood up. So he’d missed one. The question now was whether or not he’d been followed here. He didn’t think so, but he’d better make sure. Jared wasn’t going anywhere.
He slipped into the woods and made a big circle out to the road, where he looked for any signs of vehicles. The road was empty. He knew the plate tag wasn’t a device used for following someone down the road. It could give a general location when the satellite transmitted a query signal, but it was not precise enough to do block-by- block surveillance. The question was, then, When would they query it? That would determine how much time he had out here. That tag changed the equation.
He walked back through the woods to where Jared was pinned under the trailer. He hauled over two cinder blocks and made himself a rough bench. He sat down and watched as Jared started to come around. He was whimpering and trying to move, and then he opened his eyes wide when he realized he could we? move. Kreiss switched on the lantern and pointed it into jared’s face. He switched on the voice-distortion box.
“Can you hear me?” he asked. The box transmitted his words in the softly booming tones of a giant computer-generated voice, atonal and without any accent or inflection.
Jared blinked rapidly in the glare of the lantern’s beam and tried to move again, pushing himself sideways as
