Otherwise, David might yet slip through their hands. Marian would be safe, of course but David would, in all probability, just be reprimanded for fraud; he would be damned only for murder… Was Gant even alive—? The thought chilled him.
"Strickland, this is beautiful," Mclntyre said. The man's hand was heavily, unreassuringly on his shoulder for a moment, then he retreated to the armchair that had been dragged out of the sight lines of the two windows of the room.
The enthusiastic, ingratiating tone of his voice had been denied by the greedy stare of his eyes.
"A man has a right to protect himself, Mac. Even a duty," he replied studiedly.
"You take your duty seriously, Strickland." That was Fraser, who was more subtle and deliberate in his mockery. The ambient music that seeped from the speakers like an anaesthetic gas seemed to have no dulling effect on their anticipatory malevolence.
The electronic surveillance had been disarmed when the FBI arrived.
He'd been in the bedroom, packing for Vancouver the next day. Their guns had been drawn as he opened the door of the lodge, while his was still concealed behind his back, not wanting to cause alarm to a neighbour. Mclntyre and Fraser had arrived in the early afternoon, with the bustle of businessmen after a long flight. There were now a half-dozen of them in and surrounding the lodge.
The lights of the den made it full dark outside. Only he was visible from the windows to Gant, who they promised with malicious humour was coming. He sat before the surveillance console and its bank of monitors and screens. They wanted Gant to see him alone. From scraps of their conversation, Gant must know they had beaten him here his airplane had disappeared from radar. He'd been forewarned.
They promised him protection from Gant, assuring him that Gant wanted to kill him… as they did. Fraser was there as if deputised, but it must be he who was leading the parade. Mclntyre's pension could go up in pieces he, Strickland, held the grenade — because of the things they'd gotten away with in Latin America in the eighties. Mclntyre had to let Fraser run the show.
Strickland swallowed carefully. His mouth and throat were dry as he watched the screens. The low-light TV cameras showed him the small clearing, the grey washed trees, the flicker of a big owl between branches, the movements one of them made as he patrolled. But not Gant not yet. The ground-level radar he had installed swept its arm across the screen. Most evenings, it revealed the presence of bears, the occasional dog or cat, the quicker blips of night birds
He realised the very sophistication and thoroughness of the electronic surveillance would be his downfall. There was no way Gant could penetrate it undetected.
They knew that. The two armed men outside were surplus. Gant would appear on the TV monitors, the radar, and wouldn't be able to get to him. Strickland knew Gant was his only chance. Maybe he didn't want him dead, at least not right away.
Perhaps he wanted proof, a confession. A gap of time in which Strickland might turn the tables, kill Gant. Not like Fraser and Mclntyre. He was absolutely certain of their desire to eliminate him.
The bear lumbered away on the TV, remaining a shadow on the radar. The clearing was empty, the trees, massing like an army around the lodge, were a grey fence. Mclntyre scratched at his stubble. Fraser he listened intently, to be certain had begun checking his pistol. In anticipation.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Night Action Now, he was certain. The night-vision glasses wearied his eyes, the single, camera like lens heavy in his grip. But he was certain. Low-light TV cameras fenced the clearing around Strickland's lodge, moving slowly but ceaselessly, able to pick up anything that might come out of the surrounding forest.
He put down the binoculars and was shocked by the darkness. He could only make out a thin, last glow on the western horizon, with the closest of the mountains, South Sister, a ghostly snow-glow to the north.
The electronic surveillance was as he had anticipated. Strick-land protected himself as naturally as an animal; his claws and teeth were TV cameras and radar.
He returned the binoculars to his eyes. Maybe he didn't always use it, but it was operational now… Strickland-there. Framed like a painting in the window of the room on that side of the lodge, helpfully lit.
Watching his screens, waiting. Gant had seen no one with him.
Just one shadow moving in another darkened room, perhaps the kitchen.
He could not know how many there were other than the two outside and Mclntyre, who just had to be there.
Gant was seated with his back against the hole of a withered, storm struck pine, on an outcrop of rock only a few hundred yards from the lodge. He could look down like a raptor into the clearing, into the single lit room. The two patrolling men in the trees went about their business without imagination or variation.
A little after four, he had left the jeep two miles away around the shore of Bonner Lake, then skirted the tiny settlement of Squaw Camp.
Those were the cabins and lodges that had formed the background of the snapshot that had betrayed Strickland's location. He had climbed up to Strickland's lodge in its small clearing by means of a hiking trail that wound up the side of the mountain. Knowing all the time that Mclntyre would be ahead of him.
In the late afternoon, he'd caught the reflected light off what was, to all appearances, nothing more than a satellite TV dish. It hadn't been moving when he first saw it, then, just before dusk, it began swivelling on the low roof, back and forth. It was a radar dish used for military surveillance. Its one blind spot was the lodge's chimney
… which problem the low-light TV system cancelled. The four cameras covered every foot of open ground. They could just sit and wait for him to step out into the clearing.
He ate a bar of chocolate and listened to the rush of an owl's wings somewhere near, even heard the intensified rustling of its landing in undergrowth and its almost immediate takeoff. Heard beyond that the grumble of a bear, like the noise of a car that wouldn't start. Farther off, the dim noise of music from the little encampment of wooden buildings down by the shore. The lake seemed to hold the last light as if it was irradiated by a nuclear spillage.
Carefully, he checked the equipment he had removed from the rucksack.
Especially the stubby tube of the fifty-round helical feed magazine that belonged with the Smith & Wesson Calico 9mm pistol. Alan Vance had a collection of guns like so many Americans who had never seen anything that wasn't feathered or furred blown apart. It came in useful now, though… the Ruger rifle would even take the short-range thermal sight, big as a video camera that he had found. Barbara had told him where to look. It was a patented design of Vance's early years in electronics.
He silently slid it home on the mount and raised its surprising lightness to his eye, rifle butt against his shoulder. The eyepiece showed him the night trees on a miniature screen. Two minutes later, it showed him one of the patrolling FBI agents, walking cautiously, just inside the trees. Clear shot Gant put down the Ruger Mini-14 carefully. The air was still soft, the evening breeze hardly evident.
He smelt pine resin and the fainter scent of something frying. Soon, he would have to move again, try to discover how many of them there were. He pushed aside the thought that he was going up against the FBI. The body-count would be in Federal agents… Even if he could prove what Strickland had done to Vance Aircraft, and on whose behalf, there would still be charges that he had assaulted, wounded, even killed, FBI special agents.
The last of the light had gone and big stars had begun to appear in the moonless sky. It wouldn't be up until around midnight. South Sister was just an afterimage on the retinae; the other, more northerly volcanic peaks had vanished. The lit window in the clearing shone out more warmly. There were dotted lights down by the lake, the chug of a small motor as a boat slipped across Bonner Lake, its lights as much like specks as the stars.