Elkins said, "What good does that do us?"
"Up till now," Lloyd said, "I've been diverting, then sending on, because all I wanted was to read what everybody had to say. Now, I don't send it on."
Wiss grinned. "Like shutting off a faucet," he said.
"Something like that," Lloyd agreed. "And from now on, if an answer is needed, I put together the answer myself, using all their passwords and technical footprints from their previous messages."
Parker said, "So that's what you can do. If they send out an SOS, it comes to you and nobody else."
"By any means they want to try," Lloyd said.
Elkins said, "Except smoke signal."
"That's somebody else's department," Lloyd agreed.
Parker said, "And the answer to the SOS they get is from you, but they think it's from their friends."
"Exactly," Lloyd said. 'They say SOS, strangers approaching the lodge, I say help is on the way."
"Then we go in," Parker said, "and they don't send any more messages."
"But I do," Lloyd said. "They're making hourly reports, up to eleven at night and starting at eight in the morning, what they're doing, what they found, what the situation is. Nobody wants to feel isolated up there, so they're in touch with every level of command from Havre to DC."
Wiss said to Parker, "And Larry does that, too, sends in the reports, long as we need to."
Parker said, 'Tomorrow morning, we buy orange coats. Tomorrow afternoon, we go hunting."
5
About a quarter after one the next afternoon, Parker and Elkins and Wiss climbed out of their gray Jeep at the top of Marino's road by the shack, well above the lodge. All three wore bright orange coats, red and black wool hats with earlaps, black corduroy pants, and tall brown boots. All three wore, in their right ears, under the earlap, a small transmitter from which the tinny voice of Lloyd spoke to them from time to time, down in his room at the motel in Chinook. Hooked to the underpart of the rigid brims of their caps were small microphones, so they could talk back to Lloyd. All three had Remington .35s broken open over their forearms, and fake hunting licenses in clear plastic packs fastened like targets to the backs of their orange coats. All three had black moustaches and black-framed eyeglasses.
"We're starting down now," Elkins said.
Lloyd's little voice, like a leprechaun in the ear, said, "Is it cold?"
Wiss, embarrassed for his protégé, sounded irritated instead, saying, "Of course it's cold, Larry. We're not here to chitchat."
"Sorry."
It was cold enough to see your icy breath, cold enough to make the gloves they wore necessary, though the gloves might cause a little trouble if they had to use the Remingtons. They walked down the paved road, ice crystals crackling with a dry rustle beneath their boots. Ahead the sentry towers loomed, lights off but cameras still on, looking inward.
"Frank!"
Not Lloyd, not the voice in the ear, but someone behind them. Parker and the others spun around, and a guy was there, on the road a few yards uphill from them, holding his arms well out to the sides, palms forward, to show he was unarmed. He was in a black pea jacket and black wool cap, a bulky guy, probably in his late thirties, with a big heavy-boned face.
Sounding astonished, and not happy, Elkins said, "Bob! For Christ's sake—"
"Don't worry about us," Bob said, patting the air to calm everybody down, while the voice in Parker's ear asked, "What's happening? Bob? Who's Bob?" Nobody was going to answer Larry, because nobody was going to tell Bob there was another pair of ears here.
Elkins said, "They're gonna revoke your parole, Bob." He really didn't want this guy here.
'They did, yesterday," Bob told him. "I said to you, it was taking too long, Frank. Harry and me took off, so where else we gonna go?"
Wiss, sounding like a stern parent, said, "Not here, Bob."
"We won't horn in on you, honest to God," Bob said. "It's your play. Just so you know, Harry and me, we'll be up by your car. You need a hand, you can count on us. You want us out, we're out."
"We want you farther out than this, Bob," Wiss said.
Bob shrugged, turning mulish. "Well, this is the way the hand plays," he said. "We'll stay up there till it's over, we'll help if we're needed, we'll divvy when it's done, you go your way, we'll go ours."
Larry in the earphone had grown silent, so he'd caught up with what was happening. Wiss and Elkins looked at each other, then at Parker. Parker thought somebody around here wouldn't live through the day; too many people coming from too many angles. He said, "It's okay. They'll stay up there, on deck."
"That's right," Bob said, and tried to toss a manly smile in Parker's direction. 'Thanks, pal."
Parker shrugged. He said> "Come on," and turned away, walking downhill again. After a second, the other two followed, looking back uphill at Bob, who waved to them, then turned away, going back up the road toward his partner, Harry.
Parker and Elkins and Wiss walked on down past the ring of camera towers. Anybody watching? No. Still no. Occasionally, it seemed to Parker, he could hear
Lloyd's breath in his ear, but nothing else. The man didn't hum or whistle on the job.
"Gotcha!"
The three kept walking, didn't break stride. Wiss said, "Larry? They see us?"
"Picked you up on the perimeter cameras, now they're phoning Havre. Hold on."
The three kept walking, not on the road but paralleling it, looking around as though for game. Two minutes later, Larry's voice said, 'They're confused, because this is Thursday and the season doesn't start till Monday. They think you're jumping the season on purpose, you probably figure to be alone up there, maybe you're down from Canada."
Elkins said, "What do they plan to do about it?"
"Nothing, unless you approach the house."
"I see the house now," Wiss said.
They slowed, moving toward the lodge. The people inside were lawmen, and so would ask questions first. But the image they should be given was of dumbass hunters, maybe half-smart wiseguys looking to make a kill before it was legal. They should not be given an image of people stalking the lodge with robbery in mind.
"Angle to the right," Parker said, "as though we meant to go around the house."
They could see it clearly now, looming ahead of them through the trees, gleaming white in the world of gray and brown and dark green. The two lawmen
inside were not visible, but were certainly watching the three orange coats approach.
Wiss said, "Larry, the next message you get, divert."
"Oh, I know. Nothing happening now, though."
Parker said, "We should stop here, talk it over among ourselves, point different directions, discuss which way we want to go."
They did that, and then Parker pointed toward the house, saying, "Now I'm saying maybe we should go see if somebody's home."
Wiss and Elkins looked toward the house. Elkins said, "And we're talking it over, do they know much about hunting around here?"
Wiss said, "We're wondering, will they help us, or call the cops?"
They looked at one another, and shrugged, and moved their arms around. "And now," Parker said, "we're deciding what the hell, let's just go over there and knock on the door."
They all nodded at one another, then moved toward the house, angling first to get back onto the paved road, then walking downhill.
"That's far enough, fellas."
The loudspeaker had a brassy loud twang to it, and seemed to be coming from the trees all around them, not from the house at all. The three stopped and looked around.
"This is private property. Move outside the perimeter of the towers."
The three turned to one another. Parker angled
himself so his face was away from the lodge as he said, 'They might have a directional mike in there."