That night, after Patrick had been tucked into bed, Kerney sat on the lawn outside the apartment. At the ballpark the stadium lights were on, and a crew was busy putting the finishing touches on the set for the concert sequence. Crickets chirped and a slight breeze slid through the trees, bringing the faint yelp of a distant coyote. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned just as Susan Berman sat down by his side.
“Did you really punch Johnny in the face?” she asked with a smile.
“Did he tell you that?”
Susan nodded.
“I refuse to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever.”
Susan laughed. “Why did you do it?”
“It was the only way I could get him to listen.”
She leaned forward slightly and searched Kerney’s face in the dim light that cascaded up from the ballpark. “You’re a good man, Kevin Kerney, and if your marital circumstances were different, I wouldn’t mind at all having you as my champion.”
She kissed him on the cheek, said good-night, and hurried toward the ball field.
Warmed by Susan’s compliment and ladylike expression of interest, Kerney sat quietly for a moment before retreating to the apartment. At the kitchen table he opened the laptop and surfed the Web, looking for the latest news from Iraq. Five more soldiers had been killed in combat. It brought back memories of the dead and dying Kerney had seen in Vietnam. Sara’s face flashed through his mind with images of her killed or maimed. It made him shudder.
Slowly, the images swam away. With his fingers poised over the keyboard Kerney considered what to write to his beautiful wife. He thought about the long, elegant line of her neck, her flashing green eyes, the freckles on the bridge of her nose, the graceful way she moved. Suddenly, with an unaccustomed ease, he found himself composing a love letter.
The next day, after dropping Patrick off at the nanny’s, Kerney rendezvoused with Leo in Lordsburg. At five in the afternoon he was on-station at the Sentinel Butte Ranch with Leo, sitting in a brand-new four-wheel-drive sheriff’s unit bought and paid for with Homeland Security funds. With the engine off to avoid the possibility of detection the temperature inside the vehicle had to be a hundred degrees. The open windows and camouflage netting provided some relief, but with no breeze the heat was relentless.
Behind the steering wheel Leo sucked down bottled water from a cooler and talked by radio to the teams. The Chinaman Hills duo had been in position for an hour and the team at the gate and windmill was setting up. The state police helicopter, last to arrive, was twenty minutes out.
Kerney dismounted the vehicle and swept the landscape with binoculars. The spot Leo had picked was a good one, with line of sight to the hills, the ranch gate, and the landing strip. Kerney concentrated on Chinaman Hills. The team had set up low on the eastern slope at the mouth of a small box canyon. Virtually invisible in daylight, they would be impossible to see come nightfall.
Kerney raised the glasses to the summit of the cinnamon-brown hills. Above it the Star of the North on the top of the smokestack winked weakly in the light of day. The wind-scoured hills, dotted with cactus, cleaved by the runoff of occasional torrential storms, showed no signs of trails leading down from the spine. At midslope a barbed-wire fence spanned the length of the hills. Where runoff had undercut the soil, several fence posts, no longer anchored in the ground, dangled, suspended in the air by the wire strands.
He swung to the east and scanned the ranch gate. The second team’s vehicles were lined up behind the windmill. Once the netting was in place, they, too, would have excellent concealment.
To the southeast the Big Hatchet Mountains topped out, gray in the harsh light of a hot sun well beyond its zenith. The limestone uplift pressed against the sky and tall, scattered pines crowded the summits of the highest peaks. Juniper and pinon clung to the lower drainages on steep cliffs, and at the base, on the valley floor, cattle browsed among the bunchgrass and desert shrub.
He trained the binoculars on the high country, looking for the Continental Divide Trail that started at the border and ran all the way to Canada. Because of the distance he couldn’t make it out.
Kerney returned his attention to the stakeouts. He figured it would take each team, including the chopper, which would need time to power up, three to five minutes to reach the landing strip. That was worrisome. A good pilot in a small plane could be airborne by then.
“They are going to hear us coming,” Kerney said. “We might not get there quickly enough.”
Leo grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? One of my deputies is an ex-jarhead sniper. He’ll be on the lead ATV. If the plane starts to taxi, he’ll stop at a thousand meters out and put rounds through the engine.”
“That would be hard to do without a spotter,” Kerney said.
Leo handed Kerney a bottle of chilled water through the open window. “If he misses, the helicopter will force the plane to stay on the ground. Take a load off. It’s two hours until sundown.”
“Is your deputy really a trained Marine sniper?”
“Fowler? You bet. One shot, one kill. He’s a Gulf War One vet. I call him my one-man SWAT team.”
“What’s his weapon?”
“A civilian version of an M40A1 with a ten-power scope and tripod.”
“Let’s have him leave his ATV behind and low-crawl into position at sunset. Tell him to get within five hundred meters of the landing strip. Closer, if he can manage it. He can hide in the tall grass.”
Leo nodded in agreement and called Fowler.
After sunset Buster Martinez arrived at the Harley homestead on the Granite Pass Ranch to find Shaw waiting for him outside the barn next to his panel van. In the beam of the truck headlights he could see that Walt was wearing a holstered sidearm.
“Why the pistola?” he asked as he got into the van.
Shaw wheeled the van onto the ranch road. “With Kerney snooping around I’m taking no chances.”
“You’d shoot a cop?” The thought of it made Buster’s stomach churn.
“It’s just a precaution,” Shaw replied. “Chances are we’re the only two people in the Bootheel not at the Playas ballpark for the free concert.”
“That’s where I’d like to be,” Buster grumbled.
Shaw braked to a stop. “Go ahead and go.”
“I just meant it would be something nice to see.”
“Then just shut up about it.” Shaw gunned the engine and accelerated. The van jarred over the ruts as it picked up speed.
Buster clamped his lips together. The van headlights froze a rabbit in the road and a front tire thumped over it. He glanced at Shaw. In the glow of the instrument panel Shaw looked pissed off. He’d been acting that way toward him all day. Probably still steamed about the saddle, Buster thought.
He unwrapped a piece of gum, popped it in his mouth, and started chewing. It kept him from asking Shaw what in the hell the big hurry was all about.
To keep himself alert and entertained Kerney used night-vision goggles to watch Fowler, Leo’s deputy sheriff, ex-Marine sniper, one-man SWAT team, crawl toward the landing strip. In the gathering darkness, with the waning moon yet to rise, he wondered if Fowler’s effort would be worth it. Other than the officers on the stakeout there had been no hint of human activity in the valley since their arrival. Additionally, the operation was premised on nothing more than an educated guess. There was no guarantee that a plane would be landing at the strip tonight.
Fowler was good; he stayed low, used his elbows, knees, and belly, and moved to the best concealment points. Soon he’d be in position, five hundred meters out, covered in sand and grit, pricked by cactus spines, bitten by fire ants.
Inside the four-by-four Leo had his headset on and was talking with the troops in a low voice. Throughout the wait he seemed perfectly content to remain sedentary and had exited the vehicle only once to relieve himself. Kerney didn’t know how the man could sit so long without getting antsy.