"For what?"
"Sell surveillance of Pakistan to India, and surveillance of India to Pakistan. Sell surveillance of Iraq to Iran, and Iran and Syria to Iraq; of Israel to Syria. Of Taiwan to China, and China to Taiwan."
"They'd get caught."
"I could tell you ten ways to do it, that they'd never get caught. That the buyers would never see the sellers. That's what the Internet is for. Any buyer who's getting this stuff. it'd be the biggest secret they had."
"Okay. So what next?"
"Let's go back to Austin. I need to do some shopping," I said.
"Always shopping."
"We'll come back tonight."
"A scout?"
"A scout."
In Austin, we went to an outdoor-sports store and bought a good compass; a GPS receiver with a map function; topographic maps of the East Waco area, including Corbeil's ranch; and a cheap black daypack. At a building-supply place, picked up a builders' protractor, a bubble level, and some duct tape. And in a sewing store, a card with five yards of elastic banding. I spent an hour in the parking lot with the GPS receiver, figuring out how to work it; especially interesting were the time and distance functions, and the backtrack function.
Then there was the matter of the gun.
"We need a better one," LuEllen said. "Look what they did to Lane, and what they did to Jack. Those were executions, so they just don't give a fuck. If we go on a scout, and they catch us, and they've got gunsthis is Texas, Kiddthey're going to shoot us down like dogs."
"Anytime you buy a gun."
"Ought to be easy in Texas," she said. "Let me call Weenie."
It was easy in Texas. All we had to do was drive to Houston, which was a little better than two hours away, meet a guy in a parking lot near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and give him $600 for a cheap Chinese-made AK with two magazines, fifty rounds of 7.65 X 39, and a nylon sling.
"That's about a two-hundred dollar gun in a store," I told LuEllen, as we left the parking lot.
"That wasn't a store," she said.
"Hope it works," I said. "Looks like it was made by a high school kid in a shop class."
At five o'clock we were back in Austin. In the motel room, I pumped some shells through the AK, bruised the tip of my middle finger with the firing pin, and eventually decided that the thing might work. We ate, and by seven o'clock, we were on the road again.
The land around Waco is fairly lush. Waco is just about south of Dallas, and the really dry, sere landserious prickly-pear countrystarts an hour or two to the west.
But the land just west of Waco, like lots of backcountry in this day of Interstate highways, was lonely. All the land was used, in one way or another, but when we'd gone out in the morning, we'd seen only one person along the road, a woman walking out to her mailbox In that kind of country, without the light pollution of the city, it gets dark.
We'd picked a good night for it, windless, starlit, quiet. The moon was already slanting down in the sky when we drove past Corbeil's. There were lights in the house, in the building that might have been an office or bunkhouse, and in the yard. A couple of cars were parked outside the garage, but we didn't see anyone moving around. We made the turn on Beulah Avenue, west of the ranch, and headed north, until we found the track that headed back to the abandoned homesite that we'd discovered in the morning. Once there, we shut down the truck, spent a couple of minutes looking around, and mostly, listening
We heard nothing but insects, and the gravel underfoot. Ten minutes after we arrived, LuEllen broke out the taped flashlights, and we started back down the road toward Corbeil's place.
The walk took forty minutes, moving slowly, and stopping to listen and scan ahead with the night glasses. During that time, we neither heard nor saw another vehicle At the corner of Corbeil's property, where I'd followed the fence line in that morning, we stepped into the trees and with the flashlights, established our position on the GPS
"Ready?"
"Go," she said.
We were both dressed from head to foot in black In the city, we'd worn dark red jackets. They were nearly as invisible as black, when you were out of the light, and looked a lot more innocent to cops. Out here, if we were caught in the middle of Corbeil's pasture with the AK, there'd be no point in arguing that we were there by mistake.
We crossed the fence, with me in the lead, LuEllen following behind, the stars and fragmentary moon were just bright enough that we could see each other as shadows, and hear our feet swishing through the grass. When we'd walked a good distance up the hill, I moved over to the fence line, illuminating it with a spiderweb of light from one of the flashlights
With the night glasses, I could clearly make out the dish next to the water tank. Nobody around, though down the hill, I could see cattle, lying down, grouped together like pea pods on a table.
"Anything?" The word was a breath next to my ear.
"No. Let's cross. Use the light and watch the barbs."
We crossed the fence and headed down the hill. The dish was two hundred yards away, and we took it easy, stopping often to listen. When we got close, we could hear trickling water, and then, even closer, a tiny electronic hum, the equipment wasn't moving, but was turned on.
I handed the AK and the night glasses to LuEllen, by agreement, she moved on down the hill about thirty yards, as a listening post. I took off the backpack and got the equipment out, marked our spot with the GPS, switched the GPS receiver to the time function, then started making measurements.
The dish was in what appeared to be its "rest" position. With the compass, I measured, to within a degree or to, the direction it was aimed inabout 290 degrees, or a little north of west, and not at all the direction it had been aimed earlier in the day. When I was sure I had it right, I got out the duct tape, taped one end of the elastic band to the top rim of the dish, stretched it across the face of the dish, so I had a tight, straight line with no sag, and taped it to the bottom Using the level to establish my earth-line, I measured the angle of the elastic, which essentially gave me the current azimuth of the dish. I wrote it down, and then sat down to wait.
We'd agreed, earlier, that we'd wait for up to three hours for the dish to move. If it hadn't moved by then, we'd bail. We'd be getting tired, and our edge would be gone. With the elastic stretched out, I laid back on the ground and got comfortable. Watched the moon going down, the stars popping out. The lights from Waco, to the east, were bright enough that you didn't get the full clout of the Milky Way as you do up in the North Woods, but then, that might be northern jingoism; the stars were pretty good.
I'd been there for twenty-five minutes when the dish motor burpedan electronic burp, a change in the hum, and I sat up, listening, to be sure, then quickly checked the GPS and jotted down the time. With the level and protractor in hand, I moved around to the front of the dish and quickly checked the azimuth. It hadn't changed. But something was happening: the deeper note from the motor was unmistakable.
I was worrying about that when I felt a vibration in the disk, and slowly, surely, it began to move, tilting back. I looked at where it was pointing, at the horizon line, but could see nothing but stars. Sometimes, on dark nights, you could see them, the satellites, like tiny sparks scratching themselves on heaven.
I checked the azimuth, wrote down the GPS time signal. Checked the azimuth, wrote down the time. Checked it again, and again. Then hurried around behind it, got the compass, checked to make sure the direction hadn't changed: it hadn't. I went back to the dish and checked the azimuth as many times as I could until the dish was pointing at the local horizon, up the hill, and suddenly stopped. After taking the last azimuth, I ran around and checked direction again. Still the same. When I give the numbers to Bobby, I should have a straight line running through the sky from just north of west to just south of east, and even with the crude measurements of the protractor, should be able to give him a reasonable close approximation of times and azimuths.