He was about to say the men looked more like mechanics than trainee security guards when he heard the sound. It was drifting in through the open windows of the car, faint but unmistakable — the distant crackle of small-arms fire.
O’Halloran had heard it too. ‘How about we check that out,’ he said. ‘The better picture we have of what goes on here, the better chance we’ll stand.’
‘Of doing what?’
‘Breaking into the house. What did you think I meant?’
If Coburn hadn’t witnessed the carnage at the Fauzdarhat shipyard and had he not met a young woman there called Heather Cameron, he would have rejected the idea out of hand. But he had been at the shipyard, and he had met Heather Cameron — the reason why the FAL had been trying to kill him ever since, he thought, and why, in the absence of a more sensible proposal, maybe he ought to be considering whether this one could be made to work.
‘Well?’ O’Halloran was getting impatient. ‘Are we going to check out that gunfire, or aren’t we?’
‘Yeah. All right.’
‘OK. Keep your eyes open for a dirt road that looks like it leads down to a ski field called Star Ridge. I can’t see it on the sat photo, but it’s shown on the map. I don’t think it goes through Shriver’s land, but it’ll take us closer than we are right now.’
O’Halloran had barely finished speaking when, at the entrance to a pot-holed track, Coburn caught sight of a plywood offcut nailed to a tree. It was a sign, set back some distance from the highway, hand-painted and so riddled with bullet holes that the words Star Ridge had been all but obliterated.
Wondering whether they were doing the right thing, he swung the nose of the car on to the track, avoiding the largest of the holes before hurriedly winding up his window.
‘This isn’t going to let us sneak up on anyone without them knowing,’ he said, ‘not with us kicking up this much dust.’
‘We’re out of town fishermen.’ O’Halloran wound up his own window. ‘If anybody asks, we’re looking for a good steelhead spot along the river.’
The surface of the track wasn’t getting any better. In winter, when the ground was hard, it would probably be OK, Coburn thought; in the middle of a dry July it wasn’t, in places so soft that the car was bottoming out, and in others so heavily rutted that the Chrysler felt as though it was steering itself.
They had travelled little more than half a mile when the track became less overgrown, and the countryside began to change. Instead of the lodgepole pines along the highway, areas of juniper and sage were competing with huckleberry and bluegrass, and on some of the high-desert knolls wildflowers were still in bloom.
Too busy at the wheel to appreciate the scenery, Coburn was nearly at the point of suggesting they should go no further when O’Halloran called a halt to their drive.
‘Over there.’ The American pointed ahead to a small clearing. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’
After checking that he had sufficient room to turn the car around, Coburn parked at the edge of the clearing, cut the engine and kicked open his door. ‘Walk to where?’ he said.
‘Listen.’ O’Halloran had already climbed out and was already listening, looking through the binoculars he’d brought to scan a bank of scrub 200 yards away.
From where they were parked, although the sound of gunfire was being muffled by the vegetation, it was loud enough and distinct enough for Coburn to recognize the characteristic crack of M16s. He could hear other sounds as well — the occasional crump of a mortar shell and, now and then, the voice of someone shouting out instructions.
Wondering what was attracting O’Halloran’s interest, he went to find out.
The American continued using his binoculars. ‘Not that much to see,’ he said. ‘Barbed-wire fence, a couple of warning signs saying firing range, keep out, some kind of building, and what looks pretty much like a burned-out World War II battle-tank. I can’t tell whether that’s what’s being used for target practice.’ He handed Coburn the binoculars. ‘What do you make of the building?’
About twenty feet long and eight feet high, it was painted white and constructed from concrete blocks, but otherwise unremarkable. A row of low level ventilation slots had been cut in the south-facing wall which was the only wall Coburn could see, but it had no other features that would indicate what it could be for.
Judging by the number of rounds being fired, as many as a dozen men could be using the range, he decided, either recruits being trained as bodyguards and mercenaries before they were hired out to work for anyone who could afford their services, or others like Yegorov whom Shriver could rely on to support the cause of the FAL wherever in the world they happened to be sent.
Was Yegorov here, Coburn wondered? Could he be here now, only a few hundred yards away on the other side of the fence?
Either the same thought had occurred to O’Halloran, or he’d grown impatient again. He set off by himself, moving cautiously from one tree to another, using what cover he could find until he was in a position to get a better view.
Coburn followed him, taking a similar route and joining the American behind a group of spindly bushes on the north edge of the clearing.
‘Well, what do you know?’ O’Halloran pointed. ‘How about that?’
From his new vantage point, although Coburn could see little more of the firing range than he’d been able to before, he was looking at the building from a different angle, and he was closer to it — close enough to see padlocks hanging on a steel-reinforced door and to read the notice bolted to it:
DANGER
EXPLOSIVES AND LIVE AMMUNITION
NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY
He was annoyed for not realizing the place was a magazine — an explanation for it being the only smudge on the satellite photo located safely away from all the others.
Using the binoculars again, he studied the door and took another look at the ventilation slots.
‘Have you seen something?’ O’Halloran was curious.
‘No.’
‘Why are you looking through my binoculars then?’
‘I’m not.’ Coburn gave them back. ‘Come on. We’re wasting our time. We’re not going to learn anything by hanging around here making out we’re fishermen.’
Preferring not to consider the implications of what he’d seen, he returned to the car where he made the mistake of declining O’Halloran’s offer to take over the driving.
‘Why?’
‘I drove us here, so I might as well drive back. I know what the track’s like, you don’t.’
‘Now tell me the real reason.’
‘There isn’t one — only that if I have to come back it’ll be easier to remember where the worst of the bends are.’
‘Why would you need to come back?’
‘I don’t know. It’s no big deal.’ Refusing to be drawn, Coburn successfully avoided answering the question during their return drive, and had begun to think he’d got away with it until they were sitting at a table in a small diner in John Day where they’d stopped for lunch.
‘Right.’ O’Halloran finished eating his sandwich and pushed his plate away. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘What?’
‘If you want to carry on with this job by yourself, just say the word.’
‘It’s not that.’ Coburn thought for a moment. ‘Do you remember saying I’d stand about as much chance of pulling this off as you would of getting a pat on the head from the President?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘If we try to walk in to Shriver’s place on a dark night and help ourselves to his files, neither of us will be around long enough to get a pat on the head from anyone.’