Chief Durant clucked his tongue and asked Gray, "You want to tell him or can I?"
"What's a friend for if he can't break bad news?" Gray called to the detective. "Hey, Pete. How you feeling about now?"
"Never better. Nothing like relieving pressure on the inner systems."
"Well, as they say in the song, 'You're going to need an ocean of calamine lotion.' "
It took Coates a moment, then he yelled, "Aw, goddamnit." He held his hands away from his body and shook them as if that might rid them of the poison oil. "Goddamnit."
Without turning, he looked over his shoulder at them. "What do I do now, for Christ sake?"
The police chief said, "I'd put your peter back in your pants, for a start."
"It'll be best if you can do it without touching it," Owen said, pulling out another wild oat stalk. "Otherwise the oil will spread and you'll end up looking like you got the Bangkok pox."
"And don't ask me to help you with the task," Durant said with a straight face. "I wouldn't get the kick out of it you might suppose."
"Goddamnit," Coates yelled again. He jiggled himself, then jumped up and down, and finally used the thumb and little finger of one hand to put himself back into his pants. Still holding one hand away from his body and high above the surrounding plants, he zipped up his pants.
"Son of a bitch." He turned on his heels. "What do I do now?"
"You wearing socks?" Durant asked. "Otherwise your ankles will get it."
"Of course I'm wearing socks. Goddamnit, get me out of here."
"Why don't you walk out like you walked in?" Gray advised. "Keep your hands up."
The detective tiptoed out of the bank of weeds. When he got back to them, he demanded, "Why didn't you tell me I was walking into poison ivy, for Christ sake?" He grabbed the back of one hand with the other. "Christ, my hands hurt already."
"Pete, you're a smart guy," Gray said, dropping the last of the wild oats onto the pile and rising to his feet. "Never in my wildest imagination did it ever occur to me that a smart guy like you would walk into a patch of poison ivy with his privates hanging out."
Durant laughed.
"I was speechless," Gray explained. "I couldn't warn you."
Coates frantically scratched the back of his hands. "Funny guy, Owen, goddamnit."
Chief Durant returned to his car. He said he'd be in touch, and then he backed around the larch tree and drove down the road, disappearing down the hill, dust rising from the car's passing.
Coates and Gray started back to the cottage. Adrian Wade and the FBI technicians were inside. Coates scratched and scratched.
The detective said, "Owen, you're having a lot of fun at my expense, looks like. But you'd better do some serious preparing for Nikolai Trusov. He's coming and I'm going to try my best to stop him, but I tried in New York and failed. I don't plan on it, but I might fail again, and then he'll show up here."
"I'm getting ready."
"Doesn't look like it to me," Coates said. "Goddamnit, I got some poison ivy on my third leg. I can feel it." He scratched his crotch.
"Follow me." Gray led the detective to the side of the cabin. As a firebreak, the wild grass and bushes were kept well away from the structure. They walked on clover and grass and pebbles around to the back of the house, to the main bedroom window at the back. Moss grew on the lower logs of the house.
"Are you jacking me around, Owen?" Coates scoffed. "Cowbells and tin cans?"
Partially hidden in a stand of quaking aspen was a length of wire on which were three rusted cowbells and several empty cans. A trip wire was attached to the second log of the house and ran across the firebreak to the string of cans and bells.
"This looks like a kid designed it!" Coates exclaimed, working on his hands. "You don't think for one minute that Nikolai Trusov will fall for this, do you?"
"Nope." Gray stooped to lift a hand-sized rock. "But it'll take his attention off of more serious matters."
He lobbed the rock onto the ground two feet the other side of the bell-and-can alarm. The rock bounced on the leaves and grass.
The sound of an explosion filled the space between the brush and the building, a concussive wash of wind rushed past them. The air instantly filled with leaves and twigs, twisting and falling.
Coates jumped back, grimacing as if wounded. Smoke was gray and acrid, filling the air and making it shimmer. He reached under his armpit and pulled out his service revolver. "What in hell?"
A speckled pattern had appeared on the logs of the house. Some of the bird shot was visible in its craters, others had sunk further into the wood. A few pellets had dropped to the base of the building. Splinters had been torn away from several logs. Dust rose from the damaged mortar. The shot pattern was the size of a basketball.
"Jesus Christ, Owen. A spring gun?"
Gray nodded. "A 12-gauge hidden in the bush. I built a pressure plate out of some sticks."
Coates peered into the bush. "I don't see the shotgun."
"I hid it a little better than I hid the alarm. I've got five other weapons placed here and there, cocked and ready. I'll come back in a while and reset this one."
Coates returned his weapon to its holster and resumed scratching his hands and his groin. "All right. Maybe you are taking Trusov seriously."
They moved toward the front of the house.
Coates asked, "Where'd you learn about spring guns?"
"In Vietnam. We'd usually set traps at rear approaches to our hides so nobody could sneak up on us. All snipers are taught about booby traps."
"I'm going to be bunking out here in Frontier Land with you." Coates said, biting the back of his hand for relief. "You sure you remember where you put all the guns?"
"I'll draw you a map, if you like." Gray led him to the porch. "I only hope you're not a sleepwalker."
Montana State Trooper Ross Bowen lifted the plastic photo frame from his dashboard and grinned again at his new daughter. Eight pounds, seven ounces, twenty-one inches long, born six days ago, and if there was a God in heaven the girl would look like her mother. He gently tapped the photo, sending his love to his daughter. Bowen had been unprepared for the emotions that had overtaken him in the birthing room and that were still with him. His wife had laughed when he told her that food was tasting better since their daughter was born. So he hadn't told her that the Montana air seemed purer, that he could do more chin-ups than ever before, and that their Labrador retriever was more obedient. Everything was better. Bowen was suffused with parental joy.
Then the silver Honda Accord appeared in his mirror, growing quickly. Bowen didn't need to refer to his daily briefing memo and he didn't need to radio for confirmation. He knew the Accord had been stolen forty minutes before from the parking lot of a minimart. The State Patrol had assumed the Russian was behind the wheel.
Bowen's patrol car was parked behind a stone outcrop that hid much of his vehicle from westbound travelers yet allowed him to aim his mounted radar gun back east along the rising road. His radar was off, and the cone was against the windshield pillar. Trooper Bowen had viewed this duty as an opportunity to sit in the sun under his windshield and consider the good fortune of a new daughter.
The Accord tore by Bowen's patrol car. The trooper cranked over his ignition and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The patrol car fishtailed from the shoulder onto the asphalt. The photo of his baby fell to the floor.
The silver Accord wasn't speeding, only sixty miles an hour or so, Bowen determined as he closed the distance. He could see the back of the driver's head, but details were lost in the flashing reflection from the Accord's rear window. And there was a passenger in the car. Bowen flicked on his cherries and siren, then lifted his handset to notify the dispatcher that he would need assistance. He pulled within ten car lengths of the Accord.