Reeves quickly pulled his cloth wallet from his pack. His finger trembling, he opened it to find his Idaho driver's license. He held it up to the copter. "Do you think this is the Forest Service, and they're checking permits?"
"The Forest Service using Huey Cobras?"
"I wouldn't put it past them."
Both climbers stood motionless, their licenses in front of them. They did not know that a Nikon TRL camera attached to the fuselage next to the loudspeaker was taking a photograph of them and the licenses.
The loudspeaker squawked again, "Thank you."
The turbines wound up. The Huey lifted away from the mountainside, bringing its tail rotor around and yawing downhill. The helicopter raced to the valley floor, low enough to blow up a trailing cloud of dirt all the way, then disappeared downstream just above the treetops.
The climbers turned back to the granite and lichen face, and for much of the ascent they cursed the newly officious and newly high-tech United States Forest Service.
Down in Hobart, Ray Miller sadly shook his head. "I'm sorry, miss. I don't have the work."
"I've been a short order cook on and off for ten years," the woman argued. "All I need is a week's employment. I work hard and I don't steal."
"I don't doubt anything you say," the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Saloon owner said. "But take a look around. It's lunchtime, but you and I are the only people in the place. I can hear my echo in here."
The woman had walked into the saloon a few minutes before. She was in her late thirties. Her brown hair had a badger's streak of gray and was loose down her back, and a length of rawhide and ribbon was tied into it. She wore no eye shadow or lipstick. The bridge of her granny glasses had been mended with a small piece of duct tape. Her yellow and white print blouse was tucked in at her waist. A belt of braided cloth held up her jeans. Her old back-pack had a grease stain along a side. Miller guessed she dressed like a hippie to hide her poverty.
"What's your name, young lady?" he asked. He had been standing behind the bar doing his paperwork. A hand-held calculator, a corporate checkbook, and a sheaf of bills were in front of him.
"Susan."
"Where you coming from, Susan?"
"Calgary. My husband left there three months ago, gone to Texas to look for work in the oil fields. I'm on my way to join him. But he couldn't send me any money."
"You hitchhiking?"
"Yeah." She brushed her hair back with a hand. "You wouldn't believe the crap I have to put up with, guys picking me up in their pickups and semis."
"How about a chili potato on the house? I make the chili from scratch, and I dump it into a baked potato and grate cheese over it."
She grinned gratefully, then slipped off her backpack and put it at her feet. She slid onto a stool.
Miller wrapped an apron around his waist. "I like to think my potatoes are famous, but I serve less than thirty meals a week. I cook and wait tables, and then I bus and clean the plates. I wish I could offer you a job."
"I understand."
"I used to make a pretty good living," Miller added. "But the town has dried up and is on the verge of blowing away."
"Don't apologize." She smiled warmly. "I understand."
The Right's door swung in and four men entered single file. They had the look of tough accountants, which meant they were FBI agents. They were all in slacks and windbreakers. They took chairs together at a round table under an elk head. The first to take his seat lifted the menu which was encased in an upright plastic stand.
Ray Miller said to the hitchhiker, "I'll get these guys' order and be right back to start on your potato, Susan."
As Miller rounded the bar to wait on the table, five more men and two women entered the saloon. All wore Idaho State Patrol uniforms. They took the table near the stuffed Chinese pheasant.
Miller nodded at the State Patrol officers as he walked to the table of FBI agents. "May I help you? I recommend the potatoes."
Before any of the agents could answer, the door opened again. This time two men in sports coats entered. Miller did not know it, but they were Boise plainclothes policemen. Before the door pulled itself closed, in came five more state patrolmen, then three Idaho National Guardsmen in summer field uniforms.
His pen poised over the pad, Miller asked the FBI agents, "You fellows looking for that Russian that Chief Durant told me about?"
"That's right." The agent had a preacher's quick, confiding smile.
"Lots of you folks coming to Hobart?"
"Lots."
"How many?"
The agent asked, "What's an Oinker Potato?"
"Strips of crisp bacon and chunks of tomato over melted cheddar cheese."
"I'll have one of them."
The door swung open again. A man and a woman entered wearing uniforms Miller did not recognize. He squinted at their arm insignia. Coeur d'Alene police.
Miller tried again. "You could do me a big favor helping me plan my kitchen by letting me know how many of you are in town."
"Couple hundred."
"Going to be here for long?"
"Four, five days, a week. Who knows? And a Diet Pepsi."
"I'll be right back," the saloon owner blurted. He hurried to the bar, weaving between the full tables. He rushed to the stool where the hitchhiker Susan had been sitting. It was empty.
"Gone," Miller breathed miserably. "Goddamnit."
But she was still in the saloon. Wearing an apron she had found on a hook on the cooler door, she was behind the bar, bent over the ice machine, ladling ice into glasses. She put one under the Diet Pepsi spigot.
She smiled again at Miller. "I take it I have a week's work."
"Looks like it'll be a long, long week. Make both of us some money."
He scurried back to the FBI agents, still smiling.
So it was that Hobart and environs came to groan under the weight of law personnel. They emptied the Big Wood Grocery Store, bought all the gas at the Sinclair station, filled the Hobart Motel, and cleaned out Bud's Drug of candy bars and newspapers. But Ray Miller never ran out of potatoes, because if there is one thing Idaho has, it's potatoes, and as the state's license plate will testify, they are famous. The law officers and soldiers filled the streets with their vehicles, jammed the telephone lines, stood on the corners, swaggered and smiled, and added a sense of wonder and purpose to the lives of Hobart citizens.
Owen Gray lay on his belly, the M-40A1 Marine Corps sniper rifle in front of him. His left hand was forward, with the palm against the stock ferrule swivel and the sling high on his arm. His wrist was straight and gently locked so the rifle rested on the heel of the hand. The fingers cupped the stock but did not grip it. His left elbow was under the rifle's receiver. The bones, not his muscles, supported the rifle. The wood butt was firmly in the pocket of his right shoulder. His right hand was wrapped around the checkered stock with the thumb extended over the narrow portion of the stock. Gray's left elbow was the pivot to move the barrel. His shoulders were level. His trigger finger lay alongside the guard.
The barrel was free-floated, meaning that it was secured to the chamber but did not touch the stock. The gap between the stock and barrel was the thickness of a dollar bill, and this clearance prevented the stock from distorting the barrel from one shot to the next. The barrel was heavier than on most other rifles, and this distributed heat from the powder discharge more evenly, reducing warpage. Near his elbow was a box of match ammunition, so called because each bullet in the same box and each box in the same case had the identical serial number, indicating the bullets had been manufactured with the same batch of gunpowder on the same day, thereby eliminating the vagaries in powder that might randomly change muzzle velocity.