So I rolled the Scout out of there with Rudolph Buzarski's payload of fruits and vegetables thumping around in cardboard cartons in the back. The gourds and squashes and ears of corn bumped around and played a crude symphony of guilt and sadness. Well to hell with it. I swung around and hunted side roads. After forty-five minutes I found one I liked. It snaked around above the flatlands of the valley flood plain and wended its way up into the wooded hills that surrounded the farm. I bumped and grunted along this for another hour until I found a way that took the truck off to the side to a small clearing just big enough to hide it. I left it and fought my way through tangles of thickets until I was looking down at the farm buildings below.
The farm looked even neater and more efficient from above. The buildings were squared with one another, the furrows absolutely parallel. The roads and fences were laid out in anal-compulsive rectangles and right angles. The faint roar of a tractor-invisible from where I waited and watched-wafted up to me on the warm wind. The same with a cawing of a rooster. Then mostly silence and wind-hum. I saw the old farm building at the edge of the property where I'd had the scrape with Randy Newdecker and his leather-clad friend.
The old building looked gray and dusty compared to the dairy barns. It looked saggy and hollow compared to the swine buildings. I crept down through the trees and thickets to the edge of the woods. I was up on a gentle slope perhaps seventy-five yards from the building. A shape moved and pranced at the doorway. It was the German shepherd dog, tied to a stake with about forty feet of chain to romp around on. Enough to romp around on so that he guarded the doorway quite well, thank you. I was skunked. I returned to the car and headed home. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. I could come back after supper and be ready with all I needed for a nighttime siege of the building.
Mary and I were civil to one another, but it ended there. She knew I wasn't leaving the "thing" alone, but had been out snooping. We sat through a decent dinner and chatted, but I knew she wasn't leveling with me. For that matter, I wasn't with her either. At half past nine I left Concord in the Audi 110 thought it better not to take the Scout again… it had become almost a landmark at the Buzarski farm in the few short minutes I'd spent there earlier. With me I had:
1. A quartz-beam searchlight, hand-held, that plugged into the cigarette lighter socket.
2. My 7 x 50 binoculars, perfect for nighttime use.
3. The. 22 calibre Ruger Bull-Barrel auto-loading target pistol, with two clips.
4. A small crowbar.
5. A flashlight.
6. My quart thermos full of hot coffee.
7. A pack of cellophane-wrapped beef chunks.
The beef was a touch cut, a cheapie the stores like to disguise with names like "Family Steak" and "Value Cut." It was what I wanted, though, a tough portion of the cow that could stand abuse and yet be irresistible. The red sticker on the package said: "Great for Cook Out!" The meat was cut into golfball-sized chunks for shish kabob.
It was almost midnight when I reached Belchertown, and quarter to one when I cruised to a stop up the side road where I'd parked earlier. The road was tricky and rutted, and I was glad I'd thought to bring the quartz-beam spotlight. I left the car with my satchel on my back and made my way down the slope again. I managed to squirm up closer than before in the darkness. I got to within twenty yards of the barn door, and hid in a tiny clump of bushes that grew out of a rock cluster. I swept the binoculars over the ground. Their ability to gather light was as important as their ability to magnify, and I saw the sprawled heap of the dog asleep right in front of the door. There would be no getting past him without raising a ruckus. I could just see the outline of the main house on the knoll a quarter of a mile away. There was no other dwelling nearby though; that was good. Just the hog barns with their ripe smell. I was thankful for this aroma; if the dog had any scenting talent it would be hindered by this thick odor, and keep me hidden. But if the dog were to eat the meat he had to be awake. On my way down the slope I had gathered half a dozen rocks, one of which I now threw at the dog. No response. I chucked two more at him before I wised up and flung one right at the old barn. It whunked into the wood solidly and the big dog was up in a second, barking and whirling around full of self-importance. I glassed the house with care during this show to see if any lights came on.
It remained dark. Before the dog dozed off again I flung a hunk of meat at him. The dope couldn't smell it, probably because of the hog barns. I switched on my flashlight and let the circular beam fall near the animal. I wiggled it on the ground like a fishing lure, and the dog rose and went over to it. I teased him around with the beam for a minute or so. The dog didn't bark because there was no noise. Finally, he found the meat. I saw his head bob up and down with the convulsive, gobbling motion common to dogs. I threw him another chunk, and he heard it land. He found it instantly and snarfed it down. He was getting the idea. I threw another. Same thing. He remained standing now and his tail was doing a slow wag. I heard a soft whine.
I figured he weighed between seventy and eighty pounds, and judged the dosage accordingly. Earlier I had selected five particularly big and tasty-looking chunks of beef and had inserted into the center of each a capsule containing 200 milligrams of chloral hydrate. This drug, a sedative/hypnotic, when mixed with alcohol is called a Mickey Finn, or knockout drops. Used alone in sufficient quantities it puts people to sleep. I didn't want to kill Fido, just immobilize him for about three hours. I figured three of the chunks would make him non compos mentis, and four would slide him right under. Five might be dangerous to him, but I needed a spare. I threw him three loaded chunks, which he gobbled down. I waited twenty minutes. The dog sank to his belly, his head still up, looking. I threw a small rock at the barn. He jerked his head in the correct direction and gave a little whuff! But he didn't get up. He was gassed, that's why. I threw the fourth chunk. Ten minutes after ingestion, the dog's head was on his paws.
After ten more minutes I threw another rock at the wall. Nothing. I approached close to the dog and threw a rock at him. It skipped and caught his hind leg. Nothing. Fido was in the land of nod. I kicked his tummy gently with my boot and heard a faint sigh, then went on past him toward the barn. The door was closed but unlocked. This was understandable; if indeed the old barn held something other than hay bales a locked door would only call attention to it. It was clear then that Randy Newdecker was relying on the dog to keep the barn safe. The pistol was zipped inside my Windbreaker, since I owned no holster. I unzipped the jacket. The crowbar was thrust into my belt. The flashlight was cradled lightly in the cast of my left arm. I had left the satchel of meat and the thermos of coffee back at the clump of bushes.
There was a mere hint of moonlight, just enough to guide me through the small door next to the big one. Once inside the barn I softly closed the door behind me and stood and waited. I breathed slowly through my open mouth, hearing the faint rustle of my canvas jacket with each breath. I was being very quiet. I damn near jumped out of my socks when I heard a loud flutter from above. Either a pigeon or a barn owl. I crept forward between the rows and stacks of hay bales. They were stacked like giant bricks, each two by two by four feet and weighing eighty pounds. I snaked my way through the walls of dried grass. I turned here and there. I didn't know where the hell I was. After crisscrossing the barn for twenty minutes, I sat on a bale and considered. There was nothing of interest on the ground floor, which left the loft and the stable floor below. The barn was a typical older one: built on a slope with a main door in the end and another big doorway in the middle on the underside of the slope which gave access to the stable floor underneath. But usually there was a trap door or ramp connecting the two lower levels. It took me another forty minutes of searching before I found it: a wall ladder over an elongated trap door. It was the rungs that tipped me off; I brushed by them as I felt my way along the wall and knew there was a ladder. With my light I found the handle of the trap door, a metal ring set in a recess. I switched off the light and raised the door slowly. Nothing. Black as pitch down there. I didn't really want to go… I flipped the light on quickly and looked down. There was no monster lurking there. I stuffed the flashlight into my hip pocket where I could reach it in an instant and started down. It was mighty hard gripping the rungs with my left hand but I managed. The old stalls were still there. Most of them were stacked high with hay, but some weren't. Curiously, it was lighter down there than up above because of the long narrow windows above the stalls. They were rectangles of faint bluish light, like frozen ghostly fish swimming around the edges of the barn. I crept out to the center aisle and could see the stalls, perhaps eight on a side, receding away into the darkness. I began with the nearest stall and worked my way along. My watch said two-thirty. Each stall was taking about five minutes. If I didn't get lucky I'd still be there at dawn. And how long would my friend Rover stay zonked? Probably another hour at the most.
In the fourth stall, in the middle of the barn's belly, behind and underneath a few bales and scattered mounds of hay, I found it. Or rather them. First I felt the rough crate wood, and could see the pale gleam of whitish wood in the faint light. I switched on my flashlight. At the instant I did so I heard a sound from the far end of the barn. I shined the light quickly in that direction but saw nothing. Probably a rat, coon, or skunk. I cut the light and waited in the dark ten minutes before going back to the crates. Then I swept the hay off the uppermost one, and turned the light back on. It had a double swirl symbol stenciled on it, and underneath the symbol, stenciled in black paint, the words: MILITARY ARMAMENT
CORPORATION POWDER SPRINGS, GA. U.S.A.
Looking for a place to insert the crowbar, I noticed that someone had already pried the crate open; there was an indentation between the lid and side of the box where a big screwdriver had been inserted. I pried off the lid. Inside the box, which was the size of a small footlocker, were four weapons. They were strange looking, unlike any firearm I'd ever seen before. They were ugly, made of stamped dull metal. They looked like pistols, with big squarish bodies and little teeny barrels sticking out the ends. The grip projected downward from the middle of the pistol body instead of the back end. Also in the box were eight clips (two for each gun) and four big metal tubes about a foot long (longer than the gun bodies). I picked one of these up; it was heavy and solid. Then I saw the thread mount on the end of the tube. that matched the one on the barrel extension on the gun body. I knew what it was then: a silencer. I picked up one of the bodies. Used to fine shotguns and pistols, I couldn't believe how cheaply made it looked. There was no machining whatsoever. It was a rude collection of stamped metal and spot welds. It looked as though you'd find it lat the bottom of a Crackerjack box.
A knurled knob on the top of the body moved backward if I pulled hard on it. There was a big spring in there, but no external locking and safety lugs like those found on automatic pistols. But this didn't look like an automatic pistol. It was, I suspected, a machine-pistol, or submachine gun. And one with a silencer too. `
Son of a bitch.
There were two of these crates. Underneath those were three more crates that were noticeably larger. I saw the familiar logo on the sides: the interfacing triskelion of Colt Industries. I knew that weapon: the Armalite M16, the standard assault rifle of the U.S. Army. Joe and his friends at the State Detective Bureau had told me enough about these to make it clear they were worth a fortune on the black market. And finally, wrapped in a canvas tarp alongside the wall were two bulky objects that were wound, mummy style, in rust-inhibiting paper. I unwrapped one of the bundles enough to peer at it. It was a medium-weight machine gun. The ribbed metal housing over the barrels looked oddly familiar but I didn't know why. I wrapped the big weapon up again and placed it back the way I found it. I re-covered the crates and scattered the hay back over them. Then, my light out and stuffed in my hip pocket, I went over to the ladder.
Two rungs up, a light shone behind me. I blinked my eyes twice to make it go away. Surely they were playing tricks on me. Surely I was dreaming.
But I wasn't. I felt cold against the back of my neck. It was steel, and pressed hard up underneath the big bone in my skull that lies right behind the ear. It was the barrel of a gun.
"Dawn't move," said a husky voice, "dawwn't!"