The Dark Root (43 page)

I ran a finger between my neck and the tight throat-mike fitted just to the side of my vocal cords. It was about as comfortable as those cheap, elastic bow ties waiters are forced to wear, but it enabled me to talk on the radio in a barely audible murmur and still be clearly understood at the other end. Strapped to my right ear, also with constricting bands that ran around my head, was a single large, padded headphone. A receiver on my belt allowed me to change frequencies between the small group of people hidden along Gene Blood’s farm, the Border Patrol dispatcher in Swanton, and Lester Spinney, who was standing by the helicopter we’d been lent by the New York State National Guard.

I made sure I was on the local channel. “This is Alpha One with a wake-up call. How’s everyone doin’?”

One by one, the six people I had assigned to me checked in, all with nothing to report. The last was Richard Boucher, the Border Patrolman who’d put me onto Gene Blood in the first place. We’d met shortly after that first phone conversation. I’d liked him instantly, and had gone to some pains to make sure he was made my on-ground liaison to his superiors.

“I had a doe trigger one of the infrareds about half an hour ago, but that’s it so far.”

“10-4.” I took my finger off the send button and sighed. We’d been out here for four nights running. The concert in Highgate had come and gone, along with the almost fever-pitch tension that had accompanied it. Forty-eight hours earlier, a wandering doe would have triggered an instant recon patrol and brought everyone on the team to the edge of their seats. This time, I was sure, Boucher had merely waited for the animal to clear the woods and had checked it out with his binoculars. We were, after all, only some five hours shy of dawn—and of bringing this entire operation to a close.

There had been some bright spots, especially far west of us, above Highgate, where quite a few people had been rounded up crossing the border to see the concert. Those “hits” had apparently justified our putting the majority of our manpower there, despite my personal opinion that Truong would opt for a place of calm over chaos. That’s why he’d chosen to undermine Da Wang from Vermont in the first place, instead of fighting him directly on his own Montreal turf—and why he’d taken so long to reach this point in his plans, after years of tracking down and eliminating the lesser players, slowly nibbling away at a nemesis who’d been watching him get closer for years.

I couldn’t complain, though. The committee running this coordinated operation—nominally under Frazier’s guidance—had listened to all viewpoints, and mine had been catered to with my squad of six now very bored people. They’d even gone beyond that. Boucher had found a couple of others like Blood—people living on the border with no past smuggling histories, but who were on the financial ropes and vulnerable to persuasion—and the committee had placed small squads on their properties, too.

So now I was trying to come to grips with the fact that despite my instincts—and my further belief that, of all the candidates, Blood was the best—I’d still been wrong. Either Truong did have enough money elsewhere to keep himself going, or he had other means to restock his coffers. It was possible he’d undermined more than one of Da Wang’s pipelines, that despite Nguyen’s denials and all the other intelligence we’d gathered on him, he’d still managed to keep some part of his business from all of us. But I still didn’t believe it, even when confronted by the obvious.

A small tone went off in my ear, indicating someone wanted me on channel two—the frequency of the Swanton headquarters dispatcher.

“Alpha One from 6-40,” came the flat, disinterested voice, “We got a hit on Whiskey-Three. 2-53 investigating.”

I switched my radio over and murmured an acknowledgment. I wasn’t as attuned as the Border Patrol was to the names and locations of all their dozens of monitors—I relied on Richard for that. I switched back to channel one in time to hear his low, calm voice say, “Memphremagog, eastern bank.”

“10-4.” I shifted my weight to get more circulation to my left leg. Normally, sensor hits were recorded by the dispatcher, and either checked remotely by camera or by a notified patrol unit. Given this particular detail, however, and the fact that none of us knew for sure where Truong might try to cross, all of us were being told of every “hit,” regardless of where it was located. Only the small mobile sensors, like the several Richard was monitoring, bypassed this system, since their broadcast strength wasn’t enough to reach the Swanton receiver.

Of the three types of sensors, the infrareds gave off the most alerts, since they were designed to capture anything that broke their invisible beams, including animals, falling branches, and even occasional tricks of light. The seismic units, triggered by the vibrations of passing vehicles, and the magnetics, which could pick up the metal shoelace holes on a single pair of boots, were custom-made for this kind of surveillance. But the infrareds were the cheapest, the lightest, and the easiest units to install, and as such accounted for the majority out here. I therefore assumed the sensor by the lake was one of them, and that its object of interest was either a floating log or two lovers in a canoe with a fetish for frostbite.

The tone went off again in my ear. This time, the dispatcher sounded a little more interested. “6-40 to all units. Whiskey-Eighteen just went dead. 6-40 to 2-53.”

2-53 was the Derby-based car that had gone out to investigate the first hit. “6-40. This is 2-53. I’m on City Farm Road now, heading north. I’ll take a look from Allen Hill.”

I stayed on the main frequency, eavesdropping. I remembered Allen Hill from the guided tour of the landscape Boucher had given me five days earlier. From the top of it, the lake had spread out below like a vast black oil slick, curving around the tree-spiked humps of the islands and peninsulas with a menacing invasiveness. It was easy to imagine the lone patroller now, sitting in the warmth of his vehicle, adjusting his night-vision goggles to fit against high-power binoculars, steadying his elbows on the steering wheel.

“6-40, this is 2-53. We have multiple craft on the water, northeast of Black Island. Looks like they’re heading toward the Holbrook Bay area, moving fast.”

The Swanton dispatcher slipped into his Chuck Yeager, calm-in-any-storm voice. “10-4, 2-53. Advise you stay put for further incursions while we tend to mop-up.” He followed with an alphabet soup of call letters, directing multiple units—both vehicles and boats—to converge on the scene.

He was interrupted by 2-53 again: “6-40, you better step up the response. Now I’ve got more Charlies heading south, maybe to Indian Point. They’re spreading out to hit the shore on a broad base. We’re going to need everybody we can get.”

Swanton Dispatch reacted accordingly. Unit by unit, he read off numbers, including Spinney’s helicopter crew. Like heavy footfalls coming along a corridor, I could hear him getting closer to me and my small, suddenly alert band. “Alpha One,” he finally said. “2-57 is to follow the Johns River SOP. Your command has been terminated.”

2-57 was Richard Boucher, and he was being ordered to take over from me and abandon the Blood farm. In the pause that should have been filled with my own curt and acquiescent “10-4, Alpha One command terminated,” I heard the double tone of our own frequency go off in my ear—Boucher wondering why I was hesitating and impatient to get going.

I switched channels. “Go ahead.”

“Joe,” he said, without all the formalities, “you hear that last request?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking. Anything going off on your monitors?”

“Negative. The action’s on the lake.”

“It is right now—out in the open where everyone can see it.”

Swanton signaled to me to answer. I went back to their frequency and told them to wait. When I returned, Richard asked, “What’re you saying? You still think he’ll hit here?” His voice was incredulous, and a touch irritated.

“This could be his last shot. He laid the ground, did his homework, took his time. I have a hard time believing it all boils down to a bunch of boats flying across open water in clear weather, especially since he must know we’re on high alert.”

This time it was Boucher who hesitated. “They’re still going to need troops along the eastern shore.”

“Fine. How many will it take?”

“I’m running the sensors,” he said.

“How ’bout you, me, and Steve stay put, and I cut the other three loose?”

I knew what that decision was costing him. The northern border was normally quiet enough to be considered by some a retirement post. To be on duty and miss an event like this cut deep. “Thanks, Richard. I appreciate it.”

I let him do the honors of breaking the news to 6-40. In true military style, they took it without comment, saving their wrath for when it could be dished out face to face, by the man with the most brass on his shoulders.

I stayed on the general frequency, as I knew Boucher and Steve were doing from their hiding spots. Tucked away among my little pile of rocks, I could hear all hell breaking loose, as VSP, Newport Police, and sheriff ’s units were called in for backup, visualizing from experience what was taking place. Five minutes later, adding to the unreality, I heard the distant thudding of Spinney’s helicopter through the ear that wasn’t covered by the headphone, some six miles to the west.

As the minutes dragged on, I began wondering if the anticipated dressing down I’d be getting later wouldn’t be richly deserved.

The small double tone went off. I switched over.

“Joe, I got a hit, about halfway between us,” Boucher reported.

“Okay. Hang on.”

The trick to mobile sensors was to place them strategically, far enough apart to give the listener not only a sense of which direction the object was moving in, but also at what speed. Richard and I were waiting for the second hit.

“Got it,” he said moments later. “He’s heading toward you, and he’s on wheels, moving fast.” Then he added quickly, “I got another one on the first sensor—something big.”

I aimed my binoculars to the left and then made a calculated gamble. “Drop everything and head back to your pickup, Richard. If he is mobile and I miss him, we’ll be shit out of luck without a vehicle. Steve, you find out what triggered that second hit, and call for reinforcements. I think this is it.”

“What if this is another diversion? Or a midnight joyrider?”

“Just do it. We don’t have much left to lose.”

I heard something in the distance and tore the headphone off my ear to listen. It was the high-pitched whine of a small engine. I disconnected the radio from all its covert paraphernalia, the need for silence over, and told Richard, “I hear it coming. Sounds like an ATV.”

Boucher was breathing hard, running for his pickup. “10-4. I’ll be headin’ your way in a sec.”

The fog bank by the trees told me nothing. As before, it lay there, trapped, opaque as green phosphorescence through the low-light binoculars, disguising the source of the approaching engine’s growing howl. I was frustrated by the binoculars. Richard and a few of the others had been issued sophisticated night-vision goggles from the Border Patrol’s limited supply, which not only could be conveniently strapped onto one’s head, but could also be left in place while shooting a gun. If it came to that, I knew I wouldn’t do much with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a pistol in the other.

At last, much closer than I expected, the fog gave up its malevolent gift. The dark, squatty form of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, towing a small trailer, burst from the bank like a shark clearing water, and came charging right at me, its lights extinguished.

I exchanged the binoculars for a powerful flashlight, stood clear of the rocks, steadied my gun hand on top of the hand holding the light, and switched it on. “Police—stop.”

But we were too close. It had happened too fast. There was no room left for either one of us to choose a peaceful option. The driver was also wearing night goggles, and the glare from my light totally blinded him for an instant, making him instinctively tear them off and throw them aside. He swerved at me, only barely in control of his machine. Just before diving out of the way, I saw the dazed face of Truong Van Loc.

I ended up against one of the rocks, momentarily stunned, the stench of the ATV’s exhaust in my nostrils. He hadn’t missed me by much. I dug my radio from the holster on my belt. “Richard—it’s him. He got by me. He’s heading for the road.”

I scrambled to my feet and began running, my flashlight now lost but my gun still in my hand. The road was a couple of hundred feet away, and Truong, now minus his goggles, had switched on his headlights. But I knew we were too late. Richard hadn’t been able to get to his pickup quickly enough. Even now, almost reaching the road and seeing Truong picking up speed in the opposite direction, I could barely see Richard’s lights coming over the rise far to my right.

Breathing hard, I staggered into the road and waved at the pickup to stop. He slowed down enough for me to pile into the passenger seat, and then poured the speed back on.

“He’s right ahead of us—four-wheel ATV with a trailer—using lights.”

Over the radio, we heard Steve reporting that he’d secured a large truck, minus the driver, and that he’d contained its human cargo by locking the back door.

Driving with one hand, the countryside ripping by in a frightening blur, Boucher unhooked his radio mike and relayed our situation to Dispatch in a calm, measured tone. “There is one thing going for us,” he said after he’d signed off. “Unless he really knows this part of the woods, he’s going to have to double back to keep on any kind of decent road. They all crap out about three to four miles east of here.”

I remembered that from studying the map earlier. Somewhere near where Orleans County ended and Essex began, the dozen or so marked roads all either dead-ended or looped back around to the west. But there were a lot of them, mostly interconnected, and unless we could seal them off quickly, Truong still stood a good chance of escaping, especially if he put his cross-country vehicle to its intended use.

“There he is,” Boucher murmured, almost to himself.