A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 27

PEQUOD STANDS ON THE FARMINGTON RIVER, twenty miles west of Hartford in a green hilly section of Connecticut. There was a small bend in the river and as you came around a curve in the road that hugged the river, there it was. A three-story brick building with a cupola on the roof, a restaurant on the first floor with some hanging plants in the window. There was also a Sunoco station, a Cumberland Farms convenience store made as rustic as a Cumberland Farms was likely to get, with texture 1-11 plywood siding stained gray. Across from the restaurant was another threestory brick building. No cupola this time, but across the second story an open balcony ran the length of the building. There were two or three white Victorian-vintage houses with wide verandas that sat on the small slope that ran up from the road, and then you were through Pequod, and the hills and the river were all there was again.

“Look like a dynamite liberty port,” Hawk said.

“Throbbing,” I said.

“Only thing they don’t seem to have is a…” Hawk flipped open the manila folder on his lap and read from Rachel Wallace’s notes. “Diversified Weapons Fabrication and Testing Facility.”

“A subsidiary of Transpan International,” I said. Five miles past Pequod we turned left at a sign that said DEVILS KINGDOM, with an arrow, and crossed the river on a small bridge. Instead of paving, the roadbed of the bridge was made of crisscrossed steel bars, rather like a grating, so that if you looked straight down out the side window you could see the river moving below.

Coming off the bridge the road forked, the main macadam two-lane highway stretching straight north toward Massachusetts, a smaller road veering left along the river and disappearing in a copse of sugar maples. We went along the small road. Past the trees a plain stretched out north from the river and on it stood a long cinderblock building, a small frame building, and perhaps six Quonset huts painted gray. A chain link fence stood ten feet high, topped with razor wire, around the buildings. At each corner was a watchtower.

“Look like a prison,” Hawk said.

“Transpan International,” I said. “Unless Rachel Wallace is badly confused.”

“I bet she ain’t,” Hawk said.

We drove slowly past. There was a large gate with a guard shack beside it. Beyond the fenced area there was a firing range and past that something that looked like it might be an obstacle course that led into the woods. There was no one on the range but there was movement on the obstacle course; people in camouflage fatigues ran and jumped among the trees, hard to see through the foliage at a distance.

Hawk watched silently as we drove past. “Fire on the range,” he said, “run the obstacle course, that get you a twenty-four-hour pass to Pequod.”

“Makes you want to re-up,” I said.

“But whose army?” Hawk said. “Who these guys in the dappled threads?”

A hundred yards up the road I stopped the car and we sat looking back at the complex.

“What Rachel say they have government trouble about?” Hawk said.

The big metal roll-up door at one end of the nearer cinderblock building opened and a forklift truck bearing several stacked crates beetled from the door and across the open mill yard and into the next building.

“Federated Munitions Workers tried to organize the place. Transpan did a lockout. Federated sued, the NLRB got involved in mediation. Transpan brought in non-union workers. There was some violence. The thing’s been in the courts since 1981.”

“Security look excellent,” Hawk said. “See the dogs.”

“Yes.” Inside the perimeter of the chain link fence a guard in mottled fatigues walked with a German shepherd on a short leash. The guard had an automatic weapon slung on his shoulder.

“There’s three more,” I said.

“Yep, walking so that one is always along each side of the square.”

“And the watchtowers on the corners,” I said.

“And you want to bet they got the fence wired,” Hawk said. “Rachel say what they doing in there?”

“No. Arms manufacturing. But what arms, and what the assorted doughboys are for, she doesn’t say.”

“What you want to do,” Hawk said.

“Figure there’s no place else around here. If these guys are going to drink they’ll have to come into Pequod. Maybe we can hang around the bar there and see what we can learn. Unless you want to shoot our way in.”

Hawk grinned. “Not yet,” he said.

A dark blue jeep came out of the front gate and drove up the road toward us. Hawk slid his handgun out from under his warm-up jacket and held it down beside his right leg between the seat and the door.

The jeep stopped beside us and two men in blue coveralls and blue baseball hats got out and walked over to the car. One stood behind our car, the other came around to the driver’s side. Both wore army-style flapped holsters on web belts. A patch on the sleeve of the jump suit said TRANSPAN SECURITY. The guard leaned down and looked in the car window. He wore reflecting sunglasses and a dark beard and very little of his face showed under the down-pulled bill of his hat.

“Excuse me,” the guard said, “may I ask why you gentlemen are parked here?”

“Gee,” I said, “we didn’t mean any harm. We were just wondering what this place was. Is it an army base?”

“I’m sorry,” the guard said, “but this is a restricted area and I’ll have to ask you to move on.”

“This area? I didn’t know. I thought it was a regular public road.”

The guard shook his head. “I’ll have to ask you to drive on.”

“Sure, officer,” I said. “We’re from out of state. Is there anyplace good around here to get a steak and a few beers?”

“Pequod House,” he said. “Go down here, cross the bridge, and about five miles east you’ll find it.”

“You go there?” I said. “Is it good?”

He grinned, his teeth suddenly bright in his beard. “Good, bad, doesn’t matter. It’s the only place in fifty miles.”

“Oh,” I said, “I gotcha. Okay, thanks. We’ll go there then. You guys Army?”

“No, private operation. Turn it around now and move out.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thanks for the tip.”

I U-turned and we drove slowly back down the way we’d come. The jeep followed us, past the Transpan complex and all the way to the bridge.

Across the bridge Hawk slid the magnum back under his coat.

“You kept your dignity,” Hawk said. “You didn’t jump out and kiss his ass.”

“Humble but proud,” I said. “And we know where the guards hang out off duty.”