Mortal Prey

13

There 's no good way to get from St. Louis to Anniston, Alabama, in a hurry, any more than there's a good way to get from Minneapolis to St. Louis. Rinker couldn't hurry anyway, because she couldn't risk a traffic stop. She took I-64 east to I-24, and I-24 down to Nashville, where she picked up I-65, and I-65 all the way to Birmingham, and then I-20 east to Anniston.

She started late in the afternoon and was still driving at dawn. She listened to a St. Louis Cardinals game heading down to Nashville, thinking about those times in the liquor warehouse, about a million years earlier, when the Cards games always ran in the background, and she, no baseball fan, knew every man on the roster.

She lost the Cardinals outside of Nashville, and poked around the radio looking for some decent country, but that was hard to come by. She finally found a local station along the Alabama line, playing a long string of LeAnn Rimes, including "Blue," one of Rinker's favorites. When that station faded, she spent the rest of the night dialing around the radio for more good places to listen.

At 6A. M., a little beat-up, but pleasantly so-she always liked road trips-she checked into a cheap motel called Tapley's, and when asked how many there'd be, she said, "Well, my husband's probably coming over during the day, he's a sergeant in the Army, but I'm not sure if he'll be staying the night."

The lady clerk looked at her with a touch of warmth in her eyes and said, "We'll put you down for one, and if that changes, honey, just let me know."

"I'll do that, and thanks," Rinker said. "I'd give you a credit card, but I don't know if it'd work. He's probably put a bass boat on it. I'll just give you cash, if that's okay."

"That'd be fine."

She called Wayne McCallum at eight o'clock, and got him on the first ring: "Sergeant McCallum, ordnance."

"Wayne George McCallum. How are you?" She used her best whiskey Rinker voice.

There was a pause, then: "Oh, shit."

"I need to talk."

"I wouldn't doubt it, but things are pretty hectic right now." His voice was casual, with an underlying layer of stress.

"Did you take that twelve-step I heard about, or are you still running down to Biloxi on the weekends?"

"I sure as shit ain't took no twelve-step," he said. McCallum had a fondness for craps.

"So come on. I got something you need, and you got something I need."

"I can't talk right now. Could you call me at my other number, in about five minutes?" He gave her a number.

"I'll call," she said. She waited while he ran out to a pay phone, gave him an extra minute, and dialed. He picked up on the first ring. "I can get you two good ones, equipped. Three thousand."

"I don't need them. I need something special."

"Special."

"Real special."

"We better talk. See you at the usual?"

"The usual."

She got four hours of sleep, and a little after noon, got cleaned up, changed into jeans, running shoes, and a short-sleeved shirt, and clipped one of her pistols into a pull-down fanny pack. Behind the pistol she stuffed a brick of fifty-dollar bills, wrapped with rubber bands.

When she was ready, and feeling a little adrenaline, she headed south to Talladega, then east into the mountains of the Talladega National Forest. She stopped at a wayside park, where a hiking trail started off into the woods. She sat in her car for a moment, watching, then retrieved the fanny pack from under the front seat and strapped it on, with the pack in front. She also dug out one of her cell phones, checked to make sure it was the right one, and carried it with her.

For years, Wayne McCallum had been her main source of silenced nine-millimeter pistols, and she'd dealt with him twenty times. They'd once had a long talk about meeting places, places to talk, places to exchange equipment for money. They had agreed that cleverness was its own enemy. If you met in a crowded public place, which was one theory on how you do it-the crowd bought you protection from the person you were meeting-and if somebody was onto you, you'd never see them coming. If you could just see them coming, there was always a chance. A lonely spot, but still technically public, where you wouldn't seem suspicious just for being there, was the best solution.

A hiking trail was perfect, as long as she had her best friend along… with a full magazine and a spare.

She climbed out of the wayside park, up the hiking trail, then looped up a secondary track to a scenic overlook. When she got to the top, she found it empty. She had, in fact, met McCallum a half-dozen times at the overlook, and, except for McCallum, had never encountered another soul. The overlook was nothing more than a circle of rocks around a patch of beaten earth, on the edge of a steep hill. There was a good view back toward Talledega, and no sign of recent use: nothing but old cigarette filters scattered around the rocks, and a couple of weather-rotted clumps of toilet paper back in the bushes. She expected the filters would last until the next ice age-longer than the rocks, anyway.

McCallum arrived precisely at one o'clock, driving an older Cadillac. He'd always driven a Caddy, because that's what men like him drove, and there'd always be a set of good golf clubs in the trunk. He climbed out, smiled up at where he thought she was, and came puffing up the trail, a fat, red-faced man in civilian clothes, way out of shape. Welcome to today's Army, Rinker thought.

"We gotta find some goddamn place flat," he said, as he wheezed into the overlook. He was close enough that she could smell his breath, and it smelled like Sen-Sen. She wondered if they still made it.

"Or you gotta take off some weight," Rinker said. She smiled. "How are you?"

"A hell of a lot better than you," McCallum said. He looked her over, then said, "After all that shit up in Minnesota, I figured the next time I saw you, we'd both be in hell."

"Not there yet," she said.

"If you don't stay the fuck away from St. Louis, you will be," he said.

"Got a couple more things to do before I take off." She pulled the top off her fanny pack, let the pistol unfold, then dug behind it for the brick of fifties. She tossed it to him, and he caught it, glanced at the denomination on the top bill, and said, "This is a lot."

She held up the cell phone. "Remember you told me about that Israeli thing?"

He laughed, and said, "You're shitting me." He ran two hands through his short hair, then scrubbed at his scalp like one of the Three Stooges-Rinker could never remember their names, but it was the fat one. "You're not shitting me."

"I'm not. Can you really do it?" she asked.

"Hell, yes. I've been itching to." Jeez, Rinker thought, his eyes are bright. "Banged off a couple myself," he said, "up here in the hills, just to make sure it works. It works. It works beautiful."

"How about the plastic? Can they get back to you?"

"It's all civilian. They could never bring it back here. Back to me."

"How long to do it?"

"Couple hours. I could have it tonight," he said. He was getting excited. Aroused. "I mean, it's real easy. 'Bout everything you need is already built into the phone. You need one chip and the plastic."

"It'd be a favor, Wayne," Rinker said. She gave him her number-three smile. "The quicker the better."

She drove back to Anniston, leaving after he did, taking a different route, checking her back trail. At the motel, she slept the rest of the afternoon, and spent the early evening watching television. At eight o'clock, she drove out to an interstate gas station and a telephone. McCallum picked up on the first ring.

"We going out, or what?" she asked.

"I'm ready, honey-bun. Tell me where."

"How about Boots?" Boots was an Army bar. She'd been there once before, in the parking lot.

"See you there."

Again, she was there before he was. That was part of the deal. Though she had little faith in the idea that she could spot cops, she was virtually certain that McCallum wouldn't turn her in. He'd helped her too many times, and Alabama had primitive ideas about the proper punishment for murder.

When the Caddy rolled in, she watched for five minutes, then decided she'd buy it; she'd seen nothing that worried her. She rolled down the hill into the parking lot, up close to the Cadillac, and dropped the passenger-side window. Neon lightning rolled off the Caddy's hood, reflecting the on-and-off "Boots" sign overhead. McCallum saw her, got out of his car, stepped over, climbed into the passenger seat, and fumbled the cell phone out of his jacket pocket.

"Here's the phone," he said. He sounded eager to get rid of it, or to please her-like a child giving a gift to a teacher. "If you was to take it apart, and knew a lot about phones, you might find the plastic. If you didn't, and if you just looked into it, you'd never see it."

"What happens if I call out?"

"Nothing. It's still a perfectly good phone. But I'll tell you what, you don't want to call out to 6-6-6. 'Cause if you do, the beast'll blow your ass off."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure." He nodded in the dark. "Same thing when you're calling into it. You call, you make sure you got your guy, and you punch 666. Then you won't have your guy anymore."

"How powerful is it?" Rinker asked. "I mean, would it blow up this car?"

"Oh, hell no." McCallum shook his head. "I got a chunk of plastic in there not much bigger'n a. 22 slug. No, the damage would all be to the head, but it'll flat knock a hole in that. If you were to put it in the backseat, and it went off, you probably wouldn't hear much for a few days, and there'd be a hell of a hole in the upholstery, but it wouldn't kill you. It's 'bout like a charge in a, say, a. 338 mag."

Rinker looked at the phone, then back up at the soldier. "Wayne, if you'd gone into this business fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have had a job."

"Weren't no cell phones fifteen years ago," McCallum said. "And you know what? Puttin' this thing together made me kind of horny. I'd like to see it go. I mean, I could do this."

"You're a freak, Wayne," Rinker said.

"Of course I am, sweetheart." McCallum beamed at her, his fat sweaty jowls trembling with excitement. " 'Course I am."

She checked out that night; told the woman working behind the counter that things just hadn't worked out. Going past the 'Bama border, she looked for the country station that had featured LeAnn Rimes, but it was an AM station and she lost it in the static of the thunderstorms closing in from the west.

She caught the rain at Nashville, lightning bolts pounding through the inky dark night, radio stations coming and going, the jocks talking of tornado warnings and multiple touchdowns near Clarksville. She came out the other side of the squall line before dawn, and rolled on into St. Louis on dry pavement.

Kept thinking about the telephone.

This wasn't like her. Should work-and could flush a couple of more quail.