The Devil's Code

CHAPTER 22

When we were killing time in Austin, we hardly talked about Lane Ward. We were working at pushing her away, the image of her dead on the motel bed. Instead of talking about that, we were technical: How did they find us so quickly? When did they detect the intrusion, etc.?

On the way up to Waco, LuEllen, who had hardly spoken at all that morning, asked, "Who's going to take care of her?"

"What?"

"Who's going to take care of Lane? Who's going to take care of the funeral and her stuff at her house? What's going to happen with all that? Does somebody just haul it to the dump?"

"Don't start," I said.

"I can't help it. I woke up thinking about it. I mean, she was about my age, and she doesn't have any kids, and her parents are dead, just like me. Then, all of a sudden, she's killedand who takes care of her? The state? I mean, do they just cremate her and throw her ashes in a dump somewhere? Do they take all of her books out and throw them away, or have a garage sale, or what?"

"If she's got a will. I mean, that should take care of it."

"That's just legal," LuEllen said. "I wonder if there's anybody who really cares?"

She worried about it all the way to Waco; and didn't really stop then, I don't think. She just stopped talking about it.

Waco has a county courthouse that looks like a state capitol. I went in looking for a map, and they sent me across the street. I got one, chatted with the map guy for a few minutes, and he showed me a plat book. It took a while, but I eventually spotted Corbeil's ranch just outside a little town called Crawford, which was northwest of Waco proper. We stopped at a Barnes amp; Noble bookstore, LuEllen ran in and bought a couple of crumpets and some kind of health juice, and we headed for Corbeil's.

There's a big lake at Waco, and a couple of rivers, which didn't fit with my mental picture of the place: but there they were. The November countryside was low and rolling, and as we got closer to Crawford, cut by gullies and a few creeks. There was some corn farming, and lots of hay around, but in general, the country was more ranch than farm. We crawled through Crawford, inadvertently ran a four-way stop that I thought was two-way, and almost got T-boned by a Chevy pickup. LuEllen was peering out the window and said, eventually, "Took me sixteen years to get out of a place like this."

"Really? A place like this?"

"Up in Minnesota," she said. I'd never known she was a smalltown girl, though if I'd thought about it, I might've guessed. And I waited. No small-town kid has ever been through another small town without some kind of comment about the other town's inferiority. She said, "But the place I grew up, at least we had a Dairy Queen."

Yup.

Corbeil's place was set on a ridge above Texas Highway 185; the place was a sprawling yellow log-cabin-style house. Not new, but not antique, either: the kind of log place that city people buy. We couldn't see it all from the road, but a half-dozen outbuildings of one kind or another were scattered about the place: a steel pole barn stuffed with hay, what was probably a machine shed, a six-car garage, what might possibly have been a bunkhouse or an office buildingtwo doors, and a row of windows with decorative shutters next to each windowa long, low stable with a training ring off one side, and what might have been a pump shed.

One pasture, surrounded with barbed wire and with a circular growth pattern in the grass that suggested a center-pivot watering system, contained a half-dozen Brahman cattle. The rest of the place was that kind of shaggy gray-green, ready for winter. A couple of hundred white-faced cows were clumped around what we could see of the rest of his pasture land, which continued to rise, in a series of steps, behind the ranch house.

According to the plat book, Corbeil owned 1,280 acres two square miles, a mile wide and two miles deep. There were roads on two sides: Highway 185, which ran east-west along the front of the house, and Beulah Drive, which ran north-south, along the west side of the ranch.

A mile north of Highway 185, as we drove up Beulah on the west side of Corbeil's property, an old ramshackle farmhouse squatted well back from the road in a clump of trees, with weeds growing up in the two-tire-track driveway. The place looked dead, but there was a newer pizza-dish-sized satellite TV antenna on the roof, and another, old-style dish on the lawn out back, so we figured somebody probably lived there.

We continued on the county road to what we figured was the end of Corbeil's property, and then went two miles on, where we found the remnants of what must have been another old farm: a grove of trees set back from the road with traces of a track going back into the trees. I turned around on the track, and in the silence and emptiness of the place, got out and trotted back to the trees, and found an old crumbling chimney, and a parking spot littered with corroding beer cans. Maybe the local lover's lane.

On the way back out, as we approached the north end of Corbeil's land again, I pointed to the fence line that marked the edge of Corbeil's property.

"Up aheadsee those trees? I want to hop out with the glasses. You take the truck back up the road about five or six miles, then come get me. Give me fifteen minutes," I said.

"Where're you going?"

"I'm going to walk along that fence row, see what I can see on the other side of that hill."

"Probably a rancher who doesn't like trespassers."

"I'll tell him I'm an artist," I said. "I'll take my bag with me."

At the trees, I hopped out with the bag and the binoculars, and as LuEllen rolled away, I cut through a copse of junky roadside trees, crossed a fence where it joined another fence line, and headed up the hill. As I said, the countryside was empty: roads and fences and fields and not a lot of people. I was walking through some kind of ground cover, springy underfootit looked grassy, and it looked as though it were regularly mowed, but it wasn't anything like the alfalfa or clover I was familiar with.

I followed the fence line four hundred yards up the hill, and finally reached a broad crest where I could look down on Corbeil's ranch. Lots more cows and a big stock tank with a watering station. What interested me more, though, was the satellite dish that sat next to the pump station. It was one of the big ones, the old-fashioned dishes, but it looked well-kept; and there was nobody there to look at a TV. Still, it was moving as I watched. I couldn't actually see the movement, but when I looked away, and then looked back, it seemed that the dish had moved. I squatted next to the fence, lined up a barb on the barbed-wire with one edge of the dish: and yes, it was moving. It moved for the best part of five or six minutes, and then stopped.

As best I could judge, from the direction of the road down the hill, the dish was pointing northeast when it stopped. I could see the backside of the old abandoned-looking farmhouse a mile south, and with the binoculars, could make out the satellite dish behind it: that dish was also pointing northeast.

Huh.

Were the dishes coordinated? Were they talking to satellites? And if they were, so what? There are uplinks all over the place: even sports bars had them. But bars didn't have coordinated dishes scattered over a couple of square miles. If the dishes were linked, they would have, in effect, a huge baseline, which would be the same as having a much bigger and more sensitive dish. And with those photos.

We were onto something. A secret operation of some kind? But who were they hiding it from? If they were working with the feds, they'd just go ahead and stick the dishes up anywhere; they wouldn't be hidden away on a ranch in Waco.

I was waiting in the trees when LuEllen came back.

"Anything?"

"Yeah. I think we're getting a handle on something. Did you see a satellite dish at Corbeil's? One of those big babies?"

"I didn't notice. I don't think so."

We cruised the place again, running down Highway 185, but no dish was visible from the highway. "Could be down out of sight," she said.

"Or maybe there are only two. or maybe there are more, tucked away like that stock tank."

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"A little fantasy," I said. "They were willing to kill for those pictures, and we have what might be code. We got that list of names for all those Middle Eastern countries. I wonder if somehow they aren't hijacking photos from the recon satellites and selling them."

"For what?"

"Sell surveillance of Pakistan to India, and surveillance of India to Pakistan. Sell surveillance of Iraq to Iran, and Iran and Syria to Iraq; of Israel to Syria. Of Taiwan to China, and China to Taiwan."

"They'd get caught."

"I could tell you ten ways to do it, that they'd never get caught. That the buyers would never see the sellers. That's what the Internet is for. Any buyer who's getting this stuff. it'd be the biggest secret they had."

"Okay. So what next?"

"Let's go back to Austin. I need to do some shopping," I said.

"Always shopping."

"We'll come back tonight."

"A scout?"

"A scout."

In Austin, we went to an outdoor-sports store and bought a good compass; a GPS receiver with a map function; topographic maps of the East Waco area, including Corbeil's ranch; and a cheap black daypack. At a building-supply place, picked up a builders' protractor, a bubble level, and some duct tape. And in a sewing store, a card with five yards of elastic banding. I spent an hour in the parking lot with the GPS receiver, figuring out how to work it; especially interesting were the time and distance functions, and the backtrack function.

Then there was the matter of the gun.

"We need a better one," LuEllen said. "Look what they did to Lane, and what they did to Jack. Those were executions, so they just don't give a fuck. If we go on a scout, and they catch us, and they've got gunsthis is Texas, Kiddthey're going to shoot us down like dogs."

"Anytime you buy a gun."

"Ought to be easy in Texas," she said. "Let me call Weenie."

It was easy in Texas. All we had to do was drive to Houston, which was a little better than two hours away, meet a guy in a parking lot near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and give him $600 for a cheap Chinese-made AK with two magazines, fifty rounds of 7.65 X 39, and a nylon sling.

"That's about a two-hundred dollar gun in a store," I told LuEllen, as we left the parking lot.

"That wasn't a store," she said.

"Hope it works," I said. "Looks like it was made by a high school kid in a shop class."

At five o'clock we were back in Austin. In the motel room, I pumped some shells through the AK, bruised the tip of my middle finger with the firing pin, and eventually decided that the thing might work. We ate, and by seven o'clock, we were on the road again.

The land around Waco is fairly lush. Waco is just about south of Dallas, and the really dry, sere landserious prickly-pear countrystarts an hour or two to the west.

But the land just west of Waco, like lots of backcountry in this day of Interstate highways, was lonely. All the land was used, in one way or another, but when we'd gone out in the morning, we'd seen only one person along the road, a woman walking out to her mailbox In that kind of country, without the light pollution of the city, it gets dark.

We'd picked a good night for it, windless, starlit, quiet. The moon was already slanting down in the sky when we drove past Corbeil's. There were lights in the house, in the building that might have been an office or bunkhouse, and in the yard. A couple of cars were parked outside the garage, but we didn't see anyone moving around. We made the turn on Beulah Avenue, west of the ranch, and headed north, until we found the track that headed back to the abandoned homesite that we'd discovered in the morning. Once there, we shut down the truck, spent a couple of minutes looking around, and mostly, listening

We heard nothing but insects, and the gravel underfoot. Ten minutes after we arrived, LuEllen broke out the taped flashlights, and we started back down the road toward Corbeil's place.

The walk took forty minutes, moving slowly, and stopping to listen and scan ahead with the night glasses. During that time, we neither heard nor saw another vehicle At the corner of Corbeil's property, where I'd followed the fence line in that morning, we stepped into the trees and with the flashlights, established our position on the GPS

"Ready?"

"Go," she said.

We were both dressed from head to foot in black In the city, we'd worn dark red jackets. They were nearly as invisible as black, when you were out of the light, and looked a lot more innocent to cops. Out here, if we were caught in the middle of Corbeil's pasture with the AK, there'd be no point in arguing that we were there by mistake.

We crossed the fence, with me in the lead, LuEllen following behind, the stars and fragmentary moon were just bright enough that we could see each other as shadows, and hear our feet swishing through the grass. When we'd walked a good distance up the hill, I moved over to the fence line, illuminating it with a spiderweb of light from one of the flashlights

With the night glasses, I could clearly make out the dish next to the water tank. Nobody around, though down the hill, I could see cattle, lying down, grouped together like pea pods on a table.

"Anything?" The word was a breath next to my ear.

"No. Let's cross. Use the light and watch the barbs."

We crossed the fence and headed down the hill. The dish was two hundred yards away, and we took it easy, stopping often to listen. When we got close, we could hear trickling water, and then, even closer, a tiny electronic hum, the equipment wasn't moving, but was turned on.

I handed the AK and the night glasses to LuEllen, by agreement, she moved on down the hill about thirty yards, as a listening post. I took off the backpack and got the equipment out, marked our spot with the GPS, switched the GPS receiver to the time function, then started making measurements.

The dish was in what appeared to be its "rest" position. With the compass, I measured, to within a degree or to, the direction it was aimed inabout 290 degrees, or a little north of west, and not at all the direction it had been aimed earlier in the day. When I was sure I had it right, I got out the duct tape, taped one end of the elastic band to the top rim of the dish, stretched it across the face of the dish, so I had a tight, straight line with no sag, and taped it to the bottom Using the level to establish my earth-line, I measured the angle of the elastic, which essentially gave me the current azimuth of the dish. I wrote it down, and then sat down to wait.

We'd agreed, earlier, that we'd wait for up to three hours for the dish to move. If it hadn't moved by then, we'd bail. We'd be getting tired, and our edge would be gone. With the elastic stretched out, I laid back on the ground and got comfortable. Watched the moon going down, the stars popping out. The lights from Waco, to the east, were bright enough that you didn't get the full clout of the Milky Way as you do up in the North Woods, but then, that might be northern jingoism; the stars were pretty good.

I'd been there for twenty-five minutes when the dish motor burpedan electronic burp, a change in the hum, and I sat up, listening, to be sure, then quickly checked the GPS and jotted down the time. With the level and protractor in hand, I moved around to the front of the dish and quickly checked the azimuth. It hadn't changed. But something was happening: the deeper note from the motor was unmistakable.

I was worrying about that when I felt a vibration in the disk, and slowly, surely, it began to move, tilting back. I looked at where it was pointing, at the horizon line, but could see nothing but stars. Sometimes, on dark nights, you could see them, the satellites, like tiny sparks scratching themselves on heaven.

I checked the azimuth, wrote down the GPS time signal. Checked the azimuth, wrote down the time. Checked it again, and again. Then hurried around behind it, got the compass, checked to make sure the direction hadn't changed: it hadn't. I went back to the dish and checked the azimuth as many times as I could until the dish was pointing at the local horizon, up the hill, and suddenly stopped. After taking the last azimuth, I ran around and checked direction again. Still the same. When I give the numbers to Bobby, I should have a straight line running through the sky from just north of west to just south of east, and even with the crude measurements of the protractor, should be able to give him a reasonable close approximation of times and azimuths.

At the top of its arc, the dish stopped moving for thirty seconds, then slowly began turning, more to the north this time, as the dish began to come down in its arc. At the end of the movement sequence, it was pointing at the horizon at about 320 degrees, or about 30 degrees further north than before. I noted that, packed up my stuff, took the elastic off the dish, and walked south about fifteen feet, and whispered, "LuEllen?"

A moment later, she was next to me: "Get it?"

"Yeah."

"I heard you clunking around."

"Not too much, I hope."

"Not too bad. are we good?"

"Unless you'd like to take a little walk."

"You're the boss."

Moving slowly, stopping often to use the night glasses, and staying as far away from the groups of cows as we could, we walked toward Corbeil's farmhouse. We sat on one hillside for fifteen minutes, taking the whole country in, then crossed a wash and climbed the other side; and from there, we could see Corbeil's clearly.

"No dish," I muttered to LuEllen.

"So let's go. We've been here too long."

"Let's head over that way for a couple of hundred yards first, and then head back," I said.

"That way" was east, toward the eastern edge of Corbeil's land. We first crossed back to the hill behind us, to get a little more distance between us and the house, and followed the backside of the ridge for four or five hundred yards. When the GPS put us three-fourths of the way across, we turned back up the hill. When we got to the crest, we looked down, and there, in a little hollow, was another dish.

"That's three," I whispered.

We crossed down to it, and I marked it on the GPS, and did a quick measurement: 320, just like the last one. Waiting. I considered waiting until it started to move, but we were running down. "Let's go."

We took better than an hour to get back to the truck. We approached it slowly, listening, loaded up as quietly as we could, backed out, and headed south toward the highway. Once on the road, LuEllen said, "Nice night for a picnic."

"I'm a little kicked," I said. She was driving, and I added, "When we get down to that old farmhouse, off on the side, if there aren't any lights, stop at the end of the driveway; just for a second."

There were no lights, and she stopped. I stuck the GPS out the window, got a quick read, noted it, and said, "Let's go home."

We took the county road south, then Highway 185 east, past Corbeil's ranch. As we passed the ranch, we saw two men walking out to a car in the driveway. One of them glanced at us as we went by.

"That guy." LuEllen said. "The one on the right."

"Yeah. He's limping." We continued down the highway, and looking back, I saw the car pull out of the driveway, following. A few miles on, we stopped at an intersection before turning south toward Waco. The car followed, again.

"Still behind us?"

"Yeah, but they would be. There's no place else to go." They didn't seem to be coming after us with any urgency. "Slow down a little; bring it down to about fifty-even or fifty-eight," I told her.

She lightened up on the gas, and the car, a Buick, slowly crept up on us. When they were off our back bumper, they hung there for a while, then, at a flat spot, kicked out around us and accelerated away. I had the glasses ready, and picked out the tag number on the Buick.

"Guy didn't look at me," LuEllen said.

"Why should he? We're just another truck on the open highway. Even paranoia has its limits."

"For amateurs," LuEllen said. "Not for me. We wipe this truck, and take it back first thing tomorrow morning. Before the DMV opens, in case he can check the plate."

"Of course," I said.