When Vickers hung up Cunningham was spreading a Texaco road map out on the desk. Watchman had a look at the compass coordinates Vickers had scribbled on the pad. He put his finger on the map: “Right about there.” He felt a surge of purpose. All light—all right: now I’ve got a crack at them. For old Jasper.
The map showed no useful detail and Vickers said almost immediately, “Is that the best you’ve got?”
Cunningham swallowed. “Well, sir, I …”
Watchman said, “We’ve got a county topographical in the car. Buck …”
“Wait up,” Vickers said. “We may as well all go—get started rolling. I’ll use your car radio on the way. Let’s not waste time.”
Watchman flicked imaginary moisture from his mouth corners with thumb and forefinger and waited until Vickers had crossed half the length of the room. “You’ll want a few things first.”
Vickers stopped. His voice was metallic: “What?”
“You can’t just head up in that back country with what’s in your pockets.”
“Trooper, you’re wasting my time. Say what’s on your mind.”
“You’ll want a jeep. And a pack of food and some heavy clothes. Rifles. Three or four walkie-talkies.” He glanced at the Special Agent’s feet. “A pair of mud boots wouldn’t hurt.” Turned to Jace Cunningham: “This is no time to play cute on this one so give me a straight answer. There must be plenty of night poachers in a town like this and you’ve probably seen them come and go. A few of them likely have snooperscopes—infrared. I want one.”
Cunningham scraped a hand across the abrasive stubble on his jaw. It sounded like sandpaper. “I reckon I could scare one up.”
The look in the FBI agent’s eyes was unreadable.
3
Cunningham and his deputies had gone out to assemble equipment. Watchman started taking rifles down from the locked gun rack and inspecting them and finding ammunition. Vickers had gone to the telephone and was talking, arranging relay contacts through the Highway Patrol dispatcher and the FBI District Director in Phoenix so he could keep in touch with CAP coordinators in three towns and sheriffs’ offices in two Nevada counties and one in Utah. Vickers had a brisk command voice and there was no faulting the efficient precision of his maneuvers to coordinate the search and start drawing up a tight net. “I want State Highway 793 sealed off at interval points and I want the roadblocks maintained until further notice.… Keep every plane you can up there. I want every inch of ground air-searched before it gets too dark out there. They’re on foot if they got out of the wreck at all—I’m going out there myself but it’ll take at least an hour to get there. This damned copter pilot of mine won’t take me out there, he says the storm’s too close to that area. I can’t force the son of a bitch to do it.”
Buck Stevens came in with an armload of coats and gloves and boots. “Bummed these from the deputies. See if you can find stuff that fits.”
Vickers was still talking—evidently to his superior in Phoenix. “Yes, sir. I think we ought to take all these bits and pieces of information we’ve got up to this point and run them through the I. D. classifications on the computer in Washington. It may help to get a make on these people. We can try all the usual openings—modus operandi, identity of possible twin-engine airplane pilots, access to military stores of chemical Mace, tracer on that abandoned Lincoln up in Fredonia where they stole the Buick—that was a last-minute switch, the Lincoln broke down on them. It’s probably stolen too, but it’s worth a try. And I’d like some assistance up here as soon as you can provide it. We’ll need to go over the witnesses’ stories and run checks on recently discharged employees—whoever planned this operation had to know a great deal about the situation here and you often find an ex-insider in on these jobs. I’d appreciate getting a good lab crew up here as fast as possible; they seem to have dusted everything for prints but the local equipment is pretty shoddy and they haven’t got any real technicians up here.… Yes, sir, I realize it’s expensive and possibly redundant but there’s a good deal of cash involved.… Traceable? I don’t think so. Not easily. According to the Chief Constable here they only had a list of serial numbers on the big bills, the hundred-dollar bills, and we all know how easily those can be passed in foreign countries.…”
Watchman stopped listening. Vickers was touching all the correct bases. He knew the regulation methods, had a command of the situation and a willingness to make decisions and set things in motion. But there was a weakness in it: the weakness a regular army met when it tried to close with guerrilla terrorists. Computerized organization and modern technology were fine for sealing off elaborate superhighway networks or city streets, or closing in on clues and identities, but Watchman was dubious about how well the technocrats’ methods were going to work in the desert with a high-country blizzard ramming down toward them.
4
The storm was ugly and black and they were driving straight toward it. The cruiser was convoyed by the mining company jeep, Cunningham driving; their speed was limited by the jeep’s but even so the tires snickered on the sharp bends. Watchman’s arms felt constricted by the bulk of the borrowed sheepskin-lined mackinaw. When he judged the spot right he pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. “End of the line. We swap here.”
A truck snored by, heavy laden. The jeep waited behind the cruiser, its engine idling roughly. Cunningham stepped out, letting the canvas door flap behind him, and stood with a bland incurious expression on his freckled cheeks.
Vickers took charge. “Constable, you’ll stay here in the Highway Patrol car with one hand on the car radio and the other hand on your walkie-talkie. You’re going to be my only contact with the rest of this search so I’ll want you on your toes. You can handle it.”
Watchman looked on with the amusement compressed inside him. Vickers must have read somewhere in a Bureau manual that it was a good idea to compliment local officers and persuade them to give utmost cooperation: but it didn’t come naturally to him, he had a heavy hand with the butter-knife and old Jace wasn’t fooled; he just stood there with his glance fixed on Vickers as if he was waiting for Vickers to serve a subpoena on him.
It unsettled Vickers; finally he said in a different voice, “You know how to work these radios, don’t you?”
“I reckon.”
“Fine—fine. Well, then, let’s get on.”
They got into the jeep, Stevens in back with the knapsack and the walkie-talkies. Watchman handed the folded map to Vickers. “You’ll have to navigate. Watch the compass.”
It hung in a black plastic shell from the windshield divider, below the mirror. Watchman put the floor stick in low gear and went grinding up over the hump of ground beside the highway shoulder; turned north, away from the highway, and went up through the gears fast, bumping across the brush-studded hardpan at a speed that made everything rattle.
“You don’t need to shake us to pieces, Trooper.”
“Maybe you’d rather get there after we run out of daylight.”
Vickers cleared his throat.
The dust lifted high and the jeep’s passage exploded gray wrens out of the bushes. After a little while Vickers said, “I think you want to head a few more points to the left—more over that way.” He pointed and Watchman adjusted the course, weaving among brush clumps and a spindle tracery of cactus and catclaw. In the half light the mountains were vague and hazy out ahead. Vickers kept his finger on the map in his lap and watched the compass; his finger moved a fraction forward every now and then, marking what he thought was their present position. “It shows a ranch back here in the foothills. What’s that supposed to be?”