Mallon carefully arranged his weapons. He put the two identical Beretta Model 92 pistols he’d taken from the two men on the road into the side pockets of his jacket, where he could reach one easily with either hand but they did not restrain his movement. He considered taking Diane’s small pistol with him, but he admitted to himself that the two Berettas probably held more rounds than he would live to use. He hid hers under the passenger seat, then walked off to search for a place to climb the fence.
Mallon strode along the road for about three hundred yards, looking up along the top of the fence at the coiled razor wire, and down at the fence posts. He had worked construction sites where somebody had deemed it necessary that the usual chain-link fence be wired like that. Whenever it had been strung, he had insisted that the fence rental company handle it, instead of his crew. The wire was treacherous stuff that had a way of springing around whenever it was cut, and taking a gash out of anyone nearby.
The wire along this fence was strung in a way that compressed it tightly, more like the wire around a prison than a construction site. The chain-link mesh was pulled taut, so there were no spots along the bottom where a man could get a bit of slack and slip under, and the posts were set in concrete.
But Mallon knew something about this kind of fence that Parish probably didn’t know. Installing them was heavy, dull work that pinched fingers and dug gouges in flesh. It was work that the installation companies hired young, inexperienced laborers to do. A straw boss could go through, pound wooden stakes into the ground where he wanted posts, and then go away for a few hours while his crew dug postholes, mixed cement in small batches, and set posts. A day or two later, the crew could come through again, unrolling chain-link mesh along the line and connecting it to the posts. The work was hard and heavy. Mallon had no doubt that the posts near the front gate and the buildings were set in very deep, wide holes with plenty of cement. He could see that in the stretch he was walking now along the road, they were still pretty good. But the farther the fence got from the front gate, where the bosses and the customers were, the worse the work would be.
He reached the spot where the fence turned away from the road into the woods, and kept walking. When he was three hundred feet from the road, he knelt beside one of the posts and tested his theory. This one had been set in a hole that was only nine inches wide, which left room for only about three inches of cement around the three-inch post. He had been right. They’d had to dig through tree roots. They’d had to carry the bags of cement and buckets of water way out here through the brush to mix by hand. There didn’t even seem to be a decent path that could accommodate a wheelbarrow. As the day had worn on, and they’d gone deeper into the forest, where the bosses didn’t come very often, the laborers had used less cement, and less care.
Mallon walked along another hundred feet until he came to a post that looked a bit off plumb. He examined the base, and decided this was the one. He began to rock it back and forth, harder and harder, until he had it at a forty-five-degree angle. The shallow clump of concrete at the base extended only an inch or so from the pole. He went to his back on the bed of pine needles, lifted the chain-link mesh with both hands, and wriggled under, pushing with his feet. When he was on the other side, he pushed the post upright, stomped some of the loose earth around the concrete, and tried to memorize the way it looked so that he could find it again. He could tell that it was unlikely he would be able to pick it out in a hurry at night. The fence was a line of identical posts surrounded by nearly identical pine trees. He stepped to one of the trees, picked a broken bough off the ground that had already turned brown, then wove it in and out of the links.
He stepped back to be sure he could recognize it, then turned and moved off into the fenced-in land. He was still surrounded by trees, but he could tell that, somewhere off to his left, the land rose gradually to a ridge. He headed in that direction because he guessed that might offer him the safest way of observing the complex of buildings. The lights from the area near the gate and the driveway would not reach up there.
When Mallon had climbed for ten or fifteen minutes up the wooded slope, he came out into a field that led onto the ridge. He made out in the moonlight that it was only the first of at least three rows of foothills that stretched into the backcountry toward a high mountain range, without any glow of electric lights, or any lighter-colored gashes for roads. Just below the ridge where he stood were a couple of buildings. One was the size of a two-car garage, and the other was cabin-sized, both in the same plain style of rustic architecture as the buildings he had seen on his visit with Lydia.
He turned around to look down toward the buildings near the gate. There the slope was clear of trees and brush, like a field of clover and alfalfa. He could make out the main lodge, and now he could see all of the parking lot across the driveway. He counted six cars. He tried to decide what that meant. One would belong to Michael Parish, the man he and Lydia had spoken to. Diane had mentioned two women instructors and a man, which meant three more cars. That left only the Lexus the red-haired man had driven, and one other.
There was a second big building, this one with a high roof, like a barn. It had only high windows and skylights, but it was dark, so Mallon could not tell what was inside. He guessed it must be the gym that he’d heard Parish mention on his first visit, the place where they offered instruction in hand-to-hand fighting. Scattered around on the outskirts were six low buildings that he identified as barracks. Each had three doors on each side, so probably they were each divided into six private rooms with separate entrances. There was no sure way for him to tell how many of them were occupied, but from the six cars, he had to assume that at least two barracks were being used.
It was a difficult place for an intruder, he decided. The front gate, the parking lot, and the area around the main offices were bathed in light, even at this hour. The driveway, which he could now see deserved to be called a road, was lighted at intervals all the way to the big building he had identified as a gym. The living quarters were around the complex on the outer fringes, where it was darker and quieter. Any or all of them might be occupied by people who would hear a person walking by outside. The site did not offer any obvious places for someone like Mallon to enter and be sure of going unnoticed.
Mallon turned and looked away from the camp. Before he went down there, he would need to get a closer look at the buildings separated from the main complex. He had to be sure they weren’t occupied before he turned his back on them.
Mallon kept to the shadowy places where groves of trees had been spared. He made his way to the more distant of the two buildings first. It was a cabin. He moved cautiously along the wall, examining it as carefully as he could. The siding consisted of rough slats nailed vertically to the frame of two-by-fours at top and bottom to cover plywood sheets, then painted a light olive to blend into the landscape.
Mallon moved cautiously to the window on a narrow end of the building and looked inside. In the moonlight that shone through the windows he could see one room with three sets of empty bunk beds, a table, and six chairs. There was a bathroom, which was open. He could see three kerosene lanterns: one in the center of the table, and two hanging from wrought-iron supports high on the walls. The cabin looked primitive. Maybe it was an extra place to accommodate guests who wanted the illusion of roughing it, or maybe its purpose was isolation. It didn’t matter. There was nobody here now.