"I want to catch every report from the officers Ed has out on the road when they call in."
"We'll trap all the calls, in or out."
Harley spoke up, looking at Halloran. "And the Feds are crawling all over that county, right?"
"So Ed says."
"Well, they've gotta be talking to each other somehow, operation that big. We need to figure out what kind of a network or frequency they're using, tie in, and find out what the hell is going on and where."
"You can do that from this rig?"
"You bet we can."
"Let's move, then," Magozzi said. "We'll head for the middle of Missaqua County, park this thing in a wayside somewhere, and be ready to move in any direction the information points us."
"We'll follow in our car," Halloran said. "In case we have to head out somewhere fast."
Harley smiled at him and jerked a thumb toward the rig. "She may look like an elephant, but she runs like a cheetah. You aren't going to need your car."
Bonar gave a short nod and started to walk away. I'll grab our stuff and load up."
Harley trailed along to help while the others climbed into the RV. "We've got about everything you need in there already."
Bonar kept walking. "I got a riot gun, a shotgun, goodies like that."
"Cool. Where's your car?"
Bonar pointed. "That one. Couldn't take the county vehicle through Missaqua."
Harley's mouth hung open. "Jesus Christ. That's your ride?"
"That's it. The old clunker."
Harlcy laid reverent hands on the Chevy while Bonar leaned into the backseat. "Old clunker my ass, I'm touching the Hope Diamond here. The Holy Grail. Hose me down and hang me out to dry, this is a Yenko Camaro."
Bonar passed Harley the shotgun and reached in deeper for the riot gun. "I don't know what Yenko is, but this is Charlie Metzger's old car. No real beauty, but it runs nice. Here, take this."
Harley grabbed the not gun without looking at it. He was still staring at the car. "427-cid L72 engine, front disc brakes, ducted hood, heavy-duty radiator, special suspension, and a 4.10:1 rear axle. Quarter mile in the high elevens. I'll give you a hundred right now."
"In your dreams." Bonar chuckled and slammed the door hard.
Harley winced. "One twenty-five."
"You're a penurious son of a bitch, aren't your"
Harley tightened his mouth and stomped after Bonar toward the rig. "All right, all right, you hard-ass, a hundred and fifty."
"Give me a break, Harley. I paid three thousand for this car and you want to give me a hundred and fifty dollars for it?"
Harley stopped and looked at the man. "A hundred and fiftythousand, you moron."
THE DEAD, empty weight of perfect silence lay over the little lake behind the barn. Beyond the broad clumps of cattails, the water's black surface reflected the full moon's stark light like a bottomless mirror. No water bug skated on its surface; no frog sang from its shore; no cricket scraped the hairy bow of one leg across the other. There was no night music.
For several moments after they heard the last jeeps pull away Grace, Annie, and Sharon remained perfectly still, kneeling in the water like three soggy penitents.
Annie's nose itched. Were they really gone? If she lifted her hand to scratch her nose, if a drop of water plunked back to the surface, would a dozen men leap from hiding and start shooting?
Slowly, carefully, she lifted her left hand from the water and raised it to her nose. It was covered with thick clots of swampy mud. She scratched her nose and no one shot her. "Can we get out yet?" Her whisper was barely a breath.
Grace's shoulders lifted under the surface, and the water around them rippled. "Carefully," she whispered back.
Annie rose from her knees, wobbling, water sheeting from her tattered dress, her eyes almost screwed shut when the body of the cow behind her shifted. "There's a cow in here." She moved aside to show them.
"Good Lord," Sharon whispered, staring at the thing. It looked peaceful lying there, only a portion of the belly rising above the water's surface like a hairy black-and-white rock. "That's where all the animals went. They pushed them into the lake."
The three of them waded hurriedly out from among the cattails onto the mud-flattened grass of the shore, water running from their clothes to puddle at their feet. Sharon and Annie both sagged to the ground like dazed, broken-stemmed flowers pummeled by a heavy rain. Grace stayed upright a moment longer, standing straight and tall and still, a motionless vessel for her busy eyes. Finally, she took a deep breath, and Annie knew it was safe. "That's what happened here," she said. "They were moving some kind of gas in trucks, something went wrong, and they killed a whole town."
"Oh, shit." It was the first time Grace had ever heard genuine panic in Annie's voice. "So we've been sitting in a lake filled with animals that died from poison gas?"
Grace sat down next to her, lifted a soggy piece of silk away from her neck, and laid it back on her shoulder where it belonged. "It's been hours. Those soldiers weren't worried, so we shouldn't be. Whatever it was isn't here anymore."
"So I don't have to strip down and look for lesions?"
Grace shook her head. "There wouldn't be lesions, anyway. It wasn't a chemical agent. It was nerve gas."
Sharon looked at her. "How do you know that?"
"Chemical agents are all corrosive. From what I saw of that cow, it was clean, and there wasn't a mark on that dog back in the house, either."
Annie thought about that for a second, then breathed out and nodded, completely satisfied, and Sharon wondered how the hell she learned to do that. She shivered, hugging her knees, feeling the very careful world she'd created for herself crumbling around her. Suddenly, what she had chosen to do with her life, profiling one killer at a time, maybe saving a life or two along the way, seemed terribly insignificant. While she was so busy-and Grace and Annie, too, for that matter-tracking single serial killers all over the country, mass murder was happening right in her own backyard. "Christ, I don't believe this. Nerve gas? This is Wisconsin, for God's sake, not the Middle East. Where the hell did they get nerve gas?"
Annie patted her on the knee. "Actually, Wisconsin's a pretty good place to get the stuff. It's pretty much pesticides on steroids. You've got the main ingredient on every farm in the Midwest, and instructions on how to make it all over the Internet."
Sharon closed her eyes. "It just can't be that easy, or every nutcake on the planet would be using it. We're not talking about fertilizer bombs here."
"It isn't that easy," Grace said quietly. "But it isn't impossible, either. Remember the sarin release in the Tokyo subway? They didn't buy that stuff from an arms dealer. They made it themselves."
Sharon rubbed at her eyes and took a couple deep breaths, thinking that this was what had killed all the people and animals here. Just breathing. "They've got two more trucks filled with the stuff out there somewhere." Her voice was trembling now, and her hand shook as she fumbled with the button to light up her watch face. "And in about nine hours, they're going to gas a thousand people if we don't do something. We have tohurry."
Grace's voice was maddeningly calm. "We need someplace to hurry to first."
"Out of here! We have to get out and let someone know what's going on!"
Annie grabbed Sharon's hand and shook it with a little scold. "You have to calm down. Just think for a minute. . . ."
"We don't have a minute!" Sharon hissed. "This isn't just about us anymore. What are we supposed to do? Sit around here, thinking, while a lot of other people die?"
Grace blew out a sigh, reminding herself that this wasn't just a panicked woman talking-the cop in Sharon had just taken over, and as far as cops were concerned, immediate action was the answer to everything. "Fine," she said quietly. "Just what would you like us to do?"