Behind the house, the bluff rose, thick with trees; those trees were bare, but no matter-tonight they were an ebony blot against the charcoal sky. The home-the estate-of Preston Freed was seemingly impregnable. Fuck it; I was going calling, anyway.
Half a mile or so down, there was a road-two narrow lanes of gravel-that seemed the most likely access to the Freed estate. My Sunbird stirred up dust, climbing the bluff until it leveled out, and dipped and farmland began appearing on my left; but on my right was forest, and barbed wire with signs that said, PRIVATE PROPERTY- TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. Added to one of the signs, by somebody unimpressed by these cornfield threats, was: AND EATEN.
Soon, off to my right, a paved driveway materialized, blocked by a heavy, unpainted steel gate-nothing fancy, just formidable. A car, a brown Ford, was parked on the other side of the gate, on the grass, and somebody was in it; the orange glow of a cigarette showed on the driver’s side.
I’d gotten a good look, going by, and without attracting undue attention, either. On gravel like this, you had to move slow; and on a night this dark, the watchdog in the parked Ford couldn’t see whether I was looking his way or not. And what the hell, with that massive, unpleasant-looking gate, anybody driving by for the first time was bound to gawk a little.
About a mile down I found a little access inlet to a cornfield, and I left the Sunbird there. I was wearing a black windbreaker over a black turtleneck sweater with black slacks and… let’s just say I was wearing your basic black and leave it at that. I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t not nervous. Home invasions are not, as I believe I said, my style. And a home invasion where an estate is involved-an estate inhabited by a wealthy paranoid political crackpot who thinks the Soviets are after him-was like nothing I’d ever attempted.
I had a nine-millimeter in the shoulder holster, under the windbreaker, which was unzipped. I did not have the noise suppressor attached. If this little endeavor came apart on me, I could need to do a lot of shooting, fast, considering the number of bodyguards and security types this guy would likely employ. And a silenced gun can’t be used rapid fire; you have to work the action by hand, each round, because the gas you’re suppressing, to keep the gun quiet, is the very thing that makes the automatic automatic.
What I had instead-and what was in my hand this very moment as I moved across the gravel road to the barbed wire fence and its warning signs-was a so-called stun gun. I’d picked it up at a pawnshop in Davenport this afternoon. I’d never used one before, though I was plenty familiar with the principle, as I’d carried its bulkier relative, the Taser, on some jobs right before I quit the business.
The Nova XR-5000 Stun Gun was pocket size, not much bigger than a doctor’s beeper, which it somewhat resembled; its two brass studs would send not a beep, but a 47,000-volt message. I gave it a test burst, and an arc snapped and sizzled whitely between the two test electrodes. Just like in an old Frankenstein movie.
This toy had its drawbacks: you had to be in direct contact with your man, and the jolt of the thing would probably make your man scream; it took three to five seconds of contact to make the subject lose muscle control. The Taser, on the other hand, shot darts, and at a good distance. But then the Taser needed reloading every two darts, and this puppy carried around thirty hits, if properly recharged.
Tonight, you see, I had to be careful not to kill anybody. It was a pain in the ass, but it was necessary.
The barbed wire fence was only waist high; it could be stepped over without much difficulty, if you were careful, and I was. For all the threatening NO TRESPASSING signs, and the heavy gate, Freed’s security wasn’t anything to write home about. State of the art it wasn’t. There were no television cameras down by that gate, nor was the gate anything that couldn’t be ducked under or over. Killing the watchdog in the Ford would be no real challenge to anybody who even vaguely knew what he was doing.
I moved slowly, breath visible in the chill air, easing through the trees, most of which were bare of leaves, though there were occasional pines, so I had both leaves and needles under my sneakered feet, which made for some crunching no matter how hard I tried not. I wasn’t any fucking commando, after all, though I’d done some jungle fighting. But you didn’t run into many pine cones or beds of leaves where I had my on-the-job training.
Finally I came to the edge of the trees and the house was perched on a gently rolling, landscaped lawn, like a tiny toy house on top of a great big cake. Only it wasn’t a tiny house: it sprawled, an angular, many-windowed affair, dark natural wood and sandstone giving it the feel of a cabin or lodge.
My vantage point was to the right rear of the place; in back there was a big garage-big enough for a small fleet of cars-which connected to that paved driveway, which I now could see travelled along the edge of the quarry drop-off. I was up high enough to see the view: Lake Quarry; the narrow highway; some trees and the Mississippi beyond. Even on this dreary night, it was some view. A man who lived in a house like that-who owned a house like that-who looked out on a view like that-could come to think of himself as pretty all fucking powerful.
I almost didn’t see the guard. He walked right by me, not five feet away. The trees hid me, and he was lazy, not directing his flashlight into the trees; in fact, his flashlight wasn’t even on.
But he was a burly guy, in a heavy brown leather bomber jacket with a. 357 mag on his hip; he looked like a sheriff’s deputy but without the insignia. He didn’t hear me come up behind him, slip the stun gun under his coat and against the small of his back. My hand was over his mouth, stifling his scream, slapping the wide slash of adhesive tape in place and his body shook from the shock of it. Nice part is, the shock doesn’t transfer from his body to yours. You just hold on, pressing the button while counting One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi, Five Mississippi, and he just does this pathetic jitterbug in your arms, wetting his pants.
I lowered him to the ground and brought his hands behind him, using flex-cuffs to bind him. I bought a gross of these “throw-away handcuffs” years ago-they’re like garbage bag ties, little lightweight pieces of plastic with a serrated tip that draws up tight through an eye. I put another one of them around his ankles-the only way these things could be removed was by cutting the fuckers off-and dragged him by the feet into the forest. He smelled bad. Full bladder.
There wasn’t piss on his jacket, however, and he was enough bigger than me that it fit over my own; his keys were in the jacket pocket. He was out of it. It would be fifteen minutes before his brain resumed control. I removed his black western-styled holster and slung on his. 357 mag. I picked up his flashlight, which he had dropped (understandably), and carried it in my left hand-the stun gun in my right, twenty-nine or so more pops to go-and moved with casual authority across the rolling golf-course of a lawn, toward the house.
It was a walk that took probably three minutes and only seemed an eternity. I walked across the paved area to the back of the house, where a stone stairway with wood banister rose to a landing flush with what was probably the kitchen, and was about to go up when the door opened and another sentry came out and said to somebody within, “It’s quiet tonight, too quiet,” archly ominous. And then he laughed. He was another big man, wearing jeans and plaid shirt with a big revolver on his hip. Probably another. 357.
He was standing on the landing, lighting up a cigarette when I joined him and put the stun gun in his belly, slapping tape across his open mouth, his eyes so wide the white showing overwhelmed iris and pupil. He struggled, and I pushed against him, maintaining the contact, and he danced with the jolt, and peed, and broke the railing behind him and landed on his back about a story down. I pondered going down and cuffing him, but figured the sound of wood breaking and flesh-and-bone thumping might have roused people within the house, and I couldn’t fuck around with it.