Sipperly laughed wheezily, then he saw that Janson was serious. An avaricious
look crept over his fleshy features. “Well, joking aside, I’m really very fond
of that dog,” he recovered. “He’s truly one-of-a-kind. Excellent guard dog … ”
Janson glanced at the large animal, his muddy coat of black and tan, his short,
blunt snout and the curved incisor that jutted outside his lips when his mouth
was closed, bulldog-style. A homely creature, at best.
“Except he doesn’t bark,” Janson pointed out.
“Well, sure, he’s a little reluctant in that department. But he’s really a great
dog. I don’t know if I could part with him. I’m kind of a sentimental guy.”
“Fifty.”
“A hundred.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Sold,” Jed Sipperly said, with another beery grin. “As is. Just remember that.
As is. And you’d better take that mangy filth-puppet along with it. The only way
you’ll ever get the beast in the car.”
The mammoth dog sniffed Janson a few times before losing interest and, indeed,
got into the vehicle only when Janson tossed the Raggedy Ann into his backseat.
It was a tight fit for the enormous animal, but he did not complain.
“Thank you kindly,” Janson said. “And, by the way, can you tell me where I can
pick up a radar detector?”
“Now, you know those are illegal in the state of Virginia, don’t you?” Sipperly
said with mock severity.
Janson looked abashed.
“But if you’re interested in a sweet deal on one of those babies, all I can say
is, you asked the right guy.” Sipperly had the grin of someone who knew it was
his lucky day.
It was early evening before Janson returned to his motel room; and when he had
finished assembling his equipment and loading it into a knapsack, the light had
waned. By the time he set out, he and the dog had to walk by the moonglow. Sheer
tension made the hike seem to go faster this time, despite the weight of the
knapsack.
Just before Janson approached the final ridge, he removed the dog’s collar, and
scratched him affectionately about the head and neck. Then he scooped up a few
handfuls of soil and smeared it around the dog’s head and into his already muddy
coat. The transformation was not subtle; the collarless dog now looked feral, a
particularly large version of the mountain dogs that occasionally roamed the
slopes. Next, Janson took the Raggedy Ann doll and flung it over the chain-link
fence. As the dog ran after it, Janson stepped back into the dense stand of
trees and watched what happened.
The huge dog lunged against the fence, fell back, and sprang forward again,
crashing against the vibration sensors and the taut-wire system. They were
designed to have a sensitivity threshold that would prevent them from being
triggered by a gust of wind or a scampering squirrel; the banging of the
enormous canine was far above that threshold. With an electronic chirp, both
systems registered the presence of an intruder, and a row of blue diodes lit up,
marking out the segment of the fence.
Janson heard the motorized pivot of a closed-circuit videocamera mounted on a
high pole within the grounds; it was swiveling toward the disturbance. A cluster
of lights mounted over the camera blinked on, directing a blindingly intense
halogen blaze toward the section of the fence where Butch was launching his
repeated assaults. Even sheltered by the trees, Janson found the light searingly
bright, like multiple suns. Time from initial trigger to camera response: four
seconds. Janson had to admire the efficiency of the intrusion-detection system.
Meanwhile, the bewildered canine leaped onto the fence, his front paws grabbing
hold of the wire links: nothing mattered to him but his rag doll. As Janson’s
eyes adjusted, he could see the camera’s lens elongate. It seemed that the
camera was operated remotely from within one of the guard stations; having
pinpointed the intruder, its operators could zoom in and make a determination.
That determination did not take long. The halogen light was switched off, the
camera swiveled back to its center position, turned away from the fence and
toward the gravel driveway, and the blue diodes of the section went black.
Janson heard the springy, clattering noise of the dog lunging once more against
the chain-link fence: Butch making another go at it. Did he think he would
retrieve the doll this way? Was he, in some canine fashion, trying to show the
doll how much he cared? The brute’s psychology was opaque; what mattered to
Janson was that his behavior was predictable.
As was the behavior of those who operated the perimeter security systems. The
great virtue of the multimillion-dollar system was that it obviated the need to
send a guard out in a case like this. You could make a thorough inspection
remotely. This time, as the dog sprang against the fence, no diodes illuminated.
The segment was deactivated, the siege of false alarms forestalled. Janson knew
what conclusions had been reached at the guard stations. No doubt the feral
creature was chasing a squirrel or a groundhog; no doubt its enthusiasm would
soon pass.
Now, as Butch crouched for another lunge at the chain-link fence, Janson threw
his knapsack over it and started to run toward the barrier himself. When he was
just a few yards away, he sprang up into the air, as the dog had. He caught the
fence with the ball of his foot, flattening it against the vertical as far as he
could. With his other foot, he pressed the toe of his boot into one of the
links, and grabbed onto the fence with both hands. Moving hands and feet in
tandem, he swiftly propelled himself toward the top of the fence, which bristled
with sharp, pointed spikes. The way to get over, Janson knew, was to overshoot
it, keeping his center of gravity above the fence top before he climbed over: to
achieve this, he imagined that the fence was a foot or so taller than it
actually was, and flung himself over that imaginary point. Maneuvering upside
down, briefly, he placed all his fingers into one of the diamonds of the chain
links. Then he torqued his body over the fence, pivoting on his clawlike grip.
With a flip-twist, Janson righted himself and tumbled to the grass.
There was something soft beneath him as he landed. The rag doll. Janson tossed
it back over the fence; the dog gently picked it up with his mouth and crept
away somewhere behind the tree line.
A few moments later, he heard the motorized sound of the camera hood
repositioning itself, and once again the halogen floodlights blazed.
Was the camera aimed at him? Had he unwittingly tripped some other alarm system?
Janson knew that no buried-cable pressure sensor could be used within fifteen
feet of a chain-link fence; the ordinary wind sway of such a large metallic
object would produce too great a perturbation in the electromagnetic detection
field.
He flattened himself on the ground, his heart thudding slowly. In the dark, his
black clothing was protective. Against the powerful beams of light, however, it
might help pick him out from the pale gravel and bright green grass. As his eyes
began to adjust to the spill of light, he realized that he was not its target.
From the play of shadows, it seemed clear that it was aimed, once more, at the
segment of fence he had already surmounted. The guards were double-checking the
integrity of the barricade before reactivating the segment. Four seconds later,
the blazing light was extinguished, and the darkness returned, along with a
sense of relief. Faintly blinking blue diodes indicated that the vibration
sensors were back online.
Now Janson made his way toward the stanchions. He looked at their configuration
once more and felt disheartened. He recognized the model, and knew it was a
state-of-the-art microwave protection system. Mounted on each sturdy pole
beneath an aluminum hood was a dielectric transmitter and a receiver; a 15 GHz
signal was set to one of several selectable AM signal patterns. The system could
analyze the signature of any interference—inferring size, density, and speed—and
feed it into the multiplex communications modules of the system’s central net.
The bistatic sensors were staggered, as he had noticed earlier, so that the
beams doubled over each other. You could not make use of one of the stanchions
to climb over the flux, because the flux was doubled where the stanchions stood:
climbing over one field, you would merely land in the middle of the second
field.
Janson looked back to the barricade fence. If he triggered the microwave
barrier—and there was an excellent chance that he would—he would have to
scramble over the fence before the guards appeared and shooting began. And he
would be moving in the glare of the quadruple halogen flood, a device that not
only illuminated an intruder sharply for the camera but also, by its very