Sarge, the large black man who owned the carryall, removed a panel in a false deck in back, exposing a shallow compartment. By flashlight he took from it five M-16s, five web harnesses with appended gear, and an Uzi. Then he replaced the panel and the carpeting that covered it. From a pocket on their harnesses, five men took night goggles. They’d traveled light. They didn’t expect a serious fight, or any fight at all, and should be back before dawn.
A sixth man stood by, scar-faced from a broken bottle in a bar fight, and with one leg surgically shortened after an ugly wound in Nigeria. He was taciturn in almost any circumstance, and at a time like this said nothing at all. When the five were ready to go, Koskela spoke to him, quietly and needlessly. They’d been over it before, but under the circumstances, redundancy was advisable. Excusable at least.
“We should be back by daylight,” he said. “If we’re not, hang out here till nine, then drive to Big Spring Campground. You know the drill.”
The scarred face jerked a curt nod, clearly visible by night goggles. The five then walked out into the rangeland, and Lute took a compass shot; after that he’d guide mainly on stars. Then they set off across the grassland, and were swallowed by night.
* * *
When Lute had scouted the area, he hadn’t expected to carry out the operation till the following May. Typically, Carl hadn’t considered the problems, including snow cover, when he’d called Lute in Portland. Lute had half expected snow by now, which would preclude the operation. He’d made that clear before leaving Montana, and later on the phone. Carl hadn’t been happy. He wanted Ngunda dead long before spring. He’d actually sounded worried that someone else might kill the guru first, denying him involvement.
So Lute had rented computer time at Kinko’s in Pueblo. On the Web, he checked out the thirty-day weather outlook for the region. A dry autumn was expected.
On that basis, he’d gotten hold of Sarge, who’d agreed to the proposal. Sarge had always been reckless, and had so far gotten away with it. Sarge in turn had gotten in touch with others in the Southwest, from as far as Phoenix and El Paso. Four had signed on, including Romero, who’d stay with the vehicle.
There’d been a couple of worrisome days when a Pacific storm moved northwest across Baja, but it had dumped most of its moisture on the Arizona plateau and the San Juans—forty inches of snow on Wolf Creek Pass, and twenty-one at Conejos, wherever the hell Conejos was. But that ate up most of the storm, and it ran out of juice on the west slope of the Sangre de Cristos. At Lauenbruck, according to the Web, all they’d gotten was a trace, not enough to settle the dust.
The ground was drier than a popcorn fart. For his purposes, conditions were definitely better now than they’d be after the spring thaw.
* * *
A slender moon stood about forty degrees above the western horizon, with maybe three hours to go before it set. With night goggles they didn’t need it. Two more miles and Lute called a break. None of them were in prime shape, nothing like when they were in active service, but they never let themselves get soft. Their endurance just wasn’t what it had been. While they rested on the lumpy bunchgrass slope, he stargazed. This might, he thought, be my last gig. He’d never planned to make it a lifetime profession. Too many of the oldtimers, if they survived and stuck with it, got eccentric beyond belief. Which is all right, if that’s what you get off on, he’d told himself, but for me? And some of the people you worked for were assholes through and through, no more trustworthy than a skunk in a henhouse. Others were more or less trustworthy, but ignorant. Like Carl. Carl had no idea what a job like this took.
A meteor streaked across the sky, disappearing in mid flight. Burned up, Lute supposed. He wondered if a big one would hit in his lifetime. Maybe like the one that had made Meteor Crater near Winslow. He’d visited it once, 4,000 feet across and 600 deep, made some—he couldn’t remember its supposed age—twenty thousand years came to him. Someone had estimated the meteor at 85 feet across, probably breaking up just before it hit, traveling yea-many thousand miles an hour. It was hard to imagine something so small making such a big hole, but at that speed . . . He wished he could have watched it happen, maybe from the high peak north of Flagstaff, fifty miles distant.