Stephen Cannell - Vertical Coffin

By five o'clock we were almost there. I triggered the radio. "This is Scully. We're one or two klicks from the Billy Machen camp." Scott Cook came right back on the radio.

"We just left that SEAL camp at Silver Pass. The place was empty, no sign of him. No tackle, foot, or rope marks on the climbing faces. You want my take, this guy hasn't been up here."

"But we saw his piton," I said.

"Roger that, but he's not on this side of the mountain. We're gonna check the back side, but if he's not over there. I think we've been messed with."

I clicked the transmit button twice to indicate I understood.

Sonny and I didn't say anything but we were both walking faster, now afraid that Smiley had for some reason lured us out toward the Chocolate Mountains, then doubled back.

We got to the end of the Gas Line Road and pushed open the gate. The black Dodge was gone. Somehow he'd rewired the battery system. I wondered where he'd found a cable way out here. Then I looked over at our SWAT truck. The hood was up.

Spray painted on the side in black paint was a message:

nice try assholes.

The back of the SWAT truck, where the spare ordnance was kept, had inch-thick metal doors with a bolt lock, impossible to penetrate. But Smiley had pulled the engine alarm wires and opened the hood. The emergency alarm had probably brayed until the system's battery went dead. As we approached, I could see that our battery cable was missing.

I reached into my pack and pulled out the one that Grundy had given me, then opened the truck with the spare key and found a toolbox in the back. Sonny went to work reattaching the positive cable to the engine battery.

"Yeah, nice try, asshole," he said softly as he finished. We opened the driver's side door on the truck. Sonny slid one of the keys into the ignition and started the engine, then backed the truck out while I walked over to where Smiley's Dodge Ram had been parked when we pulled in. I knelt down and studied the tracks in the gravel, as Sonny rolled up and stopped the SWAT truck behind me.

I pointed to a service road, "Cochise read many signs. Track many assholes."

Sonny grunted, and was already talking on the radio by the time I had the passenger door open. "You guys, he's down here. He got his truck going and went west, down the service road. We're tracking him in the SWAT truck. What's your ETA the parking lot?"

"We're losing light up here. It's gonna be slow going down at night. We can't get back there until around twenty-two thirty," Scott Cook said.

Not till 10:30 p. M. I looked over at Sonny and he said, "Looks like it's up to the dumb-ass arm-climbers to fix this mess."

We put our SWAT Tac vests back on, then drove along the fenced perimeter of camp Billy Machen. It had once been a tent city, but now all that was left were some poured concrete pads. It looked completely deserted. We kept going until we hit the Niland Blythe Road, which wasn't really a road, as much as a narrow dirt trail. Sonny slowed the truck to a stop and we looked to the left out across open desert. We were trying to decide which way to go, when I thought I saw something flash way out in the distance.

"What's that?" I pointed toward the spot.

We focused on the dark landscape, working on our night vision. After a minute it flashed again.

"See if they've got any infrared stuff back there," Sonny said.

"Good idea." I ducked through the opening into the back of the truck and started reading the labels on the equipment drawers, finally spotting one marked: light-gathering scopes.

Inside was a single pair of heavy-duty infrared binoculars. I brought them forward, then settled back into the seat, turned them on, and focused them through the windshield, toward the spot where the flash of light had been.

As they heated up, the picture first turned green, then slowly brightened. I was looking at the same landscape, only now I could see details, almost as if it were daylight. Something was racing around on the desert floor at least two miles away. It was still too far away to tell if it was Smiley's black truck.

"Something's out there. Some kind of vehicle," I said.

Sonny turned the wheel toward the spot and drove up the dirt road, heading deeper into the desert valley full of Joshua trees and cacti. Suddenly, the road veered right and we were running beside a ten-foot-high industrial-strength chain-link fence. Every quarter mile or so there was a large painted sign:

chocolate mountain aerial gunnery range danger explosives!

keep out!

by order of the U. S. Government

Then under that:

peligro — explosivos! prohiba la entrada!

por orden de la gobierna de los ustados unidos

Sonny had his eyes on the rutted road, trying to keep from breaking an axle, when I reached over and turned off his headlights.

"What're you doing?" he barked. "Can't see."

"I have a feeling we're gonna end up going in there." I pointed at the range. "I don't think we oughta be advertising our location."

Sonny grunted, but made no move to turn the lights back on.

We were soon passing what appeared to be a massive automobile graveyard. Bombed out wrecks, old county and state vehicles, yellow bulldozers, garbage trucks, and decommissioned road-maintenance equipment loomed behind the chain-link. Most of them were scorched by fire or blown to bits, some barely recognizable, others had signs painted on the sides in large white letters: Armored Column, Russian T-62 Tank, SAM Missile.

"What the hell is all this about?" Sonny said, slowing to look as we passed.

"I've heard about this place. Navy and Marine pilots fly practice sorties against all this old junk."

"Is it safe for us to go in there?" Sonny said, suddenly apprehensive.

"If that's where Smiley is, we got no choice."

Then I remembered the slip of paper I'd found out by his trash. I dug it out of my pocket and opened it up. "Pull over for a minute."

Sonny stopped the truck and I turned on the map light.

"Whatta ya got?" he said.

"I found this at his place in Inglewood. I couldn't figure it out back then, but you know what I think it might be?" Sonny shook his head, puzzled.

"A Marine Corps firing mission. MCAS could stand for Marine Corps Air Station. YUMA is the Yuma air wing. TACTS could be like Tactical Air Combat Training or Combat Target Systems-something."

We both studied the sheet.

7S

MECH INFANTRY REIN

1335

PG783783

N 33 13 57.1

W 11505 16.6

LIVE ORD

1,2

8S

MECH INFANTRY REIN

1539

PG726796

N 33 14 39.9

W 11508 58.2

LIVE ORD

1,2

10S

SA-6 Site

2240

PG771820

N33 15 56.5

W 115 06 01.1

LIVE ORD

1,2

11S

ARMORED COLUMN

2203

PG773815

N 33 15 38.1

W 115 05 54.3

LIVE ORD

1,2

12S

SAM SITE

1348

PG735806

N 33 15 12

W 115 08 18.5

LIVE ORD

1,2

13S

MECH INFANTRY

1444

PG7718803

N 33 15 02.9

W 115 09 27.5

LIVE ORD

1,2

14S

MECH INFANTRY REIN

2350

PG771772

N 33 13 14.5

W 11505 57.4

LIVE ORD

1,2

15S

NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM, AAA, RADAR SITES

0205

PG736809

N 33 15 23.6

W 11508 17

LIVE ORD

1,2

MT. BARROW

NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM SITES

0545

PG895707

N 33 09 42.1

W 114 58 10.8

LIVE ORD

1,2,5.

"I don't know what column one is, but column two is the target description," I continued. "Mechanized Infantry, Armored Column, SAM site. They drag these old garbage trucks and bulldozers out on the gunnery range, set them up to look like armored columns or a SAM missile site, then the jet jocks roll in and hit all this stuff with Tomahawk missiles. Column three is something. Numbers-I don't know what."