Donald Harstad: Code 61

I looked. I saw nothing. Then I heard the click of the night scope being turned on.

“Jesus Christ!” I'd never heard somebody yell in a whisper before.

“What?”

“There's somebody out there!”

“Give me the scope.”

“Just a minute… ”

“Just give me the goddamned scope!” I hissed.

“Jeeez,” she said, but handed it over, reluctantly. I was about to ask her where this somebody was, when I saw him. He was keeping low, and moving around the house from the back to the front, staying under the first floor windows, and apparently going to the front door.

“He looks like he's headed to the front door,” I said.

I watched for a moment. The rain had let up a bit, but he was still difficult to make out. There was something about the way he walked that struck me as familiar.

“Call Borman,” I whispered, “and alert him.” Coming from the direction of the rear of the house, our intruder would have come up from the east, or bluff side.

Not from Borman's direction. I wanted Borman to be aware that he might have to move in a hurry.

Sally keyed the mike on her walkie-talkie, and said, “Eight? Eight?”

Either she'd had her receiver volume turned up earlier, or she'd bumped the dial when she took it out of the case. Either way, there was a loud scratching sound from her radio, and Borman clearly said “Eight… ” in what I thought was a booming voice. I must have jumped a foot.

Sally was quick. Very. She had the volume back down before he finished with “… go ahead.”

The man I was watching turned, and cocked his head. He might have heard the radio, but probably not clearly. He listened for a few seconds, and then turned back toward the house. But in that few seconds, I hit the zoom button, and I made him.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

“What, what?” said Sally. Over in her direction, I could hear Borman's voice, barely audible now, calling us.

“Answer him, tell him to stand by, we have movement.”

She did.

“I made our man out there,” I said.

“Peale?”

“William Chester.”

Wednesday, October 11, 2000

23:30

“The vampire hunter?” asked Sally.

“Yep.” He was holding very still, as I looked. There was no doubt. I could see bulges on his back and down one side, that looked like that pack he'd had earlier, and something else I couldn't quite make out. But it was him, all right. I watched him move toward the porch, creep up the steps, and then crouch down using a pillar as cover, and peer into the house through the glazed doors. He froze there. After a minute, I handed the night scope to Sally.

“Look at the front porch, behind the right-hand pillar.”

Without the benefit of the scope, the night was suddenly much darker.

“Oh, yeah. I see him.” After a second, she said, “Carl, ya think, I mean, since he hunts vampires, you know… ”

“That he's got one now?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“Naw. I think he's still looking.” I tried to sound convincing, but I was thinking on another track altogether. I was hurriedly going back through all the evidence regarding Dan Peale. Could he and Chester be the same person? They were close to the same height, if the data on Peale was correct. They could be of an age. He'd appeared just as we were getting into Peale, and that had been a remarkable coincidence even at the time.

“What's he doing?” I whispered to Sally.

“Just squatting there,” she said.

I picked up my own walkie-talkie, and called Borman, sotto voce.

“We have a man on the grounds,” I said, “but I believe I recognize him. Whiskey Charlie.”

“Ten-nine?” he crackled back.

“Initials Whiskey Charlie.”

There was a pause, then, “Ah, ten-four. The expert, then?”

“Ten-four. That's the one. Heads up, he might know more than we do. Ah, and let's go code sixty-one on this… ” No names, no locations.

“Ten-four.”

I placed the walkie back in its carrier. “What's he doing, now?”

“Hasn't moved.”

My mind was flying, trying to evaluate our situation. It occurred to me it was possible that if Chester wasn't Peale, he may have followed Peale to the house. If we approached, we would cause some sort of commotion, especially if we confronted him on the porch. If Peale were in the house, he could well take off.

But the actions of the people in the house, at least those we'd seen, seemed very normal.

Which left me with Peale not in the house, but meant that Chester could be Peale and just be waiting for the residents to go to bed before he entered.

That didn't add up, really, either. I completed my little circle of reasoning.

“Bullshit,” I said, “it's just Chester.”

“I know it's just Chester,” answered Sally, “and now he's moving,” thereby relinquishing her right to the night scope.

“Give me the scope,” I said.

She did, and I picked him up as he crossed the porch and kept going left, toward the far side of the house. He hesitated at the corner, then disappeared around the side of the house.

“Shit. He went around the other side.”

What to do? Move, and possibly reveal our position? Stay put and never see where he went? One set of night-vision gear didn't help, although I probably wouldn't have split us up, regardless.

“Okay, Sally. We gotta go to our right. We'll go about a hundred feet, then head toward the house. Maybe fifty feet, to the big tree that's in the yard, there. We'll be out of the trees, so we lie down. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. We stay on the ground, and we look at the back side of the house, and this side, and I think we also get the front from there.” I began moving. “Keep it quiet,” I said, “and just hang on to my coat.” I had the scope, and could see very clearly, indeed. Sally would be moving into darker ground without that benefit.

It took us about a long minute to cover the distance. I glanced at the house through the scope, and saw that we could see the back and the near side. Just the edge of the front porch. That would have to do.

“We're at the tree. It's on your right.”

“I can see it when we're this close,” she said.

I looked up, without the night scope. The tree loomed large, and distinctly. I cleared my throat quietly. “Okay. Well, then… ”

With that, we both lay down in the wet grass, in the rain, and waited.

I handed the scope to Sally. “You watch, I'm going to try to contact the office from here.”

“Right.” She eagerly took the vision gear from me. As soon as she started looking, she said “Nothing.” That at least let me know the equipment was still functioning.

I tried the office three times on the INFO channel, to no avail. Then I tried Borman on the OPS channel. Damn. We were now way over his radio horizon, and had even more trees between us. I'd probably have to stand up to get either one of them.

We lay there in complete silence for a good fifteen minutes, and I was beginning to believe that Chester, or whoever he really was, had either gotten into the house, or left altogether.

“You think Mr. Chester could be Dan Peale?” whispered Sally.

“Possible,” I whispered back. But I'd had a little time to think about it. “Don't think so, though. I don't think the timing's right for some stuff.” But I was tired, and I couldn't be absolutely sure that there hadn't been time for him to be in both Nation County and in Lake Geneva. “Not sure, though.”

“How do we find out for sure?” she asked.

I hate whispered conversations. If we're supposed to be quiet, then, by God, shut up. In this case, however, it had a benefit. Because she'd asked the question, I stopped planning alternative approaches to reacquiring Chester, and realized that Borman was the only person on our side who'd actually ever seen Dan Peale. And I didn't think Borman had ever actually seen William Chester. How do we find out, indeed?