David Dun - At The Edge

"Yeah?" he said, turning toward her. "What's the matter?"

"These people are big-time dangerous. I don't think you should go."

"We've got it-"

"All planned. I know. It's all set up, but who cares? It doesn't matter. Listen to me. You have Nate. You're all he's got. He doesn't have a mother. You should think of him and put him first. We don't need to do this. I can go in with the state inspectors and just see what I can see."

"Oh, and they're going to show you all their secrets."

"Dan, I know how you feel, but who says you'll learn anything by sneaking around outside?"

"I can try."

"You swore you wouldn't go in the buildings. Look at me, you bastard. Tell me."

"I won't go in the buildings."

"Or any old mines."

"I'm not promising about that. I want to figure out what they're doing with that pipe, and the tank, and the old shack or mine, or whatever it is. And if I knew that, I might figure out why they feel the need to kill people." He grabbed her shoulders. "They almost caused a holocaust at the courthouse. They murdered Lynette. What'll they do next? You make the diversion and don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"All right. Forget it. Do your damned macho thing. I'll see you when you get out."

"All right," he said as he turned back to his truck, obviously wanting to leave before she tried again to talk him out of it.

"Please be careful," she said in a tired voice.

Kenji seemed amazingly calm as he sat across the desk from Groiter. Kenji had come to Groiter's office, meaning that he would want him to do something he might not want to do.

"I think you have to get more directly involved. This isn't working out."

"There was no way to predict that his secretary would get in that car."

"It didn't work. Nothing else matters," Kenji said.

"Next time I'll supervise."

"And now we haven't even got the taps. We don't have a clue what's going on."

"I'll take Maria Fischer. With Corey. We'll bleed everything she knows; then we'll deep-six her. It's that simple."

"That simple, huh?"

"It'll take some planning."

"Why do you need Schneider?"

"Because there has to be a villain, and it can't be me or you."

Groiter's confidence was boosted by his photo of two corpses-a dead Catherine Swanson and the photographer-he had retrieved from Corey. If everything went to hell and Kenji began to get dangerous, he would use it.

"OK. But this time make it work. Find out everything she knows and then bury her where nobody will ever find her."

When Kenji left, Groiter went to a phone booth at the nearest strip mall. He found Corey at home. Now that he called her regularly he had learned her patterns.

"You were brilliant," he reiterated as if he hadn't said it five times before. "It's incredible that he stuck his secretary in that car."

''I don't understand it,'' she said. ''I just don't understand. Why would he do that?"

"Papers said she was doing him a favor, taking it to the mechanic. It was a last-minute deal."

"Shit."

"Maybe he knew it was dangerous. Maybe he was acting like the king who has a taster eat his food to see if it's poisoned."

"He's still walking around," she said. "Whatever the reason. I used up a perfectly good bomb on a dumb bitch."

"So next time we'll do it together. And wouldn't you rather do them both? One right after the other?"

"I would."

"And what if we got her to talk. Admit they were taking money."

''Could we make a video and show it to the movement?''

"Sure. Why not? But we need a place to take her." There was a pause.

"I know a perfect place."

"I'll call you soon to hear your ideas."

Groiter felt that at last he was making progress. She was starting to rely on him.

Dan watched the fence, listening intently for dogs or people. Only after seeing the fence for the second time, observing the meticulously coiled razor wire, did he contemplate his enemies' determination to protect their secrets.

It was 7:00 a.m. The forest was drippy with moisture, cool and dark. Angled shafts of early-morning sun barely penetrated the upper layers of the forest. The ground was in deep shadow. The clarity and pureness of a spring day made emerald green of the grasses and trees.

Nothing moved. The owls were perched, and the daytime predators were not making themselves known. A dusky-footed wood rat had scurried by, no doubt looking for the nearest windfall.

For 2? hours Dan attempted to retrace the route he and Maria took the day of the car chase. Finally he recognized the large barrier logs and the hemlock they'd used to bridge the windfalls. Now he crouched just outside the double chain-link fence. Not a dog in sight. The diversion seemed to have worked.

Because of its warm-when-wet properties, he wore wool head to toe. That was at Maria's insistence. She even found him wool pants. Wool was not only warm, she said, but unlike fabrics like Gore-Tex it was also quiet when moving through the forest. No matter how hard she had tried to make her assistance seem trivial, it was endearing.

She had gone in with the biologists as a public representative. Whatever that was. The whole concept of self-appointed public do-gooders marching around on private land irritated Dan. After all, the government was supposed to represent the public, and the bureaucrats were bad enough without volunteer bureaucrats. Yet here he was using the very system he hated in order to snoop and trespass. The world was a complicated place.

He wondered if there were electronic sensors or infrared beams that would enable them to detect him when he passed through the fenced area. The thought was hard on the nerves. He had been acting like a fearless commando around Maria. Now, by himself, without an audience, how brave was he? It was that precise thought that brought a curse to his lips and brought out the wire cutters.

Quickly he snipped the heavy chain-link fencing. Pushing himself so he wouldn't mentally freeze and crawl back under his bush, he cut quickly, and in seconds he had chopped up a three-foot section and bent it inward. Sweating profusely, he tossed the cutters through the hole in the first fence and crawled through after them. He used the same technique on the second fence and was soon on the far side.

No alarms had sounded. Moving slowly through the woods with a light pack on his back, he stayed in the thick undergrowth and used a compass along with the handheld GPS, moving toward the area of the tank. He had no idea where the lab was located or what other amenities might be found on the property. Every time he stepped, he made a sound unless he deliberately disciplined himself. After more than a few crackles and snaps, he decided to take off his boots and socks and put them in his pack. This enabled nearly silent movement. His tender feet could feel any twig about to snap and the leaves were moist enough that they were a mere whisper against his skin.

He found himself wishing he had brought a handgun. Fear did that. In the more rational confines of his office, he had come up with several good reasons not to bring a weapon of any kind. After many minutes he came to a lightly graveled road. In most places the gravel had sunk into the soft ground, leaving a surface that was partially dirt. It appeared that heavy vehicles used the road frequently. He wondered if the workers came and went at night so as not to attract attention.

Shrinking into the forest, he began to parallel the road, and in a few minutes he came to what resembled the letter Y. The ground was becoming rapidly steeper. The trees remained giant with few breaks in the overhead canopy, the road largely winding around their trunks. Where a tree had been removed, a telltale patch of blue sky shone through.

There was nothing to distinguish the fork of the Y bearing right from the one bearing to the left except that the left-hand fork rose at a steeper gradient. If he were correct about his position relative to the main buildings, the road to the right probably led to the gate. The one to the left had an unknown purpose and was therefore the more intriguing. He decided to keep to the left and look for the tank and the boards on the side of the mountain.