Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [132]
He stopped at the apartment and called Andy Baca at state police headquarters, who agreed to provide manpower and equipment for the stakeout. Then he powered up the laptop and found an e-mail from Sara. She was hard at work safely inside the Baghdad Green Zone, creating something called “actionable intelligence.” Although she couldn’t, for security reasons, go into detail, it had to do with collecting and analyzing real-time battlefield information on insurgent and terrorist activities.
Kerney wasn’t reassured. He doubted such work could be accomplished solely in the air-conditioned comfort of a fortified, heavily guarded facility in a war-torn nation.
He wrote back, keeping it lighthearted and chatty. He told her how well Patrick was doing and about his three-day stint in the saddle, chasing cattle on the Jordan ranch. He wrote about Barbara Jennings’s emergency appendectomy that had caused Dale to stay home. He mentioned the upcoming country-music benefit concert, scheduled to be shot at the Playas ball field in two nights. He left out the fact that he might be on a stakeout during that time.
He signed off with love and kisses and drove to the nanny’s house, his thoughts still on Sara. Was she in some remote village, training combat ground troops on how to make uplink satellite intelligence reports from the field? Or with an infantry company, transmitting real-time intelligence on enemy activity during a firefight?
From his tour in Vietnam, Kerney knew firsthand about insurgency and guerrilla warfare. There were no rear areas or safe havens, no clearly defined enemy, no easily identified threat thresholds. He wanted Sara home now, and his heart ached at the thought of some disaster befalling her.
He sat in the truck for a moment and forced himself to clear away worrisome thoughts before he went to get his son. Back in the truck he put Patrick on his lap behind the steering wheel and told him he could drive. Grinning, Patrick clutched the wheel with his tiny hands while Kerney navigated through some of the empty residential streets. After a few slow go-rounds he put Patrick—who was very pleased with himself—in the car seat and headed for the copper smelter. There he found Kent Vogt at a portable cattle pen, feeding the stock.
Over at the rail spur and loading dock of the smelter, Barry Hingle and his construction crew were busy building ramps to be used to send police cars careening through the air, and a special-effects crew was rigging a flatbed railroad car to receive one of the airborne vehicles.
“This is going to be something else when they film it,” Vogt said as he joined Kerney and Patrick at the truck. He nodded at the penned up cattle. “Ten tons of beef on the hoof meets ten tons of cop cars. I can’t wait to see how they do it.”
“You’re not part of it?” Kerney asked.
“Nope, the stunt riders get to have all the fun. Something about liability and insurance. I get to help chase down the cattle after they been scattered to hell and gone.” Vogt lifted his head toward the mountains behind the smelter. “I figure it will take Buster, Pruitt, Ross, and me a full day to round them up. That’s if Buster ain’t sitting in a jail cell in Lordsburg.”
Kerney laughed. “Word sure travels fast. Buster’s a free man.”
“But without that fancy saddle, I bet,” Vogt said with a grin.
“True enough.” Kerney let Vogt’s observation pass without further comment. In a land with so few people it was never wise to say too much about an individual’s friends, neighbors, or coworkers until you knew what bound them together or split them apart.
Chuckling, Vogt put his gloves on and returned to his chore. After showing Patrick the cows Kerney took him to watch the movie people at work. Every few seconds the beacon on the tall smokestack pulsated, flashing its warning light into the sky. Come nightfall it would guide