Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [135]
Behind the steering wheel Leo sucked down bottled water from a cooler and talked by radio to the teams. The Chinaman Hills duo had been in position for an hour and the team at the gate and windmill was setting up. The state police helicopter, last to arrive, was twenty minutes out.
Kerney dismounted the vehicle and swept the landscape with binoculars. The spot Leo had picked was a good one, with line of sight to the hills, the ranch gate, and the landing strip. Kerney concentrated on Chinaman Hills. The team had set up low on the eastern slope at the mouth of a small box canyon. Virtually invisible in daylight, they would be impossible to see come nightfall.
Kerney raised the glasses to the summit of the cinnamon-brown hills. Above it the Star of the North on the top of the smokestack winked weakly in the light of day. The wind-scoured hills, dotted with cactus, cleaved by the runoff of occasional torrential storms, showed no signs of trails leading down from the spine. At midslope a barbed-wire fence spanned the length of the hills. Where runoff had undercut the soil, several fence posts, no longer anchored in the ground, dangled, suspended in the air by the wire strands.
He swung to the east and scanned the ranch gate. The second team’s vehicles were lined up behind the windmill. Once the netting was in place, they, too, would have excellent concealment.
To the southeast the Big Hatchet Mountains topped out, gray in the harsh light of a hot sun well beyond its zenith. The limestone uplift pressed against the sky and tall, scattered pines crowded the summits of the highest peaks. Juniper and piñon clung to the lower drainages on steep cliffs, and at the base, on the valley floor, cattle browsed among the bunchgrass and desert shrub.
He trained the binoculars on the high country, looking for the Continental Divide Trail that started at the border and ran all the way to Canada. Because of the distance he couldn’t make it out.
Kerney returned his attention to the stakeouts. He figured it would take each team, including the chopper, which would need time to power up, three to five minutes to reach the landing strip. That was worrisome. A good pilot in a small plane could be airborne by then.
“They are going to hear us coming,” Kerney said. “We might not get there quickly enough.”
Leo grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? One of my deputies is an ex-jarhead sniper. He’ll be on the lead ATV. If the plane starts to taxi, he’ll stop at a thousand meters out and put rounds through the engine.”
“That would be hard to do without a spotter,” Kerney said.
Leo handed Kerney a bottle of chilled water through the open window. “If he misses, the helicopter will force the plane to stay on the ground. Take a load off. It’s two hours until sundown.”
“Is your deputy really a trained Marine sniper?”
“Fowler? You bet. One shot, one kill. He’s a Gulf War One vet. I call him my one-man SWAT team.”
“What’s his weapon?”
“A civilian version of an M40A1 with a ten-power scope and tripod.”
“Let’s have him leave his ATV behind and low-crawl into position at sunset. Tell him to get within five hundred meters of the landing strip. Closer, if he can manage it. He can hide in the tall grass.”
Leo nodded in agreement and called Fowler.
After sunset Buster Martinez arrived at the Harley homestead on the Granite Pass Ranch to find Shaw waiting for him outside the barn next to his panel van. In the beam of the truck headlights he could see that Walt was wearing a holstered sidearm.
“Why the pistola?” he asked as he got into the van.
Shaw wheeled the van onto the ranch road. “With Kerney snooping around I’m taking no chances.”
“You’d shoot a cop?” The thought of it made Buster’s stomach churn.
“It’s just a precaution,” Shaw replied. “Chances are we’re the