Orchid Blues (23 page)

Ham lay down again and pulled the blanket over himself.

When he woke up, the sun was rising and he was sore all over. It had been a long time since he had slept on the ground, and it didn’t agree with his aging bones. He stood up and looked out at the lake. The dinghy was gone, to his relief, and a northerly breeze had sprung up. He heard a door behind him slam.

“You awake?” Jimmy called out.

“Yeah.”

Jimmy came down to the water’s edge and stood beside Ham. “What happened to the dinghy?”

“A breeze came up during the night,” Ham replied. “I guess it blew away.”

“Was there anything fishy about it?”

“Nah, it was just an empty dinghy. Somebody didn’t tie it up good, I guess.”

“I guess. You want some breakfast?”

“In a minute; I’m just enjoying the sunrise.” Jimmy left him there, and Ham kept looking out at the lake. He saw Holly paddle away.

Holly and Harry stopped at a roadside restaurant west of Orchid Beach and were having breakfast.

“How the hell is Ham going to get the phone, if you threw it in the lake?” Harry asked.

“I didn’t throw it in the lake on purpose, Harry,” Holly replied. “I was in an awkward position in the dinghy, and it didn’t go as far as it was supposed to. Don’t worry, Ham will get it. I saw him mark the position, and it won’t be hard to find. The water’s probably only three or four feet deep there.”

“You almost got your ass caught, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t. Somebody in the barracks woke up and came outside. Ham dealt with it. I waited until he was back inside for half an hour before I got out of there. And the wind helped me get back.”

“You know how much that telephone cost?” Harry demanded.

“No, and neither do you, Harry. Now get off my back and eat your breakfast.”

Harry took out his new, scrambled cell phone and called the house. “What’s up?” he asked, when Eddie answered.

“Nothing all night. I guess they slept soundly. There are people in the house now, so I guess they’re having breakfast.”

“We’ll be back in an hour or so.” Harry punched off and turned to Holly. “You’re sure the phone won’t get wet?”

“Harry, it was in a sealed plastic bag. Now shut up about it and eat your breakfast.”

“I don’t suppose you thought to check the signal strength on the phone.”

“I did, and it was dodgy—only two bars on the display.”

Harry opened his cell phone again, called his office in Miami and ordered that a portable cell be set up as near as possible to the north shore of Lake Winachobee.

Holly felt awful about throwing the phone short, but she wasn’t about to let Harry know it. She hoped to hell Ham could recover it.

Forty-nine

HAM STOOD AT ONE END OF THE AIRSTRIP AND watched through the sights of the Barrett’s rifle as a jeep towed a nearly wrecked car across the opposite end, four thousand feet away. The car was moving at about twenty miles an hour, he reckoned.

He led the car a yard and squeezed off the round. A large hole appeared in a rear door of the car. “Do it again,” he said to Peck, who was standing beside him. “And I want to know how fast he’s moving.”

Peck spoke his instructions into a handheld radio, then he turned to Ham. “He says he was doing about fifteen miles an hour.”

“Tell him to speed it up to twenty-five this time,” Ham replied. “Nobody drives that slow on purpose.”

Peck relayed the instructions, and the jeep turned around and started another pass, this time faster.

Ham fired again, and the glass in the front passenger door shattered.

“Right on!” Peck yelled.

“Yeah, but do you want me to hit the driver?”

“No, we want the rear-seat passengers.”

“Of course, the explosive round will take out pretty much everybody in the car.”

“Still, I’d like you to be able to hit the rear-door window every time,” Peck said.

“Turn him around, and maintain that speed.”

Ham fired the big rifle until they had to stop and let the barrel cool off.

At lunchtime, Ham was sitting with Peck when John came into the dining room.

“Productive morning?” Peck asked.

“Pretty good,” John replied. He produced a cell phone and switched it on. “Tell me something,” he said, “what kind of cell phone signal strength do you get out here?”

“Pretty poor,” Peck said. “Sometimes you have to try half a dozen times to get a call through.”

“Interesting,” John said. He held up his cell phone for Peck to see. Ham saw it, too—there were five bars of signal strength showing in the display. “You know anything about cell phone improvements out here?”

“Haven’t heard a thing,” Peck said. “I tried to use mine a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t get a call out.”

“There’s nothing much out here that would cause them to install a new cell, is there?”

“Not that I can think of. We’re about it for twenty miles or so. Are you worried about this, John?”

“I’m not sure whether to be worried,” he replied. “But I’ve never experienced a sudden improvement in cell phone service. I’ve experienced worse service many times, but never better service. If you were going to install a cell out here, where would you put it?”

“On top of something, I guess. A water tower, a church steeple, a microwave tower. The terrain is flat as a pancake for miles.”

“Is there any installation like that around here?”

“No, that sort of thing is usually around I-95, to the east, or the Florida Turnpike, to the west.”

“Let’s take a drive,” John said.

“Okay.”

“Ham, why don’t you join us? You’re an observant fellow.”

“Sure.” Ham drank the last of his iced tea and followed them to a car outside. Peck drove, John took the shotgun seat and Ham sat in back.

“Take a right and drive to I-95, then turn around and come back,” John said. He held his cell phone up, so that Ham could see it, too. They reached the highway and Peck turned right. “Strong signal all the way to the main road,” John said.

Ham watched the cell phone display and wondered what the hell was going on.

They drove east for a few miles, then John spoke again. “Signal’s dropping. We’re down to two bars.” A couple of minutes later: “Up to three bars, now four.” Ham could see I-95 ahead. “Five bars. Turn the car around.”

Peck made a U-turn and the same phenomenon occurred. “Drive right past our turn,” John said, watching the phone. “Five bars at our turn,” he said. A few miles later: “Signal’s dropping—three, now two. The no-signal light is on. Turn around.”

Peck made another U-turn.

“Ham,” John said, “did you notice anything unusual along our route?”

“There was a power company van pulled over a few miles back, and a man up a pole, but I don’t know if you’d call that unusual.”

“Normally, not,” John said, “but I wonder why the hell we’re suddenly getting such good cell phone service out here. There’s the power company van, Peck. Slow down as we go by.”

The car drove slowly past the van, and everybody had a good look.

“One man up the pole,” Ham said. “The van doors were closed.”

“You want me to turn onto our road?”

“Yes,” John said. He watched his cell phone signal all the way to Peck’s house. “Peck,” he said as they pulled to a stop, “anybody you know of have a cell phone out here?”

“I asked everybody,” Peck said, “and I collected a dozen, including Ham’s. Why?”

“Because I wonder if somebody has a phone we don’t know about, and if somebody else has suddenly improved service in the area just so he can make a few calls.”

“You want me to conduct a search of the whole compound?”

“No. If there’s a phone here, I doubt if we’d find it. I want someone to monitor a scanner on the cell phone frequencies, though. We just might pick up something.” He turned to Ham. “I understand there was a boat near the bunkhouse last night.”

“Yes, there was,” Ham said. “I went outside to sleep, because a snorer was keeping me awake; Jimmy woke me up in the middle of the night and pointed out the boat. It appeared to be an empty dinghy that someone hadn’t tied up right.”

“You really think it was empty?”

“I watched it for a good half an hour while I was trying to get back to sleep, and it never moved in the water. Later on, a breeze came up from the north, and it must have blown back where it came from.”

“I see.”

“I don’t know how big a cell phone transmitter is, but I wouldn’t think you could get one into a small dinghy.”

“You’re right,” John said. “The dinghy must have been a coincidence. I don’t think the signal strength is an accident, though. I want a twenty-four-hour watch on the scanner, Peck, and I want somebody to drive past that power company truck every hour. I want to see how long it stays there.”

Ham wondered if this had something to do with the cell phone delivered to him, the one lying on the bottom of Lake Winachobee.

Fifty

HOLLY LEFT WORK, WENT HOME, WALKED DAISY, then went to Harry’s place. Everybody was looking glum.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Have you heard from Ham?”

“No,” Harry said, “not by phone or bug. There’s been a lot of activity in Peck’s study, but nothing was said that would give us any more information about what’s going on out there.”

“I wonder why Ham hasn’t retrieved the phone yet?”

“There’s something else,” Harry said.

“What?”

“While my van was out there working to set up the portable cell, a car drove past twice, with three men in it. My people got a photograph through a window in the van.” He shoved a color print across the table.

Holly picked it up. “That’s Ham in the back seat,” she said, “and John in the front passenger seat. I can’t see the driver’s face.”

“You’re right,” Harry said. “But why are they cruising up and down the highway while my van is out there?”

Holly looked at the photograph more closely. “John is holding something in his hand, and Ham seems to be looking at it.”

Harry looked at the photograph again. “Could be a cell phone,” he said.

“Oh, shit,” Eddie chipped in. “They were reading signal strength.”

“Now, why the hell would they do that?” Harry asked.

Everybody was quiet for a moment.

“Maybe their weak signal strength out there suddenly got too good,” Holly said. “Maybe they were suspicious of that.”

“It’s John,” Harry said. “That son of a bitch is smart.”

“Is there equipment out there where you can see it?” Holly asked.

“Just a whip antenna on a power pole. The van is parked a couple of miles away.”

“But John saw the van there.”

“Yeah.”

“Eddie,” Harry said, “if you were John and you thought it was strange that your cell phone signal strength had improved, what would you do about it?”

Eddie frowned.

“From a technical point of view, I mean.”

“I guess I’d try to find out if somebody was using a cell phone in the compound. I’d run a scanner and see if it picked up anything.”

“John could actually overhear calls, if a cell phone were being used out there?”

“He could if he has a scanner. You can buy them at Radio Shack and modify them to pick up cell phone frequencies.”

“But it wouldn’t pick up Ham’s scrambled phone.”

“No, and if it did, it would only get static.”

“So if Ham got the phone out of the lake, he could use it without being caught.”

“Without being caught electronically,” Eddie corrected.

“If you’re right about John catching on,” Holly said, “then Ham would know about it, because he was in the car. Maybe that’s why he’s not using the phone.”

“But he was here when I explained how the scrambled phone worked,” Eddie said. “He heard me say that it would be undetectable.”

“That’s right,” Harry said. “If Ham remembers.”

“He’ll remember,” Holly said. “He’s got a memory like a bear trap, better than mine.”

“I hope it’s better than mine,” Harry said.

“Hey, listen up,” Eddie said, pointing at the radio. “Ham’s on the air.”

Holly heard a jumble of voices, then a door close.

“Ham, I hear you’re working wonders with the Barrett’s rifle,” a voice said.

“Damn right he is,” another man chipped in.

“It seems to be going well,” Ham said.

“Could you be ready to shoot by, say, Monday?” the first voice asked.

“John, I’m ready now,” Ham replied.

Harry spoke up. “Eddie, is the tape recorder on?”

“Yes,” Eddie replied.

“Monday will be soon enough,” John said.

“You ready to tell me what I’ll be shooting at?” Ham asked.

“Two, maybe three men in the back seat of a limo,” John replied. “And that’s all you need to know for now.”

“I think we ought to start watching the weather,” Ham said. “You get the Weather Channel out here?”

“Yes, on satellite,” the third man said.

“Peck, that’s not going to get you a local forecast.”

“Why are you worried about the weather?” John asked.

“I’m worried about the wind,” Ham said. “If there’s more than a slight breeze, windage could be a real problem, depending on the distance. Is this limo likely to be moving through a crowd?”

“Maybe,” John said.

“I don’t think we want to shoot near a crowd, if there’s any wind. You don’t want to kill a lot of citizens, do you?”

“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary,” John replied.

“Well, if you have an option—I mean, if there’s a route for this limo, and you could choose where to shoot, you might want to look for a spot with trees on either side of the road, and the taller, the better.”

“That would help you with the wind?”

“It would, if the wind wasn’t too strong.”

“I can get an aviation forecast that would give me winds at the local airport twenty-four hours ahead of time.”

“That would be a big help,” Ham said. “The winds ought to be the same on the street.”

“Well, let’s go to dinner,” John said, and the three men left the room.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s Monday,” Holly said.

“Eddie,” Harry said, “I want you to get on the Internet and visit every Florida site you can find. Look for a list of events on Monday. Doug, I want you to call the FAA and tell them I want to know—in fact, I want tapes—of anybody who calls from Saturday onward asking for a forecast of local winds, not a whole briefing for a flight and not a winds-aloft forecast, just a forecast of local winds at any airport in the state.”