Beyond the chain-link barricade, he saw a series of stanchions. These were, at first glance, four-foot-high poles with nothing between them. A closer look revealed them for what they were. Each received and transmitted a microwave flux. In simpler systems, it was possible to clamp a rod on top of a pole and simply climb over it, dodging the invisible beams. Unfortunately, these were staggered, with overlapping beams that protected the stanchions themselves. There was simply no physical way to avoid the microwave flux.
And in the grassy fairway beyond the stanchions? There were no visible impediments, and Janson scanned the grounds until, with a sharp pang, he identified the small box near the graveled driveway with the logo of TriStar Security on it. There, beneath the ground, was the most formidable obstacle of all: a buried-cable pressure sensor. It could not be bypassed; it could not be reached. Even if he somehow surmounted the other obstacles, the pressure sensors would remain.
Infiltration was surely impossible. Logic told him as much. He put down his binoculars, rolled back over the rocky ledge, and sat there in silence for a long moment. A wave of resignation and despair overcame him. So near and yet so far.
It was almost dusk by the time he found his way back to the maroon Taurus. His clothing flecked with bits of leaves and many small burrs, he drove back toward Millington and then north on Route 58, keeping a vigilant eye on the rearview mirror.
With the little time he had left, he had to make a number of stops, a number of acquisitions. At a roadside flea market, he bought an electric eggbeater, though all he wanted was the solenoid motor. A stripmall RadioShack sufficed for a cheap cell phone and a few inexpensive add-ons. At the Millington grocery store, he bought a large round container of butter cookies, though all he wanted was the steel can. Next was the hardware store on Main Street, where he bought glue, a canister of artist’s powdered charcoal, a roll of electrical tape, a pair of heavy-duty scissors, a compressed-air atomizer, and a locking extensible curtain rod. “A handyman, are you?” asked the blonde in denim cutoffs as she rang up his purchase. “My kinda guy.” She gave him an inviting smile. He could imagine the counterman across the street glowering.
His final stop was farther down Route 58, and he arrived at Sipperly’s car lot just shortly before it closed. From his face, he could tell the salesman was not pleased to see him. The big mutt’s ears pricked up, but when he saw who it was, he returned his attentions to his saliva-slick rag doll.
Sipperly took a long drag on a cigarette and walked toward Janson. “You know all sales are ‘as is,’ don’t you?” he said warily.
Janson took five dollars out of his billfold. “For the dog,” he said.
“Come again?”
“You said I could have the dog for a fiver,” Janson said. “Here’s a fiver.”
Sipperly laughed wheezily, then he saw that Janson was serious. An avaricious look crept over his fleshy features. “Well, joking aside, I’m really very fond of that dog,” he recovered. “He’s truly one-of-a-kind. Excellent guard dog …”
Janson glanced at the large animal, his muddy coat of black and tan, his short, blunt snout and the curved incisor that jutted outside his lips when his mouth was closed, bulldog-style. A homely creature, at best.
“Except he doesn’t bark,” Janson pointed out.
“Well, sure, he’s a little reluctant in that department. But he’s really a great dog. I don’t know if I could part with him. I’m kind of a sentimental guy.”
“Fifty.”
“A hundred.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Sold,” Jed Sipperly said, with another beery grin. “As is. Just remember that. As is. And you’d better take that mangy filth-puppet along with it. The only way you’ll ever get the beast in the car.”
The mammoth dog sniffed Janson a few times before losing interest and, indeed, got into the vehicle only when Janson tossed the Raggedy Ann into his backseat. It was a tight fit for the enormous animal, but he did not complain.
“Thank you kindly,” Janson said. “And, by the way, can you tell me where I can pick up a radar detector?”
“Now, you know those are illegal in the state of Virginia, don’t you?” Sipperly said with mock severity.
Janson looked abashed.
“But if you’re interested in a sweet deal on one of those babies, all I can say is, you asked the right guy.” Sipperly had the grin of someone who knew it was his lucky day.
It was early evening before Janson returned to his motel room; and when he had finished assembling his equipment and loading it into a knapsack, the light had waned. By the time he set out, he and the dog had to walk by the moonglow. Sheer tension made the hike seem to go faster this time, despite the weight of the knapsack.
Just before Janson approached the final ridge, he removed the dog’s collar, and scratched him affectionately about the head and neck. Then he scooped up a few handfuls of soil and smeared it around the dog’s head and into his already muddy coat. The transformation was not subtle; the collarless dog now looked feral, a particularly large version of the mountain dogs that occasionally roamed the slopes. Next, Janson took the Raggedy Ann doll and flung it over the chain-link fence. As the dog ran after it, Janson stepped back into the dense stand of trees and watched what happened.
The huge dog lunged against the fence, fell back, and sprang forward again, crashing against the vibration sensors and the taut-wire system. They were designed to have a sensitivity threshold that would prevent them from being triggered by a gust of wind or a scampering squirrel; the banging of the enormous canine was far above that threshold. With an electronic chirp, both systems registered the presence of an intruder, and a row of blue diodes lit up, marking out the segment of the fence.
Janson heard the motorized pivot of a closed-circuit videocamera mounted on a high pole within the grounds; it was swiveling toward the disturbance. A cluster of lights mounted over the camera blinked on, directing a blindingly intense halogen blaze toward the section of the fence where Butch was launching his repeated assaults. Even sheltered by the trees, Janson found the light searingly bright, like multiple suns. Time from initial trigger to camera response: four seconds. Janson had to admire the efficiency of the intrusion-detection system.
Meanwhile, the bewildered canine leaped onto the fence, his front paws grabbing hold of the wire links: nothing mattered to him but his rag doll. As Janson’s eyes adjusted, he could see the camera’s lens elongate. It seemed that the camera was operated remotely from within one of the guard stations; having pinpointed the intruder, its operators could zoom in and make a determination.
That determination did not take long. The halogen light was switched off, the camera swiveled back to its center position, turned away from the fence and toward the gravel driveway, and the blue diodes of the section went black.
Janson heard the springy, clattering noise of the dog lunging once more against the chain-link fence: Butch making another go at it. Did he think he would retrieve the doll this way? Was he, in some canine fashion, trying to show the doll how much he cared? The brute’s psychology was opaque; what mattered to Janson was that his behavior was predictable.
As was the behavior of those who operated the perimeter security systems. The great virtue of the multimillion-dollar system was that it obviated the need to send a guard out in a case like this. You could make a thorough inspection remotely. This time, as the dog sprang against the fence, no diodes illuminated. The segment was deactivated, the siege of false alarms forestalled. Janson knew what conclusions had been reached at the guard stations. No doubt the feral creature was chasing a squirrel or a groundhog; no doubt its enthusiasm would soon pass.
Now, as Butch crouched for another lunge at the chain-link fence, Janson threw his knapsack over it and started to run toward the barrier himself. When he was just a few yards away, he sprang up into the air, as the dog had. He caught the fence with the ball of his foot, flattening it against the vertical as far as he could. With his other foot, he pressed the
toe of his boot into one of the links, and grabbed onto the fence with both hands. Moving hands and feet in tandem, he swiftly propelled himself toward the top of the fence, which bristled with sharp, pointed spikes. The way to get over, Janson knew, was to overshoot it, keeping his center of gravity above the fence top before he climbed over: to achieve this, he imagined that the fence was a foot or so taller than it actually was, and flung himself over that imaginary point. Maneuvering upside down, briefly, he placed all his fingers into one of the diamonds of the chain links. Then he torqued his body over the fence, pivoting on his clawlike grip. With a flip-twist, Janson righted himself and tumbled to the grass.
There was something soft beneath him as he landed. The rag doll. Janson tossed it back over the fence; the dog gently picked it up with his mouth and crept away somewhere behind the tree line.
A few moments later, he heard the motorized sound of the camera hood repositioning itself, and once again the halogen floodlights blazed.
Was the camera aimed at him? Had he unwittingly tripped some other alarm system?
Janson knew that no buried-cable pressure sensor could be used within fifteen feet of a chain-link fence; the ordinary wind sway of such a large metallic object would produce too great a perturbation in the electromagnetic detection field.
He flattened himself on the ground, his heart thudding slowly. In the dark, his black clothing was protective. Against the powerful beams of light, however, it might help pick him out from the pale gravel and bright green grass. As his eyes began to adjust to the spill of light, he realized that he was not its target. From the play of shadows, it seemed clear that it was aimed, once more, at the segment of fence he had already surmounted. The guards were double-checking the integrity of the barricade before reactivating the segment. Four seconds later, the blazing light was extinguished, and the darkness returned, along with a sense of relief. Faintly blinking blue diodes indicated that the vibration sensors were back online.
Now Janson made his way toward the stanchions. He looked at their configuration once more and felt disheartened. He recognized the model, and knew it was a state-of-the-art microwave protection system. Mounted on each sturdy pole beneath an aluminum hood was a dielectric transmitter and a receiver; a 15 GHz signal was set to one of several selectable AM signal patterns. The system could analyze the signature of any interference—inferring size, density, and speed—and feed it into the multiplex communications modules of the system’s central net.
The bistatic sensors were staggered, as he had noticed earlier, so that the beams doubled over each other. You could not make use of one of the stanchions to climb over the flux, because the flux was doubled where the stanchions stood: climbing over one field, you would merely land in the middle of the second field.
Janson looked back to the barricade fence. If he triggered the microwave barrier—and there was an excellent chance that he would—he would have to scramble over the fence before the guards appeared and shooting began. And he would be moving in the glare of the quadruple halogen flood, a device that not only illuminated an intruder sharply for the camera but also, by its very brightness, would tend to blind and so immobilize him. If retreat were necessary, he would retreat: but it would be only a little less risky than proceeding.
Janson unzipped his knapsack and removed the police radar detector. It was a Phantom II, a high-end model meant for motorists who liked to speed and didn’t like speeding tickets. What made it so effective was that it was both a detector and a jammer, aiming to make a motorist’s car “invisible” to speed-detecting equipment. It worked by detecting the signal and bouncing it back toward the radar gun. Janson had removed its plastic casing, shortened the nub of its antenna, and installed an additional capacitor, thus shifting its radio-frequency spectrum to the microwave bandwidth. Now he used duct tape to fasten the device near the end of the long telescoping steel rod. If it worked as he hoped, he would be able to exploit an inherent design feature of all outdoor security systems: the necessary tolerance for wildlife and weather. A security system was useless if it regularly issued false alarms. Outdoor microwave systems always used signal processing to distinguish human intruders from the thousand other things that could cause anomalies in the signal—a branch tumbling in the wind, a scampering animal.
Still, he was taking a stomach-plunging gamble. In less exigent circumstances, he would have field-tested his hypothesis before staking his life on it.
One more time, he studied the configuration of the stanchions. The bistatic sensors could be placed as far as seven hundred feet away from each other. These were merely a hundred feet away—a spare-no-expenses approach that must have gladdened whoever had been paid to install the system. And yet the proximity of the sensors was another factor in Janson’s favor. The farther apart they were, the broader the coverage pattern between them. At 250 yards, the coverage pattern would swell to an oval that reached, at the midpoint between the two sensors, a width of forty feet. At thirty yards, the coverage pattern would be tighter and more narrowly focused, no wider than seven feet. That was one of the things that Janson was counting on.
As he had expected, the poles along the second, staggered tier beamed to the alternating pole in the tier closer to him, and vice versa. The point where the two beams intersected, accordingly, was the narrowest possible area of coverage. One stanchion was three feet to the left and two feet behind the other pole; thirty yards to either side, the pattern was repeated. In his head, he drew an imaginary line connecting the pair of adjacent stanchions, then the imaginary line connecting the next pair. Midway between those two parallel lines would be the point where the area of coverage was at its minimum. Janson moved toward that point, or where he intuitively estimated it to be. Holding the steel rod, he moved the Phantom II toward that spot. The system would have instantly detected the appearance of an object, but it would also immediately determine that the waveform patterns did not correspond to that of any human intrusion. It would remain quiet and undisturbed—until Janson himself tried to cross. And that would be the moment of truth.
Would the radar scrambler confuse the signal receivers, preventing them from registering the presence of the very human intruder that was Paul Janson?
He couldn’t even be sure that the Phantom II was working. As a precaution, Janson had disabled its displays; there would be no reassuring red light indicating that it was mirroring the signals it received. He would have to proceed on faith. He kept the Phantom II steadily in position, moving himself down the pole, hand over hand, keeping it aloft without shifting its position. Then he rotated the rod and continued to back away from the microwave barrier.
And … he was through.
He was through.
He was a safe distance on the other side. Which was not a safe place to be at all.
As Janson walked toward the gently sloping fairway toward the mansion, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristling, conscious on some animal level that the greatest risks lay ahead.
He looked at the dimly illuminated LCD display of his black Teltek voltmeter, holding it in cupped hands. It wasn’t field-caliber equipment, but it would do.
Nothing. No activity.
He traveled another ten feet. The digits began to climb; he took another step, and they surged.
He was approaching the subterranean pressure sensors. Though the voltmeter indicated that the buried cable itself was still a ways off, he knew that the electromagnetic flux of TriStar’s buried-cable sensors created a detection field that was more than six feet wide.
The rate of increase in the voltmeter’s display suggested that he was nearing the active field. Nine inches beneath the sod, the “leaky” coaxial cable was designed to have gaps in the outer conductor, allowing an electromagnetic flux to escape and be detected by a parallel receiving cable that ran in the same jacket. The result was a volumetric detection field around the coaxial cable, about one foot high and six feet wide. Still, as with other outdoor intrusion-detection sy
stems, microprocessors were tasked with distinguishing one kind of disturbance from another. A twenty-pound animal would not trigger an alarm; an eighty-pound boy would. Intruder speeds, too, could be detected and interpreted. Snow, hail, gusting leaves, temperature changes—all could alter the flux. But the brains of the system would filter out such noise.
Unlike a microwave system, it could not be spoofed. The buried cables were inaccessible, and the TriStar system had redundant tamper protection, so any interruption of its circuits would itself be detected and prompt an alarm response. There was only one way through it.
And that was over it.
Janson retrieved the telescoping rod and, twisting the segments counterclockwise, locked it in its fully extended position. He walked some ways back toward the microwave poles and, keeping the rod extended in his hands, raced toward the buried sensor cables, imagining the invisible six-foot-wide band to be a physical barrier.
He held the pole as he ran, then plunged the end of it in the ground, just above where he believed the cable to be buried. Now: a step and drive. He swung his right knee up and forward, and jumped, swinging upward with his hips as he held on to the pole. If all went well, his momentum would carry him, and he would land a safe distance from the cable. It need not be a soaring, athletic pole vault, but a broad jump; it was merely necessary to keep his body several feet in the air. The volumetric detector would have been alerted only to the thin pole twitching in the ground—nothing even approaching the volume, or flux disturbance patterns, consistent with a human being. Now, as he kept his eyes on the area of grass where he hoped to land, a comfortable distance from the buried sensor cable, he suddenly felt the metal rod buckling under his weight.
Oh dear God, no!
In mid-arch, the rod collapsed and Janson tumbled heavily to the ground, just a few feet from where he’d estimated the coaxial to lie.
He was too close!
Or was he? It was impossible to be sure, and the sheer uncertainty was the most nerve-racking thing of all.