Pike settled in to wait, and visualized possible scenarios. If the man and the woman drove away from him, he would run to the Rover, and drive like hell to catch up. If they turned around and came toward him, he would hide beside the house until they passed. Then he’d have to run for the Rover.
His cell phone vibrated.
He touched a button to answer. Stone, speaking soft.
Pike said, “Go.”
“I’m hanging out in some weeds up here. Smells like rats.”
Pike didn’t respond.
“They’re inside. Guess what? The windows look like three kinds of green hell. They got it lit with IR.”
Elvis had mentioned their night vision equipment. They were using infrared illuminators as a light source, and NVG to see. Jon was wearing his own night vision goggles, or he wouldn’t have been able to see the glow. The old man who lived in the mauve wouldn’t be seeing anything.
Jon said, “Stand by.”
A second passed.
“Lights out. The party’s over.”
Ten or twelve seconds passed before Jon spoke again.
“Early night, bro. Elvis is leaving the building.”
Another pause.
“Not your Elvis. The real Elvis.”
Another pause, and Jon’s tone changed.
“Dude.”
Pike waited.
“Their goggles are crazy, bro. Really small. Kinda flat. I don’t see any tubes. No shit. This is wild.”
A tube was a cylindrical image intensifier used to intensify available light in night vision equipment. Jon Stone had enormous experience with night vision gear, yet didn’t recognize these.
Pike said, “Shop later.”
“They’re on the steps. Check’m out.”
The woman and man emerged between the bungalows. They weren’t wearing the goggles now, but Pike noticed a bag slung on the man’s shoulder, which probably held their equipment.
Jon said, “You got’m?”
“Got’m.”
“Have you seen goggles like this?”
“Gear’s off. You good?”
“The old man came out. I’ll move in when he settles.”
“Rog.”
The woman and her round friend didn’t hurry. They went to the sedan, and the woman got in behind the wheel. When she opened the door, the interior lights did not come on. The man climbed into the shotgun seat. A moment later, the brake lights flared, the lights came on, and the sedan pulled away. Pike waited to see if they turned around, and kept waiting until he was sure they weren’t.
Pike raced to the Rover at a dead sprint, fired the engine, and powered away on five hundred thirty-five turbocharged horses.
Jon’s Rover truly was a helluva beast.
Pike saw their taillights ahead twenty-two seconds later and eased off the gas. He dropped back, dropped back a little more, and followed.
22
Jon Stone
0236 hrs
Silver Lake, CA, USA
The old man was a double-royal pain in the ass. He poked around outside Schumacher’s dump for a good twenty minutes, just dicking around. He peeked in the front windows and tried the front door, then crept down to the street, screwed around down there doing God knew what, finally came back, and peeked in the windows again. When he returned, he shined a little light through the window, so Jon figured he’d gotten the light from his car. Jon made the guy for a Peeping Tom and figured he was a regular outside his neighbors’ windows. Creep.
Jon waited him out in the empty blue bungalow. Pike had told him the blue was uninhabited, but Pike hadn’t told him it reeked like a cat box. The instant Jon entered, the sharp stench of ammonia burned his eyes. And for this, for standing around in a piss-soaked-carpet ammonia hell, Jon Stone was being paid exactly nothing. The only thing keeping him from obsessing about the money he wasn’t making was the funky night vision goggles the scarecrow and the meatball had worn. These were the stuff of Jon Stone’s trade, and he had never seen goggles like these. He was, officially, fascinated, which left him equally curious to see what they’d left in Schumacher’s bungalow.
Assuming they’d left something. Since they’d spent only a few minutes inside tonight, tonight might have been a retrieval mission. They could have planted something earlier and returned tonight to retrieve it. Jon had planted such bugs himself. Rather than transmitting motion alerts or conversations or images in real time, which made detection easier, recordings were made on SIM cards. The recordings could be transmitted at a later time or the SIM card could be retrieved by hand. The downside being someone had to physically retrieve the card, said someones possibly being the scarecrow and the meatball.