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any of the papers or on TV; but of course they have. I have no
doubt that right now whole roomfuls of them are playing the
telephone tapes over and over and tearing their hair out in
handfuls trying to get voice patterns or something in the
background. A cordless vibrator against the throat doesn t help
them much.
Keep going, Romstead thought; embroider. Egomania s about all
we ve got going for us egomania and greed.
At first we thought of having Jerome Carmody deliver the
money, Kessler s voice went on, but we found out he s got a
serious heart condition, and I don t want somebody crapping out
on a freeway at seventy miles an hour with two million dollars of
my money in his car
You ought to guard against that streak of sentimentality,
Paulette interrupted.
Shut up, if you want to hear this. So we decided on Brooks. He
works for the bank, so the bank is simply delivering your own
money to you. Two of us have seen him up close, so they can t run
in an FBI ringer on us.
Man on a Leash 115
They have the pictures and the facts of life as they are. You ll be
on the leash, with enough explosive in the car to blow it all to hell
and only the transmitted radio signal keeping the detonating
circuit from closing and setting it off. I m using a lower frequency
this time for longer range of operation and so there ll be no
reception blind spots when you re behind hills or in canyons. And I
won t be at the transmitter; that ll be in another part of the forest
and remote-controlled itself. They can locate it with direction
finders and get up there where it is with mules in five or six hours,
but why would they? If they turn it off, they ll kill you. They ve
been warned that any deviation at all from the procedure I ve
given them and you ll go up, and they know that anywhere along
the line we can get a look at the vehicle to be sure it s Brooks in it.
Delivery of the money will be in the Mojave Desert between
Barstow and Las Vegas. If any other vehicle follows him off the
highway or if there s a plane or helicopter in sight anywhere the
deal is off and we go back to square one and start over
All right, Romstead interrupted. Let s say they give you that
Brooks alone, nobody following him. You ve got enough clout at
this point that they probably have to. But for Christ s sake, use
your head. In the first place, you should know as well as I do that
Brooks is going to be in constant contact with the FBI by radio.
The United States government has access to maybe a little
electronics expertise itself. Second, the car, whatever it is, is going
to be carrying a homing device of some kind so they can track it
with direction finders, and in the third place and this is the one
you can t beat wherever you take delivery you re going to be
quarantined. You re going to be surrounded on all sides to the
point of saturation, by police, sheriffs deputies from a half dozen
counties, and FBI agents. They ll block every exit a jackrabbit
could squeeze through. And don t think they can t.
Of course they can. Kessler sounded amused. Blockade,
cordon, or whatever you want to call it, is one of the oldest law
enforcement tactics in the world, and it works provided you know
what area to blockade. They won t, until it s too late, and it s a
long way from Barstow to Las Vegas. Over a hundred and fifty
miles to be exact ... All right, pass him the maps.
This latter was obviously addressed to whoever was on the other
side of the mirror. Romstead went over by the chest. The panel slid
open. Oil company highway maps of California and Nevada were
deposited on top of the chest, followed by a large sheet of white
paper folded several times and some thumb tacks. The panel
closed, and Romstead heard the latch being fastened.
Man on a Leash 116
Unfold the large map, and thumbtack it to the wall, Kessler
ordered, so you can follow this.
Romstead unfolded it. It was meticulously hand-drawn and
inked, and he assumed it was a large-scale blowup of some section
of the highway from Barstow to Las Vegas. He stuck it to the wall
between the beds with the tacks.
Those highway maps you ve got don t show all the desert
roads, Kessler said. Mine does, even the ungraded ones. It s
drawn to scale, and I ve run all those roads myself, the ones we re
going to use. It extends for thirty miles east and west along a
section of Highway Fifteen east of Barstow and covers the area
from ten miles south to twenty miles north of the highway, or nine
hundred square miles in all.
Now. Brooks doesn t know yet where he s supposed to go, only
that he s to use an open Toyota Land Cruiser so we can see there s
no FBI joker concealed in it. Ten minutes before he s due to leave
the bank with the money he ll get a phone call, the last one, which
will throw all the Efrem Zimbalist Juniors into a third-degree flap
trying to trace it. It will be long-distance-dialed from one of a
room-long bank of pay phones at Los Angeles International by a
girl in a wig and dark glasses, and the message will take five
seconds, so lots of luck
Accomplished young lady, Paulette Carmody murmured. She
operates vertically, too.
Kessler paid no attention. He went on. It ll simply tell him to go
to Barstow, which will take less than four hours, and register at
the Kehoe Motel under the name of George Mellon. There s a
package there for him that was delivered two days ago by a parcel
service with instructions to hold for arrival. It s a radio receiver,
single channel, crystal-controlled. The object of all this scrimshaw,
of course, is to keep the Zimbalists from getting hold of it enough
in advance of when he has to use it so they can find out what
frequency it s tuned to. They ll descend on the Kehoe the minute
they hear this, of course, and they ll have the receiver before
Brooks gets there; but there s still not time, and they wouldn t
have the lab facilities in Barstow anyway. There s a note with it
telling Brooks to proceed east on Highway Fifteen with the phones
plugged into the receiver for further instructions.
Romstead broke in. It won t do any good. They ll be in front of
him and behind him, and even if they can t pick up the channel
themselves, they ll see where he leaves the highway.
Sure. Kessler went on. But it takes time to surround an area
of several hundred square miles. And when they do, they re going
Man on a Leash 117
to surround the wrong area. Brooks is going to leave the highway
headed south, but you re going to be waiting for him on the
opposite side, to the north. In that six hundred square, miles.
Romstead whistled soundlessly. That was going to be rough to
handle if he could pull it off. But how could he?
The radio message, Kessler went on, will simply tell him to
take that exit I ve got marked A on the map and proceed five point
eight miles straight down that road, where he will receive further
instructions. But not by radio this time. One of us will have him
under visual surveillance with a telescope we ll have two of them
in operation, with our own communications setup. If anybody
follows him off the highway, the whole deal is off. And after a little
over four miles he s in very rough country and completely out of
sight of the highway.
When the five point eight turns up on his odometer, there will
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