Page 57 of Cross Down
“John, why waste time?” she says. “We’ll just be repeating ourselves when we meet up with Bastinelli. If you want to do something useful, catch some shut-eye while I drive. I promise I’ll wake you if I see anything interesting.”
The interior of the Tahoe is warm, and the seat is comfortable, and damn if I don’t sleep some as we get deeper and deeper into rural New Hampshire.
I wake up when we stop. We’re on a dirt road surrounded by tall trees. I rub my eyes. “Did I miss downtown Healy?”
Deacon checks something on her iPhone. “There is no downtown Healy. Or uptown Healy. This is an unincorporated community in northern New Hampshire.”
“Doesn’t sound too appealing.”
“There’s no town government, no police, no zoning laws, and no property taxes. For a person like Bastinelli, this is very attractive indeed. We should be at his place in a couple of minutes.”
I shift my feet, try to stretch my long legs, fail in the tight quarters. “You didn’t wake me up. I guess you didn’t see anything interesting.”
“A male moose humping a female moose, but I didn’t think that was your style.”
“Good guess.”
She drives on, checking the odometer and her watch, then stops.
“This is it,” she says.
I lean over and see more brush, saplings, and tree trunks. “I’ll take your word for it, even if you do work for the mean ol’ CIA.”
Deacon turns the steering wheel to the left. “It’s not that mean anymore, and I don’t work there. I’m just a consultant.”
I want to point out that we’re not turning into any kind of road or lane, but Deacon seems confident and I keep my mouth shut.
Then I see something unusual. The brush and the saplings aren’t high enough to block us and I hear thewhip-snapsound of the Tahoe driving over firmly packed terrain. And we’re not sinking into the soft forest soil.
Interesting—we’re on an invisible road.
The brush thins out and now we’re on a visible gravel road heading up a gentle slope to a one-story brick and concrete house with what looks to be a concrete watchtower or steeple rising from its center. There’s a large, well-tended garden with a small pond off to the left, and attached to the opposite side is a garage, its exterior lined with white propane tanks. About twenty yards away, two cows and a number of goats and chickens mill about a freestanding barn.
The windows in the neat and well-maintained house are narrow, and when Deacon stops the Tahoe and we step out, I look at them again and realize why they’re narrow.
Firing slits.
The front door opens up and Gary Bastinelli steps onto the porch, frowning. He has short brown hair and a closely trimmed beard and wears khaki pants, boots, a black T-shirt, and a holstered pistol on his right hip.
“You intend to stay long?” he asks Deacon.
“As long as it takes to get things figured out,” she says.
He shrugs. “You get thirty minutes, that’s all.”
Chapter
67
Inside, the houseis a mix of military equipment (weapons, from pistols to automatic rifles mounted on walls; eight small screens on a kitchen counter show various video feeds from around the property) and the cute and mundane (Barbie dolls and Legos scattered across the wooden floor).
Bastinelli points us to chairs at a large dining table, and when Deacon and I sit down, he comes over with muffins and a carafe of coffee.
I say, “Good to see you, Gary. Even under the circumstances.”
“Nice of you to say, John. Sorry about Billie.”
“Thanks.”
