The Devil's Code

turn on Beulah Avenue,west of the ranch, and headed north, until we found the track that headed back to the abandoned homesite that we’d discovered in the morning. Once there, we shut down the truck, spent a couple of minutes looking around, and mostly, listening.
    We heard nothing but insects, and the gravel underfoot. Ten minutes after we arrived, LuEllen broke out the taped flashlights, and we started back down the road toward Corbeil’s place.
    The walk took forty minutes, moving slowly, and stopping to listen and scan ahead with the night glasses. During that time, we neither heard nor saw another vehicle. At the corner of Corbeil’s property, where I’d followed the fence line in that morning, we stepped into the trees and with the flashlights, established our position on the GPS.
    “Ready?”
    “Go,” she said.
    We were both dressed from head to foot in black. In the city, we’d worn dark red jackets. They were nearly as invisible as black, when you were out of the light, and looked a lot more innocent to cops. Out here, if we were caught in the middle of Corbeil’s pasture with the AK, there’d be no point in arguing that we were there by mistake.
    We crossed the fence, with me in the lead, LuEllen following behind; the stars and fragmentary moon were just bright enough that we could see each other as shadows, and hear our feet swishing through the grass. When we’d walked a good distance up the hill, I movedover to the fence line, illuminating it with a spiderweb of light from one of the flashlights.
    With the night glasses, I could clearly make out the dish next to the water tank. Nobody around, though down the hill, I could see cattle, lying down, grouped together like pea pods on a table.
    “Anything?” The word was a breath next to my ear.
    “No. Let’s cross. Use the light and watch the barbs.”
    We crossed the fence and headed down the hill. The dish was two hundred yards away, and we took it easy, stopping often to listen. When we got close, we could hear trickling water, and then, even closer, a tiny electronic hum; the equipment wasn’t moving, but was turned on.
    I handed the AK and the night glasses to LuEllen; by agreement, she moved on down the hill about thirty yards, as a listening post. I took off the backpack and got the equipment out, marked our spot with the GPS, switched the GPS receiver to the time function, then started making measurements.
    The dish was in what appeared to be its “rest” position. With the compass, I measured, to within a degree or to, the direction it was aimed in—about 290 degrees, or a little north of west, and not at all the direction it had been aimed earlier in the day. When I was sure I had it right, I got out the duct tape, taped one end of the elastic band to the top rim of the dish, stretched it across the face of the dish, so I had a tight, straight line with no sag, and taped it to the bottom. Using the level to establish my earth-line, I measured the angle of the elastic,which essentially gave me the current azimuth of the dish. I wrote it down, and then sat down to wait.
    We’d agreed, earlier, that we’d wait for up to three hours for the dish to move. If it hadn’t moved by then, we’d bail. We’d be getting tired, and our edge would be gone. With the elastic stretched out, I laid back on the ground and got comfortable. Watched the moon going down, the stars popping out. The lights from Waco, to the east, were bright enough that you didn’t get the full clout of the Milky Way as you do up in the North Woods, but then, that might be northern jingoism; the stars were pretty good . . .
    I’d been there for twenty-five minutes when the dish motor burped—an electronic burp, a change in the hum, and I sat up, listening, to be sure, then quickly checked the GPS and jotted down the time. With the level and protractor in hand, I moved around to the front of the dish and quickly checked the azimuth. It hadn’t changed. But something was happening: the deeper note from the motor was unmistakable.
    I was worrying about that when I felt a vibration in the disk, and slowly, surely, it began to move, tilting back. I looked at where it was pointing, at the horizon line, but could see nothing but stars. Sometimes, on dark nights, you could see them, the satellites, like tiny sparks scratching themselves on heaven . . .
    I checked the azimuth, wrote down the GPS time signal. Checked the azimuth, wrote down the time. Checked it