He nearly dashed past a real estate sign that said "Contact Steve Decker."He slowed hastily to drive through the barely visible gap between the fir trees.He realized with horror that he might be leading himself and Beth into a trap just as he had tried to trap Renata.He drove across the wooden bridge, below which the narrow Pex River ran fast.The car drove into the dark clearing and stopped in front of the steps leading to the house.He turned off the engine, and just turned the knob to turn off the headlights—this kept his lights on for two minutes longer.
With this light, he took Beth's cane and the carrying case from the backseat.He felt an overwhelming urge to act, but he dared not let himself do it.If Renata and her accomplices were driving by and saw him hurrying into the cabin, they would immediately suspect that he knew he was being followed, that he was waiting for them, that they were being tricked.He nervously held back his impatience, allowing himself to look as worn out as he felt.He followed Beth up the log steps and reached into a metal box fastened to the cabin doorknob.The car's lights provided just enough illumination for him to unlock the box with his own key.He lifted the lid of the box, took out the key to the cabin, opened the door, and helped Beth into the house.
Immediately after closing the door, locking it, and turning on the light, Decker responded to the urgency swelling inside him to its limit.The curtains of the cabin had been drawn long ago, and no one outside could see him helping Beth to let her put down her crutches and pick up the camouflage suit he bought in the gun store.She pulled the camouflage suit over her blouse and slacks, and as soon as she zipped it up and picked up her cane, Decker quickly put on his own camouflage suit.Before leaving the cabin for the airport, they put on the polypropylene long underwear he bought.Meanwhile, Decker applied a tube of dark grease from Camouflage to Beth's face and then to his own.When they'd gone through these maneuvers earlier in the evening, they'd been ready in less than two minutes, but now Decker felt they were taking much longer, and it made him nervous.Come on, he thought.To avoid fingerprints, they wore dark cotton gloves.The gloves are thin enough to shoot a gun and thick enough to keep you warm.Decker turned on a small radio, and a country western singer began to sing pathetically about "Life, Love, Separation..." Decker left the lights on.He helped Beth out the back door, closing the door behind him, and the adventure paused in the cold night to stroke her arm lovingly and encourage her.
She was shaking, but she did what she had to do, as they had rehearsed.She disappeared to the left of the cabin.
Decker secretly admired her courage.He went to the right.In front of the cabin, his headlights were off.The night grew darker where the light from the cabin windows did not reach.Gradually, Decker's eyes adapted to the darkness, and the unique bright moon and countless stars in the plateau area gave off a wonderful and soft light in the night.
Earlier, Decker and Esperanza walked around the area, surveying the terrain from a tactical standpoint.They decided to use the hunting trail behind the cabin, which was sheltered by thick bush.Beth was now going along the path, out of sight from the road.Soon she would come to a large, leafy tree, where the path circled.There, Beth would sprawl on the ground in the woods and crawl down the brush-covered slope to a shallow pit Esperanza had dug.There were two double-barreled shotguns on a log ready for her.
Meanwhile, Decker scrambled in the dark to an identical shallow pit, which he had dug himself with a camping shovel from a gun store.Although wearing three layers of clothing, he still felt the dampness of the ground.He was lying behind a log, hidden in the bushes.He groped around, but couldn't find what he was looking for.His pulse was throbbing anxiously, and at last he found the Winchester 30-30 lever-action rifle.This deadly weapon was designed for mid-range shooting in such brushy terrain.It held six rounds in the magazine and one more in the chamber, and the rounds could be fired very fast as the lubricated lever behind the trigger went up and down.
Next to the rifle was a car battery, which he had also bought before leaving Santa Fe.Next to the battery are 12 pairs of wires with their ends exposed.The wires run to kettles filled with fuel oil and a plant fertilizer whose main ingredient is ammonium nitrate.These things are mixed according to a certain proportion of ingredients to become a kind of explosive.In order to increase the lethality, Decker opened up several shotgun bullets and poured the gunpowder and buckshot inside.To make a detonator for each bomb, he carefully broke the outer glass of twelve 100-watt light bulbs, not daring to use too much force so as not to damage the filament inside.Then, grasping the bulb's metal base, he inserted the filaments into each jug one by one, and glued two wires toward the base of each bulb.He buried the jugs in key locations and covered them with leaves.The pairs of wires ran all the way to the car battery next to Decker and were covered in the same way.The wires are arranged from left to right, in line with where the kettle is buried.Decker could pick any pair of wires out of them and press the end of one wire to the positive terminal of the battery and the other to the negative terminal, so that when the circuit was formed, the filaments of the bulb would burn and detonate bomb.
He is ready.Down the trail, beyond the narrow Pex River, on the other side of the road, Esperanza was hiding in the woods.He must have seen Decker drive up to the house, must have been waiting for Renata and her gang to arrive.It was common sense that when their homing receivers told them Decker was turning off the main road, they wouldn't just follow him up the trail without first looking out for trouble.More likely, they would drive past the entrance to the trail, continue on the main road for a considerable distance, stop, and cautiously return to the trail.They certainly didn't want to go through the bottleneck-like entrance to the trail, but they couldn't, because there was only one other way to get close to the cabin, and that was by swimming in the fast-moving river.In the dark, this approach is too risky.
As soon as Renata and her men left the main road, they took the trail.Esperanza would emerge from his hiding place and destroy their car.In this way, if they had a bad feeling and wanted to escape, they would not be able to do so.There would probably be two cars—one from the surveillance team at the airport and one from the Santa Fe gang.Esperanza would insert a twig into the axle valves of several tires to stop the car from running, and the soft hiss of the gas leaking would be drowned out by the rush of the river.Esperanza would then creep up to the group, attacking them from behind with a Model 22 semi-automatic rifle loaded with 30-gun magazines and two more magazines dangling from his belt after the shootout began.Although a light weapon, this rifle has several advantages - it has a quieter shot, can hold a lot of bullets, and can fire bullets extremely quickly.These features are useful in short-distance, hit-and-run operations.The kettles would blow up one by one; Beth would fire that shotgun; Decker would fire that Winchester, with that Remington as a backup.If all had gone as they had planned, Renata and her gang would have been dead in thirty seconds.
The problem, Decker thought, was that Murphy's Law always messed up plans in one way or another.Wherever there is a possibility of error, it is certain that error will occur.And there are a lot of question marks in the middle of this plan.Would Renata and all her gang come down the trail at the same time?Will they sniff out the trap, will they check back to see if anyone is sneaking up behind them?Can Beth hold her own reflexes and fire at the right moment like they've rehearsed?For that matter, would she be too petrified to fire a gun at all?or will it...
Notes:
Notes: