High Crimes

“What was I supposed to do?” he said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He slipped one hand into her blouse and cupped her left breast, and she shook her head.

“Honey,” he said plaintively, withdrawing his hand.

She was torn by emotions, wholly confused. She could barely resist him, yet at the same time she desperately wanted to resist him. Finally, she closed her eyes and kissed him, and then he gently began kissing the nape of her neck, the swell at the top of her breasts, her nipples, the underside of her breasts.

She said, “I’m starved. I didn’t eat dinner.”

Naked, the two of them were entwined on the narrow cot.

He looked at his watch. “It’s three in the morning. Care for an early breakfast?”

“I’d love it.”

Another plane roared by overhead.

She said, “Three guesses why this lake is deserted.”

“After a while you don’t even notice the planes,” he said. He stood up, walked over to the stove. “We’ve got eggs and toast.”

“Brioche?”

“Sorry. Wonder Bread.” He knelt down, lit the wood stove, watched until it had caught fire. “Gotta catch sometime,” he said. “Ah, here it goes.” He smiled in satisfaction. “And that takes care of that.”

“It’s cold here,” she said. She got up from the cot and put on one of his plaid flannel shirts.

“Good idea,” he said, and slipped into his jeans and a T-shirt. He returned to the stove, put four slices of bread on the toasting rack and a chunk of butter into the hot frying pan, and cracked several eggs over it. The eggs crackled and sizzled and filled the shack with the most wonderful smells.

“Where do you bathe around here?”

“Guess.”

“That freezing lake?”

He nodded. Then, suddenly, he turned his head. “Claire.”

“What?”

“Do you hear something?”

“Don’t tell me you have animals out here, too.”

“Shh. Listen.”

“What are you doing?” she whispered as he walked to the door and began slowly to open it. “Tom?”

“Shh.” He looked out the door, looked around in all directions. He shook his head. “I thought I heard something.”

He slipped on a battered pair of Reeboks she’d never seen before and stepped outside. She followed him.

He stopped and looked up at the sky. Now Claire could just make out a noise from above that didn’t sound like an ordinary plane: a drone, high-pitched and insistent, that grew louder. As it did, another sound distinguished itself: the thwack-thwack of helicopter blades. Tom kept looking up.

“There must have been a transmitter in the Lexus,” he said.

“But I did the check you told me to do!”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have let you drive here. Even stopping the Lexus a few miles away. Those transmitters have gotten more sophisticated since my time in the military — you couldn’t have found it. Those planes we heard must have been small single-engine fixed-wing—”

Suddenly, from somewhere on the ground, came a series of sharp explosions that sounded like firecrackers going off.

“Oh, God, Tom, what is it?”

“My booby traps. Get back inside!”

“What?”

The thwack-thwack of helicopter blades grew louder as the helicopter approached and then hovered directly overhead, and suddenly a blindingly bright light came from the sky. She looked up. Bright lights shone down from the helicopter, illuminating the whole area. She blinked, her eyes trying to adjust to the sudden brightness.

“Go!” he shouted, and she turned swiftly and ran back to the shack, with Tom right behind.

He shut the door, grabbed her. “Get down on the floor.”

“Tom—?”

“Now!”

She dropped and flattened herself on the rough wooden floor.

“I strung up booby-trap devices all around. Trip wires nailed to the trees. They never expected it. My primitive burglar-alarm system.”

Before she could say anything, a loud, amplified voice from out of the sky boomed: “Federal agents! Come out and drop all weapons!”

“Tom, what are we going to do?” she cried, her voice muffled by the floorboards.

He didn’t reply. He was searching for something.

“Tom?”

“They’re not going to rush us, not with you in here,” he said. “Also, they don’t know what I’ve got in here. Now, they’ve got us surrounded, but they’re not going to move any closer.”

“What are we going to do?” she said desperately.

“Let me do it, Claire.”

She turned to watch him looking out the window through the viewfinder of the brown oblong box she’d seen earlier. He seemed to be pointing it up at the sky.

“Tom, what are you doing?”

“It’s a laser range-finder from a tank,” he said. “Old Special Forces trick.”

“Where the hell did you get that?” She turned her head so she could see out one of the windows.

The amplified voice boomed: “We are the U.S. Marshals Service. We have a warrant for your arrest. Come out peacefully and no one will be hurt.”

“Army surplus in Albany,” Tom said. “Thousand bucks. Use the laser to temporarily blind the pilot, zap him in the eyes. Old trick. We have no choice. That’s their surveillance post in the sky. Take care of that first.”