The van slowed, and Junior tapped on the roof. Dreamer waited. Junior tapped again. Dreamer raised the plastic lid, emerging like lobster thermidor into air scarcely cooler outside. Squatting on the roof, he secured one snap on the bottle and jumped into the thick green hedge beside the road.
He lay on his back and watched the tail lights disappear. Looked at the map in his head and knew exactly where he was. Less than twenty yards to the building, and cover all the way. Manicured shrubs in the shadow of tall Texas pines.
Dreamer closed his eyes and let his breath go shallow and still, let the colors go to work. He smelled the scent of cinnamon and Spam. Blue Crayolas and clean athletic socks. Gold electric ants in his hair, and beetles on his skin. He distinctly heard a line from a Bette Davis film.
It took a good minute and a half. Dreamer sat up and looked around. It was all right there, as clear as it could be, thin green wiggles going this way and that, a holographic map spread out before his eyes.
Jesus, Dreamer thought, they got an awful lot of stuff. It was all on Paulo's chart which had cost him a bundle to get. Still, he'd never seen anything like it anywhere. It was sheer electronic assault. Radio Shack and the CIA were holding a sale at Enchanted Mesa West. There were video cameras on the twelve-foot walls, stone and razor wire, and that was just a start. The system worked out from the wall. The strongest defenses were closest to the building itself. It reminded Dreamer of a firebase in Nam, though that was one war that he'd missed.
An infra-red nighteye system backed up the TV snoops. A marble-chip path wandered out from the wall like a lazy little stream; water-worn stones placed artfully about in the Japanese style. Within this area, thin copper wires stretched an inch above the ground. They wouldn't kill a man, but they'd knock him on his ass. There were pressure mines in the grass, ears that could hear a flower grow. Closer to the building, red laser spiders spun their webs, daring anyone to break the spell. There were pinecone mikes in the trees. Sensors in the yucca and the sage. A thousand crystal eyes, blinking blindly in the night.
It was overkill beyond all reason, protection past any conceivable need. Dreamer knew it, and the people who'd installed this million dollar system knew it too. But this was not your ordinary rent-a-cop Tinkertoy two-dollar whoopa-whoopa listen-to-the-sirens-go-off kind of place. This was Enchanted Mesa West, and the folks inside liked all the good shit they could get.