The whole purpose of the exercise was to lie in wait and catch the owner of the patch as he or she came into the area to water and tend the plants. We had no idea who that was, though there was some speculation.

I’d picked a hilltop location for my car, about a mile and a half from the two officers in the patch. I couldn’t see them, but I could see a large chunk of the park, and the height of my location would ensure that I could receive their walkie-talkie transmissions in the hilly terrain. I’d gone up a long farm lane to an abandoned barn and parked in the bit of shade the barn offered. It was a slow day, and I had gotten into position early. Been there for over an hour, in fact. Quality time. It was ninety-four degrees, and the humidity was about 95 percent. I’d turned off the engine, and air conditioner, so I would make less noise, and sat there trying to use thread to rig a spar for a ship model I was building. I’d given up smoking, and was wishing I hadn’t. I had started sweating, and was wishing I hadn’t too. I’d opened one of four cans of soda pop I’d brought with me, in a small ice-filled cooler. One for each of us when I picked them up. And a spare for now. I had the driver’s door propped open, hoping for a little air. Not even a hint of a breeze. And they shouldn’t be ready for pickup for a good half hour yet. I started the first knot in the thread that attached the stuns’l boom to the spar.

I heard a faint pop, then another. Then a whole lot of popping noises, almost like an old lawn mower. I put down the spar, and looked over toward the valley where the patch was. It was very quiet. The slight haze caused the distant features to dance. I checked both sides of the thin ribbon of graveled road that wound toward the pickup point, but I couldn’t pin down where the sounds had come from. There were lots of farms surrounding the park, and I thought it was probably a tractor. I was just starting to pick up my spar, when the popping began again. A lot of it. I dropped the spar, and got out and stood alongside my car. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It got very quiet again.