Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

The first fence was made of five-foot-high white pickets. Hidden on the pickets were small cameras, and both audio and motion sensors.

The second fence, closer to the house, was of cast iron, eight feet tall, and also held surveillance cameras and motion sensors. Every twenty feet there were floodlights.

As Edgar Delchamps steered the Town Car up the drive, a herd of canines—if “herd” is the proper term to describe a collection of six enormous, jet-black Bouviers des Flandres—came charging around the side of the house.

They waited patiently for the substantial gate to open, then when the Lincoln rolled past, they followed it, gamboling happily like so many outsize black lambs.

“What’s with the dogs?” Porky Parker asked.

“Clinical studies have shown that having access to dogs provides a number of benefits to elderly people, so we use them in our geriatric services program,” Two-Gun Yung replied. “That makes them deductible. You have no idea how much it costs to feed those big bastards.”

“They also serve to deter the curious,” Edgar Delchamps added.

He stopped the Lincoln before a four-door garage, pulling it alongside one of the two black GMC Yukons parked there.

Everyone got out of the Town Car as one of the garage doors rolled upward.

A grandmotherly type in her early fifties appeared at a door in the rear of the garage. Her name was Dianne Sanders, and she was listed on the payroll of Lorimer Manor, Inc., as resident housekeeper.

The herd of Bouviers des Flandres gamboled on toward her. She put her fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly. The dogs stopped as if they had encountered a glass wall.

“Go chase a cat,” Mrs. Sanders ordered sternly, pointing out the garage door.

Reluctantly but obediently the herd slowly walked out of the garage.

She looked at Delchamps and said: “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know who your friends are? In addition to inside plumbing, Lorimer Manor offers television.”

“Think of that one,” Delchamps said, pointing at Parker, “as a lonely stranger desperately needing the hospitality of friends. And also some lunch, if that’s possible. I thought you knew Roscoe.”

“Only by reputation,” she said.

“You know he’s one of us,” Yung said.

“I heard.”

“And now that you know that, Mr. Parker,” Yung said, “we’ll have to kill you.”

Oh, Jesus, here we go again!

Porky will go bananas.

“May I ask what’s going on here?” Parker asked. “What is this place?”

“Of course you can ask, but as Two-Gun just said, what you know

can get you killed,” Delchamps said. He smiled, then added: “Well, let’s go get some lunch.”

In the house, Parker looked around. Plate-glass windows across the back wall offered a view of an enormous grassy area. There was a croquet field and a cabana with a grill beside an enormous in-ground swimming pool. Two of the Bouviers, their red tongues hanging and their stub tails wagging, were looking in through one of the plate-glass windows; the rest of the herd was chasing birds on the grass.

And Parker noted the residents: First he saw four elderly men, two in wheelchairs, three of whom looking roughly as old as Edgar Delchamps. There also was a very large—six-foot-two, 220-pound— and very black man wearing aviator sunglasses who appeared to be in his late thirties, and a woman who looked about sixty. She had a chrome walker next to her chair at a large dining table that was covered with food.

In the center of the table was a centerpiece: Two dinosaurs, each about two feet long, faced each other. There was a pink bow around the neck of one of them.

“I think everybody knows who Mr. Parker is,” Delchamps announced to the residents.

Everybody nodded.

“He wants to know what’s going on here,” Delchamps said, “what this place is. Can I tell him?”