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She grunted. “We need to get in touch with Goat. Maybe he can email stuff to us. There have to be flash drives here. If we can send the stuff we could actually have something to bargain with.”
Trout held out the satellite phone. “That was the second thing I wanted to tell you,” he said. “I can’t get a call through to Goat.”
“What?”
“I know.”
“Where’d you call from? Maybe there’s no reception down in the—”
“I’ve called from a dozen different places on the first and second floor. Right by the windows, too. Nothing.”
“Shit.”
“What I don’t get,” said Trout, “is why they’re bullying us about this. All they have to do is talk to Volker.”
“Zetter said they can’t find Volker.”
“Oh … crap.”
“So,” Dez asked, “what do we do now?”
Trout shook his head. “Geez … I really don’t know. Keep trying to get in touch with Goat.”
“Billy,” said Dez, “we could tell them where to find Goat.”
“And have them put a bullet in his head?” Trout fired back. “No thanks.”
“Would you rather they stormed in here? With all these kids?”
“I’d rather we find a way to get in touch with Goat.”
They looked at each other for a few moments, and then off into separate quadrants of the middle distance.
“Can we use the walkie-talkie to call Goat?” asked Trout.
“I don’t know. If so, I wouldn’t know how,” she admitted. Then she tilted her head to one side as if listening to a thought. “Could they be blocking the sat phone somehow? I mean, could they be jamming it or something?”
“Goat could tell you that,” said Trout. “He’s the techno geek.”
“But it’s possible, right?”
They thought about the situation for a long time, but neither of them had a solution. Dez’s knowledge of electronics didn’t extend much beyond downloading Hank Williams Jr. ringtones and watching YouTube videos. Trout was more savvy, but nowhere close to Goat’s level.
“I guess so,” Trout said at last. “It’s funny, we had a story scheduled about the twenty-first-century army, but I haven’t started the research yet. Bad timing.”
“Yeah, it blows that the death of our entire town got in the way of your job.”
“Bite me, Dez. You know what I mean.”
“I know. I was making a joke.”
“Hilarious.”
She ignored him. “So, where does that leave us other than five miles up shit creek?”
“Not sure what we can do beyond keep trying,” he said. “I’ll call Goat every minute if I have to.”
“Why bother?” she said.
