activities of such a dubious nature.
One of them said, "And who the fuck are you?"
Parker did not attempt to jive them, did not foolishly claim his rights
as a U S. citizen, did not bother to say anything at all. He just took
three running steps toward the drawn drapes, praying that a big window
or sliding-glass balcony door lay beyond them, that it would shatter on
impact, that the drapes would protect him from serious cuts, and that he
would be outside and gone before they knew what happened. If the drapes
were a lot wider than the window, covering more blank wall than glass,
he was in big trouble. Behind him, the men shouted in surprise ' just
as he hit the drapes, for they'd obviously believed they'd trapped him.
He went through the material with the unstoppable power of a locomotive.
The impact was tremendous, sending a devastating shock across his
shoulder and through his chest, but something gave way with a crack and
a screech and a crash of glass, and he was through into daylight,
vaguely aware that the doors had been French rather than sliding panels
and that he had been lucky the lock was flimsy.
He found himself on a second-floor balcony with a pair of redwood lounge
chairs and a glass-topped table, over which he fell. Even as he was
going down on top of chairs, banging knees and barking shins, he was
already coming up again, up and over the balcony rail, leaping out into
space, praying he would not land in a particularly woody shrub and be
castrated by a sharp, sturdy branch. He fell only twelve feet onto bare
lawn, jarring his other shoulder and his back but breaking no bones. He
rolled, scrambled to his feet, and ran.
Suddenly, in front of his eyes, foliage snapped-flutteredshredded, and
he didn't know what was happening, and then as he continued to run,
pieces of bark exploded off a tree, and he realized they were shooting
at him. He heard no gunfire. Silencer-equipped weapons. He zigzagged
toward the perimeter of the property, fell in an azalea bed, scrambled
up, ran on, reached a hedge, threw himself over it, and kept on running.
They had been ready to kill him to stop him from spreading the news of
what he had seen in the Salcoe house. Right now, they were probably
hastily moving-or killing-the Salcoes. If he found a phone and called
the police, and if the killers were agents of the U S. government,
whose side would the police be on? And who would they believe? One
eccentric and rather curiously dressed artist with a woolly beard and
flyaway hair? Or three neatly attired FBI men claiming they were in the
Salcoe house on a legitimate stakeout of some kind, and that Parker
Faine was, in fact, the felon they had attempted to arrest. If they
demanded custody of him, would the police cooperate?
Jesus.
He ran. Abandoning the Tempo, he sprinted down the sloped wall of a
shallow glen, along the rocky course of a narrow brook, between trees,
through underbrush, up another wall of the same glen, into someone's
back yard, across that lawn and into another yard, alongside a house,
out into a street, from that street to another. He slowed to a fast
walk to avoid drawing attention to himself, but he continued to follow a
twisty route away from the Salcoe house.
He knew what he had to do. The horror he had just seen had made the
extremity of Dom's plight clearer than ever. Parker had known his friend
was in danger, deep in a conspiracy of monumental proportions, but
knowing it in his mind was not the same as knowing it in his guts. There
was nothing for him to do but go to Elko County. Dom Corvaisis was his
friend, perhaps his best friend, and this was what friends did for each
other: shared their trouble, fought back the darkness together. He
could walk away, go back to Laguna Beach to continue work on the
painting that he had begun yesterday. But if he chose that course, he
would never like himself very much again-which would be an intolerable
circumstance, for he had always liked himself immensely!
San Francisco International, and head east from there toward Nevada. He
was not concerned that the men in the Salcoes' house would be looking
for him at the airport. The only words any of them had spoken in his
presence were: "And who the fuck are you?" If they did not know who he
was, they would most likely figure he was a local. The keys to the
Tempo had a rental-company tag on them, but they were in his pocket. In
an hour or two, of course, the bad guys would trace the car to the
airport, but by then he should have taken off for San Francisco.
He kept walking. On a quiet residential street he saw a young man,
about nineteen or twenty, in the driveway of a more modest house than
the Salcoes', carefully scrubbing the whitewalls on the tires of a
meticulously restored, banana yellow, 1958 Plymouth Fury, one of those
long jobs with a plenitude of grille and big sharity fins. The kid had
a slickedback ducktail haircut to match the era of his vehicle. Parker
went up to him and said, "Listen, my car broke down, and I've got to get
to the airport. I'm in a big hurry, so would you drive me out there for
fifty bucks?"
The kid knew how to hurry. If he had not been a superb driver, he would
have fishtailed out of control and spun them off the road into trees or
ditches on a half-dozen tight turns, for he got all possible speed out
of the big Fury. After they came through the third sharp turn alive,
Parker knew he was in good hands, and he finally relaxed a bit.
At the airport, he bought a ticket for one of two remaining seats on a
West Air flight leaving for San Francisco in ten minutes. He boarded
the plane, half-expecting it to be halted by federal agents before it
could take off. But soon they were airborne, and he could worry about
something else: getting another flight from San Francisco to Reno before
they tracked him that far.
Jack Twist went through the Blocks' apartment from northto west- to
south- to east-facing windows, surveying the vast landscape for signs of
the enemy's observation post or posts. At least one surveillance team
would be watching the motel and diner, and no matter how well concealed
they were, he had a device that would pinpoint their location.
He'd brought it from New York with the other gear-an instrument the
armed forces called the HS101 Heat Analyzer. It was shaped like a sleek
futuristic raygun from the movies, with a single two-inch-diameter lens
instead of a barrel. You held it by the butt and looked through the
eyepiece as if peering into a telescope. Moving the viewfinder across
the landscape, you saw two things: an ordinary magnified image of the
terrain, and an overlaid representation of heat sources within that
terrain. Plants, animals, and sun-baked rocks radiated heat, but thanks
to microchip technology, the HS's computer could differentiate among
types of thermal radiation and screen out most natural background
sources. The device would show only heat from living sourc
es larger
than fifty pounds: animals bigger than house-dogs and human beings. Even
if they were out there in insulated ski suits that trapped a lot of body
heat, enough would escape their garments to give him a fix on them.
Jack spent a considerable length of time studying the land north of the
motel, through which he had approached the place last night, but finally
he decided no one was watching from that direction, and he moved to the
west-facing windows in other rooms. The west also looked clear, so he
went next to the windows on the south side of the apartment.
Marcie had colored the last moon in her album, and when Jack set out
with the HS101 to look for surveillance teams, she came with him,
staying close by his side. Maybe she had taken a liking to him because
he'd spent hours talking to her in spite of her failure to respond. Or
maybe she was scared of something and felt safer in his presence. Or
another reason too strange to imagine. He could do nothing for her
except keep talking softly to her as she accompanied him.
Jorja followed along as well, and though she did not interrupt with
questions, she was considerably more distracting than her daughter. She
was a strikingly beautiful woman, but more importantly he liked her a
lot. He thought she liked him, too, although he didn't suppose she was
attracted to him, not in the man-woman sense. After all, what would a
woman like her see in a guy like him? He was an admitted criminal, and
he had a face like an old battered shoe, not to mention one cast eye.
But they could be friends, at least, and that was nice.
At the living room windows, he finally spotted what he was seeking:
points of body heat out there in the cold barrens. Across the top of the
image that filled the lens-Nevada plains and overlaid heat patterns-came
a digital readout of data that told him there were two sources of heat,
that they were due south of his position, and that they were
approximately four-tenths of a mile away. That information was followed
by numerals that represented an estimation of the size of each source's
radiant surface, which told him he had found two men. He switched off
the HS's heat-analysis function and turned up the magnification, using
the device as a simple telescope, zeroing in on the area in which the
heat had been detected. He had to search for a couple of minutes, for
they were wearing camouflage suits.
"Bingo," he said at last.
Jorja did not ask what he saw, for she had learned well the lesson he
had taught them last night: Everything spoken in the apartment was
sucked directly into the enemy's electronic ears.
Out there on the barrens, the two observers were prone on the cold
ground. Jack saw that one man had a pair of binoculars. But the guy
was not using the glasses at the moment, so he was not aware of Jack
watching him from the window.
He moved to the east windows and surveyed that landscape, as well, but
it was uninhabited. They were being watched only from the south, which
the enemy figured was sufficient because the front of the motel and the
only road leading to it could be seen from that single post.
They were underestimating Jack. They knew his background, knew that he
was good, but they didn't realize how good.
At one-forty, the first snowflakes fell. For a while they came down
only as scattered flurries, with no particular force.
At two o'clock, when Dom and Ernie returned from their scouting trip
around the perimeter of the Thunder Hill Depository, Jack said, "You
know, Ernie, when the storm really hits later, there might be some
people on the interstate who'll see our wheels out front and pull in
here, looking for shelter, even if we leave the sign and other lights
off. Better move my Cherokee, the Servers' truck, and the cars around
back. We don't want a lot of people rapping at your door wanting to know
why you're giving rooms to some people and not to them."
Actually, certain that the enemy was even now listening to them, Jack
was using the specter of weary snow-bound motorists as a plausible
excuse to move the pickup truck and the Cherokee, the two
four-wheel-drive vehicles, out of sight of the observers south of I-80.
Later, when heavier snow and the early darkness of the storm settled in,
the entire Tranquility family would surreptitiously leave the motel from
the rear, heading overland in the truck and the Cherokee.
Ernie sensed Jack's real purpose; equally aware of eavesdroppers, he
played along. He and Dom went outside again to move all the vehicles
around back.
In the kitchen, Ned and Sandy had nearly finished preparing and
packaging the sandwiches that everyone would be issued for dinner.
Now they had only to wait for Faye and Ginger.
The snow flurries intermittently surrendered to furious but short-lived
squalls. The day dimmed. By two-forty, the squalls turned to steady
snow that, in spite of a complete cessation of wind, reduced visibility
to a few hundred feet. Out on the barrens, the camouflaged observers
were probably picking up their gear and moving closer to the motel.
Jack checked his watch more frequently. He knew time was running out.
But he had no way of knowing how fast it might be running out.
While Lieutenant Horner repaired the sabotaged polygraph in the security
office, Falkirk lectured the Depository's chief of security and his
assistant-Major Fugata and Lieutenant Helms-letting them know they were
on his list of possible traitors. He made two enemies, but that didn't
matter. He did not want them to like him-only to respect and fear him.
He had not yet finished chewing out Fugata and Helms when General
Alvarado arrived. The general was a lardass with a pot gut, fingers
like sausages, and jowls. He stormed into the security office in a
red-faced outrage, having just heard the bad news from Dr. Miles
Bennell: "Is it true, Colonel Falkirk? By God, is it true? Have you
actually taken control Of VIGILANT and made prisoners of us all?"
Sternly but in a tone that could not be construed as disrespectful,
Leland informed Alvarado that he had the authority to include the secret
program in the security computer and to activate it at his discretion.
Alvarado demanded to know whose authority, and Leland said, "General
Maxwell D. Riddenhour, Chief of Staff of the Army and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs." Alvarado said he knew perfectly well who Riddenhour was,
but he did not believe that the colonel's mentor in this matter was the
Chief of Staff himself. "Sir, why don't you call him and ask?" Leland
suggested. He took a card out of his wallet and gave it to Alvarado.
"That's General Riddenhour's number."
"I have the Staff HQ number," Alvarado said scornfully.
"Sir, that's not Staff HQ. That's General Riddenhour's unlisted home
line. If he's not in his office, he'd want you to contact him on the
unlisted phone. After all, this is a deadly serious matter, sir."
Burning a brighter red, Alvarado stalked out, the card pinched between
thumb and forefinger and held away from his
side as if it were an
offensive object. He was back in fifteen minutes, no longer flushed but
pale. "All right, Colonel, you have the authority you claim. So . . .
I guess you're in command of Thunder Hill for the time being."
"Not at all, sir," Leland said. "You're still the CO."
"But if I'm a prisoner-"
Leland interrupted. "Sir, your orders take precedence as long as they
don't directly conflict with my authority to guarantee that no dangerous
persons-no dangerous creaturesescape from Thunder Hill."
Alvarado shook his head in amazement. "According to Miles Bennell, you
have this crazy idea that we're all ... some kind of monsters." The
general had used the most melodramatic word he could think of, with the
intent of belittling Leland's position.
"Sir, as you know, one or more people in this facility attempted, by
indirection, to bring some of the witnesses back to the Tranquility,
evidently with the hope that the witnesses will remember what they've
been made to forget and will create a media circus that'll force us to
reveal what we've hidden. Now, these traitors are probably just
well-intentioned men, most likely members of Bennell's staff, who simply
believe the public should be informed. But the possibility also exists
that they've got other and darker motives."
"Monsters," Alvarado repeated sourly.
When the polygraph was repaired, Leland charged Major Fugata and
Lieutenant Helms with interrogating everyone in Thunder Hill who had
knowledge of the special secret harbored there for more than eighteen
months. "If you screw up again," Leland warned them, "I'll have your
heads." If they failed again to find the man who'd sent the Polaroids to
the witnesses, he would view their failure as one more bit of evidence