He heard a deep rumble and glanced at the sky. Thunder. That storm was coming on fast. He threw the Jeep into gear and started moving. Not quite as good as having a helicopter to follow, but at least he’d know when he was heading in the right direction and when he wasn’t. And he’d be approaching the spot from the opposite direction. Maybe he was already closer than the feds. And who knew? Maybe the storm would help him get there first.
As he drove he passed through an area of burned-out trees. Lightning? A careless camper? Whatever, it looked like there’d been a helluva fire here. All the trunks had been scorched coal black, the smaller branches seared right off. But the trees weren’t dead. Every trunk had little branchlets forcing their way through the charred crust of the bark and sprouting new bright-green needles. Can’t kill these damn things, he thought. Then he grinned. Maybe this is a good place for me. I like these pines. No matter what you do to them, they keep coming back. I’m just like your pines. Poppy. You can’t kill me, can’t stop me. I keep coming. And I’m coming for you, bitch.
12
Dan Keane stared out his office window, wondering why he hadn’t heard anything from Decker since this morning. He checked his watch. A little after three already. Had anything happened at that motel in Tuckerton? Should he call? Would that make him appear too interested?
But how could you appear too interested in something like this? Yes, he should call. He was useless here, otherwise. Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think about anything else.
But as he reached for the phone, his intercom buzzed. That might be Decker now. He hit the button.
“Yes?”
“A restaurant just called,” his secretary said.
“A restaurant?”
“Yes. Very rude. Said you were supposed to call them about confirming a reservation. Il Gia-something. They hung up before I could get the name straight.”
Dan stiffened. Salinas’s place. Calling here? Oh, Lord. It could only be bad news.
“I know the place.”
“Want me to—?”
“No, thanks. I’ll take care of it later. Hold my calls, Thelma. I’m going out for a short walk.”
The heat on Sixth Street hit him as soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk. Like summer. He peeled off his wool suit coat and went searching for a phone.
Wild thoughts danced around him as he walked. What could Salinas possibly have to tell him? What was so important that he risked a call to the DEA offices?
He spotted a phone at the corner by NASA and picked up his pace toward it. As he fished for a quarter, he made his usual survey of the area to make sure no one was too close. Pretty clear. Not even a pretzel cart this time. Just a bicycle messenger speeding along in his direction. No problem there. Those guys could really move. He’d be past before Dan finished dialing. He found the quarter and plunked it into the slot. As he waited for it to register, he glanced around again. The bike messenger was almost on top of him—racing helmet, dark sports glasses, skin-tight bicycle pants and top, riding a slim French street bike. But he seemed to have lost speed. As Dan watched, he pulled something metallic from his messenger pouch. It was pointed at him before he recognized it as a silenced automatic. He saw the tiny muzzle flashes light the dark hole of the silencer bore.
Before he could move, before he could scream, he felt the slugs hit him. No piercing pain—more like iron-fisted punches to his chest and abdomen, exploding through his back, lifting him off the ground and hurling him backward. He saw the intense blue of the sky for an instant, and then it, the street, the city, the world all dimmed and went away,
13
“Move, you son of a bitch! Move!” John Vanduyne felt as if his shoulder was about to pull out of the socket, but he wouldn’t back off.
Lightning flashed as he dug his feet into the sand and leaned everything he had against the Roadmaster’s rear fender. The tire spun, kicking up sand that was picked up by the rising wind and swirled into his face. Damn rearwheel drives, anyway! Why the hell was anyone still making them?
He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed harder. The car rocked forward, the tire rising halfway out of the hole it had dug for itself.
“Keep going!” he shouted to Decker over the thunder and the whine of the engine. “We’re almost there!
We’re—“ But then the car began to slip backward, and nothing he could do could keep it from sinking back into the sand.
John leaned against the bumper and pounded his fist on the trunk. He wanted to scream.
They’d been doing so well, making good time following the helicopter along the pair of sandy ruts that passed for a road out here when suddenly they’d rounded a corner and found a deer standing in their path. Decker’d slammed on the brakes, the deer bolted into the brush, and they hadn’t moved an inch since.
And now it began to rain—huge drops splattering the car and his head and back. John looked at the gray, lowering sky and wondered how things could get worse. A slashing bolt of lightning gave him an answer of sorts, so he stumbled to the passenger door and dropped into the seat.
Decker was on the hand-held transceiver. “All right, Special One. Safe home. And thanks.” John knew who he was talking to: the helicopter.
“They’ve leaving?”
Decker nodded. “Heading back to base. This weather’s getting too heavy for them.” John nodded silently. He’d been expecting that.
“Hey,” Decker said, “they hung on as long as they could—maybe longer than they should have. I hope they don’t have trouble getting back to Lakehurst.”
“I know. It’s just—”
The sky opened up then and the rain dropped in sheets.
“Hang in there,” Decker said. “We’re close. The rain ought to thicken up the sand and help us get out of this hole. As soon as it stops, we’ll get moving again.”
“But where? We’ll have to wait for the copter to—”
“No. They gave me directions. There’s a smaller road that cuts off to the right about half a mile ahead of us here. We take that for about a mile or so and look for another trail off to the right. The truck’s in there.”
The rain increased, bringing visibility down to zero. The pines disappeared. With the deafening tattoo on the car roof and the incessant roar of the thunder, they could have been sitting under Niagara Falls.
The world constricted to John and Decker and the car.
14
Snake smiled as he clicked off his transceiver—he wouldn’t need that any more. He continued to inch through the rain. He wasn’t making much progress, but he was doing a thousand percent better than Vanduyne and his fed buddies. Mired in sand and no flyboys to lead them even if they got out. What a shame.
Snake realized he might be in the exact same spot as those two if not for his Jeep’s four-wheel drive. He checked his laptop again and saw that he was closer than ever. The GPS program told him that the blinking star of his destination was somewhere about a klick and a half to his left.
He shook his head in wonder at the irony of using all this high-tech equipment to search what had to be one of the low-tech capitals of the country. He peered through the rain. Had to go slow here, look for a road, a path, a deer trail, anything that led off to the left. Damn near dark as night outside. Hard enough to see under these conditions with both eyes, but when you had only one…
And then he spotted something out his near side window and slammed on the brakes. He wiped away the condensation and peered through the downpour.