Bolton nodded. “If we run them off, how long before more come back?”
“Well, these guys must have been brought here by word of mouth, so they’re just the first wave… and I’d hate to have to try to hold this place at night…”
“What if we move the prisoner?” Bambi asked.
“Where and how?”
“We take the biohazard Hummer out the back garage exit. My father is Harrison Castro, and I—”
“Wait a sec, the guy they call the Mad Baron is your father? Billionaire, built himself a Castle overlooking the harbor maybe five years ago?”
“Yep. Survivalist nut like Grandpa and Great-grandpa before him. He could hold that place against an army. He’ll take in anyone I tell him to, no prob. He’s got a protected way down to his private pier, he owns too many sailboats to remember all their names, and I’ve been sailing since I could stand up. We take Roth there, rest up, maybe he’s got radio and if he doesn’t he’s building it, we call in to DC for instructions, and we can either keep Roth in the Mad Baron’s Castle, or I can run her up the coast, or for that matter, Dave, trust me on this, I was raised in boats and I could sail her around the Horn to Washington if I had to.”
“Oh, I believe it.” Carlucci raised his binoculars again; the crowd was still climbing the long slow slope of the hill, but they would be there in less than ten minutes. “Bolton, you drive. Take the two meanest-looking GAFEs with you. Wedge Roth between them in the back seat; Castro will bring her to you in a second.” Bolton was gone in an instant. Carlucci said, “Castro, get moving. I’m officially remanding the prisoner to the Department of the Future, as of this second.”
“Thanks. If you need somewhere to be, Dad’s got room for hundreds. Bring your families. Even if I’m gone, he’ll let you in if I tell him to.”
“I couldn’t—”
“You sure could. Your family too, ’kay? If you don’t bring them, Dad will make you go get them anyway. Food, a roof, a safe bed, and plenty of people working to keep it that way. You won’t get any better offer, trust me. Now you go stall, and I’ll go get our terrorist, and I’ll see you at Castle Castro.” Bambi raced down the hall to the interrogation room. “Mensche, sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got to relocate the prisoner, mob on the way, and they’re close, get details from Carlucci.” She grabbed Ysabel by the hand, saying, “This way, now.”
At the Hummer, she pushed the girl into the arms of one GAFE; the second one jumped in immediately, so that they had the prisoner wedged and seated. Bambi hopped into the front seat. She hadn’t had time to grab her bag, but there were probably ten “just in case Bambi comes to visit” closets at Castle Castro.
Bolton said, “No levante su cabeza, por favor.” Ysabel Roth gulped, nodded, and leaned forward so that she was completely below the level of the windows; one GAFE beside her tossed a couple of blankets and a towel in a disorderly heap on top of her. “All right, I hope you know the fastest way,” Bolton said.
“I know the best. Just keep this thing on the road and don’t outrun the sprayers on the tires. We have enough antiseptic juice to make it there?”
“Yep, I filled up when we got back.”
Mensche burst into the garage, waving his arm in a rapid rolclass="underline" go, go, go, go, go!
Bolton started the Hummer, and they rolled forward; Mensche ran ahead of them and yanked down on the manual chain to raise the door.
They lurched into the drive behind the office park, away from the main public parking area, and Bolton gunned it, turning away from Aero Drive. “It’s near the Harbor,” Bambi said.
“Yeah, I know, I’ll turn back by going another way I know, but I’m hoping we won’t be—”
Something made a clank and a thud; everyone jumped. “That’s a bullet being stopped by the Kevlar curtains under the body panels,” Bolton said. He threw the Hummer in a tight turn around a couple of dead cars and was on a main road, running flat out; another clang-thud! from the rear door announced a second shot.
“Hang on,” Bolton said, and threw the Hummer hard around another turn, down a ramp into a different office-building parking lot; he circled three-quarters of the way around the building, climbed a ramp on the other side, and shot around a long, arcing road. “We were probably out of range, but why take chances? Now I’m going to double us back onto Aero, a nice safe mile and a half from the office, and with a couple rises in the road between us and them. If the tires and the luck hold, we’ll be down to the Harbor in less than fifteen minutes. Castro, can you explain that to our two soldiers? The only Spanish I know is for making arrests.”
She snorted. “Dad has pretenses of Old Californianess. He was too proud of his heritage as a descendant of the conquistadors to let his daughter learn Spanish. I don’t suppose either of them knows French, Russian, or German.”
A muffled voice said, “My Spanish is fine. Can I sit up? It’s hot under here.”
“Wait till we’re on Aero,” Bambi said, “but please explain now for the soldiers. They must be confused as hell.”
Ysabel Roth spoke for a short while and answered a couple of questions. Then one GAFE spoke to her for a couple of minutes, and she translated, “Hey, they say that being in the GAFEs means always being as confused as hell.”
“Our kind of outfit.” Bolton slowed as they approached the Harbor; more and more wrecks and junk lay in the road. “Ms. Roth, get down and stay down; we’re going slow enough to be a good target, and it’s always possible that someone had a working CB or something and we might be ambushed.”
Once, as they passed an apartment block, people ran out toward the Hummer from the driver’s side, but the GAFE on that side lowered his window and showed them his weapon, and they stepped back. “Just need food for the baby,” one of the men yelled. “Just need some help.”
They kept rolling, and Bambi tried to think of anything else they could have done. She couldn’t seem to come up with anything.
Harrison Castro had been careful about not letting anything important about Castle Castro leak into the media, despite a whirlwind of attention while it was being built. The outer surfaces were thin brick-and-concrete facades that looked fake-medieval, with far too much glass to be defensible; inside that relatively fragile box there were what amounted to concrete bunkers, with recessed steel shutters to cover the windows as needed. If anyone tries to shoot the place up, he had often explained to her, all that Hollywood-movie-castle crap will be blown into a heap of rubble, but behind it there’s bunkers you’d need tanks to take. And that’s the point where the asshole taxers, regulators, interferers, and Democrats find out that I’m an arrogant, practical, effective, energetic bastard disguising himself as an arrogant, pretentious, effete bastard.
Brush had been planted to conceal the turnoff, but Bambi had no trouble guiding Bolton into it. They bumped and rumbled up the apparent temporary dirt road to the first checkpoint. The guard was all business until Bolton lowered the window to talk to him, and Bambi said, “Hi, Mr. Duck!”
The guard was beaming. “Glad to see you home, and hope you’re staying. Are these friends of yours?”
“Terry Bolton here is, and I’d appreciate if you gave him an all-areas pass, and let him come and go as he needs. The rest are a case of bringing my work home with me.”
“You remember the way to the Secure Garage?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll let the house know you’re comin’. Mr. Castro will want to come down and say hi.”