Silence after that. Below, tires hummed on pavement. The inside of the truck smelled like a military clinic. Gossin dared to open her eyes just a little. Dim light-strips ran along the ceiling of the cargo space. In front of her were the backs of other float chairs, two on either side of a narrow aisle. Up front, she could see a narrow bunk built into the side of the truck, and on it a shadowy form under a blanket. She couldn’t see past the float chairs directly in front of her to the bunk that must be on her side, but little flashes of color on the truck wall and ceiling suggested that the attendant there was indeed watching a vid. She had no way to tell time, no way to know how long it lasted, but she did feel the increasing discomfort of a position she could not change.
She felt her body react to the truck driving around a curve, and then another, pressing on the straps harder than before. Then the truck slowed, came to a shuddering stop, and was still. Gossin closed her eyes; they might check to be sure everyone was asleep. The truck turned again and accelerated sharply; Gossin heard another vehicle passing, a short tap of the other’s horn. More traffic noises outside. It had been night—but what hour of night? Had they started just after dark, at midnight, closer to dawn? They passed vehicles; vehicles passed them. She tried to interpret the sounds, figure out which were which size, anything that might help her understand where she had been and where she was being taken.
Working it out, bit by bit, with her eyes closed: they had been someplace far from a city… that first curvy road, the second smoother one, and now a large road with lots of traffic… so they were going to a city, or leaving the area entirely.
A thin beeping, a thump. Gossin peeked, saw a shape heave up in the front of the truck, then reach over to poke the one still lying on the other bunk. “Your turn.”
So it had been four hours.
“Did you check them? Pulse, respiration—”
“Yup. In the log.”
But Gossin knew she hadn’t slept, and no one had taken her pulse. There were remote sensing methods, but—someone had checked her pulse manually after she was loaded.
“We’ll do this check together.”
“Oh, come on—you been sleeping; I did the other—”
“Every hour. You take that side; I’ll take this.”
Gossin tried to even out her heart rate, slightly cool her skin. She thought about her grandmother, lounging in the swing-chair on the porch, about what her grandmother had said. She didn’t react when fingers touched her neck.
“Told you they’re all okay. I’m going down.”
“Can I see your vid?”
“Should have brought your own.”
This attendant made the hourly checks, and even loosened the straps on Gossin’s head and arms, massaged them. Shortly after the second check, Gossin felt the truck turn, slow, turn again, and come to a stop. A door slammed—from the cab? A triple knock on the door behind her. The attendant came past; with the truck not moving, Gossin could feel the footsteps, then heard the clank of the door unlocking and opening a little. Daylight—a streak of sun on the floor Gossin could see. Colder air flowed in with the light. It carried scents she thought of as city smells.
Ky Vatta leaned forward to peek through the window into the cab. They were parked at Bailey’s Trucker Heaven, where two roads crossed, and most of the trucks in the parking area were clearly farm vehicles pulling utility trailers. The driver—another Stevens-Vatta, familiar with the area—had had breakfast in the café and alerted by Ky had strolled out only minutes before. She and the team in the truck had made do with self-heating packets of sausage rolls.
“I see it,” the driver said. “Blue farm truck, one cow in the back, followed by a green-and-yellow utility truck. There’s a white van with a brown fender behind it.” Their truck was running and in gear; he rolled out toward the road. There were two cars behind the white van, but as it slowed to turn into the truck stop, it created a gap. Ky’s driver pulled out, directly behind their green-and-yellow target.
Ky stepped back from the window and went back to one of the couches bolted to the floor. “Everything clear, Admiral?” the special ops team leader asked. He’d said to call him Philo.
“We’re right behind it,” she said. “Clear road, weather’s holding here, though Rodney says there’s a front moving in and it’ll be colder tonight. We should be gone by then.” If everything worked. Supposedly everyone was in place and knew what they were doing. The lead truck, with the cow, would take them all the way to the ambush site, and would yield to farm traffic coming onto the road ahead. The land would rise, and get rougher, with taller hills, as they neared the fork to Weekes City. Her stomach churned. So many things had to go right. She looked around. The medical trio sat in the float chairs they might need; Rafe and Teague were beside her, and across from here were the three survivors, now in uniform.
“We’ll be fine.” Philo smiled. The team wore civilian clothes, farm-style—bulky jackets over stained work pants. The weaponry was obviously military-issue, but from a distance, from an aerial scan, they’d pass as farmers just like everyone else.
An hour and a half later, the driver banged on the window to the back. Ky went forward again.
“Just passed the last road,” he said. “That up there might be the place. We’ve got the green car and the dark-blue truck behind us, like we’re ’sposed to.”
They were coming down a slope; ahead the road curved sharply left, just like the terrain map. Fences on both sides ran close to the road. And as brake lights flared in the vehicle ahead of them, Ky saw the cattle—a heaving mass of brown moving around restlessly, with men apparently trying to get them out of the road without much success. The first two vehicles beyond the cattle had their doors open, as if the drivers were augmenting the cattle handlers.
“Almost there,” Ky said, turning around. “I can see the layout. We’re still behind the target.”
With a gesture, the team leader brought the team up and to the side door, ready to move out when their truck stopped. Ahead of them, someone honked a horn. Someone yelled. And with a final lurch, they stopped.
The ops team was out the door in a blur of speed, Ky and Rafe right behind them. They had the back door of the target unlocked before Ky reached it, and both attendants were down before they had time to return fire. Philo boosted Ky into the truck body. And there they were, five float chairs facing forward, five bald heads showing. Pockets on the back of each held a folder. Ky looked into the face of the rearmost, pulling out the folder. Gossin. Eyes opened, widened. “Admiral?”
When the truck finally started up, the two attendants sitting side by side eating something, it moved into heavier traffic for a while and then turned onto another, quieter road. Gossin dozed off and woke to voices both inside the truck and outside.
“Why are we stopped?”
“A traffic jam.”
“Here? I thought all this was farm country.”
“Driver says there’s a bunch of cattle in the road—no way around it; there’s a dozen vehicles ahead of us, at least one behind us.”
Gossin heard a faint metallic sound from behind—perhaps a cooling grille on the truck behind them—then a hiss and a pop.
“What—?” from one of the attendants.
The door swung open; light and fresh air poured into the cargo space. Both attendants were up now, grabbing for something—and the soft phup-phup of a silenced weapon took them both down. Gossin felt the strap holding her to the headrest loosen; hands unfastened the straps on her arms, and someone knelt beside her, freeing her legs. She looked down into the familiar face of Admiral Vatta.