"Where's Algini?"
"The car behind, nand' paidhi. With the radio." The car took off with a spin of its tires, then lumbered over tree roots and took the downhill by a series of tilts and bounces — they were on what the estate charitably called the branch road, which had far more of branches than road about it. It went around trees rather than have one cut down, it relied on four-wheel drive and a good suspension, which the staff cars had — along with the bar along the back of the front seat that became a good idea as they veered with the road along the side of the lodge and down again, toward the junction of service roads which the staff used getting equipment to and from the various wells and stations — he knew this road, Tabini'd been easy on his slight-of-stature guest, in the first visit he'd made to Taiben.
Not afterward. Not now.
"What's happening?" he asked, clinging to the safety bar. "Where's Tabini?"
Maybe Tano and Jago didn't know. Banichi turned around, arm on the seat back, head down because of the branches that raked over the windshield. "Somebody leaked the event to the local news — we've got intruders in the woods and we can't tell who're tourists from the lake district and who's not, which is not a tolerable situation for security. We've very good reason to believe this release of information was not a prank."
"Meaning the same people who have Hanks are out there."
"Most likely they are." Banichi turned his head back to the short view of tree trunks and underlit branches as the car jolted its way into a turn.
The driver — probably a ranger — had his hands fulclass="underline" it wasn't every atevi who knew how to drive, and nobody could avoid collision who didn't know this road, not from where he sat — the wheel went this way and that, in furious efforts that exerted atevi strength to keep the wheels on track at all, bouncing over roots and jolting over low spots, the low running lights bouncing wildly, amber lights from a car behind them casting their shadows on the seat backs in front of them and reflecting in the windshield.
"Are they likeliest to move on Taiben itself?" he asked. "Or the landing site? Do they knowexactly where?"
"They may," Tano said. "It wasn't in the news report, but no knowing the other information that's passed."
"They won't waste time on Taiben when they know we've left. They've come in afoot. So far. Now that we've moved — they'll probably have transport come in."
"We're a one-point target," Jago said. "They're diffuse. This is by the nature of a wide border with uncertain neighbors."
The road took a series of jolts that made the handhold a necessity, even for atevi, then smoothed out, and Banichi turned around again, eyes shimmering momentarily in the following running lights. "We've a secure place if we need it," Banichi said, "nadi-ji. We're not in trouble. Yet."
"That lander's going to come down slowly tomorrow."
Bren said. "If they've got any kind of weapons — if they were willing to attack it —"
"We think rather their target is Tabini himself," Banichi said. "Possibly you. We've tried to persuade Tabini to fly back to Shejidan. But the aiji says not. And he extends that decision to you."
Banichi wasn't pleased by that. And the reason for the confused, abrupt exit became more clear: scatter vehicles through the woods, keep the opposition guessing where Tabini was and with what group, or at Taiben — and where the paidhi was. Tabini thumbed his nose at the opposition. Tabini's staff andthe paidhi did, that was the message Tabini was sending, and he understood that, but they had a very vulnerable capsule coming down in a place that wasn't exactly neatly defined — they couldn't set up a specific watch over a specific ten-meter area and trust the capsule might not be a kilometer or so away, exposed to God-knew-what. Bren sat holding the elbow of his sore arm, in the interval he wasn't clutching the bounce-bar, feeling the jolts in his joints and in muscles gone cold and tense.
He wasn't scared, he wasn't scared, this wasn't like Malguri, with the chance of bombs falling on them. They were playing tag through the woods, but keeping ahead of the people trying to shoot at them; they'd dodge and switch through ranger tracks the opposition might have maps of, but it wasn't the same as their driver's evident experience of the roads. They'd out-drive them, out-maneuver them…
They were in open cars, that being what the rangers used for these narrow trails, and probably the only vehicles with a wheelbase that could take them — but they were visible targets, and the landing wasn't in a meadow interspersed with trees, or hillside forest, it was down on the flat, in a grassland split by a couple of rocky patches — profoundly eroded and wooded escarpments that ran eighty, ninety kilometers northwest to southeast, with stands of scrub that gave ambushers plenty of cover.
You could see wheel tracks in the grass. They couldn't get there without leaving a trace that small aircraft could spot well enough. Neither they nor the opposition could maneuver in a sea of grass without a trail someone else could track.
"They won't chase us here," he muttered to Jago and Tano. "They don't need to. They know where we're going. At least — close enough."
"Diffuse versus specific," Jago said. She'd said that. He'd not arrived at the same conclusion until then. But that told him at least his security had thought of it.
Then he had a cold and terrible thought.
"Oh, my God. My computer."
Banichi turned around in his seat. Flashed a shimmer of yellow eyes. And a grin. "Right between my feet, paidhi-ji. We didn't forget."
Hormones, he said to himself, his heart settling back to steady work. Damned hormones. Brain fog. A schoolboy mistake. He found himself shivering as the car found a reasonable stretch of meadow grass and ripped along at a reckless bounce. He tried not to nudge against the atevi on either side of him. He didn't want them to feel it.
But he had the hard weight of the gun in his pocket, too, and finally had the wit to ask, "Has anybody got a spare clip of shells?"
He got three, one from Banichi, one from Jago, one from Tano. The driver had his hands occupied, and the paidhi was out of convenient pockets and carrying enough weight.
The rebels had Hanks. "Is there any way —" Figuring to himself that with all of an aiji's resources to draw from, there might be personnel to spare. "— any way —" A pothole. "— Hanks has to be somewhere close." Pothole. "With them. Get into theirterritory. Go get Hanks." Bounce. "Let them worry."
Jago laughed, silent in the growl of the motor and the slap of branches. Grinned, holding on to the side of the car. "Good idea, nand' paidhi."
"You thought of that."
"So will they, unfortunately. I fear they'll move her out."
Damn, he thought. They would. As a strategist he wasn't in the game. "Can't use the airport. Ranger trails, more likely."
"Good, nai-ji."
"A peaceful man hasn't a chance with you," he said, and Tano patted his leg from the other side.
"Paidhi-ji, we listen because you have good ideas. They'd do these things. So are we doing them."
"Then where are we going? Around in circles, to make them crazy?"
"If we can," Jago said. And after a fierce series of bumps and a turn, "There's a classified number of storm shelters, where we can rest about an hour or so, move around again. Tabini's plane's left, or will, very soon now. Just keep them wondering. We hope so, at least."