by Dean Koontz
The Cessna Turbo Skylane RG knifed through the darkness, two miles above the Nevada desert, with the low clouds under it, wings plated silver by moonlight.
“Elliot?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this.”
“You don’t like my company?”
“You know what I mean. I’m really sorry.”
“Hey, you didn’t get me mixed up in it. You didn’t twist my arm. I practically volunteered to help you with the exhumation, and it all just fell apart from there. It’s not your fault.”
“Still . . . here you are, running for your life, and all because of me.”
“Nonsense. You couldn’t have known what would happen after I talked to Kennebeck.”
“I can’t help feeling guilty about involving you.”
“If it wasn’t me, it would have been some other attorney. And maybe he wouldn’t have known how to handle Vince. In which case, both he and you might be dead. So if you look at it that way, it worked out as well as it possibly could.”
“You’re really something else,” she said.
“What else am I?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as?”
“Terrific.”
“Not me. What else?”
“Brave.”
“Bravery is a virtue of fools.”
“Smart.”
“Not as smart as I think I am.”
“Tough.”
“I cry at sad movies. See, I’m not as great as you think I am.”
“You can cook.”
“Now that’s true!”
The Cessna hit an air pocket, dropped three hundred feet with a sickening lurch, and then soared to its correct altitude.
“A great cook but a lousy pilot,” she said.
“That was God’s turbulence. Complain to Him.”
“How long till we land in Reno?”
“Eighty minutes.”
George Alexander hung up the telephone. He was still sitting in Kennebeck’s wing chair. “Stryker and the woman took off from McCarran International more than two hours ago. They left in his Cessna. He filed a flight plan for Flagstaff.”
The judge stopped pacing. “Arizona?”
“That’s the only Flagstaff I know. But why would they go to Arizona, of all places?”
“They probably didn’t,” Kennebeck said. “I figure Elliot filed a false flight plan to throw you off his trail.” He was perversely proud of Stryker’s cleverness.
“If they actually headed for Flagstaff,” Alexander said, “they ought to have landed by now. I’ll call the night manager at the airport down there, pretend to be FBI, see what he can tell me.”
Because the Network did not officially exist, it couldn’t openly use its authority to gather information. As a result, Network agents routinely posed as FBI men, with counterfeit credentials in the names of actual FBI agents.
While he waited for Alexander to finish with the night manager at the Flagstaff airport, Kennebeck moved from one model ship to another. For the first time in his experience, the sight of this bottled fleet didn’t calm him.
Fifteen minutes later Alexander put down the telephone. “Stryker isn’t on the Flagstaff field. And he hasn’t yet been identified in their airspace.”
“Ah. So his flight plan was a red herring.”
“Unless he crashed between here and there,” Alexander said hopefully.
Kennebeck grinned. “He didn’t crash. But where the hell did he go?”
“Probably in the opposite direction,” Alexander said. “Southern California.”
“Ah. Los Angeles?”
“Or Santa Barbara. Burbank. Long Beach. Ontario. Orange County. There are a lot of airports within the range of that little Cessna.”
They were both silent, thinking. Then Kennebeck said, “Reno. That’s where they went. Reno.”
“You were so sure they didn’t know a thing about the Sierra labs,” Alexander said. “Have you changed your mind?”
“No. I still think you could have avoided issuing all those termination orders. Look, they can’t be going up to the mountains, because they don’t know where the laboratories are. They don’t know anything more about Project Pandora than what they picked up from that list of questions they took off Vince Immelman.”
“Then why Reno?”
Pacing, Kennebeck said, “Now that we’ve tried to kill them, they know the story of the Sierra accident was entirely contrived. They figure there’s something wrong with the little boy’s body, something odd that we can’t afford to let them see. So now they’re twice as anxious to see it. They’d exhume it illegally if they could, but they can’t get near the cemetery with us watching it. And Stryker knows for sure that we’ve got it staked out. So if they can’t open the grave and see for themselves what we’ve done to Danny Evans, what are they going to do instead? They’re going to do the next best thing—talk to the person who was supposedly the last one to see the boy’s corpse before it was sealed in the coffin. They’re going to ask him to describe the condition of the boy in minute detail.”
“Richard Pannafin is the coroner in Reno. He issued the death certificate,” Alexander said.
“No. They won’t go to Pannafin. They’ll figure he’s involved in the cover-up.”
“Which he is. Reluctantly.”
“So they’ll go to see the mortician who supposedly prepared the boy’s body for burial.”
“Bellicosti.”
“Was that his name?”
“Luciano Bellicosti,” Alexander said. “But if that’s where they went, then they’re not just hiding out, licking their wounds. Good God, they’ve actually gone on the offensive!”
“That’s Stryker’s military-intelligence training taking hold,” Kennebeck said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s not going to be an easy target. He could destroy the Network, given half a chance. And the woman’s evidently not one to hide or run away from a problem either. We have to go after these two with more care than usual. What about this Bellicosti? Will he keep his mouth shut?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander said uneasily. “We have a pretty good hold on him. He’s an Italian immigrant. He lived here for eight or nine years before he decided to apply for citizenship. He hadn’t gotten his papers yet when we found ourselves needing a cooperative mortician. We put a freeze on his application with the Bureau of Immigration, and we threatened to have him deported if he didn’t do what we wanted. He didn’t like it. But citizenship was a big enough carrot to keep him motivated. However . . . I don’t think we’d better rely on that carrot any longer.”
“This is a hell of an important matter,” Kennebeck said. “And it sounds to me as if Bellicosti knows too much about it.”
“Terminate the bastard,” Alexander said.
“Eventually, but not necessarily right now. If too many bodies pile up at once, we’ll be drawing attention to—”
“Take no chances,” Alexander insisted. “We’ll terminate him. And the coroner too, I think. Scrub away the whole trail.” He reached for the phone.
“Surely you don’t want to take such drastic action until you’re positive Stryker actually is headed for Reno. And you won’t know for sure until he lands up there.”
Alexander hesitated with his hand on the phone. “But if I wait, I’m just giving him a chance to keep one step ahead.” Worried, he continued to hesitate, anxiously chewing his lip.
“There’s a way to find out if it’s really Reno he’s headed for. When he gets there, he’ll need a car. Maybe he’s already arranged for one to be waiting.”
Alexander nodded. “We can call the rental agencies at the Reno airport.”
“No need to call. The hacker geeks in computer operations can probably access all the rental agencies’ data files long distance.”
Alexander picked up the phone and gave the order.
Fifteen minutes later computer operations called back with its
report. Elliot Stryker had a rental car reserved for late-night pickup at the Reno airport. He was scheduled to take possession of it shortly before midnight.
“That’s a bit sloppy of him,” Kennebeck said, “considering how clever he’s been so far.”
“He figures we’re focusing on Arizona, not Reno.”
“It’s still sloppy,” Kennebeck said, disappointed. “He should have built a double blind to protect himself.”
“So it’s like I said.” Alexander’s crooked smile appeared. “He isn’t as sharp as he used to be.”
“Let’s not start crowing too soon,” Kennebeck said. “We haven’t caught him yet.”
“We will,” Alexander said, his composure restored. “Our people in Reno will have to move fast, but they’ll manage. I don’t think it’s a good idea to hit Stryker and the woman in a public place like an airport.”
What an uncharacteristic display of reserve, Kennebeck thought sourly.
“I don’t even think we should put a tail on them as soon as they get there,” Alexander said. “Stryker will be expecting a tail. Maybe he’ll elude it, and then he’ll be spooked.”
“Get to the rental car before he does. Slap a transponder on it. Then you can follow him without being seen, at your leisure.”
“We’ll try it,” Alexander said. “We’ve got less than an hour, so there might not be time. But even if we don’t get a beeper on the damn car, we’re okay. We know where they’re going. We’ll just eliminate Bellicosti and set up a trap at the funeral home.”
He snatched up the telephone and dialed the Network office in Reno.
chapter twenty-five
In Reno, which billed itself as “The Biggest Little City in the World,” the temperature hovered at twenty-one degrees above zero as midnight approached. Above the lights that cast a frosty glow on the airport parking lot, the heavily shrouded sky was moonless, starless, perfectly black. Snow flurries were dancing on a changeable wind.
Elliot was glad they had bought a couple of heavy coats before leaving Las Vegas. He wished they’d thought of gloves; his hands were freezing.
He threw their single suitcase into the trunk of the rented Chevrolet. In the cold air, white clouds of exhaust vapor swirled around his legs.
He slammed the trunk lid and surveyed the snow-dusted cars in the parking lot. He couldn’t see anyone in any of them. He had no feeling of being watched.
When they had landed, they’d been alert for unusual activity on the runway and in the private-craft docking yard—suspicious vehicles, an unusual number of ground crewmen—but they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Then as he had signed for the rental car and picked up the keys from the night clerk, he had kept one hand in a pocket of his coat, gripping the handgun he’d taken off Vince in Las Vegas—but there was no trouble.
Perhaps the phony flight plan had thrown the hounds off the trail. Now he went to the driver’s door and climbed into the Chevy, where Tina was fiddling with the heater.
“My blood’s turning to ice,” she said.
Elliot held his hand to the vent. “We’re getting some warm air already.”
From his coat, he withdrew the pistol and put it on the seat between him and Christina, the muzzle pointed toward the dashboard.
“You really think we should confront Bellicosti at this hour?” she asked.
“Sure. It’s not very late.”
In an airport-terminal telephone directory, Tina had found the address of the Luciano Bellicosti Funeral Home. The night clerk at the rental agency, from whom they had signed out the car, had known exactly where Bellicosti’s place was, and he had marked the shortest route on the free city map provided with the Chevy.
Elliot flicked on the overhead light and studied the map, then handed it to Tina. “I think I can find it without any trouble. But if I get lost, you’ll be the navigator.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
He snapped off the overhead light and reached for the gearshift.
With a distant click, the light that he had just turned off now turned itself on.
He looked at Tina, and she met his eyes.
He clicked off the light again.
Immediately it switched on.
“Here we go,” Tina said.
The radio came on. The digital station indicator began to sweep across the frequencies. Split-second blasts of music, commercials, and disc jockeys’ voices blared senselessly out of the speakers.
“It’s Danny,” Tina said.
The windshield wipers started thumping back and forth at top speed, adding their metronomical beat to the chaos inside the Chevy.
The headlights flashed on and off so rapidly that they created a stroboscopic effect, repeatedly “freezing” the falling snow, so that it appeared as if the white flakes were descending to the ground in short, jerky steps.
The air inside the car was bitterly cold and growing colder by the second.
Elliot put his right hand against the dashboard vent. Heat was pushing out of it, but the air temperature continued to plunge.
The glove compartment popped open.
The ashtray slid out of its niche.
Tina laughed, clearly delighted.
The sound of her laughter startled Elliot, but then he had to admit to himself that he did not feel menaced by the work of this poltergeist. In fact, just the opposite was true. He sensed that he was witnessing a joyous display, a warm greeting, the excited welcome of a child-ghost. He was overwhelmed by the astonishing notion that he could actually feel goodwill in the air, a tangible radiation of love and affection. A not unpleasant shiver raced up his spine. Apparently, this was the same astonishing awareness of being buffeted by waves of love that had caused Tina’s laughter.
She said, “We’re coming, Danny. Hear me if you can, baby. We’re coming to get you. We’re coming.”
The radio switched off, and so did the overhead light.
The windshield wipers stopped thumping.
The headlights blinked off and stayed off.
Stillness.
Silence.
Scattered flakes of snow collided softly with the windshield.
In the car, the air grew warm again.
Elliot said, “Why does it get cold every time he uses his . . . psychic abilities?”
“Who knows? Maybe he’s able to move objects by harnessing the heat energy in the air, changing it somehow. Or maybe it’s something else altogether. We’ll probably never know. He might not understand it himself. Anyway, that isn’t important. What’s important is that my Danny is alive. There’s no doubt about that. Not now. Not anymore. And I gather from your question, you’ve become a believer too.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said, still mildly amazed by his own change of heart and mind. “Yeah, I believe there’s a chance you’re right.”
“I know I am.”
“Something extraordinary happened to that expedition of scouts. And something downright uncanny has happened to your son.”
“But at least he’s not dead,” Tina said.
Elliot saw tears of happiness shining in her eyes.
“Hey,” he said worriedly, “better keep a tight rein on your hopes. Okay? We’ve got a long, long way to go. We don’t even know where Danny is or what shape he’s in. We’ve got a gauntlet to run before we can find him and bring him back. We might both be killed before we even get close to him.”
He drove away from the airport. As far as he could tell, no one followed them.
chapter twenty-six
Suffering one of his occasional bouts of claustrophobia, Dr. Carlton Dombey felt as though he had been swallowed alive and was trapped now in the devil’s gut.
Deep inside the secret Sierra complex, three stories below ground level, this room measured forty feet by twenty. The low ceiling was covered with a spongy, pebbly, yellowish soundproofing, which gave the chamber a peculiar organic quality. Fluorescent tubes shed cold light over banks of computers and over worktables laden with journals, c
harts, file folders, scientific instruments, and two coffee mugs.
In the middle of the west wall—one of the two shorter walls—opposite the entrance to the room, was a six-foot-long, three-foot-high window that provided a view of another space, which was only half as large as this outer chamber. The window was constructed like a sandwich: Two one-inch-thick panes of shatterproof glass surrounded an inch-wide space filled with an inert gas. Two panes of ironlike glass. Stainless-steel frame. Four airtight rubber seals—one around the both faces of each pane. This viewport was designed to withstand everything from a gunshot to an earthquake; it was virtually inviolable.
Because it was important for the men who worked in the large room to have an unobstructed view of the smaller inner chamber at all times, four angled ceiling vents in both rooms bathed the glass in a continuous flow of warm, dry air to prevent condensation and clouding. Currently the system wasn’t working, for three-quarters of the window was filmed with frost.
Dr. Carlton Dombey, a curly-haired man with a bushy mustache, stood at the window, blotting his damp hands on his medical whites and peering anxiously through one of the few frost-free patches of glass. Although he was struggling to cast off the seizure of claustrophobia that had gripped him, was trying to pretend that the organic-looking ceiling wasn’t pressing low over his head and that only open sky hung above him instead of thousands of tons of concrete and steel rock, his own panic attack concerned him less than what was happening beyond the viewport.
Dr. Aaron Zachariah, younger than Dombey, clean-shaven, with straight brown hair, leaned over one of the computers, reading the data that flowed across the screen. “The temperature’s dropped thirty-five degrees in there during the past minute and a half,” Zachariah said worriedly. “That can’t be good for the boy.”
“Every time it’s happened, it’s never seemed to bother him,” Dombey said.
“I know, but—”
“Check out his vital signs.”
Zachariah moved to another bank of computer screens, where Danny Evans’s heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature, and brainwave activity were constantly displayed. “Heartbeat’s normal, maybe even slightly slower than before. Blood pressure’s all right. Body temp unchanged. But there’s something unusual about the EEG reading.”