by Dean Koontz
“Maybe.”
“They’d be excited, overconfident, caught up in the moment.”
They were both aboard the Suburban. The engine of the motor home turned over, started.
Jane said, “We’re too deep in for a change of plans. It’s this or nothing. Let’s roll.”
18
IN THE BEDROOM OF THE Tiffin Allegro, Cornell Jasperson found the secret space under the queen-size bed to be comfortable and even pleasant. He was not having an anxiety attack, but darkness always calmed him in the throes of such an event, and it calmed him now. As when he was burning with anxiety, Cornell imagined himself floating in a soothing pool of cool water. Under the bed platform, where no one could touch him, he wouldn’t go nutbar and make a spectacle of himself at the very worst moment, which might have happened if he had remained in the Suburban.
The motor home began to move, slowly at first and then faster. Engine rumble and road noise filtered up into the secret space where Cornell lay. It wasn’t pleasant to the ear, but he could endure it. This wasn’t like the sound of the airplane that had touched him all over like thousands of crawling ants and spooked him into an anxiety attack. He would be all right. He really would. Nobody could touch him here.
Mr. Riggowitz seemed like a good person. Very old, but gentle and concerned. A nice smile. When he’d shown Cornell the space under the bed, Mr. Riggowitz said he’d driven from one end of the country to the other, over and over again, so he knew what he was doing behind the wheel of the motor home. He would do a fine job. They were safe in his hands.
Nevertheless, Cornell wished that their driver was Mr. Paul Simon, the songwriter and singer. He knew it wasn’t realistic to wish for this. Mr. Paul Simon was too famous and probably too rich to drive a bus for anyone, though a constant kindness in his music suggested he would be a person of humility and understanding who would do anything that he could to assist someone in distress.
A disturbing thought occurred to Cornell. Until recently, he had worn his hair in dreadlocks like Mr. Bob Marley, the singer, but he cut them off when he learned that the reggae star had been dead for decades. Although he loved Mr. Paul Simon’s music, he did not closely follow the singer’s life, and now he realized that he didn’t know if Mr. Paul Simon was alive or had passed away.
If Mr. Paul Simon had passed away, Cornell shouldn’t be wishing that the singer-songwriter was driving the motor home. Mr. Riggowitz was very old, but alive, which made him better suited to the task.
Thinking about all this, Cornell became nervous. The darkness and the imaginary pool of cool and soothing water were helpful, but to further calm himself, he began to sing aloud softly, “Diamonds on the soles of my shoes.”
19
JANE HAWK KNEW THE DESERT offered unique beauty, but under the current circumstances, this stark realm seemed to have been salted and otherwise poisoned. What little grew across the pale surrounding plain appeared misshapen and threatening, as though the roots of all the local flora extended far down into infernal regions, originating in the tortured souls of the citizens of that deep darkness.
When they had first arrived here, the land had seemed to speak to her, and now she felt that it repeated what it had said then: The boy is mine now and forever.
They had arrived on County Highway S22, but they were leaving on State Highway 78 to avoid encountering the same agents at the same roadblock. Bernie had entered the valley as ordinary Albert Neary, but he was leaving with an FBI escort, which couldn’t be easily explained to those who remembered him from a few hours earlier.
Luther drove five miles below the speed limit. They didn’t want to appear to be fleeing and thereby draw undue interest. In the motor home, Bernie remained only three car lengths behind them.
Traffic seemed heavier than normal, nearly all of it outbound from the valley. The motorists who passed the Tiffin and Suburban were traveling much faster than the speed limit. Although nothing about the people glimpsed in those vehicles confirmed their panic, Jane suspected an urgent exodus was under way, inspired by extreme, bizarre violence witnessed and rumored.
She had a second thirty-two-round drum for the Auto Assault-12. The barrel of the shotgun was still warm when she changed out the depleted magazine.
Whether the search operation had learned that she was in an FBI Suburban or whether that discovery died with the crew of the Airbus, security at all the roadblocks had surely tightened in the hours since she arrived. The professionals hunting her possessed intuition no less keen than hers. They would feel in their bones that this was the day when she would come, that she was among them, and in fact that she might already have her boy and be on the way out.
Furthermore, they evidently had augmented their searchers with a cadre of adjusted people, and something had gone terribly wrong. The ensuing chaos gave them another reason to conduct tighter searches of every outbound and inbound vehicle. They might even seal off the valley for the duration and allow no one to enter or leave.
She couldn’t risk the motor home being subjected to a closer inspection than it had received earlier in the day. She and Luther would try to bluff their way through the roadblock with Bureau ID and badges that she’d gotten on Monday from her source in Reseda.
Duke and Queenie might give them away; however, the dogs might as likely add credibility to their story of escorting a VIP Arcadian out of the chaos zone. Yes, it was known that Gavin and Jessica Washington owned a pair of German shepherds. But Jane suspected most of these elitist Arcadian creeps would be unable to imagine that she might risk rescuing the dogs along with her boy. Their ethics, such as any existed, were utilitarian ethics. Were their roles and hers reversed, they would abandon the dogs or even kill them rather than bring them along. Fortunately, Duke and Queenie were of the breed most often trained to assist law-enforcement officers, and the Bureau employed a kennel’s worth of them.
After certain events in Iron Furnace, Kentucky, Luther had been publicly connected to Jane. However, he hadn’t been at her side during subsequent hits she made on Arcadians in Orange County, California, and Lake Tahoe. They might think he had died or gone to ground in grief over the nanoweb enslavement of his wife and older daughter, unwilling to risk his remaining child, Jolie, by further helping America’s most-wanted fugitive. Luther could not disguise his race or his size, but his shaved head, beard, and new wardrobe might be enough to avoid suspicion.
As for Jane, she was being Elinor Dashwood. Shoulder-length blond hair long gone. Pixie-cut chestnut-brown wig. Colored contact lenses to turn her blue eyes brown. Stage-prop glasses. A simple disguise was nearly always successful if worn with confidence. Never avoid eye contact. When stared at, stare back. When flirted with, flirt in return. Don’t evade casual conversations with strangers; in fact, initiate them. Know who Elinor Dashwood is, and then be her.
They were approaching the crest of a low rise when Luther said, “Something’s on fire.”
A dark column churned high into the faded-blue sky. Three vultures circled the smoke as though it bore the scent of charred carrion that whet their appetite.
The Suburban topped the rise. Half a mile ahead, lightbars flashed on the barricading vehicles, one of which burned furiously.
20
THE WATER SURGING IN THE gutters bears upon it phosphorescent laces of foam. Deprived of wind, the rain falls hard in plumb lines. Thin scarves of fog do not race like the rain, but instead wander through the day to a different tempo, like lost spirits seeking some final resting place, glowing with the lightning as if each bolt is a welcoming call that lures them toward some far shore.
The scene is beautiful, and it is crafted solely to enhance the drama of what Egon Gottfrey will soon do. Yet he’s weary of it.
Here in eastern Texas, in the central time zone, perhaps half an hour of daylight remains, but the dark-gray overcast is so thick that the sun seems already to be setting
behind the swollen clouds. He is eager to proceed and would approach the target house now if only the storm would relent.
A moment later, the volume of rain diminishes. Becomes a light drizzle. The drizzle becomes sprinkles. The arsenal of Heaven seems to have fired its last thunderbolt. In the gathering gloom, the rain entirely stops.
21
LUTHER SAID, “THIS DOESN’T LOOK good.”
Vehicles had been ordered off the road and were parked on the flanking desert, three long parallel rows beside the outbound lane, many fewer along the inbound side. Agents wearing FBI T-shirts and baseball caps were carrying riot guns and watching over the restive motorists in their cars and trucks. The Bureau boys looked pissed, as though they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot out tires—maybe even a windshield—if one of the drivers they’d ordered into limbo decided to tramp on the accelerator and take off.
Jane said, “If we are who we say we are, we’ll play it bold. Drive straight into it but slow.”
In the eastbound lane, a disabled Dodge Charger, which perhaps had been serving as a barricade, had been T-boned at high speed by a Cadillac Escalade. The Charger was on its side, afire. The front doors stood open on the Caddy.
Evidently run down by the Escalade, two mangled corpses—one male, one female—lay in the eastbound lane.
As Luther pulled around the dead to proceed slowly eastbound in the westbound lane, an armed agent waved him vigorously toward the shoulder of the highway.
“We’re coming straight at them, so they can’t see the FBI on the roof and doors,” Luther said.
“Or maybe the Airbus pilot got the word out, and these guys are on to our game.”
Jane put down the window in her door as Luther lowered his. She held out the badge in her right hand, raised high for all to see, as Luther offered his in his left hand.
The agent still waved them insistently to the side of the road, and two other men warily moved forward with their shotguns raised, one to each flank of the Suburban.
With the motor home close behind, Luther braked to a stop, but didn’t leave the pavement.
The Auto Assault-12 stood between Jane’s knees, butt on the floor, muzzle aimed toward the ceiling. Under the circumstances, it availed her nothing. Any attempt to use it would draw instant fire from the two approaching agents.
The man who came to the driver’s side saw FBI on the door, but he didn’t lower his weapon. Blood spattered his face, maybe not his own blood. From a distance, Jane had thought these men looked angry, and they did, but they were also terrified, wide-eyed and as pale as soap, wound so tight that if a neural spring failed, there could be unintended shotgun fire.
“What’s happened here?” Luther asked.
Staying three steps back from the driver’s door, the agent spoke as if Luther’s simple question was an affront. “What happened here? What do you think happened here? What’s it look like happened here. Freakin’ zombies happened, like they’re happening everywhere.”
The agent on Jane’s side said, “In like ten seconds one of our guys had his face chewed apart, torn off. What kind of crazy bastard can do that, can even think of doing it?”
Luther said, “That’s why we’ve been ordered to escort the man in the motor home the hell out of here.”
The bloodied agent looked toward the Tiffin Allegro. “Who’s he, he gets an escort?”
“Better you don’t know a name. There’s no revolution without him. He’s from the central committee.”
Jane leaned toward the console and looked through the driver’s door window at the agent. She didn’t have to fake anxiety; her voice was shot through with fear for her boy. “Hey, listen, the guy in the RV is a mean ballbuster. You want to know who really runs the DOJ and the Bureau, pulls the strings—it’s not the attorney general or the director, it’s that sonofabitch back there. If we don’t get him out of here fast and then something goes wrong, we’ll wind up with needles in our arms. Maybe you have bigger worries right now, but number one with me is being injected and brain-fucked. So can you just, damn it, please cut us some slack?”
The agent glanced at the Tiffin again, then quickly away, as if the man up there behind the wheel might curse him with the evil eye. He was harried, shaken, thrown off his game by recent weird events. “All right. Go on through. But slow. It’s a mess.”
Although Luther and Jane had been granted permission to proceed, the other agents watched them with sharp suspicion as they passed. Beyond the wrecked Cadillac and the burning Dodge Charger, four more bodies were splayed on the pavement, two perhaps cut down by gunfire, at least one of the others butchered in a manner that Jane could not discern.
Small flying insects of a species unknown to her had ventured forth from their shadowed havens into the desert heat, enticed by the feast of fresh blood. Wings silvered by sunlight, they swarmed in shimmering hysteria above the dead, and the burning car smoked into a sky as pale and dry as the land below. Beyond the windows of the impounded vehicles alongside the highway could be seen stricken faces, drivers and passengers who seemed as patient as spectral voyagers waiting on the bank of that final, black river for the ferry that forever conveyed travelers in only one direction.
As the scene of horror and chilling portent receded, Jane felt no relief. The junction of State Highways 78 and 86 lay about twenty miles ahead, and the town of Indio—where they would return to the comparative safety of Ferrante Escobar’s fenced property—was almost another fifty miles farther. In seventy miles, in this new wicked world aborning, anything could happen.
22
IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, THE DOWNPOUR ceases only temporarily, to facilitate Egon Gottfrey’s approach to the target house. Once he gains entrance to the residence, no doubt the Unknown Playwright will cue the lightning and thunder, crank on the spigot, and flood the scene with storm effects once more, as this act of the drama moves toward its violent, Wagnerian conclusion.
Carrying the Medexpress container and a tote bag, he crosses the quiet street to the house that stands three doors south of the one where Ancel and Clare Hawk abide in a false sense of security. He turns north.
The storm in intermission clots and blackens the sky no less than during its performance. The early dusk it has brought to Conroe becomes darker with each step that Gottfrey takes.
The following is what he knows by dint of extensive use of NSA data troves and connections. Sue Ann McMaster, born Sue Ann Luckman, the clerk at the bus station in Killeen, was once married to Roger John Spencer, her first husband, for eight months prior to his death in a traffic accident. Roger’s mother is Mary Ann Spencer, now the manager of the bus station in Beaumont, who presented Egon with the staged video of Ancel and Clare stand-ins arriving from Houston. Tucker Treadmont, the young Uber driver with man breasts and a snarky attitude—who led Egon, Rupert, and Vince out of Beaumont to an abandoned house in the boonies—is the son of Arnette and Cory Treadmont. Arnette’s maiden name is Lemon. She is the daughter of Lisa and Carl Lemon. Carl is Lisa’s second husband. Her first was one Bobby Lee Bricker. Lisa and Bobby Lee, now in their seventies, had a child all those years ago and named him Lonnie John. Lonnie John Bricker isn’t only the half brother of Arnette Lemon Treadmont, but is also the driver who, during a Skype interview with Gottfrey, claimed that Ancel and Clare Hawk were passengers when, on Monday, he drove the 10:25 bus from Killeen to Houston. This leaves Jim Lee Cassidy, the tall, folksy, white-haired Realtor and lying sack of shit in Killeen, who claimed that Ancel and Clare had been getting out of the Mercury Mountaineer in front of his office when his valise fell open, spilling a lot of important papers; supposedly they helped him pick up the documents before the wind blew them away, and then they hurried off in the direction of the bus station. Jim Lee Cassidy is surely the wily bastard who worked out this chain of deception. Sue Ann McMaster and her husband live in a house in Killeen that they acquired through Cassidy, as do Lonni
e John Bricker and his partner. Arnette and Cory Treadmont had lived in Beaumont, where their son Tucker still resides, but they later moved to Killeen, where they bought a house through the ever-busy Jim Lee Cassidy. The links between Cassidy and the Hawks were more difficult to uncover. Jim Lee has an older sister, Corrina June, seventy, who is married to one Preston Eugene Fletcher. Preston Fletcher has a twin sister, Posey, who is married to one Johnny Don Ackerman. Posey and Johnny Don have two daughters and a son, all grown. The son is Dr. David Ackerman, forty-two, a military historian and a civilian employee at the Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico, to which Nick Hawk had for a while been assigned. There Nick met Jane.
Those are facts known to Gottfrey, and the following are suppositions he makes from those discoveries. Nick and Jane Hawk were friends with Dr. David Ackerman at Quantico. Subsequent to Nick’s death and Jane’s ascension to the most-wanted-fugitive list, David Ackerman discreetly contacted the Hawks to say that he wanted to help any way he could, and Jane vouched for him to her in-laws. At some point it was decided that Ancel and Clare might one day need a bolt-hole and a plan to obscure the journey they would make to get to it. David Ackerman’s parents, Posey and Johnny Don, now retired, made a lot of money in the construction industry in Conroe. They lived in a large house on three acres, but owned as well a vacation home in Florida, where they spent part of the year. Whether they were home in Conroe or not, they were pleased to allow Ancel and Clare to hide there if and when the need arose. So Ancel and Claire didn’t drive the Longrins’ Mercury Mountaineer to Killeen. Say they drove it as far as Austin. Say they were met in Austin by Dr. David Ackerman’s sisters, Kay and Lucy. Say Kay drove them four hours to the house in Conroe, while Lucy drove the Mountaineer to Killeen and parked it in front of the real estate company owned by her uncle Jim Lee Cassidy, who then waited for the authorities to tie the Mercury Mountaineer to the Hawks and locate the vehicle by its GPS signal, so that he could send them to Sue Ann McMaster and the bus station.