"Shmontses, huh?" Ginger Weiss said, pretending anger.
Still grinning, the writer said, "If the Yiddish fits, wear it."
That was the moment when Jorja knew Dominick Corvaisis' heart was
already claimed and that she would have to exclude him from any romantic
fantasies she might cook up in the future. The spark of desire and
glimmer of deep affection shone brightly in his eyes when he looked at
Ginger Weiss. The same heat warmed the physician's gaze. The funny
thing was, neither Dom nor Ginger appeared quite to realize the true
power of their feelings for each other. Not quite yet, butsoon.
They drove out of Elko, toward the Tranquility, thirty miles to the
west. As twilight faded toward night in the east, Dom and Ginger told
Jorja what had happened prior to her and Marcie's arrival. Jorja found
it increasingly difficult to hold the good mood she'd been in since
stepping off the plane. As they sped through the gloom-mantled barrens,
with craggy and threatening black mountains thrusting up at the horizon
under a blood-dark sky, Jorja wondered if this place was, as she had
thought, the threshold of a new beginning . . . or a doorway to the
grave.
After the Lear landed in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jack Twist quickly
transferred to a chartered Cessna Turbo Skylane RG piloted by a polite
but tight-lipped man with a huge handlebar mustache. They arrived in
Elko, Nevada, at four-fifty-three, in the last light of day.
The airport was too small to have Hertz and Avis counters, but a local
entrepreneur operated a modest little taxi company. Jack had the cab
take him-and his three big suitcases-to a local Jeep dealership, where
they were getting ready to close, and where he startled the salesman by
paying cash for a four-wheel-drive Cherokee wagon.
To this point, Jack, took no evasive action to shake off a tail or even
to determine if he had one. His adversaries clearly possessed great
power and resources, and regardless of how frantically he tried to elude
them, they would have sufficient manpower to keep tabs on a lone target
trying to escape on foot or by taxi in a town as small as Elko.
Once the Cherokee was his, Jack drove away from the dealership, and for
the first time he looked for a tail. He glanced repeatedly at the
rearview and side mirrors, but he spotted no suspicious vehicles.
He went directly to an Arco Mini-Mart that he had noticed during the
taxi ride from the airport. He parked at the dark end of the lot,
beyond the reach of the are lamps, got out of the wagon, and surveyed
the shadowy street behind for an indication of a pursuer.
He saw no one.
That didn't mean they weren't out there.
In the Mini-Mart, the blindingly excessive fluorescent lighting and
chrome display fixtures made him long for the good old days of quaint
corner groceries operated by immigrant couples who spoke with appealing
accents, where the air would have been redolent of Mama's homemade baked
goods and Papa's made-to-order deli sandwiches. Here, the only aromas
were a vague trace of disinfectant and the thin odor of ozone coming off
the motors of refrigerated display cases. Squinting in the glare, Jack
bought a map of the county, a flashlight, a quart of milk, two packages
of dried beef, a little box of small chocolate doughnuts-and, on a
morbid impulse, something called a "Hamwich," which was "a guaranteed
delicious onepiece sandwich of pulverized, blended, remolded ham paste,
bread, and spices," and which was claimed to be especially "convenient
for hikers, campers, and sportsmen." Ham paste?
At the bottom of the airtight plastic package was this legend: REAL
MEAT.
Jack laughed. They had to tell you it was "real meat" because, even
though it was wrapped in clear plastic, you couldn't tell what the hell
it was by looking at it. Yes, siroh, yes-ham paste and real meat: That
was why he had gone to Central America to fight for his country.
He wished Jenny were alive and here with him. Real meat. As opposed to
fake, polyester meat. She'd have gotten a kick out of that.
When he walked out of the Mini-Mart, he paused to study the street
again, but again he saw no one suspicious.
He returned to the Cherokee at the dark end of the lot and put up the
tailgate. He opened one of his suitcases, withdrew an empty nylon
rucksack, the Beretta, a loaded clip, a box of .32 ammunition, and one
of the pipe-type silencers. As his breath steamed from him in the cold
air, he transferred the groceries from the paper bag to the rucksack. He
screwed the silencer onto the gun, slammed the loaded clip into the
butt. When he had distributed all the loose ammunition among the many
pockets of his heavily insulated leather jacket, he closed the tailgate.
Behind the wheel of the Cherokee once more, Jack put the Beretta on the
seat beside him and set the rucksack on top of it for concealment. Using
the new flashlight, he passed a few minutes studying the map of Elko
County. When he switched the flashlight off and put the map away, he
was ready to engage the enemy.
For the next five minutes, he drove through Elko, using every trick he
knew to reveal a tail, staying on quiet residential streets where
traffic was light and where a surveillance team would be as obvious as a
festering cold sore, no matter how good they were. Nothing.
He parked at the end of a cul-de-sac and got an anti-surveillance
broadband receiver from one of the suitcases. This device, the size of
two packs of cigarettes, with a short antenna that telescoped out of the
top, received all possible radio bands from 30 to 120, including FM from
88 to 108. If a transmitter had been fixed to the Jeep while he was in
the market, enabling a tail to follow at a distance, his broadband
receiver would pick up the signals; a feedback loop would cause the
receiver to emit an ear-piercing squeal. He pointed the antenna at the
Jeep and slowly circled the vehicle.
The Cherokee had not been bugged.
He put the broadband receiver away and got behind the wheel of the wagon
again, where he sat for a minute in thought. He was under neither visual
nor electronic surveillance. Did that make sense? When his adversaries
put those Tranquility Motel postcards in his safe-deposit boxes, they
must have known he would come to Nevada at once. Surely they also knew
that he was a potentially dangerous man, and surely they would not allow
him to plot against them on their own turf unobserved. Yet that seemed
to be precisely what they were doing.
Frowning, Jack twisted the key in the ignition. The engine roared.
On the Lear from New York, he had pondered the situation at length and
had arrived at several theories (most of them half-baked) as to the
identity and intentions of his adversaries. Now he decided that nothing
he dreamed up was half as strange as whatever was actually happening.
No one was watching. That spooked him.
The inexplicable always spooked him.
When you couldn't understand a situation, that usually meant you were
missing somet
hing important. If you were missing something important,
that meant you had a blind side. If you had a blind side, you could get
your ass shot off when you were least expecting it.
Alert, cautious, Jack Twist drove north from Elko on State Route 51.
After a while, he turned west, following a series of gravel and dirt
tracks, sneaking behind the Tranquility Motel instead of making an open
approach on I-80. Eventually he was reduced to traveling overland on
sometimes dangerous terrain, from an elevation as high as four thousand
feet, down across sloping foothills toward the plains. When the clouds
parted, revealing a three-quarter moon, he switched off the headlights
and continued, guided only by the glow of the lunar lamp, and his eyes
soon adjusted to the night.
Jack topped a rise and saw the Tranquility Motel, a lonely group of
lights in a vast dark emptiness, a mile and a half below and southwest
of him, this side of I-80. There were not as many lights as there ought
to have been; either the place had little business or it was not open.
He did not want to advertise his arrival, so he would proceed on foot.
He left the Beretta in the Jeep and took the Uzi submachine gun.
Actually, he did not expect trouble. Not yet. His adversaries, whoever
the hell they were, had not teased him into coming all this way merely
to kill him. They could have killed him in New York if that was all
they wanted. Nevertheless, he was prepared for violence.
In addition to the Uzi-and a spare magazine-he took the rucksack of
groceries, a battery-powered directional microphone, and the Star Tron
night-vision device. He pulled on gloves and a toboggan cap.
Jack found the hike invigorating. The night was cold, and when the wind
gusted, it stung but not unpleasantly.
Because he'd expected to go to ground immediately upon arrival in
Nevada, he had dressed suitably when he left New York. He wore
high-topped hiking shoes with hard rubber soles and heavy tread,
longjohns and jeans, a sweater, and a leather jacket with a thick
quilted lining. The crew of the chartered Lear was surprised by his
appearance, but they treated him as if he were in tuxedo and top hat;
even an ugly man with one cast eye, dressed like an ordinary laborer,
elicited respect when he could afford to lease a private jet rather than
fly commercial airlines.
Now Jack walked. Ragged tears in the clouds disrobed the moon, and the
few widely scattered patches of snow shone brightly, as if they were
shards of bone glimpsed in the darker carcass of the hump-backed hills;
the bare earth, rock formations, sagebrush, and plentiful dry grass
accepted the caress of moonlight and were limned in a vague milky-blond
hue. But when the moon slipped behind the clouds, deep rich darkness
flooded forth.
At last he reached a suitable observation point on the southern slope of
a hill, only a quarter of a mile behind the Tranquility Motel. He sat
down, putting the Uzi and his rucksack aside.
The Star Tron night-vision device took available lightstarlight,
moonlight, the natural phosphorescence of snow and of certain plants,
meager electric light if any-and am plified it eighty-five thousand
times. With the gadget's single lens, Jack could transform all but the
very blackest nights into gray daylight or better.
He propped his elbows on his knees, held the Star Tron in both hands,
and focused on the Tranquility. The rear of the structure popped into
view with sufficient clarity for him to determine that no lookouts were
posted in any shadowed niches. None of the motel units had windows
along the back wall, so no guards could be watching from those rooms.
The center third of the motel had a second floor, probably the owner's
apartment, and light shone at most of those windows. However, he could
not see into the apartment because the drapes and blinds were drawn.
He put the Star Tron in the rucksack and picked up the battery-powered,
hand-held, directional microphone, which resembled a futuristic gun.
Only a few years ago, "rifle mikes" were effective to a distance of only
two hundred yards. But these days, a good power-amplified unit could
suck in a conversation up to a quarter of a mile, much farther if
conditions were ideal. The device included a pair of compact earphones,
which he put on. He aimed the mike at a window shielded by drapes, and
at once heard animated voices. However, he got only scraps of their
conversation because he was trying to pull their voices out of a closed
room and through a quartermile of blustery wind.
With great caution, he grabbed the Uzi and other gear, and moved closer,
choosing a second observation point less than a hundred yards from the
building. When he aimed the mike at the window again, he picked up
every word spoken beyond the glass, in spite of the muffling draperies.
He heard six voices, maybe more. They were eating dinner and
complimenting the cook (someone named Ned) and his helper (Sandy) on the
turkey, the pecan stuffing, and other dishes.
They're not just eating dinner, Jack thought enviously, they're having a
damned banquet in there.
He'd eaten a light lunch on the Lear but had taken nothing since. He
was still on Eastern Standard Time, so for him it was almost eleven
o'clock. He would probably be eavesdropping for hours, piecing together
these people's identities, gradually determining if they were his
adversaries. He was too hungry to wait that long for his own dinner,
such as it was. With a few rocks, he made a brace for the microphone to
keep it angled toward the window. He unwrapped the Hamwich and bit into
that "pulverized, blended, and remolded" treat. It tasted like sawdust
soaked in rancid bacon fat. He spat out the gummy mouthful and settled
down to a meager meal of dried beef and doughnuts, which would have been
more satisfying if he had not had to listen to those strangers indulging
in a modern version of a harvest feast.
Soon, Jack had heard enough of the conversation in the apartment to know
these people were not his enemies. Strangely, one way or another, they
had been drawn or summoned here, as he'd been. Monitoring them, he
began to think their voices were curiously familiar, and he was overcome
with the feeling that he belonged among them as a brother among family.
A woman named Ginger and a man-either Don or Dombegan to tell the others
about research they'd done earlier in the offices of the Elko Sentinel.
Listening to talk of toxic spills, roadblocks, and highly trained DERO
troops, Jack felt his appetite fading. DERO! Shit, he'd heard about
the DERO companies, though they'd been formed after he'd left the
service. They were gung-ho types who'd happily accept an order to go
into a pit against a grizzly bear, armed only with a meat grinder; and
they were tough enough to make sausages out of the bear. Forced to
choose between a quick, painless suicide and hand-to-hand combat with a
DERO, the ordinary man would be well-advised to blow his own brains out
and save himself pain. Jack realized he was i
nvolved in something far
bigger and more dangerous than fratellanza revenge or any of the other
things he had hypothesized during his flight from New York.
Although the picture he got from eavesdropping was full of holes, he
began to grasp that these people had come together to discover what had
happened to them the summer before last, the same weekend Jack had
stayed here. They'd made considerable headway in their investigation,
and Jack winced as they openly discussed their progress. They were so
naive that they thought closed doors and covered windows ensured
privacy. He wanted to shout: Hey, for God's sake, shut up already! If
I can hear you, they can hear you.
DERO. That bit of news made him even sicker than the Hamwich.
In the motel they continued to chatter, revealing their strat egy to the
enemy even as they worked it out, and at last Jack tore off the
earphones, frantically grabbed his guns and equipment, and hurried down
through the darkness toward the Tranquility Motel.
The apartment had no dining room, just the alcove in the kitchen, but
that area was too small to seat nine. In the living room, they moved
the furniture against the walls, brought in the kitchen table, and used
both extra leaves to extend it, accommodating everyone. To Dom, the
impromptu arrangements contributed to the feeling of a family gathering
and to the mood of cautious festivity.
Rather than have to repeat themselves, Dom and Ginger had waited until
dinner, when the group was gathered, to report on their research at the
newspaper in Elko. Now, over the clinking of silverware, they revealed
that the Army had blockaded I-80 minutes before the toxic spill that
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 62