“An avalanche of it,” she agreed.
“You think they had time to report finding us?”
“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