32 | THE GREAT MALL
Tyler slammed the dashboard with the flat of his hand. “Come on!” he said to the driver for the third time in the last sixty seconds.
The van veered around the corner onto South Abel Street, tires smoking. The siren screamed at other traffic to stay out of their way.
“Tyler, it’s Control. The van has turned onto the Nimitz Freeway.”
Tyler thought about that for a moment. “Stupid kids. Okay, shut the van down. We’re just about there, and the next exit is not until California Circle. They’ll be trapped on the freeway. Shut it down now.”
“Confirming that—shutting down van four now.”
“Okay, all units, listen up,” Tyler said, finally feeling that he was recovering control of the situation. “We’re stopping the van on the freeway. Red Two, I want your team to keep moving over to California Circle and come in through the exit. Block them from getting out that way. We’ll come up behind them.”
“Tyler, it’s Control again; we may have a problem.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve engaged the remote shutdown, but the van is still moving, sir.”
Damn! Those hacker kids must have found a way to disable the LoJack mechanism. He thought that was supposed to be impossible.
Vienna was back in a few moments with a couple of Walmart plastic shopping bags, packed with items.
“We won’t have long,” she said. “They’ll backtrack from where we parked the van and find us on the parking lot cameras. We have to keep moving before they can close in on our trail.”
“I hope you paid cash,” Sam said, looking at the shopping bags.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No, I used my credit card. Egg.”
She pulled out some jackets and caps from the shopping bags. “We need to change our appearance. Just enough to fool the security cameras in the store.”
She handed Sam a long black Halloween witch’s wig.
“You’re kidding,” Sam said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Up close it’s obvious, but on the security cams they won’t be able to tell. Here, stick this on too.” She passed him a fake goatee.
She also put on a long black wig and pulled a short, curly blond one down over Dodge’s head, topping it off with an outsized baseball cap. She covered his black T-shirt with a padded nylon zippered jacket that Dodge wouldn’t have been seen dead wearing under any normal circumstances.
“He looks like a cross between a clown and a rap artist,” Sam muttered.
He pulled his wig on and attached the fake beard around his mouth. Vienna passed him a knitted hat and a nondescript Windbreaker, both of which he put on.
“You’re not exactly the bachelor of the year yourself,” Vienna said with a quick grin.
“I think you’re enjoying this,” Sam said.
“Having the time of my life,” Vienna said, but the grin was gone. “Where do we go once we get into the mall? You got any ideas?”
Sam shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Well, you’d better figure out something soon,” Vienna said. “It won’t take Tactical long to work out where we went.”
“Maybe we can get down to the parking levels and borrow a car,” Sam said.
“Maybe.” Vienna didn’t seem convinced.
Sam looked at Dodge. His eyes still seemed soft and vacant, and since that one word, “Vienna,” he had not spoken.
“There will be cameras everywhere,” Vienna said. “We’ll try to stay in a crowd as much as possible. Make sure you never look directly at a camera. If you can’t help it, put your hands in front of your face and pretend you’re sneezing.”
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
From fifty yards away, through the growing crush of peak-hour traffic, Tyler could see the problem. They might have shut down the van, but the van was attached to the back of an A & A Towing truck.
The siren and lights made a path for them through the lanes, and he pulled up alongside the truck, ordering the driver to pull over with the van’s loudspeaker.
He was out of the van and up on the running board of the tow truck before it had even come to a halt.
“Where did you pick this up?” he shouted at the driver, although he was pretty sure he already knew.
The mall was bustling with shoppers, and it was easy to lose themselves in the thick of the crowd. To his left, Sam noticed a store with a huge three-dimensional model of a neuro-headset displayed in the window. The name of the store was NEURO-TICK, emblazoned on the wall above the store windows. The store’s slogan underneath proclaimed YOUR STORE FOR EVERYTHING NEURO.
A few yards in front, Vienna was walking with her arm around Dodge and his around hers. Her head was on his shoulder, and his head rested on hers. To a casual viewer, they looked like any boyfriend and girlfriend, with no indication that one of the couple was just a few notches above brain-dead.
A girl in a white T-shirt walked toward him, wearing a neuro-cap—a baseball cap with a built-in neuro-headset—chatting animatedly to a friend walking next to her. Sam quickly pretended to sneeze, covering his face with his hands until she was gone.
He increased his pace, moving past Vienna and Dodge and muttering out of the corner of his mouth as he did so, “It’s not just cameras we need to worry about. Keep away from anyone wearing neuro.”
Vienna said nothing, but he knew she had heard. He stopped and looked in a store window for a moment to let them get back in front.
A young couple walked past wearing matching neuro-caps. They were smiling at each other, sharing secret thoughts. They did not glance at him; they were too besotted with each other. Sam felt that he had blinked and the whole world had turned neuro. Three months ago, neuro-headsets were a rare sight, but now everybody had them.
A security guard on a raised walkway was staring straight at him. Was that uniform cap a neuro-headset too? Sam wondered.
The man looked away. It was not.
Vienna stopped in her tracks and turned toward Dodge, as if having a conversation with him, although Sam knew that was not possible. Not yet. He moved closer and glanced idly around the mall, paying no attention to them.
“ATM ahead,” Vienna said. “Wait till someone goes to use it—that’ll block the security camera.”
“Okay,” Sam said.
“Where are we heading?” Vienna asked. “Any ideas yet?”
“I’m not sure,” Sam said. “But I know we have to keep moving.”
Vienna nodded slightly, to let him know that she had heard. After a moment, a large woman with a child in a stroller and two more in tow walked up to the ATM and inserted a card. Vienna started walking at once with Dodge. Sam counted to three, then followed her. They repeated the procedure at two more ATMs as they made their way toward the large center court of the mall.
A sign caught his eye in a corridor that led off to the left.
Sam quickened his step and passed Vienna, whispering as he did so, “Follow me.”