The cops stood in the parking lot and watched him get into the car he had rented that morning from the Avis representative at the Rogue Valley airport. He waved them a friendly goodbye and headed back in the direction of Carrie’s hotel.
When he got there, Carrie was perched on the bed in her room, wrapped in a white cotton robe, wet hair up in a towel, answering her cell phone. She looked exhausted, having been on air pretty much all night, reporting live from the scene almost hourly, the entire nation rising from east coast to west and tuning in to see a reporter who was still several steps ahead of the competition. Meanwhile, her newsroom back in New York had been working their law enforcement contacts hard, filling in the gaps for both her and, by extension, Lock.
She waved at Lock as he walked in, held the phone away from her ear and mouthed, ‘Ty.’
‘Ty?’ Lock asked, taking it from her. ‘How are you?’
Ty’s voice came through loud and clear. ‘I’m watching the news is how I am. What the hell happened?’
‘Ask him how he is,’ Carrie said, fighting back a yawn.
‘I already did.’ Lock tapped her bare knee. ‘Get some sleep.’
Carrie swatted at him. ‘Then ask him again.’
Lock cradled his cell between his ear and shoulder. ‘Carrie wants to know how you are.’
‘Stronger by the day, and just as good-looking as before.’
Lock looked at Carrie and sighed. ‘Seems that being shot has left Ty suffering from delusions of adequacy.’
‘I heard that,’ Ty protested. ‘Any news on Reaper?’
‘Thin air.’
‘What about the guys who sprung him?’
‘Nada.’
‘That helicopter they were using was military,’ Ty said.
‘That’s what I thought too.’
‘Hard to pick one of those up on eBay.’
Carrie was scribbling something on a piece of paper which she shoved under Lock’s nose. He read it, then relayed the information to Ty.
‘One of Carrie’s sources has had word that a Little Bird assault helicopter went missing from a base in San Diego three days ago.’
‘They know who took it?’
‘If they do, they’re not saying. You know what the Army’s like.’
‘You gonna try and talk to them?’ Ty asked.
‘Be wasting my time, but Carrie’s going to keep digging.’
‘So what are you gonna do? And don’t tell me nothing, Lock, because I know you must have a hard-on for Reaper a foot long by now.’
‘I wish,’ muttered Carrie, lying back, her eyes closed, head propped up on the pillows.
On the other end of the phone, Ty laughed.
Lock shot her a fake injured look, then lowered his voice. ‘I’m heading back to the Bay. One of the AB leaders survived the attack. If he doesn’t have a clue what Reaper’s up to then nobody does. Listen, once I’ve spoken to him, I’m coming down to San Francisco to see you.’
‘Look forward to it,’ said Ty, before hanging up.
‘You sure you really want to go back in there, Ryan?’ Carrie asked, sitting up.
‘I’ll be fine. I know the territory.’
Carrie gave him an even look. ‘You mean like Ty did?’
44
Lock headed out of Medford on Interstate 5. He’d have to drive north first, towards a place called Grants Pass, before the highway would drop him back south and west to Pelican Bay. To his right, trees had been planted at regular intervals along the highway. The storm clouds were being sucked back out towards the Pacific, revealing a powder-blue sky.
The smell of rental-car air freshener combined with his lack of sleep was soon making him woozy. He lowered all four windows a notch.
As he drove, the traffic fell away to a trickle of pick-up trucks and lumbering semis and the giant redwood trees closed in around his tiny car. Looking at a map he’d picked up at a gas station before he left, he’d wondered at some of the names. Rattlesnake Rapids. Wolf Creek. Starvation Heights. It was a landscape that could eat a man up whole, that was for sure.
Lock wondered if Reaper was near one of those places now. Maybe shooting the rapids with his band of fellow psychopaths, the water swallowing their trail. Or camped out on top of Starvation Heights, surveying the land below, planning a desperate last stand against the minions of what Reaper saw as an occupying government. What was the phrase he’d used? Oh yeah, the Zionist Occupation Government.
Blaming the government, Lock reflected, was an easy out for the white inmates inside America’s prisons. They had been incarcerated not because they’d peddled amphetamine to school kids, or shot some unfortunate first-generation immigrant minding the till of a convenience store, or because they’d drowned someone in their own hot tub after staging a home invasion robbery. No, it was always other people’s fault, part of a wider plan to do them down, all engineered by dark forces skulking in the shadows and plotting a new world order.
With Reaper’s messianic tendencies, Lock had a strong hunch that his former cellie wasn’t about to go quietly. He wasn’t about to do a disappearing act. No, Reaper had something else in mind. Lock was sure of it.
Aware that his eyelids were getting heavier by the minute, Lock reached down and jammed on the radio. There wasn’t much choice: a couple of country music stations and something that billed itself as Rogue Valley’s top-rated twenty-four-hour evangelical station. Lock would have welcomed some divine inspiration, but doubted it was going to come via this particular source. He clicked the radio back off.
Ten miles further on, Lock hit a line of traffic. It came up on him fast, and he had to slam on the brakes to avoid rear-ending a black pick-up sporting a National Rifle Association decal and a Palin for President 2012 sticker. The jolt as the car lurched to a halt convinced him that he’d have to take a nap before he got to Pelican Bay.
The local cops had set up a roadblock and were checking vehicles, and he was aware that his rental car and dragged-through-a-bush-backwards appearance would single him out for special attention.
He stayed in his car as he was approached, immediately declaring his firearm. Thankfully, one of the cops recognized him.
‘Any sign of them?’ Lock asked him, with a show of forced politeness.
‘Not a one,’ said the cop, disconsolate.
No shit, Sherlock, they left in a helicopter, Lock thought. ‘Well, good luck.’
The cop waved him through, and Lock continued on his way.
Fifty miles down the road, he pulled in at a rest stop. Seconds after he’d switched off the engine, pulled on his parking brake and set the alarm on his cell phone, he was dead asleep, the doors locked and his SIG close by.
Lock rarely dreamt, and when he did he shrugged his dreams off pretty much as soon as he’d taken a leak and had his first sip of coffee. But the nightmare images that came to him now would be less easily shed, based as they were on the realities of the previous days.
At first he was tumbling down a black slide that deposited him in a heap in the middle of the yard at Pelican Bay. As he looked up and got his bearings, he saw Ty, surrounded by bare-chested white inmates, their bodies a continuous mosaic of swastikas and lightning bolts. As they closed in on Ty, knives glistening in the early-morning sun, Lock glanced up towards the gun tower. The guard’s face melted into Reaper’s as one of the inmates slashed at Ty and he went down.
There was a screech of tires behind Lock as a black van careered across the yard, throwing up clouds of dust. Lock felt a burst of relief which faded almost immediately when he spotted the driver, her hands taped to the wheel. It was Carrie, a swastika carved, Manson-like, into her forehead. The living corpse of Ken Prager rode shotgun alongside her, helping to guide the wheel.