“Katie’s a little scared right now with all these… new faces around.” Jesus, she’d almost said strange.
“Why don’t she come down and play with the kids. We—”
A sudden whirring noise interrupted him. An engine of some sort, with a low-pitched rhythmic beat, coming closer, filling the air with noise.
And then she saw it: a helicopter.
Levon started running about, shouting for Lester who came limping around a corner, moving as fast as his bent spine would let him.
“Guns!” he shouted. “It’s the ATF come for the stills! Everybody get your guns!” Poppy looked about, and saw Appletons running everywhere, ducking into the house and reappearing with rifles and pistols.
“Better get back inside,” Lester said as he hobbled up to her. “This could be serious.” Poppy backed up under an overhang but didn’t go inside.
She was pretty sure that wasn’t an ATF copter; most likely it was looking for her instead of bootleg stills. She didn’t want to tell Lester that, but she couldn’t let all the Appletons get into federal-level hot water for her.
“Don’t shoot,” she told him. “You’ll only get in trouble.”
Lester stood staring at the copter which hadn’t come overhead yet. It remained hovering at the base of the rise.
“We’re not lookin‘ for trouble,” he said, “but we’ll surely provide it if someone starts it.”
“No. You don’t understand—” The helicopter suddenly turned and roared off.
“Lucky for them,” Lester said, spitting. “Damn lucky for them.”
Yeah, but unlucky for me, I’ll bet.
10
“Look!” Vanduyne said, pointing ahead through the windshield. “Tire tracks. And they look fresh.”
Bob Decker hid his relief. Finally a sign of intelligent life. They’d turned off 563 about twenty-five miles ago.
Somewhere along the way the pavement had disappeared but they’d kept going on the hard-packed sand. But going where? Not only had they not seen another human being for the past 25 miles, they hadn’t seen a trace of civilization. Not even litter. Except for the ruts they were following, this was exactly how the area must have looked before Columbus.
The sense of isolation was more than oppressive; Bob found it downright unsettling. He’d been beginning to suspect they were hopelessly lost, but now these tire tracks suggested that civilization might not be too far away.
“Wait a minute!” Vanduyne said. “Stop.”
Bob angled around the branches of a fallen tree that jutted onto the road, hit the brakes, and brought the big Roadmaster to a halt.
“What’s up?”
“That fallen tree,” Vanduyne said. “This is the second time we’ve passed it. These are our tire tracks. We’ve just come full circle.” He slumped back. “This is hopeless! We’re no closer to finding Katie now than we were this morning, and now…” He slammed his fist against the door.
Bob Decker kept his eyes on the narrow sandy path ahead and had to admit Vanduyne was right. They were very lost. They’d been taking forks this way and that, thinking the road eventually would loop them back around toward Sooy’s Boot. But all they’d done was loop back on themselves.
How much was the poor bastard supposed to take before he detonated? Vanduyne’s best and oldest friend had let him down when he needed him most—Bob perfectly understood that Razor had no choice, but he was sure that wasn’t how Vanduyne saw it—and his daughter was still missing. Plus the two of them had been cooped up together in this sedan all day. And now they were lost.
Very lost.
Bob hid his own unease and frustration and tried to sound upbeat when he replied.
“Not true. We’ve covered a lot of ground, spoken to a lot of Mulliners—”
“But the afternoon’s half gone and we still haven’t got a clue to her whereabouts.”
“We know where she’s not. We—”
“You said we’d find her today. Bob. Be honest: Do you still believe that?”
Truthfully, the chances were dwindling with each passing hour. But that didn’t mean it still couldn’t happen.
“We’ve still got lots of light left.” How was that for a nonanswer?
“I’m not so sure of that,” Vanduyne said, craning his neck and pointing past Decker. “See those clouds? They’re thunderheads. We’ve got a storm coming. And it looks like a big one.” Bob glanced left at the massing clouds that had indeed taken control of most of the western sky. They’d started out white and billowy but turned dark and ominous after swallowing the sun.
Yeah. A storm would be a problem.
“I’ll call Canney and see how he’s doing,” Decker said. The FBI man had split off to cover another area with a fellow FBI agent. “Maybe he’s onto—”
Suddenly a staticky squawk filled the car. “SSD, do you read? SSD, this is Search One.”
Bob grabbed the transceiver. “Got you Search One. What’ve you got?”
“We’ve got a vehicle similar to the object vehicle in sight below.” Since this was an open channel, and God knew who else was listening, “object vehicle” was the code they’d chosen for a red panel truck.
“Parked or on the move?”
“It’s stationary. Parked in a small clearing with four or five other vehicles… downhill from a very strange looking house.”
“Great. Where are you?”
“Over deep woods about five klicks southeast of Sooy’s Boot. At thirty-eight degrees, forty-six minutes north, seventy-four degrees, thirty-three minutes west, to be exact.”
Bob glanced at Vanduyne who’d been acting as navigator all day. “That any help?”
Vanduyne shook his head and pointed to an area of the local map that was mostly empty green. “There’s nothing there—not even a road.”
“How do I get there. Search One?”
“Well, we’ve got a road in sight, but it’s not on any of our maps. The only way you’ll get here is to have someone lead you, and I guess that’ll be us. Give us your present location and we’ll find you. You can follow us here.”
“We’re lost. Search One.”
Vanduyne was looking at the map again. “Tell him we’re somewhere south of 532 and west of 563.”
“We copy,” the transceiver said. “Find a clearing and get ready to wave a shirt or something. We’ll be overhead soon.”
“I think this is it,” Vanduyne said, still staring at the map. He seemed transformed, as if someone had hooked him up to a wire and was pumping juice into him. “I can feel it.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. Got to be a lot of red panel trucks out here.”
Vanduyne shook his head. “We’ve only spotted three all day, and all of them were sitting out on the street. This is the first one tucked away deep in the woods. That’s Poppy’s truck. I know it. We’re going to find Katie.”
“If I may quote you from earlier: From your lips to God’s ear.” He slapped his hand against the dashboard as he thought of something. “You know what we could use right now? A GPS unit. Damn! Why didn’t I think to bring one?”
“What’s that?”
“A global positioning system. It would tell us exactly where we are.”
Vanduyne shrugged. “As long as we’ve got the helicopter to follow, we don’t need it.”
Yeah, Bob thought, but I should have thought of it. Never even crossed my mind. But Vanduyne was right. The helicopter would get them there. Besides, no one could think of everything.
11
Snake pulled his Jeep off 563 in a tiny place called Jenkins. He attached the suction cup of the GPS antenna to his roof, then got back in and fired up his laptop. The GPS card was already snapped into the PCMCIA slot. The grid appeared. He tapped a few keys and waited for the program to pick up the signals from the satellites miles above, run a triangulation on them, and pinpoint his exact position on the earth.