The rain increased, bringing visibility down to zero. The pines disappeared. With the deafening tattoo on the car roof and the incessant roar of the thunder, they could have been sitting under Niagara Falls.
The world constricted to John and Decker and the car.
14
Snake smiled as he clicked off his transceiver—he wouldn’t need that any more. He continued to inch through the rain. He wasn’t making much progress, but he was doing a thousand percent better than Vanduyne and his fed buddies. Mired in sand and no flyboys to lead them even if they got out. What a shame.
Snake realized he might be in the exact same spot as those two if not for his Jeep’s four-wheel drive. He checked his laptop again and saw that he was closer than ever. The GPS program told him that the blinking star of his destination was somewhere about a klick and a half to his left.
He shook his head in wonder at the irony of using all this high-tech equipment to search what had to be one of the low-tech capitals of the country. He peered through the rain. Had to go slow here, look for a road, a path, a deer trail, anything that led off to the left. Damn near dark as night outside. Hard enough to see under these conditions with both eyes, but when you had only one…
And then he spotted something out his near side window and slammed on the brakes. He wiped away the condensation and peered through the downpour.
Two ruts in the sand, leading leftward. Good thing his wrecked eye was on the right and the lightning had flashed at the right moment, otherwise he’d have gone right past it.
Grinning, he backed up, then turned onto the path. Almost there. Poppy-bitch. Hope you’re enjoying your last hours on Earth.
15
“I’m scared,” Katie said, clinging to Poppy as the thunder shook the ground and the wind rattled the walls.
“It’s okay, honey bunch,” Poppy said, sitting on the bedroll and rocking Katie back and forth. “The storm’ll be over soon.”
“Scared o‘ storms, is she?” Lester Appleton said, licking his lips as he positioned a tin can under a leak. That made twelve containers scattered around his floor. “So’s most of the wimmins and kids. All probably hiding under their beds right now. Do it every time the thunder starts. That little girl’ll do well to get used to’em if she’s a-gonna stay. We get some real doozies out here.”
She ain’t staying. Poppy wanted to say, but didn’t want to be rude. All the Appletons had been kind to them today. Some of them said they remembered her stopping by with her daddy when she was a kid, but maybe they were just imagining it. The main thing was the way they’d welcomed her and Katie, sharing their home and their food… even their dolls, so to speak. The Appleton ideas of what was clean and what was cooked, of what was edible and what tasted good were light-years from Poppy’s, but they meant well. What they had was hers.
After all, she was kin…
Lester had said they could sleep in his place for now. His place: a ten-by-fourteen space lit by two kerosene lamps—one on a crate that served as his dresser and the other hanging from the six-foot ceiling. The walls creaked and shuddered under the wind’s attack, which set the hanging lamp to swaying. And the moving light did funny tricks with Lester Appleton’s nose-gazing eye.
Another crash of thunder and Katie tightened her grip on Poppy.
“Hope them stills is all right,” he said, swigging from a ceramic jug. “Wish my back was better—I should be out there helpin‘.” He shook his head. “First that heeliocopter, now the storm. Bad omens. I feel it in my bones— somethin’ bad’s gonna happen.”
The sight of the “heeliocopter” earlier had spurred her to run down to the clearing and pull the panel truck under some trees. That might have been like closing the barn door after the proverbial horse was gone, but she did it anyway.
And then the storm had hit and all the able-bodied men—the overly attentive Levon among them, thank you very much—and some of the women had run off to make sure the stills didn’t get damaged and the fires didn’t get too wet. Applejack was their major asset. They sold it for cash and bartered it for goods.
Poppy wondered how her Uncle Luke was faring with the feds. He’d said he was going to try and make a deal for her. What was taking him so long?
16
Carlos Salinas took the photo of Nixon from the wall and tossed it into his valise, then looked around the room. Nothing remained that he couldn’t part with, nothing that couldn’t be replaced with a simple telephone call.
As for records, Alien Gold kept all sensitive information on the office computer—verbally coded and digitally encrypted. He’d copied the pertinent data onto a Zip Drive disk and erased the hard drive. That done, Carlos had Llosa fire a few 9mm rounds into the drive—just to be sure.
“All set?” Gold asked, popping into the room for the third time in as many minutes.
Carlos nodded. Too bad, he thought. Leaving the United States and this wonderful setup. But if decriminalization went through, he’d be out of business soon, anyway. He regretted leaving Maria behind, but that was only temporary. He’d send for her later.
Llosa was waiting by the back door. Carlos nodded to him as he approached. Llosa stepped outside, then jumped back in.
Carlos skidded to a halt. “What is it?”
“A car! In the alley!”
“Oh, no!” Gold whimpered. “Oh, God! Oh, please, no!”
“Silence!” Carlos hissed as his heart began to thump. He turned back to Llosa. “Is anyone there?”
“I did not see anyone.”
“Look again.” Llosa opened the door a crack and peeked through.
He shook his head. “I see no one.”
“It could be nothing,” Carlos said.
“But it’s blocking our way.” Carlos thought of his waiting Gulfstream, fully fueled and ready to go. If he could just get into the air…
He turned to Gold. “Call a tow truck. Have someone come and move it. Pronto!” Gold nodded. His smile was sickly. “Right. No way I’m going near that car.”
In the single heartbeat it took Gold to reach for the phone, Carlos heard a roar, felt the floor tremble, saw the door shatter as an onrushing ball of orange flame swallowed Llosa and engulfed Carlos, but not before a million wooden daggers from the door ripped the silk suit and most of the flesh from his body.
17
When Snake reached the clearing, he saw four or five pickups but no panel truck. He began to curse and pound on his steering wheel in red-hazed fury.
The nearer he’d gotten to this place, to this blinking star on his GPS map, the greater his anticipation of finding Poppy, getting his hands on her, hurting her like she’d hurt him. He needed that as much as he needed the tape, and the need had grown until he felt ready to burst.
But she wasn’t here! She must have run off after seeing the copter overhead. Still cursing, he began angling the Jeep to turn around, and that was when he spotted it, hidden behind one of the pickups at the very edge of the clearing.
Snake leapt from the Jeep and ran through the deluge to the truck. Yes! This was it. This was Poppy’s. But where was she? He moved along the perimeter of the clearing… had to be a way out of here.
And then he found it. A break in the underbrush. Using lightning flashes to guide him. Snake pulled the Cobra from his belt and started up the path, a path to the “strange-looking house” the copter pilot had mentioned.
He headed for one of the few lit windows.
18
John had tuned the car radio to an all-news station, hoping for word of when the storm would break. Instead, he found himself listening to Heather Brent.