“Which way?” Bell asked.
“Down and left!” Nina said. “Hurry!”
The two men plunged after her down the leaf-slick slope, dodging mossy trees and jutting boulders as someone—presumably one or more armed agents— thrashed through the ground cover behind them. Walter had no intention of looking back to see who it was.
He was glad Nina seemed to know where she was going. He remembered they had parked the car at the end of an overgrown track that led to that burnt-out shack, but he didn’t have the slightest clue where that was in relation to the cabin. It was hard enough to avoid getting lost in the familiar halls of MIT. Out in the dark woods, he was worse than useless.
From behind and above, Latimer’s voice squawked through the megaphone again.
“No point in running, Bishop! Bell! We know where you live. We know where you work. You’ve got no place to go. All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable!”
“Just keep going,” Nina hissed.
Walter was panting like a dog, his heart hammering. The running. The panic. It was too much. He didn’t think he could take it anymore.
Nina slid down an embankment and stumbled on ahead. Walter and Bell crashed down after her, clinging to each other to keep from falling. When they reached the bottom, teetering and pinwheeling their arms for balance, an agent stepped out from behind a tree, flicking on a flashlight, his gun drawn.
He was surprisingly young, with lots of fluffy blond hair that vigorously defied whatever grooming products he’d used to try and tame it, but his face was cold and serious.
“Drop your weapons,” he said, tipping his chin at Nina’s pistol.
They were caught. Their backs were against the U-shaped embankment they’d just tumbled down, and the only way out was past the agent.
33
Nina let her gun drop to the leafy forest floor and slowly raised her hands. Walter felt a terrible desperation welling up like bile in his throat as he thought of Miranda, the usherette at the theater who would die in less than two hours if they couldn’t get to her first.
There was a quick blur of movement between the trees. The blond agent crumpled first to his knees, then awkwardly to his side.
Behind him was the shadowy form of Special Agent Iverson, trench coat flapping open and a gun held butt-first in his right hand. He knelt beside his pistol-whipped associate and checked his vitals.
“He’ll be fine,” Iverson said. “Go on.”
“Thanks!” Walter said. “How can we ever repay you for saving us again?”
“You want to repay me?” he asked. “Whatever you do, don’t let Latimer capture the Zodiac. He’s become obsessed, and can’t be reasoned with. He thinks Zodiac is the ultimate nuclear weapon, and all he cares about is controlling him. It’s up to you three to prevent it.”
The fallen agent groaned, eyelids fluttering as he struggled to regain consciousness.
“Now go. Run!”
The enormity of what Iverson was saying barely had time to sink in before Nina grabbed Walter’s hand and pulled him away.
“You heard the man,” she said. “Come on, Walter. Run! We’re almost there.”
A moment later, Walter could hear Iverson’s voice up above.
“They have another accomplice!” he cried. “Caucasian male, thirties, about six one and bald, with a beard. I saw him sap Davis, and then the four of them ran off, that way!”
There were more agents thundering through the trees, but farther back and up the slope to the left, misled by Iverson’s ruse. Walter lurched after Nina and Bell, chest heaving, as they dodged through a thick stand of young elms. He saw something dark ahead of them, beyond the trees, which quickly resolved itself into the blackened timbers and tar paper walls of the ruined shack. The nose of the rented car stuck out from behind its far corner.
They ran to it, hopping over charred debris, opened the doors and threw themselves in, Nina and Bell in front and Walter in back. Nina jammed the key into the ignition and cranked it.
The big V8 roared to life.
She dropped the shift into drive and stomped on the gas. It was too much. The tires spun in the leaf mold and mud, going nowhere.
Two agents were crashing through the elms. Walter could tell by the glint of moonlight that they had guns out.
“Easy,” Bell said.
“I got it,” Nina said. “Got it.”
She let up on the accelerator and tried again, more slowly this time. The wheels caught. They were rolling.
An agent grabbed at the car, catching a side-view mirror and smacking the driver’s side window with the butt of his gun, starring it. Nina sped up, roaring down the narrow track, and the agent let go as a tree threatened to scrape him off. The other agent skidded to a stop behind them and fired.
Walter and Bell ducked, but Walter heard no impact, and the next second they had taken a curve. The agents were out of sight.
“Not out of the woods yet,” Nina muttered.
Walter frowned, thinking it a very obvious thing to say, then realized that she meant it metaphorically.
“Those guys are going to catch us in a matter of minutes,” she said, “if we don’t find some way to slow them down.”
The paved road appeared ahead of them. Nina swerved out onto it in a spray of gravel, then rocked back into line and sped down the hill. Walter looked behind. He couldn’t see anything at first, but then he could. Headlights raced under the trees, reaching out for them.
“They’re coming,” he said.
Nina barreled down the gravel road at a terrifying speed. This was no Volkswagen Beetle, but she didn’t seem intimidated by the Detroit behemoth, and slung it along the twisting track with an admirable—if heart-stopping—fearlessness.
At last they came to the state highway. Nina bumped up onto it without braking, then roared west with her foot pinned to the floorboard. The highway was smooth and clean, but almost as twisty as the smaller road. They were screeching around the curves.
“This is where they’ll catch us,” she said.
“Then what do we do?” Walter asked. “What’s the point of running?”
“For a scientist,” she replied. “You have very little imagination.”
Another dirt road was coming up rapidly on the left side of the road. Nina glanced in her rearview mirror, then swerved toward it, killing the LeSabre’s headlights. Bell hung on with both hands. Walter grabbed the door handle and looked back. The FBI cars still were out of sight behind the curve of the highway.
The big car slammed down onto the dark dirt road at speed, almost smashing Nina’s head into the ceiling as the jolt sent her bouncing out of her seat. She drove forward about ten yards then hit the brakes and skidded to a stop in the muddy gravel.
She, Bell, and Walter looked back. A narrow sliver of the highway was just visible through the trees. One second. Two seconds. Three. Two sets of headlights howled by, and then two seconds later, a third.
“Is that all of them?” Bell asked. “How many were there?”
“I didn’t see,” Nina said. “But if there are any more, they’re probably still up at the cabin, trying to catch Roscoe and the boys. Time to go.”
She turned the headlights back on, put the LeSabre in reverse, and backed out of the side road onto the highway. But instead of going east, she went west.
“You’re going the wrong way,” said Bell. “The connector to the Five is west.”
“They’re going to turn around eventually, William. I don’t want to be behind them when they do. We’ll take the 101 back.”
“Didn’t you say that took longer?” Walter asked. “We need to get back to San Francisco as soon as possible.”
“That’s okay,” she replied. “I’ll just go faster.”
Walter exchanged a look with Bell, then put his seatbelt on. It was going to be a long trip.
34
Miranda was wrapping up her shift at the Roxie, sweeping cigarette butts and scattered popcorn out from under the seats and turning out the lights inside the candy display cases. She tossed out the last of the sad, mummified hot dogs that had been spinning on the hot rollers all day, and wiped down all the spigots on the soft-drink dispensers.