"We will in fifteen more minutes. Stopping them could be awkward, though. U.S. Customs will probably object if you shoot out their tires this side of the line."
"Loud and clear."
"Crowder, you'll continue looking in the Seattle area on the ground, and we'll give you a few helicopters to screen the freeways, but send most of the teams into the country up north. I want somebody in a four-wheel drive within ten minutes of every logging road in that forest, every dirt trail in that desert. I want at least one cross-country motorbike in the back of every vehicle. They have to leave the trailer on a road somewhere if they try to cross on foot. I don't think they'll try to cross at Blaine, I understand there are traffic jams up there."
"They can stretch for miles," Crowder agreed. "We've got three teams there, and we can stop them before they even see the border."
"Good. When it gets dark we'll get the satellites to work, and I'm betting we spot them somewhere out in the wilderness within an hour. We have to be ready to move on them. Anything else?"
"What about ferries?" Crowder said.
"Ferries?"
Crowder touched the keyboard and the map view zoomed in on the waters of the area, from the entrance to the estuary at the Georgia Strait, running between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, to Olympia at the south end, and the city of Vancouver to the north. There was a lot of water, and a lot of islands. A spiderweb of lines appeared, running all over the water.
"We've always had good ferries up here."
"Never been on one," Blackstone said with a grin. "I get seasick in the bathtub."
"Last ten years they've been adding more. Federal grants or some shit like that, ease the freeway congestion, not that it did a damn bit of good. There's three times as many ferries now as when I was a kid."
"How many go to Canada?"
Crowder touched the keyboard again, and most of the lines disappeared.
"You got your B.C. ferries, and you got your Washington State ferries. One from Port Angeles, on the peninsula, to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. From here at Anacortes to Sidney and Vancouver. Also from Bellingham to Vancouver, and from Everett to Victoria and Vancouver."
"It'd be a dumb way to go. Sometimes you can wait for hours to get aboard."
"Cover them anyway. It would be a perfect place to catch them quietly."
"Will do."
Warburton leaned back and sighed. He realized he hadn't eaten yet today, and it was almost evening. He asked someone to have a pizza delivered.
We'll catch them tonight. The satellites will find them.
29
MATT left the unit at eight that morning, and saw the rain had stopped and the sky was beginning to clear. Bad luck. He walked to the truck and pulled the trailer around the block and into the storage yard. Susan was waiting to direct him, and they lowered the ramp.
Susan had noticed that most places like this were virtually deserted most of the time. This one had half a dozen rows of buildings with garage doors facing each other. Her two units could not be seen from any road or house in the area. There was always a chance somebody would pick that morning to visit a unit close to theirs, but if that happened they would just have to wait.
Matt walked to the end of the row where he could see the entrance gate. He signaled to Susan, and she opened the garage door and led Fuzzy out and up the ramp, and closed the ramp, then the door. Thirty seconds, total.
Matt hurried back and entered the trailer through the side door. Susan was strapping a leather harness around Fuzzy's middle. She attached it to each side of the trailer with heavy chains.
"He traveled a lot before Fuzzyland opened, you know," she said. "He had his own private train. He's been in the back of trucks, too, going to and from the shows. Pachyderms are pretty good at keeping their balance, a lot better than you'd think. But we always used an arrangement like this as a sort of seat belt. I'd appreciate it if you tried not to stand on the brake, though, okay?"
"I'll keep way back from the cars ahead."
They went back outside and carefully peeled off the red contact paper Susan had applied in a big red swoosh after painting the rig a uniform beige. She grimaced as she touched the long indent where a tree branch had scraped the side.
"I did that last week. A computer recognition program would pick that out pretty quick, even from high up, don't you think? I was going to paint over it but then I thought it might be better to leave it that way until I was through the security gate." "Good thinking. Now they may be looking for it. Did you bring the paint?"
Over the Interstate Bridge traffic eased up, and they headed north. Just south of Tacoma traffic backed up again. They crept along, nervously watching the sky.
THEY missed the ferry they wanted in Tacoma, at Point Defiance, which put them an hour behind where they had hoped to be. It was a short hop to Vashon Island, at Tahlequah.
Vashon Island was pretty, still partly rural. They weren't able to make up any time; in fact they missed another ferry. Every minute sitting still in the parking lot was agony, but eventually they were waved aboard and undercover again.
This was a larger ferry and they were on the lower deck. They stayed close to the trailer in case Fuzzy started to bellow—which he hardly ever did, but he was in strange surroundings and, besides, Susan didn't want to get more than about fifty feet from him. Through a wide opening on the starboard side they could see planes on approach to Sea-Tac Airport from the north, then the city of Seattle itself. These waters were teeming with boats, many of them other ferries crisscrossing Puget Sound. They pulled into the terminal at Kingston, far behind schedule, knowing they would not get to the last departure of the ferry they wanted. When they drove past the terminal, they could not even see the departing ferry. It was long gone.
Susan had a backup plan, but she was discouraged. They pulled into a big RV park where Susan had booked a space a week earlier under another name. Matt found their space, was relieved to see it was a pull-through, and they parked as the sun was going down. There were trees around them, but not the complete cover they would have liked. Neither of them was sure if the satellites could spot them through trees, anyway.
But there was nothing for it. They would have to spend the night, and hope the search was, by now, focused far away to the north and east.
THEY made a meal from cans and ate it in silence. They hadn't bothered to hook up anything, not even the electricity, but the refrigerator and stove used propane. There was no reason not to turn on all the lights and have a party—Susan had stocked some beer. But the instincts of the hunted left them huddling beneath a single light over the kitchen table. Susan sat facing the back, where Fuzzy stood, maybe ten feet behind Matt's back. Every once in a while she got up to pet him or feed him a treat. He seemed tired of this whole bye-bye business by now.
"He's restless," she said as she sat back down opposite Matt. "He missed his daily run. Hell, he's probably even missing doing his show." "He's a creature of habit," Matt said. "He'll get used to new habits. You did the right thing."
"I hope you can stay awake a little longer. There are some things I have to tell you."
She looked up, more alert.
"The rest of your story?"
He smiled.
"Yeah. The good parts... well, the better parts. Anything would have felt good after getting out of that cell. And some things you need to know."
"Why don't we get to that part first? We'll have plenty of time to catch up on the rest, even if we have to do it by mail from our separate prisons."