"What about the planet?" Carol Brightling asked sadly.
"Carol," Bill replied, "you take care of your own ass first. You can't save Nature from inside Marion Federal Penitentiary, but if we play it smart, we can deny evidence to anyone who investigates us, and without that we're safe, guys. Now"-he pulled the list from his pocket-"these are the only people we have to protect. There's fifty-three of them, and you have four Gulfstreams sitting out there. We can fly us all down to Project Alternate. Any disagreement on that?"
John Brightling shook his head. "No, I'm with you. Can this keep us in the clear legally?"
Henriksen nodded emphatically. "I think so. Popov will be a problem, but he's a murderer. I'm going to report the Hunnicutt killing to the local cops before we fly off. That will compromise his value as a witness-make it look like he's just telling a tale to save his own ass from the gallows, whatever they use to execute murderers here in Kansas. I'll have Maclean and Killgore tape statements we can hand over to the local police. It may not be enough to convict him, but it will make him pretty uncomfortable. That's how you do this, break up the other guy's chain of evidence and the credibility of his witnesses. In a year, maybe eighteen months, we have our lawyers sit down and chat with the local U.S. attorney, and then we come home. Until then we camp out in Brazil, and you can run the company from there via the Internet, can't you?"
"Well, it's not as good as what we planned, but…"
"Yes," Carol agreed. "But it beats the hell out of life in a federal prison."
"Get everything moving, Bill," John ordered.
"So, what do we do with this?" Clark asked, on waking up.
"Well," Tom Sullivan answered, "first we go to the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York office, and then we talk to a United States attorney about building a criminal case."
"I don't think so," Clark responded, rubbing his eyes and reaching for the coffee.
"We can't just put the arm on them and whack'em, you know. We're cops. We can't break the law," Chatham pointed out.
"This can never see the light of day in a court. Besides, who's to say that you'll win the case? How hard will this be to cover up?"
"I can't evaluate that. We have two missing girls they probably murdered-more, if our friend Popov is right-and that's a crime, both federal and state, and, Jesus, this other conspiracy… that's why we have laws, Mr. Clark."
"Maybe so, but how fast do you see yourself driving out to this place in Kansas, whose location we don't know yet, with warrants to arrest one of the richest men in America?"
"It will take a little time," Sullivan admitted.
"A couple of weeks at least, just to assemble the case information," Special Agent Chatham said. "We'll need to talk with experts, to have that chlorine jar examined by the right people-and all the while the subjects will be working to destroy every bit of physical evidence. It won't be easy, but that's what we do in the Bureau, y'know?"
"I suppose," Clark said dubiously. "But there won't be much element of surprise here. They probably know we have this Gearing guy. From that they know what he can tell us."
"True," Sullivan conceded.
"We might have to try something else."
"What might that be?"
"I'm not sure," Clark admitted.
The videotaping was done in the Project's media center, where they'd hoped to produce nature tapes for those who survived the plague. The end of the Project as an operational entity hit its members hard. Kirk Maclean was especially downcast, but he acted his role well in explaining the morning rides that he, Serov, Hunnicutt, and Killgore had enjoyed. Then Dr. John Killgore told of how he'd found the horses, and then came Maclean's explanation of how the body was found, and the autopsy Killgore had personally performed, which had found the.44 bullet that had ended Foster Hunnicutt's life. With that done, the men joined the others in the lobby of the residence building, and a minibus ferried them to the waiting aircraft.
It would be a 3,500-mile flight to Manaus, they were told on boarding, about eight hours, an easy hop for the Gulfstream V. The lead aircraft was nearly empty, just the doctors Brightling, Bill Henriksen, and Steve Berg, lead scientist for the Shiva part of the Project. The aircraft lifted off at nine in the morning local time. Next stop,the Amazon Valley of central Brazil.
It turned out that the FBI did know where the Kansas site was. A car and two agents from the local resident agency drove out in time to see the jets lift off, which they duly reported to their base station, and from there to Washington. Then they just parked at the side of the road, sipped at their drinks, ate their McDonald's burgers and watched nothing happening at all at the misplaced buildings in the middle of wheat country.
The C-17 switched crews at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, then refueled and lifted off for Travis in northern California. Chavez and his party never even departed the aircraft, but watched the new crew arrive with box lunches and drinks, and then settled in for the next six hours of air travel. Wilson Gearing was trying to explain himself now, talking about trees and birds and fish and stuff, Ding overheard. It was not an argument calculated to persuade the father of a newborn, and the husband of a physician, but the man rambled on. Noonan listened politely and recorded this conversation, too.
The flight south was quiet on all the aircraft. Those who hadn't heard about the developments in Sydney guessed that something was wrong, but they couldn't communicate with the lead aircraft without going through the flight crews, and they had not been briefed in on the Project's objectives-like so many of the employees of Horizon Corporation, they had simply been paid to do the jobs for which they were trained. They flew now on a southerly course to a destination just below the equator. It was a trip they'd made before, when Project Alternate had been built the previous year. It, too, had its own runway sufficient for the business jets, but only VFR daylight capable, since it lacked the navigation aids in Kansas. If anything went wrong, they would bingo to the Manaus city airport, ninety-eight miles to the east of their destination, which had full services, including repairs. Project Alternate had spare parts, and every aircraft had a trained mechanic aboard, but they preferred to leave major repairs to others. In an hour, they were "feet-wet" over the Gulf of Mexico, then turned east to flythrough the international travel corridor over Cuba. The weather forecast was good all the way down to Venezuela, where they might have to dodge a few thunderheads, but nothing serious. The senior passengers in the lead aircraft figured that they were leaving the country about as fast as it could be done, disappearing off the face of the planet they'd hoped to save.
"What's that?" Sullivan asked. Then he turned. "Four jets just left the Kansas location, and they headed off to the south."
"Is there any way to track them?"
Sullivan shrugged. "The Air Force maybe."
"How the hell do we do that?" Clark wondered aloud. Then he called Langley.
"I can try, John, but getting the Air Force hopping this quick won't be easy."
"Try, will you, Ed? Four Gulfstream-type business jets heading south from central Kansas, destination unknown."
"Okay, I'll call the NMCC."
That was not a difficult thing for the Director of Central Intelligence to do. The senior duty officer in the National Military Command Center was an Air Force two-star recently rotated into a desk job aftercommanding the remaining USAF fighter force in NATO.
"So, what are we supposed to do, sir?" the general asked.
"Four Gulfstream-type business jets took off from central Kansas about half an hour ago. We want them tracked."
"With what? All our air-defense fighters are on the Canadian border. Calling them down wouldn't work, they'd never catch up."
"How about an AWACS?" Foley asked.
"They belong to Air Combat Command at Langley ours, not yours-and well, maybe one's up for counterdrug surveillance or maybe training. I can check."