This was going to be very big news, very soon-however it turned out.
Monks and Baskett had agreed to talk as little as possible, and to try to keep it to moments when Freeboot’s men weren’t likely to be watching. Monks spent a couple of minutes maneuvering on the freeway, changing lanes and speeds, then punched the number that Baskett had given him.
“Freeboot just called,” Monks told him. “They know I got Mandrake. He told me to drive back the way I came, and keep the phone handy.”
“O-kay, we’re in this,” Baskett called out to the people around him. “Dr. Monks, we’ll assume the situation’s unchanged until we hear from you. When we do, we’re ready to move.”
Monks drove on, thinking about the next question:
Move where?
Just over two hours later, he was on Highway 20, passing the west end of Clear Lake. The road was two-lane with little traffic, making things tough for his FBI shadows. But headlights would appear in his rearview mirror and turn off after a few miles, then quickly be replaced by different ones. Probably some of the oncoming vehicles were also part of the team.
He hadn’t talked to anyone in the interim. With the little boy asleep beside him, driving back into the coastal fog, he had been lulled into a sense of unreality.
That was shattered by the chirp of his phone. He jerked so hard at the sound that his teeth clacked together.
“When you get to Upper Lake, turn right,” Freeboot’s steely voice said. “You know where you’re going from there?”
Monks realized, with an ugly jolt, that Freeboot knew exactly where he was.
Then, with another one, that that road led to Freeboot’s burned camp-his home turf, where he would be at maximum advantage.
“The camp?” Monks said.
“That’s right. Now, I got this feeling you might have talked to somebody.”
“I called Marguerite’s mother, that’s all. I had to give her a story about why I left.”
“Yeah, well, you better be all alone from here on. We got you covered all the way. If anything else twitches out there, this is history.” Freeboot paused, a silence filled with menace that Monks could feel over the phone.
“What do I do when I get there?” he said.
“Just come walking on in, and call my name out loud.” Freeboot gave a sudden little snort that sounded like laughter.
That was all.
33
The last fifteen miles of road to Freeboot’s camp were gravel and dirt, almost impassable in places, twisting and crossing in an unmarked labyrinth. Someone who didn’t know the way could drive around lost for days, but Monks had come up here enough times with the sheriffs to remember it. The earth was washboarded and rutted, still soggy from the winter rains, slick enough in places to make him spin his tires and drift sideways, even on slight inclines. After the first couple of miles, he locked the Bronco into four-wheel-drive and left it that way.
But for all that he could see, he might as well have been on another planet. The fog thinned into patches as he gained elevation, blanketing him one minute, then parting to reveal a nightbound landscape of rocky crags and forest lit by a gibbous moon, then closing in again. There were no FBI vehicles tailing now, no lights but the Bronco’s, no signs of human life.
Monks heard a sound, a plaintive little yowl like the plea of a trapped cat. His head swiveled toward it.
It was Mandrake, starting to cry.
“Christ,” he hissed, hitting the brakes. The sedative that the hospital had given Mandrake wasn’t strong enough-the jouncing ride had awakened him. He looked up fearfully into Monks’s face, a face he already associated with nightmare.
And now he was in a new one.
Monks unbuckled Mandrake’s seat belt and cradled him, doing his best to smile. “Everything’s okay, buddy,” he said soothingly. “You’re just having a little dream, but you’ll be back to sleep in no time.”
“Mommy!” Mandrake screamed, struggling and flailing with his tiny fists.
Monks sagged in despair, then crooned nonsense while he fumbled in the back for his medical kit. He flipped on the dash light, found a vial of Ativan and a syringe, and drew off a half-milligram dose, holding it above Mandrake’s head, out of his view.
Mandrake probably didn’t even feel the needle, but it hurt Monks plenty.
The crying stopped. Mandrake’s head rolled to the side.
Monks made up his mind. He cut the Bronco’s ignition and lights, and picked up the phone. The connection was weak and static-laden, just at the edge of fade-out range.
“Freeboot’s never going to let me get to the camp,” he told Baskett. “He’ll stop me along the way, grab Mandrake, and disappear.”
“We’ve anticipated that, Dr. Monks. Recon teams are moving in on foot right now. There are helicopters, and paratroopers ready to drop.”
“I’m not going to let him have Mandrake.”
“You have to. That’s our beacon on Freeboot.”
That was the contingency plan that Baskett had put into effect. Monks would hand Mandrake over to Freeboot. When he took off, FBI surveillance would recognize that the implanted microtransmitter was moving apart from the tracking device on the Bronco. That would be their signal to move in. But the transmitter’s range was limited, a maximum of a couple of miles even in open terrain. Once Freeboot was outside that, he was gone.
“There’s a thousand square miles of wilderness out there, and it’s his backyard,” Monks said.
“Our men are the best, Special Forces-trained.”
“You haven’t seen him in those woods. He’s like a cougar.”
There was a brief pause. Then Baskett said, a little too kindly, “You’ve been doing fine, Doctor, and you’ll be done very soon, which I think is good. Sounds like you’ve had enough.”
Monks’s eyes widened in outrage. “I know landing Freeboot would make your career, Agent Baskett. But you’re not going to risk that little boy’s life to do it.”
“You are going to follow orders, Monks,” Baskett said, with icy anger. “If you compromise this operation, you don’t know what trouble is.”
“I’m the one who’s out here with his ass on the line, while you’re sitting on yours in an office,” Monks snapped. “So spare me the tough-guy act.”
“You know he’ll kill you if you don’t have that kid.”
“He’s going to kill me anyway,” Monks said. “I’ll try to get some shots off-that will be your new signal to move in. I’m stopping right now to leave Mandrake in the woods. Have your men get him quick, there’s critters.”
He clicked off the phone. It chirped again instantly. He rolled down his window and threw it into the roadside brush, then tugged off Mandrake’s pajamas.
He wrapped Mandrake in a sleeping bag and put that inside a nylon duffel, making knife slits to let in air. Outside, he stayed still for half a minute, listening into the darkness. There was nothing moving, no sound but the prickly stillness of a vast forest at night. He trotted twenty yards into the woods and hung the duffel high on a sturdy pine stob. The agents would find him by means of the implanted microphone, probably within half an hour.
Back in the Bronco, Monks quickly stuffed the pajamas full of his own spare clothes, padding them into the shape of a little body, then pulling a wad out of the neckhole and covering it with a white T-shirt to simulate a face. He buckled the doll into the passenger seat and awkwardly patted it into shape to look like a sleeping child. At night, it might fool somebody for a few seconds.