PART II:
CHAPTER 33
Quantrill banked northward toward Brigham City, so near the surface of the Great Salt Lake that his passage ruffled the steel-tinted wavelets. He saw Sanger's desperate gestures, backhanded the air to stop her.
"Mayday mayday mayday," she signed, leaning forward. "If you run North they pull your plug! I was briefed," her hands insisted.
He whipped the Loring around, nodding, and eased up on the turn as Sanger clawed to keep from tumbling into his lap. She squeezed his arm in camaraderie. Only then did they shrug into their harnesses.
Then in his mastoid he heard, "Report, Q. Report, Q."
"So you can follow my signal in a stealthy bird?"
"Affirm, Q. Presidential directive: Q's programs will be cancelled the moment he reaches Idaho."
It made sense; he didn't doubt they'd do it and wondered why they hadn't already. "You have a link with The Man, do you?" Meanwhile he steepened his bank again, judged his sweep over Ogden would clear the IEE tower.
The President is in Control center," said his mastoid primly. "He wants to avoid further violence. You must leave us viable choices, Q. Is your hostage conscious?"
Quantrill glanced toward Sanger, whose hands were saying, "Control trying to raise me."
"She may be possuming, Control. With my loop around her neck I don't blame her. Walloped her head on the cowl but she's a tough bitch. I don't trust her. One word from her and I'll shorten her a little." He fought the sideslip, believed for an instant that he had delayed for a fatal fraction of a second. With six tons of black comet hurtling through an absolutely vertical bank, he skimmed past the IEE tower, then eased back on the throttles. "Maybe I should kamikaze into you, Control."
"If you knew where we were."
"Maybe I do," he said.
"We'd like to talk about that, Q. You're too valuable to waste. But if we can't raise S. soon you'll be less valuable."
"Why not call us by names, Control, you miserable jilloff." He was planning furiously. He'd have more time aloft if he kept the sprint chopper at cruise speed — particularly if he stayed over population centers.
Loudly, over the turbine wail, he said, "Sanger, report!" His free hand said, "You're hurt. But do it."
She groaned, "Go to hell, Quantrill," and signaled him to continue on his course. Below them was the unbroken urban sprawl that had been well underway when Salt Lake City became the heart of Streamlined America, and which now spread from Brigham City to Nephi. He nodded. His readout showed something less than a two-hour fuel supply.
"You get no more from Sanger. I just tightened my loveknot to remind her," Quantrill said aloud, watching Sanger rifle the map compartment for hard-copy air navigation charts.
"We don't have to be nice. For example," said Control, as a tone began in his head. No, a cacophony of tones. Its effect was something like a squalling infant dragging its nails over slate while running a power saw. It was louder than any transmission he had ever heard from Control, but still bearable. For awhile.
In defiance: "Can barely hear you, Control. Say again."
The maddening noise increased slightly and stayed that way for a moment as Quantrill gritted his teeth. It ceased abruptly with Control's, "Loud enough, Q?"
"The name is Quantrill. Let's hear you humanize us, shithead."
"If you want to live," said his tormentor, "don't let your signal fade. Can you land a sprint chopper?"
His signal wouldn't fade as long as he was in range of a relay, which gave him much of Streamlined America. He had landed a Loring twice during maintenance checkouts but, "I can try," was all he said.
Keep the fuckers guessing.
Sanger signed, "Maybe I can find us a hole. Wait one."
Quantrilclass="underline" "Not always sure whose side you're on."
Her eyes widened before she squeezed them shut, her mouth open in a silent agony. Her hands said nothing. The garrote wire said a great deal; she had not bothered to remove it. He saw moisture coalesce at the corner of her eye, begin coursing down her lean high cheekbone. She wiped it away in anger. Still said nothing, only stared at the nav charts.
Merely to keep the channel alive he said, "If you're so goddam smart, Control, where am I?"
"A hundred thousand citizens are complaining about you, — Quantrill," said Control. He had never heard his own name spoken conversationally by Control; the victory seemed larger than it was. "You're over the Zion strip."
"Bet your ass I am." He glanced at Sanger; realized that pursuing sprint choppers or scrambled jets might soon make visual contact. If they got near enough, they could see into the canopy. "At this altitude, you wouldn't want me to make a bobble. You might think about that while you're telling people to jump me.
And if you value your other aircraft, keep 'em out of chiller range. These little maintenance ports in the cockpit are made to order for it."
At this mention of a sidearm, Sanger frowned, then quickly stripped the flesh-colored rover glove from her right hand, holding its thumb before him for inspection.
Quantrill did not understand until Control replied, "Your chiller was in your locker at Dugway, Quantrill.
Any other little bluffs you care to try?"
He said one filthy word, drawing it out, then laughed. Sanger was offering the glove to his own right hand.
"I'm wearing the thumb of Sanger's right glove, control. It has her ID, and it's her chiller — so don't worry about me, sweetie; you worry about anybody who gets near me." He saw Sanger mime "OK".
"You've been planning this a long time, Quantrill."
"For minutes and minutes," he said, letting the truth satirize itself. Ahead, the urban strip was thinning. He tapped Sanger's arm, pointed at the all-channel commset. " Maybe I should make this public," he mimed.
"Zap you right now," was her silent reply. "Looking for area I know. Coal mines. Safe if we get deep?" She ended with an interrogative; S & R had never intended its rovers to know how to mask a critic's reception.
"Quantrilclass="underline" "Near?"
A shrug, then the jab of a finger on the chart near Price, Utah. Between Nephi and Price were peaks reaching three klicks above sea level but a sprint chopper could clear them.
He nodded, pulled the Loring into a steep climb that skirted the southern edge of Salt Creek Peak. The closer he kept to the terrain, the less likely that any pursuer could maintain visual contact. Quantrill kept very, very close, choosing not to think what would happen if one of his prop shrouds gulped a bird or a fir tip, and veered to the East in a rocketing climb.
When Control spoke again it was with a different voice. The signature would have voice-printed the same, thanks to CenCom's reprocessing. But Quantrill intuited the differences; contractions, cadences.
All pointed to a humanness that Control did not normally permit in its transmissions. "Quantrill, haven't we proven we don't want you hurt?"
"Su-u-ure. Cross convinced me," he rejoined. He was trying to activate the map video display but did not know the cockpit layout that well. For a harrowing instant he found that he had set the autopilot; rushed to regain manual control as he flashed across the phalanx of treetops.
"We could ice you with the flip of a toggle," Control went on imperturbably. "You're valuable to us, Quantrill. Whatever was responsible for this momentary lapse, we need to talk about it. We're reasonable, Quantrill. If you head for Canada or try some — home remedy — to blanket our signal, we'll have no choice. If you give us a chance we can talk you down in one piece. Think of Sanger; we don't want her hurt any more than you do."