A motion caught the edge of Galway's eye: a foolhardy aide venturing into blast range with a sheaf of papers. "General?"
"What?" Quinn growled, eyes still on the display.
"I have the analysis of Postern's first stop this morning."
"Go on."
"Assuming he didn't park more than two blocks from his objective, it's eighty-two percent probable that he did indeed go to 7821 North Wadsworth. Two of the three people at the twoplex there—Raina Dupre and Karen Lindsay—brought in a truckload of oil shale from the Miniver depot late last night."
"Um. Yeah, that would have come down Seventy-two. The timing work for Caine to have hitched a ride with them?"
Galway cleared his throat. "If you'll remember, sir—"
"I know what he told you, Galway," the other cut him off. "I'll run my own checks, if you don't mind."
Galway pursed his lips and shut up.
"I've got someone checking on that now," the aide said. "Background dump shows nothing that would indicate subversive leanings by any of the three. Probability that the rendezvous was somehow prearranged is below point one percent."
"Keep digging. Double-check all relatives and previous employers for any connection to Torch. And put a couple of men in the immediate neighborhood, just in case we need a fast reaction."
"Yes, sir." The other turned and left.
Fat lot of good two men'll be against Caine, Galway thought. But something else Quinn had said...
"I thought Torch was supposed to be dead," he ventured.
"It is," Quinn said. "Haven't heard from them in five years—haven't seen any of their leaders for nearly that long. Doesn't mean a damn thing when you're dealing with fanatics."
Galway grimaced with painful memory. Plinry's blackcollars, apparently harmless for thirty years...
until the right opportunity came along.
"There!" Quinn barked, jerking forward to jab a finger at the display. The view had stabilized, and in the middle, centered within a red circle, was a tiny white rectangle. "Adams? You on it?"
"Yes, sir," one of the techs across the room replied. "Feeding the LockTight program now."
"It'd better work," Quinn warned darkly.
"It should," the other said.
"Then we've got you, Caine," the general muttered under his breath. "We've got you for good."
Galway exhaled carefully, the knot in his stomach slowly relaxing. The gamble was finally working.
"Looks like they're leaving the city," he commented. "What's out there they might be interested in?"
"You name it." With his tracking system functional again, Quinn was almost civil. "There are at least a dozen targets in the mountains, depending on how ambitious Caine feels. Everything from oilshale miners to Aegis Mountain itself. Pity your spy hasn't been able to find that out."
"He will," Galway replied. Aegis Mountain. The name had figured prominently in the orientation files the prefect had been skimming for the past few days—a symbol, he'd thought more than once, for Denver as a whole. Surely Caine wouldn't even consider tackling the place.
Or would he?
On the display the marked car was still heading west. Galway gave Quinn a sideways look, wondering whether or not he should share his sudden intuition that Aegis was Caine's target. Not, he decided. Quinn would surely reject the suggestion out of hand, and would then be that much slower to come around if Caine made a move in that direction. No, for the moment it would be better to just watch and be ready. Besides, it was Lathe, not Caine, who was the real miracle worker, and Lathe was eight long parsecs away. They could afford to give the enemy some extra rope.
Settling back, he turned his full attention to the satellite view. And tried to ignore the vague tightness in his gut.
Chapter 10
The road into the mountains was as twisted as the one the previous night had been, but at least Pittman got to drive it in full daylight. Traffic, though still heavier than the average Plinry driver would be used to, was greatly reduced from its city levels, with seldom more than one other car or truck visible at any given moment. Except for the occasional short tunnels, with their oddly unnerving pitch-darkness, Caine found himself almost relaxing as they wove in and out of the mountains toward the spot he'd chosen for their jump-off point.
They reached it about half an hour after leaving Denver: a wide part of the road with a small stream lapping through a rocky creekbed alongside the pavement. Past the stream to the south, foothill-sized mountains rose again.
"But you can see what looks like a smaller creek feeding into this one from between the hills," Caine told the others, tracing it on the aerial map. "We should be able to backtrack it to about here, then head straight south and get a good look at the Aegis Mountain entrance from this ridge."
"Risky," Braune said doubtfully. "If the settlement there belongs to either Ryqril or Security they won't take kindly to visitors."
"Which is why we watch out for sensors and tripwires and whatever," Caine said. "Remember, the ridge is over a klick away from the settlement—chances are good Security won't have any real antipersonnel stuff at that distance."
"The Ryqril might," Colvin pointed out. "If it's within line of sight, they watch it."
"So we keep our heads down," Pittman said impatiently. "Come on—the afternoon's getting away from us. If we're going to go, let's go."
Caine nodded. "Right. Pittman, get the car started while we move the emergency packs across the stream. Drive over there, behind those bushes, and we'll put a camouflage net over it."
The operation took five minutes. Five minutes after that they were out of sight of the road, walking single-file along the creekbed Caine had chosen.
Considering what the terrain had looked like from the road, the trek was surprisingly easy. The creek was clearly of the intermittent type; just as clearly, it was at one of its low points. For a meter or more on either side the gurgling water was bordered by wide, flat stones which offered sure footing without any of the surprises the patches of grass beyond them might have hidden. Beyond the grasses the tall, thin pine trees began, their dead lower branches mute testimony to the precarious hold the flora had in these relatively dry hills, and more than once Caine thought about the millions of people living bare kilometers away in Denver and the tremendous feat it must be to supply enough water for such a metropolis. Directly above them, the sky was an incredibly deep blue.
Beautiful but potentially lethaclass="underline" if Security had spotter aircraft monitoring this approach to Aegis Mountain, their view downward would be equally good.
But for the first kilometer, anyway, no one came blasting out of the sky at them. In fact, as far as the evidence of their eyes could prove, they might easily have been on a completely uncharted planet.
It was at the end of the kilometer that they reached the iron gate straddling the streambed.
"I'd say offhand we now know their attitude toward company over there," Colvin said tightly as Caine and Alamzad examined the rusty metal.
"I don't think this is something Security put up," Alamzad disagreed, touching the mesh gingerly.
"Looks pretty old, and it hasn't been maintained very well. No sensors I can find, either."
Caine looked up at the slopes angling down to the stream. "Just a simple barbed-wire fence leading off from it, too. Probably somebody's old estate line, with the fence to discourage hikers. Maybe even dates to before the war."