His mind would then shift gears. They had killed his son. He had never been there for Mike. Never even tried to find out who Mike was. With his son's death, he could make up for it all by trying to catch the bastards who killed him. The problem was that Buddy couldn't escape the fact that he was so scared he could barely function. He wished he had some inner strength to fall back on. There was nothing for him in the arcane tradition of the Jewish faith. Buddy needed a hipper religious gig.
He had tried Scientology; Tom Cruise and John Travolta had gotten him enrolled. Scientology had been a fun excursion for a while. He loved their snappy military-style uniforms with the cool ornamental braid. He wore the uniform of an Operating Thetan. He had his tailored at the studio wardrobe department, so it fit him perfectly, no sags or wrinkles. He looked like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. He also read the basic dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology from cover to cover. He had Scientology E-meter tracks made, which drew mental pictures of his state of being, graphing such notable psychic landscapes as his interior pain or perceived threat to his survival. He had tried, for almost six months, to obtain the level of Operating Thetan Three (OT-3), which was the State of Beingness, and would give him full control over Matter, Energy, Space, Time, and Form of Life. He had sat with his counselor and told her that he felt he was on the verge of going "clear," which in Scientology indicated a pure spirit. He had smiled blissfully and bragged about his spiritual purification to the actors at the celebrity center, but in reality, he attained none of the inner peace that he sensed the others derived from the religion. Worse still, he was paying through the nose for the experience.
After another three months of bluffing, he dropped out. The night that he quit, Heidi told him that life wasn't about control over energy or time or the form of life. It was just about getting laid, so she sent Michelle Fortner over to prove her point. Michelle gave him an incredible weekend of tube cleaning, but spiritually, Buddy was still bankrupt. Now he felt so alone and confused that he was on the verge of jumping out of the Blazer and running. But some invisible force wouldn't let him.
"Pull up," Cris said suddenly.
Stacy stopped and they all got out. Buddy followed Cris down to the water, where the aluminum boat Kincaid had been in was floating near the shore. Inside the boat, on the floorboards, were two orange canisters. While Cris and Buddy pulled the boat up onto the beach, Stacy took some latex gloves out of her purse and pulled them on as she walked to the water's edge.
"What is it?" Buddy said, his eyes on the orange painted canisters.
"They're waterproof bio-units. Good to three hundred feet," she said. "They're used for marine research." With gloved hands, she picked them up. Inside the canisters the black Styrofoam packing was still in place; the indentations where several vials had been pressed were still visible.
Then she carried one of the canisters back to the Blazer and examined it in the headlights.
"What do you think?" Buddy asked. He had trailed her there, hating this discovery; afraid it might lead to something and afraid it might not.
"I was just wondering if we should send this to Wendell. Maybe there were ink markings labeling the vials. We could get an ink transfer off these with chemicals."
"What for? We know what was in there."
"We think we know," she said. "But we can't be sure." She closed up the container and moved back to the boat to retrieve the second canister. When she got there, she saw that Cris was inside the boat, sitting on the center seat, studying a wet slip of paper in his hand.
"What's that?" she asked.
He handed the slip to her. On it she read:
FT W/DGNO, GV KCS, MERIDIAN NS ROANOKE
"Some kind of code?"
"It's a track warrant. It marks a train route. It means Fort Worth on the Dallas, Garland and Northeastern line, transfer in Grandview to KCS, which is the Kansas City Southern Line. It heads up into central Kansas. Then change in Meridian to Norfolk Southern, then to Roanoke, Virginia."
"It's a road map," she said, smiling. "Where'd you find it?"
"In the bottom of the boat, floating in an inch of water."
Buddy looked at the paper. "You know what the oldest cliche in movies is?" he said. "It's the fucking matchbook cover left at the scene of the crime. This is bullshit."
Cris considered this. Maybe Buddy was right. He was also hungry, exhausted, and longing for a drink. So he thought of Kennidi, for strength and resolve; he remembered the horrible headaches, caused by the clusters of tumors that grew in her sinuses and bulged her skull.
"We've got one thing going for us," Cris finally said. "These guys aren't exactly invisible. Forty guys with tattoos, guns, and Bibles are gonna be hard to miss. We could ask around in the jungles."
"Jungles?" Buddy looked puzzled.
"Hobo encampments. Hobos live in a narrow world. It covers the entire United States, but it's only as wide as the tracks. People congregate and talk. I think we should drive to Fort Worth, try and get there ahead of this train."
"Then what?" Buddy said.
"Then, if we don't see them, we pick up the trail and go on the rails after them. We ask around, try and run them down."
"Riding a freight," Buddy said, chagrined. "You can't be serious?"
"We won't find them any other way," Cris said.
"And we don't have time to talk each other out of it. I'm game if you guys are," Stacy said, and hurried back to the car.
"When we get to Fort Worth, I'll send these bio-containers to Wendell."
Buddy got in the passenger seat and Cris climbed into the back as Stacy got behind the wheel. She took off fast, heading back to the main highway, trying to catch up to Fannon Kincaid and his band of murderous train riders.
Chapter 31
It was 8:45 A. M. and the Pentagon staff car was heading down Embassy Row in Washington, past the European embassies with their stone pillars and uniformed guards, past the ornate flagged buildings at the end of the street belonging to Mexico and Argentina. Then the car swung left and headed into the large, column-flanked driveway of the Naval Observatory, which contained the official residence of the Vice President of the United States.
Admiral Zoll was seated next to four-star Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Stallings. Both men had been quiet on the long drive from the Pentagon, lost in their own speculations about what was going to take place.
It was promising to be a typically muggy Washington June day. The leaves hung like limp decorations from the heavy oak trees that surrounded the magnificent property. The Naval guards at the drive-in gate saluted the two staff officers in the back seat of the Pentagon car, then let the vehicle pass onto the ten-acre estate. It headed up the sweeping drive toward Admiralty House, where the Vice President lived.