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everyone was lying.
Carrie was next to him on his left, and Heather on his right. Sly was next to his daughter.
Then came Mac's two little girls, Sukie and Jocelyn, in a twin sleeping bag. Paul, tall and
broad shouldered, slept next to his half sisters. His pump-action Winchester 12-gauge
was at his side. Then came Jeanne McGill, restless, whispering to herself in the darkness.
Mac was next in the circle.
Jim had been distressed to see his oldest companion so stricken by the fatalities that had
torn his family apart.
Before sleep finally claimed him, Mac had sat up next to Jim and talked ceaselessly
about the sons and daughters now dead, focusing on Pamela.
"Buried her well above the high-water mark," he said. "Deep as we could. Didn't want
dogs or crabs or& " He'd rested his face in his hands. "I got up to the house in Mystic,
and they were fine, Jim. Nine of them. Now there's four. I'm like a storm crow, Jim.
Harbinger of fucking doom, aren't I?"
He wouldn't accept any sort of sympathy, and Jim stopped trying.
Jeanne McGill had woken and urged Mac to try to get some rest, then immediately laid
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herself down again and closed her eyes.
"She had on a fine cameo brooch and a lovely tiger's-eye ring, Jim. It was a present.
Middle finger, left hand. She& she only had it for a few weeks."
Finally Mac, too, had fallen into darkness.
Jeff Thomas was in his sleeping bag between Mac and Nanci, who completed the circle.
Jim was even more uneasy with Jeff around. The man had always been a grade-A,
numero-uno, checkered-flag asshole. His story of how Jed Herne had died still didn't ring
true, leaving the suspicion that he'd either killed the ex-Giants free safety himself or
stood by while he was murdered.
And there was the bizarre relationship with Nanci that had always had some sick and
perverse elements to it. Now it seemed as if love and hate had polarized even more.
"Ticking off good and bad points, Jim?"
He started at Nanci's quiet voice. She was lying on her elbow, looking at him with her
pale blue eyes.
"Sort of."
"How do I score?"
Jim felt that anything other than an honest answer would be a waste of both their times
and would make the older woman feel contempt for him. He didn't want that.
"High on some things. Top marks. Lower on others."
She laughed, the sound barely audible. "You say the nicest things, Skipper."
"The truth."
The smile vanished and she nodded. "I know. One of your strengths, Jim Hilton. I
understand why both General Zelig and the Hunters want you and your people so badly."
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Sukie McGill sat up in her sleeping bag, thumb in her mouth, eyes open wide. She looked
past Nanci Simms, through the plasterboard wall of the hut, and said, "Who's been sitting
in my chair, Mama?" And then she lay down once more by her sister.
Jim waited a few moments before speaking again. "We get moving in the morning?"
Nanci nodded. "I have the uncomfortable feeling of an invisible net slowly closing
around us. Do you not have that feeling at all, Jim?"
"No. I just feel like a man running blind along a corridor lined with razor blades. And the
passage is getting narrower and narrower."
"Same feeling. We need to get to the highway and find some wheels."
"More killing," he said wearily.
"If that bothers you, then take your .44 and blow your own head off. If we are& any of
us& to safely reach Aurora, then I can only promise you more killing. I just hope and
pray that we will not be among the dead."
"Think the Hunters are really& really hunting us, Nanci? Right this moment, I mean."
"Doubtful. After the ravages of Earthblood, life hasn't been so easy for the military. No
gasoline being processed. The technical side collapsing. If the Hunters move against us,
then it'll start in the light. But I figure we have two or three clear days before that
happens. Still& I can't always be right."
ALMOST TO THE SECOND of her saying that, the leading Chinook was being hand-
flagged away from the desert base of the Hunters of the Sun.
The long rotor blades thumped at the dark air, sending the echoes clear across the desert,
through the arroyos and dunes and ghost towns.
In a sun-bleached shack at the end of the main street of one of those derelict mining
settlements, Hopeful Gulch, a young woman was jerked awake by the sound. She stepped
out into the predawn cool wearing only panties and a faded T-shirt and peered across the
wilderness with her Swiss-made night-glasses.
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She watched as first the one Chinook, and then its twin, rose ponderously into the star-
sparkled sky and headed off on a course that would take them roughly north by
northwest.
It hadn't been possible to see from that distance what the logistics were of the Hunters'
operation, but she guessed, when she sent her radio message, that the way the choppers
took off indicated full loads.
The crucial message eventually reached Aurora through a number of cutoff
intermediaries, later that same morning, December 22.
But by that time Zelig himself was already on the road.
GAS WAS a serious problem for Operation Tempest also, bidden away in the mighty
heart of the Cascades. Zelig didn't have the manpower or the weaponry of the Hunters of
the Sun at his disposal. There were no big CH-47 Chinooks, though they had one each of
the Huey, the Bell Kiowa and the Huey-Cobra. The smaller military choppers.
For his recon southward to try to pick up the survivors of the Aquila before someone else
got to them, Zelig had chosen to rely on land transport.
Bearing in mind the deep-winter weather that was gripping the Pacific Northwest,
ordinary trucks weren't likely to be a whole lot of good. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]