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Twenty-One

 

Frantic, Hardman sat on the grid in his darkened room. He'd lost them. After only about seven hours sleep in the previous sixty, he'd fallen asleep in spite of himself, fallen asleep on the grid.

He could have maintained a direct psychic contact at least through a doze, and dozing was the heaviest he'd ever slept before while riding the grid. But this contact had been visual only, to avoid psychic assault. And he'd been sleeping too little, staying awake on Coca Cola, caffeine tablets, and determination. So when sleep had captured him, it had been for more than an hour and a half, and he'd awakened with a horrible start, momentarily weak with fear.

He should have slept longer than three hours the night before. But he couldn't know, when the Merlin group stopped at the motel in Deming, that they wouldn't get up at 2 a.m. and hit the road again. They could have; it would have been just like Merlin. So he'd laid down on the bed in the grid room, after setting the wake-up for midnight. At 1 A.M. he'd gotten back on the grid and waited—waited for something to happen. Nothing had, until Merlin and his crew had gotten up at four-thirty.

Hardman had wanted to be gridman from the first, from the time The Lords had selected and recruited him, fifteen years earlier, and acquainted him with their operation. Gridman! The power had seemed almost godlike, and as soon as he knew of it, Kurt Hardman, known since childhood as "the toad," had wanted that more than anything in the world.

He'd ridden the grid for almost that long, first as trainee, then as gridman, and loved it. And while The Lords had been in the world, it had been a leisurely post. Since they'd been taken away, with Shark left in charge, his work load had been way up. But even then, only occasionally had he felt really overloaded. The hardest part had been handling certain troublesome psychics that previously The Lords would have taken care of.

Riding the grid, he'd discovered, was hard on one, aging the body, but mostly it was worth it for the marvelous power ... depending on what one did, or what one ran into.

Actually, most of his serious trouble had been when he'd been riding the grid for fun and games instead of business. He'd found and interfered with several witches who hadn't been impinging on group activities at all, and one of them had nearly killed him. Since then he'd been much less venturesome.

Now, with the Merlin group lost, he was too shaken, his adrenalin level too high, to go to sleep again very soon. He had no idea where they were, and he'd be in serious trouble if Shark found out what had happened. That was one of the bad things about being the gridman: it made him so damned vulnerable to Shark. Shark could punish him.

Hardman's hand touched the keys that accessed highway maps to the screen; he'd isolate the more probable routes and put sniffers out. If that didn't work, he'd go for direct psychic contact, just long enough to locate them, although even that would be dangerous with these people.

* * *

Ole didn't feel well at all; something was going on, but he didn't know what.

Before they'd left Deming, New Mexico that morning, the group had decided to leave the interstate at Las Cruces, in favor of lesser highways. It seemed obvious that someone was monitoring them somehow: That was the only explanation for gunmen having been able to follow them the day before. He and Vic had also concluded that the monitoring must somehow be visual, via machine. They'd have felt any direct connection to their selves—their psyches.

Jerry had come up with the next suggestion: If someone was monitoring them by machine, and if the someone was in a human body, he probably needed to eat and sleep and go to the bathroom. Maybe he left them now and then, and found them afterward by scanning ahead from where he'd left them.

But if they repeatedly changed roads, maybe sooner or later they'd lose their monitor. At least that might make it harder and more exhausting for him. Or her.

There were all kinds of assumptions in that, none of which anyone felt certain of. But all of them now, not only Vic and Ole, recognized the value of hunches, especially the hunches of a psychic. And at the least, changing routes would make them harder to ambush.

So from Las Cruces they'd taken US 82 northeast to Alamagordo, then 54 north to Tularosa, then 70 east through Mescalero, and so on. After they'd left 380 at Tatum, Ole could feel the difference: It had worked. For a while, things had felt cleaner than at any time for days. But for the last three hours... Apparently they had their monitor back.

Sigurdsson's Caddy topped a rise, and a half mile ahead he could see a cafe, its illuminated sign the only bright spot in the night. A road sign in his headlights told him further that County Road D was just ahead. He glanced in his rearview mirror; the pickup was out of sight. It might simply be cut off by the rise behind him or it might have fallen a mile or more behind. He knew he was careless of things like that, especially where Vic was involved, but he could connect when the need arose.

Now it was time to talk about what to do next. Ole slowed and turned off the highway to park by the cafe.

"What's happening?" Carol asked beside him. In the back seat, Jerry sat up and raised a sleepy head to look out.

"Ve going to take a break; ve need to talk."

They got out of the car and went inside to wait for the others.

* * *

Vic had dozed off between the two larger men. Paul too dozed, off and on. Frank was considering waking one of them to replace him at the wheel; it wasn't that he felt sleepy, but he was getting a little glassy-eyed.

He topped a rise and saw a cafe ahead. He'd like to stop for coffee, but he didn't want to fall too far behind the others. Idly he wished again that Ole would stay in sight.

They should reach McMurtree in under half an hour, though. Ole would be waiting for them there outside the first eating place, and they'd decide whether to drive on or stop for the night. He sped by the cafe without paying it any attention.

* * *

"Sher'ff, this is Depitty Two. One of the suspect vehicles just passed us here at the Range Line Road stakeout—a black four-wheel-drive Ford pickup with Arizona plates. But there weren't no white Cadillac sedan ahead of it, and it ain't come in sight behind it yet, either."

Sheriff Bill Johnson's face showed no change as he pressed the transmit switch on his microphone. "How long since he went by you?"

"About half a minute; he ought to be gettin' to you in three, four minutes."

"All right. You let me know the minute you see the Caddy. When he's gone by you a quarter mile, you'll come on out and follow him, but don't use your flasher and don't close up on him. You understand, Ray John? I don't want him to know anything's happenin' till he sees the roadblock. Then I want you to come up on the double.

"And shoot if they try to double back on you, because we don't want these people to escape. They're communist agents, and it's up to us to see they get stopped, but otherwise we want 'em alive."

"Yessir, sher'ff, I'll let you know the minute it comes by, then be right out after 'em as soon as they get a quarter mile ahead. No siren, no flasher, and they ain't no way I'll let 'em get back by me. It oughtn't be long now. Depitty Two out."

Sheriff Johnson switched to transmit again, to talk to Deputy One, the patrol car parked on the other side of the road. "Okay, boys, there's going to be a Chevy Camaro and a Toyota sedan coming through in about a minute. Soon as they're on by, I want you to block the bridge. The next thing along after them is the pickup we want. Y'all get out then and have your guns ready. Shoot to kill at the first sign of trouble, but do not shoot if you don't need to."

* * *

"What do you think, Ole?" Jerry said. "They should have been along by now. Do you suppose something happened to them? Maybe they drove by and missed us."

"Vic wouldn't do that. Would he, Ole?" Carol asked.

Ole stared thoughtfully, sipping his coffee, then nodded. "That's v'at happened," he said, "I'm pretty sure. They vent right by and never saw us. Vic must have gone to sleep, and I didn't pick it up."

"Hadn't we better get going again, then?" asked Jerry.

Again Ole nodded, but for a moment made no move to get up.

"What's going on?" Jerry asked.

"I ain't sure." After half a minute more, the Icelander slid his long frame from the booth without saying anything further; the others followed, uncertain. The puzzled waitress met them at the cash register, and Ole gave her two ones. They walked out to the car and got in.

Ole started the engine and left the curving driveway, not back onto the highway but onto the county road which crossed it, driving north.

"Uh, Ole," Jerry began.

"Ya, I know. This ain't the same road. But something's wrong up ahead, I ain't sure v'at. And if ve follow them, it's yust going to make things vorse."

"If something's wrong, shouldn't we go help them?"

"It von't help if ve follow them into a trap."

He drove three miles farther, turned east on the next crossroad, then stopped, his brow furrowed. Neither of the others spoke.

"Okay," he said at length, "I know v'at happened now. I got the picture. There vas a roadblock, and they got picked up."

"Picked up! What for?" Carol asked.

"Somebody made it vorth somebody's vile, I suppose." He shifted into reverse, backed out into the intersection, and turned north again on County Road D.

"Where are we going?" asked Carol.

"North. Out of this county. Look in the map book and see how far the county line is from the highvay back there."

"Shouldn't we try to help them?" Jerry repeated.

"Ve vill; ve are. The vorst thing ve can do now is get caught by the same people that caught them. And v'en they decide ve ain't coming along behind, they'll probably be looking for us. That's v'y ve need to get out of this county."

Jerry didn't question Ole's clairvoyance. For just a moment longer, though, he felt the need to go back. Then the impulse evaporated, as if he'd tuned in at some subliminal level to the event Ole had picked up, and knew for himself that Ole's response was right.

"It's about fifteen miles to the next county," Carol said. "About twenty to a town." She looked from the map to Ole. "Can you tell us anything more?"

"It vas a roadblock, like I said. Yerry, you're a policeman. V'y don't you explain?"

Jerry glanced at the nighted countryside flashing by; Ole wasn't worrying about the speed limit just then. "Well," he started slowly, "out in the country like that, on a secondary highway, it would ordinarily be the county sheriff's department that set up the roadblock. So the danger is probably restricted to this county."

"I see," said Carol. "And if our route was known, they would only have notified the sheriff's department of one county!"

"Right. Maybe a sheriff that they—whoever "they" are—knew was on the take. And if they were expecting two cars and only get one, they're going to be worried. They're less apt to, uh, shoot someone if we're still loose."

"Do you really think they might do such a thing?"

"I really don't know. Things can happen in some rural counties that would be darn near unthinkable in L.A. or with a state organization. But with us running loose out here, we're a big unknown and unpredictable factor. It gets a lot harder for them to pretend, say, that there'd never been such a roadblock or such an arrest, or such people as Vic and Frank and Paul.

"Besides that, they can't know why we didn't come on through. We're a mystery, and their attention is going to stick on us. That's what mysteries can do. It's going to make it hard for them to plan anything or dispose of anyone."

He turned to Ole. "Is that the same way you figured it?"

Sigurdsson didn't take his eyes off the road. "You did a good yob. But I didn't figure it out, any more than you did. Ve yust knew it. V'at you called figuring there, that vas yust you fishing up the reasons and putting them into vords. That helps sometimes v'en you're not used to operating as a psychic."

He said nothing more then, and they sped silently down the road in the wake of their headlights.

* * *

"What now, sher'ff?"

Deputy Jack Boyd was the night dispatcher and jailkeeper. He was also the least talkative man on Sheriff Johnson's staff, and the deputy whose ethical plasticity the sheriff felt most confident of. The sheriff had his other on-duty deputies out on the road. Two men in Deputy Two were still at the junction with the Range Line Road, watching for the white Cadillac, while two others in Deputy One were back at the roadblock location at Kiowa Creek Bridge. The hope was that the white Cadillac had been delayed on the road somewhere and would be along soon.

The sheriff had been trying to convince himself that this was indeed the case, but he had a premonition that it wasn't. Which gave him a problem. His Dallas contact had offered him $40,000 to turn these people over dead or alive. As far as Sheriff Johnson was concerned, alive was better. He didn't like the idea of killing, short of self-defense, and there could be a problem in covering up a shooting.

Rinaldi had said he'd send some men to pick them up. His people would have CIA credentials or what would pass for CIA credentials; people would believe anything about the CIA. They'd pick up the prisoners or their bodies, tell any deputies involved to keep the whole thing quiet on the basis of national security, and privately leave the $40,000 with the sheriff in hundred dollar bills.

It was to have been as simple as that.

But if Rinaldi wasn't interested in half a catch, then the sheriff would be stuck with three prisoners arrested, without any charge he could make stick. If he charged them with something phony and held them, he'd have to allow them a lawyer, and they'd be out quicker than shit through a goose. Judge Schoenert was a sharp, hard-nosed old sonofabitch; couldn't nobody lie to him and get away with it.

While if he let them go, them suckers'd probably sue his ass dry. No, Rinaldi would either have to take them, or he'd ... what? All the sheriff could think of was to shoot them attempting to escape, and that wouldn't work at all: The state attorney general's office would look into anything like that too damn close. It wouldn't be like shooting them at a roadblock for resisting arrest.

Shit, he told himself irritably, I'm worryin' about nothin'. Rinaldi'll take 'em, and I'll have myself $20,000 for half a catch. All I got to worry about is how to spend it without nobody wonderin' about it. 

He answered his jailkeeper's question. "What now is, I call them guvmint boys and tell them to come pick up their prisoners."

He went to his desk and dialed the phone. Deputy Jack Boyd watched him for a moment, then wandered back to the high-security cell to peer through the small window at their catch. They'd come in peaceful enough, and there weren't none of 'em had any foreign accent, although one of the two big ones did look eye-talian. But they hadn't acted scared, nor mad either, like you'd expect if they was innocent.

The prisoners saw him looking at them through the small square of reinforced glass in the door, and the older man with the whiskers smiled at him as if the two of them shared some secret joke. Boyd stepped away, uncomfortable.

Back in the office, he found the sheriff just hanging up the phone. "When they gettin' here, sher'ff?" asked Boyd.

"About an hour and a half." The sheriff looked as if a weight had been lifted from him. "They'll be flyin' in to Jim Vance Airport, and we'll pick 'em up there. They'll take custody of the prisoners, and we'll haul 'em out to their plane in the van."

He looked meaningfully at his jailkeeper. "And remember, none of this ever happened. This is a national security matter, and those CIA boys play for keeps. Anybody leaks this, we'll likely find his hide on a bob-wire fence somewhere."

Boyd nodded. He wasn't prepared to totally disbelieve, but somehow or other the whole business sounded phony to him. The sheriff would not make a good poker player. Not that it made any difference to Boyd, one way or the other. He could have it either way, real or phony, and he wasn't the kind to gossip about business.

He'd be damned interested though to see those "CIA boys" and see what he thought of them.

The sheriff had just walked over to the coffee maker when the phone rang. Boyd picked it up.

"Buffalo County Sher'ff's Department, Depitty Boyd."

The voice at the other end sounded cool and professional. "Deputy Boyd, this is Lieutenant Parmeter of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Albuquerque. Let me speak with the senior watch officer, please."

Boyd's eyebrows arched. "Just a minute," he said, and putting a hand over the mouthpiece, turned to the sheriff. "It's for you. F.B.I."

A fleeting pang hit the sheriff, leaving a residue in the pit of his stomach. He came over and took the phone. "This is Sher'ff Johnson. What can I do for you?"

"I'm Lt. Joseph Parmeter of the Special Narcotics Strike Force of the F.B.I., in Albuquerque. It's been reported to us that you are holding in custody three of our agents, arrested in a black four-wheel-drive Ford pickup truck with Arizona plates. These agents, as a matter of security, carry no Bureau identification. They are using the following identities: Victor Merlin, Frank Diacono, and Paul David.

"I am prepared to fly agents to McMurtree tonight to arrange the release of these people, and in the meantime I hope you'll make them comfortable. But if the charges against them are misdemeanors, or if formal charges haven't yet been filed, the Bureau would feel deeply obligated to you if you would release them tonight. That would allow them to complete their very important mission, and it would save both funds and man-hours at this end. Could you do that for us, Sheriff Johnson?"

Bill Johnson's strong, high-cheekboned face had gone wooden. Gentle Jesus! This could be somebody from the white Cadillac, or he might be talking to an actual F.B.I, lieutenant. It could even be some racketeering operation in competition with Rinaldi! But the voice sounded genuine; it sounded like a fed.

"Who am I talkin' to again?"

"Lt. Joseph Parmeter—that is P as in "papa"; A as in "alpha"; R as in..."

"All right, all right, I got it now: Parmeter."

Bill Johnson's mind worked feverishly. Somebody had to have let this story out. It could have been somebody of Rinaldi's, or it could even have been one of his own men; no telling where the F.B.I, had infiltrated or had a tap—if it was the F.B.I.

"And what was that office again that you're with?" asked the sheriff.

"The Special Narcotics Strike Force of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," came the patient reply.

The sonofabitch sounds so goddamn official! he told himself. There weren't none of them hoods could sound like that. And that would explain why them fellas in the high-security cell back there hadn't put up any fuss when they'd been picked up, or even when they'd been locked up. It was like they knew someone would straighten it all out. 

Shi-it! "And what did you say they were doin', comin' through here?" Johnson asked.

The sheriff was stalling now, trying to think.

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information, sheriff. All I need to know, at this time, is whether you can release them now to go on their way, or whether I have to send agents to arrange their release." The lieutenant sounded slightly impatient now.

If I keep them, Johnson thought, Rinaldi'll be by to pick them up. And sure as flies in shit, I can't give them to him now. If I give them up, there'll be hell to pay when the feds get here. There'll be hell enough to pay if the feds have to come after them at all, 'cause they'll sure as hell want to know what their people were charged with. 

"Sheriff? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, yeah. I got one of my men checkin' on somethin'."

Maybe I could tell him I'm turning them loose, and then give them to Rinaldi instead. But hell, if I turn them loose and they don't call right in to Albuquerque, that Parminter or whatever his name is will know sure as shit something's wrong. The sheriff could see $40,000 flying away—$20,000 at least.

"Lieutenant," he said, "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. As a fellow officer, I don't want to put you-all to no needless trouble or expense. So I'll just let 'em out now and they can be on their way." He said it as if it were his own idea.

"Thank you, sheriff. We certainly appreciate your generous cooperation, and our letter of thanks will be on its way tomorrow."

They hung up. Letter of thanks, thought Johnson. With a letter of thanks and a dollar-twenty I can buy a box of Skoal. He turned to Deputy Boyd. "I'm lettin' those three new prisoners out," he said. "It was all a mistake. Get their valuables out of the cabinet for 'em."

Boyd stared at him. "What you goin' to tell them CIA fellas when they get here?"

"God damn it, don't argue! Jesus Christ! All I get is arguments around here!"

The deputy shrugged and watched the sheriff stomp into the hall toward the high-security cell. Bill didn't hardly ever get that mad, Boyd thought as he went to the padlocked cabinet.

Johnson unlocked the heavy cell door and swung it open. The three men inside looked up. "Y'all are free to go now. Lieutenant Parminter just called from Albuquerque and told us who you are."

Diacono nodded curtly. "Of course," he said. He turned to Vic and Paul, nodded again, and without saying anything more, they followed the sheriff down the hall. Nor did they speak when they picked up their wallets, checked the contents, and received the keys to the pickup. They didn't even say anything when they went out the door. They were afraid to: They didn't want to risk queering whatever had happened to set them free.

Sheriff Bill Johnson watched the door close behind them. It occurred to him that what had really happened was, they had some kind of concealed radio in the pickup cab, and had gotten off a call as they'd stopped for the roadblock.

Rinaldi was going to be madder than hell. Well, Rinaldi could go fuck himself.

* * *

Diacono drove east out of town about two miles and took a left on the next north-south road, which was graveled. If anything happened to change their minds again back there, he wanted to be off the highway and hard to find.

The next objective was to get out of Buffalo County.

"Does anyone have any idea at all what the hell happened back there?" he asked.

"Not yet," said Vic. "But whatever it was, I expect we'll find out before long. I'm pretty sure one of the others had something to do with us getting out."

"How are we going to find them again?"

"I don't know yet. We'll just have to wait and see."

On the right side of the cab, Paul David looked out across the moonless plain. Houses and lights were far between out here; it was lonely country at night. But this pickup didn't feel lonely. He liked these people he'd hooked up with; they felt right to him.

And he did not think of them as dangerous to be around, not even tonight.

 

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