Mammoth

"I had no idea, when I took Fuzzy, just how far we'd be taking him." She was silent for a while. Matt felt himself begin to stir, wondered if she still felt like sleeping. He touched her, and she proved she wasn't sleepy at all. But first she drew back one more time and looked at him.

"So when does this happen, do you think?"

"When it's time."

31

NIGHT fell, and the satellites opened their infrared eyes.

Howard paid for time on every high-resolution commercial orbiter as they came over the horizon until they sank below it. He stayed on the plane with Andrea, parked at the Executive Terminal, monitoring his bank of screens and listening to incoming reports from units in the field—all negative so far—while Warburton and his team watched similar displays in the war room of the security company only about half a mile away. Warburton was sure they would try to sneak over somewhere in the wilderness, so he concentrated on the eyes sca

There was a herd of cattle. Warburton watched as the computer examined several areas that turned out to be nothing but clumps of cows that made an unusually large heat signature. More cows. A group of people hiking along a mountain trail. He could see their arms and legs moving, and the beams of their flashlights. Kind of late to be moving around in the woods. Here was a group of five deer. More deer. More people. Deer, deer, deer, man alone, deer, deer... what was that? Bear. Now there was a car, a tent, a campfire, and two people... my, that's an interesting position.

It was the last interesting thing Warburton saw for several hours.

THE clock swung past midnight, eased into the wee hours. Warburton had to stop and rest his eyes every fifteen minutes or so. He hadn't had any idea there were so many deer in the whole country, and this was just a narrow strip of Washington and the tip of Idaho. Not to mention RVs. Those were fairly easy. A mammoth in an RV or a truck would shine like a beacon. They had found hundreds of garage-type fifth wheels, some with a heat source at the back where Fuzzy would be standing, but a quick look always showed it to be the still-warm engines of off-roaders like the one Susan had probably abandoned on the roadside somewhere.

He wasn't discouraged yet, they could be undercover somewhere waiting for the occasional border patrol vehicle to go by, but they had to go across sometime, and he was sure they would be detected. But he had thought to have them by now, he had to admit that. Time to go back over it, question his assumptions. Was he missing something?

He called up an area map and looked at it, tried to make it tell him something. After a few minutes he frowned.

"What's this?" he asked Crowder, pointing to the tip of a little peninsula about ten miles west of Blaine. It was an almost perfect square, two miles on a side. He hadn't noticed it before, but it was a different color from the land above it.

"That's the nipple on the hind teat of Canada," Crowder said, with a chuckle.

Warburton waited.

"It's called Point Roberts. Back when somebody was drawing that straight-line border that starts back in Mi

"So there's a border crossing?" "Sure."

Crowder typed a moment, and the map which had been told to display only ferries that went from the United States to Canada now showed the whole maze of Washington State ferries. Sure enough, a couple lines went to Point Roberts.

"Another boondoggle, you ask me," Crowder said. "Just north of the border is the great big

B.C. ferry slip at Tsawwassen. Who needs another ferry?" Sawasen? Warburton hated the stupid names up here. Humptulips, Mukilteo, Puyallup... why couldn't they speak English?

"The ferries that go there. Where do they come from?"

"Let's see... here's one from Anacortes, one from Bellingham, and one from Friday Harbor."

"The first two are covered. Where's Friday Harbor?"

"San Juan Islands." Crowder pointed to a maze of islands, all highly irregular in shape. It looked as if there were three or four big ones and dozens of small ones. "One of the ferries from Anacortes to Sidney, in B.C., stops a couple places in the San Juans, including Friday Harbor."

"But we've got that covered."

"Yeah." Crowder frowned at the map. "But there's one that stops at Friday Harbor before going on to Point Roberts."

"Where does it start?"

"Right here. Port Townsend. Over on the Olympic Peninsula."

All they had over there was one team, at Port Angeles, covering the ferry that went to Victoria. Plus, once they decided Susan was going to Canada, they hadn't been checking the main highway over there, US 101, or much of anything, for that matter. Warburton had thought the only way to Canada via the Olympic Peninsula was through Port Angeles, since he had asked only for international ferries.

It was a serious lapse on Crowder's part—he should have thought of the border crossing at Point Roberts—but Warburton wasn't going to take him to task for it. Not right now, anyway. He addressed Crowder and Blackstone.

"I don't want you to mention this to anybody. Not even Howard, yet. You know we've been picking up chatter, there's been some leaks from some of our employees, naturally, and some notice of what's going on along the border. The news and the police are just starting to get wind that somebody's looking for something the size of an elephant. But I may still have a chance to wrap this up quietly. I'm going out to take a look for myself. If there's a newsman waiting when I get there, I'll know how he found out, understand?" "Don't worry," Blackstone said. Warburton nodded, and went outside to his helicopter, thinking he would retire after this one was over, and never set foot in another helicopter again. He was getting too old for this shit.

There was a motorcycle in the backseat of the chopper. Warburton wrestled it out, pulled on a warm black leather coat and helmet, and headed out. It had a good muffler on it, making no more than a powerful purr as he moved down the deserted streets. Halfway there it started to rain again, the low-pressure system he had been watching and worrying about all night moving in from the Pacific just now arriving here in the western part of the state. He flipped down his visor.

He arrived at the park, killed the engine, and coasted down a slight slope, going by the office, and laid the bike down in shadows. He walked down the rows of sleeping juggernauts and almost missed the one he was looking for. The red stripe was gone, and the long dimple in the side had been painted over.

Smart girl. He had expected no less.

He raised his infrared glasses and looked at the back wall. It looked like somebody had painted the outline of a seven-foot-tall mammoth on the side of the trailer in bright green. As he watched, the mammoth's trunk curled up toward his mouth.

He sca

Enjoy it while you can, kids.

He got out his phone and called Howard.