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"Get up! Get up and drive!"
Rachel struggled back into her seat, shifted the car into drive, and pulled onto the highway. The green beam stayed locked on our windshield like a satellite weapon aimed from space. Taking the map off the floor, I folded it down to a small rectangle and tapped a spot three times to indicate our location.
She nodded.
I then followed 64 eastward for a couple of miles, to a small rural road that broke to the left. There I wrote, Take this turn.
When Rachel nodded again, I leaned down to her ear and said, "Take the turn no matter what happens. Understand?"
"I will. Is whatever you saw still there?"
I checked through the goggles, then squeezed her shoulder. "It's there. Speed up."
She pressed the accelerator to the floor.
CHAPTER 15
Geli Bauer stood alone in David Te
One: Te
Two: Te
He had been raised in the rural area around Oak Ridge, Te
His escape from the crime scene raised more questions. The team in the carpet van had arrived to find Rachel Weiss's Saab parked out front but Te
Without the voiceprint analysis that had turned up Fielding's covert call from a convenience store, Te
As she looked down at Ritter's shattered skull and blood-matted hair, her cell phone rang. "Bauer," she said.
"This is Air-One. They know we're following them."
"How high are you flying?"
"Ten thousand feet. There's no way they could have made us from looking at the sky. They had to see the beam."
"That's impossible without special equipment."
"They must have some."
"What are they doing now?"
A crackle of static. "They ran off the road like they saw the beam and panicked. They ducked under the dash for a while, then got back on the highway. They're doing about ninety now, still headed east."
"What are they saying?"
"Nothing about a destination."
"Where are our ground units?" Geli asked.
"Closest is fifteen minutes away, give or take two."
"I'll call you back." She speed-dialed Skow's scram¬bled cell phone. He answered after eight rings.
"What is it, Geli?"
"Te
"You must be joking. Have your people lost him?"
"The plane has the Audi now, but they could lose it."
"I suppose you want to terminate them now?"
Geli sensed Skow's finger on the chicken switch. "That's my standing order from you."
"The situation has changed."
"The geography has changed. Not the situation."
"I don't like it. How will it play?"
The bureaucrat's mantra, Geli thought scornfully. "Te
There was a long silence. Then Skow said, "Peter was right to hire you. Good luck with that rescue."
"Fuck you very much," Geli muttered, and hung up. She opened her co
"Air-One, do you still have the Audi in sight?"
"Affirmative. And they definitely know we're here. Te
"Ground units, when you get there, wait for low traf¬fic, then box in the car and take them."
"Take them out?" asked a voice with the eerie calm of a fighter pilot on a mission.
Geli looked down at Ritter's corpse, remembering last night. He was still alive inside her. "Te
There was a chorus of "Affirmative."
"Am I understood?"
The responding silence said more than the subse¬quent acknowledgments. This was why she hired former soldiers.
"Ah, that's a rog," said a cold male voice.
"Call it play by play for me, Air-One."
"Will do."
Geli smiled. Te
CHAPTER 16
As the Audi roared eastward toward the turn, I sca
Rachel reached out and pulled me close enough to whisper. "I think I see the turn. Is it Highway 45?"
I checked the map. "Yes, but it's no highway. Take it."
She slowed to fifty, then screeched left onto 45.
"Punch it," I said.
She hit the accelerator and shot down the two-lane blacktop at seventy miles per hour. I put the goggles up to my face and looked for the laser. It had lost us at the turn, but it quickly tracked back onto our rear wind¬shield. I leaned over to Rachel's ear.
"We're going to cross a bridge over the Cashie River where it flows into Albemarle Sound. Take the next left after that."
"Just tell me when to turn."
The A8 devoured the road like a starving tiger, racing up and over the high bridge that arced across the Cashie. I leaned far enough out the window to look skyward. A small plane was flying over the road at about five thou¬sand feet. A wave of relief went through me. My fear was a helicopter that could set down on the road and deploy a SWAT team armed with submachine guns. A fixed-wing aircraft could land on a highway, but not on the twisting road we would soon be driving.
Rachel pointed at an intersection ahead. I nodded. She slowed just enough to make the turn, then whipped onto a much smaller road that was heavily forested on both sides.
"Look at those trees," I said, bracing my hands on the dash.
A hundred yards ahead, towering oaks closed over the road, turning it into a shadowy tu