The Prometheus Deception (66 page)

“You think it's following us?”

“For the last few minutes the sound has been fairly constant, neither louder nor softer. It's been right above us for miles now.”

She opened her compact and thrust it out the open window. “There
is
something, Nicholas. Yes. A helicopter.”

“Son of a bitch,” Bryson muttered. A sign they had just passed indicated a rest stop a mile ahead. He accelerated, got into the right lane, following a beat-up, rust-bucket El Dorado into the rest area parking lot. The car's body was perforated by rust, part of the tail pipe dragged almost touching the ground, and the hood was secured with twine. He watched the car's driver get out, a scruffy-looking, bleary-eyed, longhaired man in grungy jeans, a black beret, and a black Grateful Dead T-shirt under a green canvas army jacket. A stoner, Bryson thought. A pothead.

“What are you doing?” Elena asked.

“Countermeasures.” Bryson grabbed some papers from the glove compartment of the rented car. “Follow me. Take your purse and whatever else you've got with you.”

Bewildered, she got out.

“You see that guy who just got out of that wreck of a car?”

“What about him?”

“Remember his face.”

“How can I forget it?”

“I want you to wait right here until he comes out.”

Bryson walked through the fast-food restaurant and saw that the driver of the El Dorado was neither in line nor seated at a table.
Either the vending machines, buying cigarettes or candy or soda, or else the restroom,
Bryson thought. The stoner wasn't at the vending machines, but he was in the men's room. Bryson recognized the man's ratty black sneakers under the door of one of the toilet stalls. He relieved himself, then stood by the sink, washing his hands. Finally, the man came out of the stall and went up to the sink. That in itself was a surprise; Bryson hadn't figured him for being much on cleanliness.

Bryson caught the stoner's eye in the mirror. “Hey,” he said, “lemme ask you a favor.”

The stoner glanced over at him suspiciously, didn't answer for a few seconds as he soaped his hands. Without catching Bryson's eye, he said with hostility, “What?”

“I know this might seem bizarre, but I need you to check outside for me, see if my wife's out there. I think she followed me.”

“Sorry, man, I'm kinda in a hurry here.” He shook off his hands and looked around for the paper-towel dispenser.

“Look, I'm desperate,” Bryson said. “I wouldn't ask you if I wasn't. I'm willing to compensate you for your time.” He pulled out a wad of bills and peeled off a couple of twenties.
Not too much money or it'll seem suspicious
. “Just look out there, that's all. Tell me if you see her.”

“Aw, man. No fuckin' paper towels. I hate those fuckin' hot-air things.” He shook the water off his hands, then he took the proffered bills. “This better not be no setup, man—I'll fuck you up but good.”

“On the level, man. Totally on the level.”

“What does she look like?”

“Brunette, early thirties, red blouse, tan skirt. Real pretty. You can't miss her.”

“I get to keep this even if she's not there?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. Man, I
hope
she's gone.” Bryson thought for a moment. “Come back and tell me and then I'll double it.”

“Jeez, I don't know what the hell you're up to, man,” the stoner said, shaking his head as he left the men's room.

He walked through the vending-machine area to the outside and looked around. Elena was stationed nearby, acting the part they had worked out, her arms folded, head swiveling from side to side, a furious expression on her face.

In a minute he returned to the men's room. “Yeah, I see her. That's one pissed-off chick.”

“Shit,”
Bryson said, handing the man another couple of twenties. “I gotta shake that bitch. I'm a desperate man.” He pulled out the roll of bills, this time removing hundred-dollar bills. When he had counted out twenty banknotes, he fanned them. “She's like a fucking stalker now, really making my life a total nightmare.”

The stoner eyed the hundreds greedily. Distrustfully, he said, “What now? I'm not doin' anything illegal or anything—nothin' that gets me in trouble.”

“No, no, of course not. Don't misunderstand me. Nothing like that.”

Another man came into the rest room and glanced at the two of them warily before using the urinal. Bryson fell silent until the man left.

Then he said, “Your car that old El Dorado?”

“Yeah, it's a piece of shit—what about it?”

“Let me buy it from you. I'll give you two thousand bucks.”

“No way, man, I got twenty five hundred bucks into it, with the new shocks.”

“Make it three thousand.” Bryson held up the keys to the Buick. “You can take mine.”

“That better not be hot.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Hey, that's a rental,” he said suspiciously, seeing the Hertz key fob.

“Right. I'm not a
total
idiot. It's just a set of wheels to get you wherever you need to go. It's all paid for, and you can drop it wherever you want, I'll take care of it.”

The stoner thought for a minute. “I don't want you coming back to me and complaining about the car being a piece of shit and all. I already told you that. She's got a hundred seventy-five thousand miles on her.”

“Not to worry. I don't know you, I don't even know your name. You'll never see me again. All I care is, your car gets me away from my wife. It's worth it to me.”

“Is it worth thirty-five hundred to you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bryson said with feigned irritation.

“I got stuff in there.”

“So go get it and come back with your stuff.”

The stoner went to the parking lot, took a green army duffel bag from the trunk and filled it with old clothes, bottles, newspapers and books, a Walkman, a broken set of headphones. He came back to the men's room.

“I'll throw in another hundred for your beret and jacket.” Bryson took off his expensive blue blazer and handed it to the man. “Take my jacket. You definitely got the better end of this deal. Plus you sold your car for three times what it's worth.”

“It's a good car, man,” he said sullenly.

Bryson handed him the hundred-dollar bill, then one more. “Wait for me to drive out of here before you take off, okay?”

The stoner shrugged. “Whatever.”

Bryson took the keys to the El Dorado and shook the man's hand.

The stoner stood by the plate-glass windows of the vending-machine area until he saw his crappy old El Dorado drive slowly by. The car stopped, and then the man saw, to his astonishment, the pretty brunette wife in the red blouse run up to the car and jump in, and then the car drove away.

No freaks like suburban freaks,
he thought, shaking his head in disbelief.
Shit
.

*   *   *

The Bell 300 helicopter hovered directly above the rest stop.

“We have a positive visual ID,” said the observer in the front passenger's seat, peering through binoculars and speaking into his headset. He watched the man in the blue blazer get into the late-model Buick.

“Roger that,” the voice replied. “We're going to satellite feed now, so give me the Buick's license plate again.”

The observer dialed up the binoculars until he could read the license plate, then he read off the numbers. “Christ, will you look at the way that guy's driving? Guy must have stopped off for a couple of drinks—no wonder it took him so long.”

The staticky voice came over the headset again. “You got a positive on the woman?”

“Uh, that's a negative,” the observer replied. “There wasn't any woman with him. Think he might have left her there?”

*   *   *

The stoner in the black Grateful Dead T-shirt and elegant French blue blazer couldn't believe his luck. First he unloads the piece-of-shit El Dorado he hadn't been able to sell for five hundred bucks last summer for thirty-five hundred. Then he gets a free rental, with what looked like no time limit. And between selling his foul army jacket and beret, and poking his head outside to ogle some fucked-up guy's chick, he'd made more in half an hour than he'd made all month. Whatever the hell that idiot's trip was, paying all that money to get away from his wife and then letting the bitch back in the car, who cared?

He had the radio blasting and was cruising at almost ninety when all of a sudden he saw the huge tractor-trailer bearing down on him from the left, pulling up even with him …

And then forcing him to the side of the road!

What the hell was this?
The pothead swung the wheel hard to the right as the eighteen-wheeler forced him off the road and onto the shoulder.

“The fuck—!” he bellowed as he leapt out of the car, waving his fist at the truck driver. “What the
fuck
you think you're doin', you
fuck?
”

A man got out of the passenger's side of the truck's cab, a well-muscled man of around forty with a crew cut. He walked around the car, looking in the windows, then rapped his knuckles on the trunk lid. “Open it,” he commanded.

“Who the
fuck
you think you are, you gas-guzzling fascist son—” the stoner screamed, stopping short when he saw the flat silver pistol pointed at his eyes. “Oh, shit.”

“Open the trunk.”

Trembling, the stoner went right to the car, opened the door, and fumbled around looking for the lever on the floor. “Shoulda known I'd get fucked,” he muttered.

The crew-cut man inspected the trunk, then looked again in the backseat. He opened the back door and prodded the large green duffel bag. Just to be safe, he fired two shots into it, then another couple of shots into the front and rear seat cushions just for good measure.

The stoner just looked, still shaking, terrified.

The crew-cut man asked a few quick questions and then he put away his gun. “Get a haircut—and get a job,” he grunted as he returned to the truck.

*   *   *

“What the hell happened?” barked the supervisor in the surveillance control center in Sunnyvale, California.

“I—I'm not sure,” faltered the technician.

“What's that in the rear seat? Zoom it in.”

“That there. It's a big bundle—a bag, a sort of duffel bag. Where'd that come from?”

“I didn't see it before, sir.”

“Replay the feed from sector S23-994, time fourteen-eleven.” He turned to the adjacent monitor. In a few seconds, he saw the strange man in the black T-shirt carrying the big green duffel bag out of the rest area and over to the late-model Buick.

“Same object,” the supervisor said. “Switcheroo.”

“Rewind it. Where'd that bag come out of?”

In a few seconds they could see the longhaired man gathering what looked like trash from the trunk and front and backseats of the rusty El Dorado.

“Shit. All right, do a capture of that vehicle—quick, now, just cut and paste the image and run a search on the visual signature.”

“Got it.”

Within thirty seconds there was a chime, and the El Dorado came into focus on the live satellite feed. “Zoom it,” the supervisor said.

“Driver is a male, passenger female,” said the technician. “We've got a confirmation. Subject in view again, sir.”

*   *   *

The El Dorado belched clouds of oil smoke as Elena and Bryson roared down the highway.

It's still there. We didn't lose them
.

A large, square wooden sign on the left-hand side of the road about fifty feet ahead announced, in letters crudely formed out of twigs,
CAMP CHIPPEWAH.
The entrance was little more than a gap in the trees, a rutted dirt road leading somewhere off into the woods.

Bryson looked more closely and saw a smaller sign hanging from the larger one on which was painted
CLOSED.

The racket from above gradually became louder: the helicopter was changing altitude, descending.

Why?

He knew why. The road was sufficiently deserted; the helicopter was shifting into position.

He suddenly veered off the highway and onto the dirt road. It would likely lead to a wooded area.

“Nicholas, what are you doing?” Elena cried.

“The leaf canopy should help us evade detection,” Bryson explained. “Maybe give us the opportunity to lose the chopper.”

“We didn't lose it back at the rest stop, then…?”

“Only for a while.”

“It's not just following us, is it?”

“No, honey. I think they've got other plans for us.”

The steady drone told him that the helicopter had easily spotted the turn-off and was moving accordingly. The rutted dirt road led to a clearing, and then to a dirt path, apparently not meant for cars. He drove at top speed. The car was not suited to the terrain; the low-hanging undercarriage scraped continuously against the rocks. Tree branches on either side of the narrow lane scraped against the body of the car.

Then, just up ahead, he could see the helicopter hovering, slowly dropping into view. There was a clearing about a hundred feet ahead, the car speeding through the woods directly toward it. He slammed on the brakes; the car fishtailed, crashing into trees on either side. Elena screamed involuntarily and grabbed hold of the dashboard to brace herself.

Can't turn around—no room here to maneuver!

Just as the El Dorado entered the grassy clearing, with several small wooden cabins scattered around, the helicopter dropped down until it hovered not more than twenty feet above the ground, its front end tipped down.

“Use your gun!” Elena shouted.