A Rage for Revenge

43 Eye in the Sky

I drove to the first public terminal I could find and logged on as Major Duke Anderson. I had his code number and I had his password.

Duke still had a clearance. Amazing. I accessed the West Coast Satellite Eyeball Reconnaissance file. I ordered a complete set of frames covering the last twenty-four hours.

Maybe Jason was right. Maybe Jim McCarthy couldn't lift a weapon against the Tribe. But Major Duke Anderson certainly could. I just asked myself how Duke would handle this and bent to the terminal.

I studied the wide-angle shot just long enough to locate Monterey Bay, then dialed down to the Santa Cruz area. Using the joystick, I centered on Family. The peninsula was a tiny dagger sticking southward. I dialed down on it, then moved forward in time to this afternoon. As the screen flashed through the framesthey had been taken one minute apart-the shadows shortened and pivoted and lengthened. Their angles changed as the Earth turned before the sun.

There.

At the north end of the peninsula, just below the hiking ridge, walking distance from the unfinished worm fence, a Jeep was parked. A man was sitting in it holding a torch.

That was me. Guarding the barn after the horse was stolen.

I moved back in time to the beginning of the attack.

Four worms and thirteen humans came across the rocks, around the end of the fence, along the ridge and down the slope, where they entered the north end of the park.

I moved the joystick and followed them through the park. Here on the west side was a group of children. There I was, just walking past them.

There. The worms burst from the park. I paged through the frames.

The worms plowed through the children.

And I turned and ran for my Jeep. The worms turned south-

- I moved forward in time.

Someone in a van was battering at one of the worms with it. Three of the worms piled on the van and peeled it open.

The fourth worm was already moving around the south curve, and facing a Jeep. There I was. There was Little Ivy. We burned the worm.

I moved through the frames.

The rest of the worms came around the curve. We fled through the park. There-we came out on the opposite side and turned around to attack the worms from the rear.

There. I blew a worm to pieces against my house.

There. The worms dashed into the park, flowed over Jack and Dove.

There. We followed.

The worms were lost in the park. I couldn't see all of what happened.

I saw the explosion that killed Little Ivy. I saw the Jeep come barrelling out of the park. It turned north toward the hiking ridge. There-I saw two worms come out of the park and flow up the slope. There were people running with them.

There. The Jeep took its position. Where was the last worm?

There was still one worm on the peninsula. Three worms had dashed into the park. Two had come out.

My God.

It had been on the peninsula with us all afternoon long. Maybe it was still there.

I reached for the phone. No, wait.

I moved forward in time. There was B-Jay getting into the Jeep. There was the Jeep moving off.

And there was the last worm and one human being moving across the road and up the slope.

The whole time I'd been sitting there, they'd been in the park watching me. Jason and Orrie.

They could have killed me.

No, they couldn't. I'd been sitting there with the torch in my lap, ready to fire.

It had been a standoff. I'd cut off their escape and hadn't known it. Shit.

But I knew something now. I knew they'd been on the peninsula until sunset. That meant they couldn't be far.

I moved back in time until the Jeep appeared to back away from its position. There were two bright red smears moving across the road. There were people with the worms too. I began moving forward in time again, this time following them up the slope and over it. I moved northward on the peninsula with them, one frame at a time.

They moved down the opposite side of the hiking ridge, across the wide plateau, through the rough and crumbled area, and across the rocks to the coast highway. I followed them from above. They couldn't know I was watching from sixteen hundred kilometers above and six hours away.

They moved northward on the road for a half-kilometer to a place where it bordered a wide field. They went inland then, two worms and thirteen humans. They were still moving on foot. Where were their vehicles?

Once they were out of sight of the highway, they turned north again. I flashed through the frames and watched them jump from moment to moment; the effect was of a strobed and jerky movement. The meadow they were on ended at a belt of trees bordering a narrow canyon road. They turned up the canyon road. And then they were gone.

The slopes of the canyon were heavily forested. The road showed through only in patches.

I moved forward in time and widened the angle. No, they hadn't come out at the bottom end of the road where it met the main highway.

I superimposed a state map on the frame and followed the road inland. No, nothing here.

They were gone. "Shit."

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the screen in front of me. It was an industrial high-resolution monitor, with 5,000 real lines of video information and another 5,000 lines of extrapolated data, all repeated 120 times a second. There were 25 million pixels of data per frame. The system could be used for anything from the most sophisticated kind of military reconnaissance to finding lost golf balls.

But I couldn't find two worms in a leafy canyon.

If they couldn't be seen from the sky, they couldn't be tracked. I leaned forward again. I typed in a search program. I ID'd one of the worms as the target and set parameters. A ten-kilometer radius, from this moment until dusk. I hit ENTER and let the program scan through the frames for me.

Nothing.

The computer couldn't find them either.

All right. So that was that. They weren't visible from the air, not as worms.

I went back to the moment where I'd lost them at the canyon road.

I followed the road north and east as it wound upward through the canyon. It came out on the crest of a ridge and joined up with a ridge road that headed mostly north.

If they were traveling by truck, it would be dusk before they got this far. They wouldn't show up on the video.

All right. No problem.

I moved back through the frames, back in time to the moment of attack. I saw the worms-four of them now-coming down the slope with their human companions. I followed them backward across the same course, up the hiking ridge, across the plateau, across the rocks, up the road, across the field, and into the trees. And of course, they disappeared.

Now, I had the time. They had been moving into position at the very same moment I had been arguing with B-Jay.

I moved to the place where the canyon road met the ridge road and scanned backward in time. No traffic up here-until a convoy hacked out of the canyon road. Three motorcycles, three trucks, and two vans.

Bingo.

I tracked with them, moving backward through the day.

The ridge road wound northward for miles. A couple of times I lust them in the foliage, but I just moved farther north and waited for them to show up again on the frames. There they were. I followed them backward until morning.

I almost missed the turnoff. I thought I'd missed them and kept going north, but then I hit Interstate 5 and I knew I'd gone too far.

Jason didn't like to use the Interstates. Too much traffic. And certainly not during the day.

I moved back to the ridge road to the first moment that the trucks appeared on it. Ahh, I see. They turned onto it from this side canyon. I followed them back up the side canyon. It dead-ended.

A narrow road wound up a hill to . . .

There. Some kind of base. No, that long building was a row of motel rooms. That had to be a lodge. That was a corral and a barn opposite. Yes. Jason liked to find little lost places like this. This looked like some kind of a ranch. Smart.

So now I knew where they had come from. But they were safe there.

So why had they attacked Family?

It didn't make sense. Family was too vulnerable. Today's attack proved that. Jason wouldn't put his people in a vulnerable place. Unless there were something about Family that required his special attention.

Oh, my God.

They'd been after me.

In fact, I'd even told them where Family was. That afternoon with Marcie and the puppies.

No-I hadn't told them where Family was. I'd only suggested one of the new peninsulas as a good place to relocate. That was part of the information I'd dumped for Jason. He'd picked up the disk and studied it.

Oh, God. This was even worse. Family was still listed as a private-access area. B-Jay had refused to list it as open-access because she didn't want refugees moving in.

And I'd told Jason to look for a private-access area. But why this peninsula?

Oh. Now I knew.

We had an extensive network of underground service tunnels and facilities. The worms could be hidden from the sky. The aboveground uses of the village would look perfectly normal.

Jason hadn't been after me at all. And yet it was exactly as he had said over and over: There are no accidents in this game. He'd found me after all. And he'd been right. I regretted it bitterly.

I was still staring at the screen.

Jason's camp was three hours away. At least. At night, driving with the lights low, the trucks might take four or more hours. They were probably still on their way.

My guess was that they would have waited for Jason and Orrie for as long as they could.

Let's see-yes, there they were. All the vehicles except one truck and one van were moving back toward the camp. I looked at my watch. They'd left around five. They should be arriving there any moment.

But they were paralyzed without Jason. What was he going to do?

Even if he followed them as soon as he got to the last two vehicles hidden in the canyon road, he couldn't be back at his camp before midnight.

A thought occurred to me. It probably wasn't possible. But it was worth a try.

I picked up the phone and punched for the Santa Cruz District Military Governor. A woman answered the phone.

"This is Major Duke Anderson, Special Forces. I need to speak with the governor."

"I'm sorry, she's not available."

"Perhaps you didn't hear me. I said I'm Special Forces."

"I heard you. Colonel Wright is not available."

"Who am I speaking to?" I asked.

"Lieutenant Gail Beeker."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I have a message for your Colonel. If she doesn't get it tonight, you may end up as Private Gail Beeker. Does the name 'Uncle Ira' mean anything to you?"

"Uh-stand by."

A moment later, another voice came on the phone. "This is Colonel Wright. Who am I speaking to?"

"This is Major Duke Anderson. Special Forces. I'm investigating the worm infestation in this area. I saw the attack on the peninsula this afternoon, and I've located the renegades' base camp. We have very little time, Colonel. We have to hit them tonight. I know this group. They're Revelationists. They'll be on the road before morning if they think their cover's been compromised. Can you mount a night mission?"

"Major," Colonel Wright said, "my troops are not trained for this kind of operation."

Right. A desk battalion. Leftovers from the Teamwork Army. They make the software run on time.

"Do you have pilots? Do you have choppers? Do you have men and women who can hold a weapon and point it in the right direction?"

"I have three teams that are used primarily for rescue operations."

"They'll do. Scramble them, please."

"Major, I appreciate the urgency . . ."

"No, Colonel, you don't. These people have taken children as hostages. What you don't know is that when they break camp, they don't take their hostages with them. They feed them to their worms, so the worms can go a week before their next meal. These are the children from the peninsula. There may be a chance to save them, but only if we act now. All I ask from you is that you ask the men and women in your command if there are any volunteers for this particular rescue mission. Let them know that there may be some shooting involved. In fact, you can count on it. I'll personally assume responsibility for the planning and execution of the operation. And I'll lead it too."

There was silence from the phone for a moment. Then Colonel Wright said, "I'll assume the responsibility, Major. But you can lead the mission. Where are you? I'll have a car pick you up."

"Don't bother. I have a Jeep. Just have someone meet me at the gate of the airfield with a clean jumpsuit."

"I'll meet you myself," she said. And switched off. The lady was okay. Regular Army always delivered.

I hit the keyboard and dumped to disk. I'd need this for the briefing. While the drive whirred, I picked up the phone and called B-Jay.

I had a hunch there might be something she'd want to do tonight too.