that had so frightened her when she was in first grade. It came back to her as vividly as if it were yesterday. Nothing could be more terrifying than to find that the ground beneath your feet was not fixed and stable, but treacherous and deadly. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she saw nightmare visions of multiple car wrecks, bridges collapsing, buildings falling down, fires and floods — but none of these were as dreadful to her as the recollection of her own terror at six years of age.
She washed her hair and thrust the memory to the back of her mind. Then she packed an overnight bag and went back to the officers’ club at ten P.M.
The command post was quiet, but the atmosphere was tense. Still no one knew for certain whether the Hammer of Eden could cause an earthquake. But since Ricky Granger had abducted Al Honeymoon at gunpoint in the garage of the Capitol Building and left him stranded on I-80, everyone was sure these terrorists were dead serious.
There were now more than a hundred people in the old ballroom. The on-scene commander was Stuart Cleever, the big shot who had flown in from Washington Tuesday night. Despite Honeymoon’s orders, there was no way the Bureau was going to let a lowly agent take overall charge of something this big. Judy did not want total control, and she had not argued about it. However, she had been able to ensure that neither Brian Kincaid nor Marvin Hayes was directly involved.
Judy’s title was investigative operations coordinator. That gave her all the control she needed. Alongside her was Charlie Marsh, emergency operations coordinator, in command of the SWAT team on standby in the next room. Charlie was a man of about forty-five with a grizzled crewcut. He was ex-army, a fitness freak and a gun collector, not the type Judy normally liked, but he was straightforward and reliable, and she could work with him.
Between the head shed and the investigation team table were Michael Quercus and his young seismologists, sitting at their screens, watching for signs of earthquake activity. Michael had gone home for a couple of hours, like Judy. He came back wearing clean khakis and a black polo shirt, carrying a sports duffel, ready for a long spell.
They had talked, during the day, about practical matters as he set up his equipment and introduced his helpers. At first they had been awkward with each other, but Judy realized he was quickly getting over his feelings of anger and guilt about Tuesday’s incident. She felt she ought to sulk about it for a day or two, but she was too busy. So the whole thing got shoved to the back of her mind, and she found herself enjoying having Michael around.
She was trying to think of an excuse to talk to him when the phone on her desk rang.
She picked it up. “Judy Maddox.”
The operator said: “A call for you from Ricky Granger.”
“Trace it!” she snapped. It would take the operator only seconds to contact Pacific Bell’s twenty-four-hour security center. She waved at Cleever and Marsh, indicating that they should listen.
“You got it,” the operator said. “Shall I connect you or leave him on hold?”
“Put him on. Tape the call.” There was a click. “Judy Maddox here.”
A male voice said: “You’re smart, Agent Maddox. But are you smart enough to make the governor see sense?”
He sounded irate, frustrated. Judy imagined a man of about fifty, thin, badly dressed, but accustomed to being listened to. He was losing his grip on life and feeling resentful, she speculated.
She said: “Am I speaking to Ricky Granger?”
“You know who you’re speaking to. Why are they forcing me to cause another earthquake?”
This seemed to make him angrier. “It’s not me who’s using more and more electric power every year,” he said. “I don’t want more power plants. I don’t use electricity.”
“You don’t?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Judy. You’re the one that’s in trouble.”
Next to her, Charlie’s phone rang. He snatched it up and wrote in large letters on his notepad: “Pay phone — Oakland — I-980 & I-580—Texaco.”
“We’re all in trouble, Ricky,” she said in a more reasonable voice. Charlie went to the map on the wall. She heard him say the word “roadblocks.”
“Your voice changed,” Granger said suspiciously. “What happened?”
Judy felt out of her depth. She had no special training in negotiating skills. All she knew was that she had to keep him on the phone. “I suddenly thought what a catastrophe there will be if you and I don’t manage to come to some agreement,” she said.
She could hear Charlie giving urgent orders in a low voice: “Call the Oakland PD, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and the California Highway Patrol.”
“You’re bullshitting me,” Granger said. “Have you traced this call already? Jeez, that was fast. Are you trying to keep me on the line while your SWAT team comes after me? Forget it! I got a hundred and fifty ways out of here!”
“But only one way out of the jam you’re in.”
“It’s past midnight,” he said. “Your time is up. I’m going to cause another earthquake, and there’s not one damn thing you can do to stop me.” He hung up.
Judy slammed down the phone. “Let’s go, Charlie!” She ripped the E-fit picture of Granger off the subject board and ran outside. The helicopter was waiting on the parade ground, its rotors turning. She jumped in, with Charlie close behind.
As they took off, he put on headphones and motioned to her to do the same. “I figure it’ll take twenty minutes to get the roadblocks in place,” he said. “Assume he’s driving at sixty, to avoid being stopped for speeding, he could be twenty miles away by the time we’re ready for him. So I’ve ordered the major freeways closed in a twenty-five-mile radius.”
“What about other roads?”
“We have to hope he’s going a long way. If he gets off the freeway, we lose him. This is one of the busiest road networks in California. You couldn’t seal it off watertight if you had the goddamn U.S. Army.”
Turning onto I-80, Priest heard the throb of a helicopter and looked up to see it passing overhead, coming from San Francisco across the bay toward Oakland. “Shit,” he said. “They can’t be after us, can they?”
“I told you,” Melanie said. “They can trace phone calls like, instantly.”
“But what are they going to do? They don’t even know which way we headed when we left the gas station!”
“They could close the freeway, I guess.”
“Which one? Nine-eighty, eight-eighty, five-eighty, or eighty? North or south?”
“Maybe all of them. You know cops, they do what they like.”
“Shit.” Priest put his foot down.
“Don’t get stopped for goddamn speeding.”
“Okay, okay!” He slowed down again.
“Can’t we get off the freeway?”
He shook his head. “No other way home. There are side roads, but they don’t cross the water. All we could do is hole up in Berkeley. Park somewhere and sleep in the car. But we don’t have time, we have to get home to get the seismic vibrator.” He shook his head. “Nothing to do but run for it.”
The traffic thinned as they left Oakland and Berkeley behind. Priest peered into the darkness ahead, alert for flashing lights. He was relieved to reach the Carquinez Bridge. Once they were across the water, they could use country roads. It might take them half the night to get home, but they would be out of danger.
He approached the toll plaza slowly, scanning for signs of police activity. Only one booth was open, but that was not surprising after midnight. No blue lights, no cruisers, no cops. He pulled up and fished in his jeans pocket for change.
When he looked up he saw a Highway Patrol officer.
Priest’s heart seemed to stop.
