Melanie reached across and threw the lever back to its start position.
Priest saw red. He hit her again.
She cried out and covered her face with her hands, but she did not flee.
Priest returned the lever to the down position.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t.”
To his surprise she reached across him again, pressing her body against the barrel of the gun, and threw the lever.
He pulled the trigger.
The bang was deafening in the little cabin of the truck.
For a split second, a small part of his mind felt a shock of grief that he had ruined her beautiful body; but he dismissed the feeling.
She was thrown back across the cab. The door was still open, and she fell out and tumbled down, hitting the floor of the warehouse with a sickening thud.
Priest did not stop to see if she was dead.
For the third time, he pulled the lever.
Slowly the plate descended to the ground.
When it made contact, Priest started the machine.
The helicopter was a four-seater. Judy sat next to the pilot, Michael behind. As they flew south along the shore of the San Francisco Bay, Judy heard in her headphones the voice of one of Michael’s student assistants, calling from the command post. “Michael! This is Paula! It’s started up — a seismic vibrator!”
Judy went cold with fear.
Michael was saying: “Any tremors on the seismograph?”
“No — just the seismic vibrator, so far.”
Judy shouted into her microphone: “Give us the location, quickly!”
“Wait a minute, the coordinates are coming up now.”
Judy grabbed a map.
A long moment later Paula read the numbers on her screen. Judy found the location on her map. She said to the pilot: “Due south two miles, then about five hundred yards inland.”
Her stomach lurched as the chopper dived and picked up speed.
They were flying over the old waterfront neighborhood, full of derelict factories and car dumps. It would have been quiet on a normal Sunday: today it was empty. Judy scanned the horizon, looking for a truck that could be the seismic vibrator.
To the south she saw two police patrol cars speeding toward the same location. Looking west, she spotted the FBI SWAT wagon approaching. Back at the Presidio, the other helicopters would be lifting off, full of armed agents. Soon half the law enforcement vehicles in Northern California would be heading for the map coordinates Paula had given out.
Michael said into his microphone: “Paula! What’s happening on your screens?”
“Nothing — the vibrator is operating, but it’s not having any effect.”
“Thank God!” Judy said.
Michael said: “If he follows his previous pattern, he’ll move the truck a quarter of a mile and try again.”
The pilot said: “This is it. We’ve arrived at the coordinates.” The helicopter began to circle.
Judy and Michael stared out, searching frantically for the seismic vibrator.
On the ground, nothing moved.
Priest cursed.
The vibrating machinery was operating, but there was no earthquake.
This had happened before, both times. Melanie had said she did not really understand why it worked in some locations but not others. It probably had something to do with different kinds of subsoil. Both times the vibrator had triggered an earthquake on the third try. But today Priest really needed to be lucky the first time.
He was not.
Boiling with frustration, he turned off the mechanism and raised the plate.
He had to move the truck.
He jumped out. Stepping over Melanie, who was crumpled up against the wall, bleeding onto the concrete floor, he ran to the entrance. There was a pair of old-fashioned high doors that folded back to admit big vehicles. Inset into one panel was a small, people-size door. Priest threw it open.
Over the entrance to a small warehouse Judy saw a sign that read “Perpetua Diaries.”
She had thought Melanie was saying “Perpetual.”
“That’s the place!” she yelled. “Go down!”
The helicopter descended rapidly, avoiding a power line that ran from pole to pole along the side of the road, and touched down in the middle of the deserted street.
As soon as she felt the bump of contact with the ground, Judy opened the door.
Priest looked out.
A helicopter had landed in the road. As he watched, someone jumped out. It was a woman with a wound dressing on her face. He recognized Judy Maddox.
He screamed a curse that was lost in the noise of the chopper.
There was no time to open the big doors.
He dashed back to the truck, got in, and rammed the shift into reverse. He backed as far as he could into the warehouse, stopping when the rear bumper hit the wall. Then he engaged first gear. He revved the engine high, then let out the clutch with a jerk. The truck lurched forward.
Priest pressed the pedal to the floor. Engine screaming, the big truck gathered speed the length of the warehouse, then crashed into the old wooden door.
Judy Maddox was standing right in front of the door, gun in hand. Shock and fear showed on her face as the truck burst through the door. Priest grinned savagely as he bore down on her. She dived sideways, and the truck missed her by an inch.
The helicopter was in the middle of the road. A man was getting out. Priest recognized Michael Quercus.
He steered toward the helicopter, changed up a gear, and accelerated.
Judy rolled over, aimed at the driver’s door, and squeezed off two shots. She thought she might have hit something, but she failed to stop the truck.
The chopper lifted quickly.
Michael ran to the side of the road.
Judy guessed that Granger was hoping to clip the helicopter’s undercarriage, as he had in Felicitas, but this time the pilot was too quick for him and lifted high as the truck charged the space where the aircraft had been.
But, in his haste, the pilot forgot the roadside power lines.
There were five or six cables stretched between tall poles. The rotor blade caught in the lines, slicing through some. The helicopter’s engine faltered. One of the poles tilted under the strain and fell. The rotor blade began to spin freely again, but the chopper had lost lift, and it fell to the ground with a mighty crash.
