The hood of night had fully covered the face of twilight by the time they reached the outskirts of Grand Junction.
With a population of over thirty-five thousand, the city was big enough to delay them. But Ellie had a penlight and the map that she had taken from the helicopter, and she found the simplest route.
Two-thirds of the way around the city, at a multiplex cinema, they stopped to go shopping for a new vehicle. Apparently, none of the shows was either letting out or about to begin, for no moviegoers were arriving or leaving. The sprawling parking lot was full of cars but devoid of people.
“Get an Explorer or a Jeep if you can,” she said as he opened the door of the Bronco, letting in a frigid draft. “Something like that. It’s more convenient.”
“Thieves can’t be choosers,” he said.
“They have to be.” As he got out, she shifted over behind the steering wheel. “Hey, if you’re not choosy, then you’re not a thief, you’re a trash collector.”
While Ellie drifted along one aisle, pacing him, Spencer moved boldly from vehicle to vehicle, trying the doors. Each time that he found one unlocked, he leaned inside long enough to check for keys in the ignition, behind the sun visor, and under the driver’s seat.
Watching his master through the side windows of the Bronco, Rocky whined as though with concern.
“Dangerous, yes,” Ellie said. “I can’t lie to the dog. But not half as dangerous as driving through the front of a supermarket with helicopters full of thugs on your tail. You’ve just got to keep this in perspective.”
The fourteenth set of wheels that Spencer tried was a big black Chevy pickup with an extended cab that provided both front and back seats. He climbed into it, pulled the door shut, started the engine, and reversed out of the parking slot.
Ellie parked the Bronco in the space that the Chevy had vacated. They needed only fifteen seconds to transfer the guns, the duffel bag, and the dog to the pickup. Then they were on their way again.
On the east side of the city, they started looking for any motel that appeared to have been recently constructed. The rooms in most older establishments were not computer friendly.
At a self-described “motor lodge” that looked new enough to have held its ribbon-cutting ceremony just hours ago, Ellie left Spencer and Rocky in the pickup while she went into the front office to ask the desk clerk if their accommodations would allow her to use her modem. “I have a report due at my office in Cleveland by morning.” In fact, all rooms were properly wired for her needs. Using her Bess Baer ID for the first time, she took a double with a queen-size bed and paid cash in advance.
“How soon can we be on the road again?” Spencer asked as they parked in front of their unit.
“Forty-five minutes tops, probably half an hour,” she promised.
“We’re miles from where we took the pickup, but I have a bad feeling about hanging around here too long.”
“You aren’t the only one.”
She couldn’t help but notice the decor of the room even as she took Spencer’s laptop computer out of the duffel bag, put it on the desk next to an arrangement of accessible plugs and phone jacks, and concentrated on getting it ready for business. Blue-and-black-speckled carpet. Blue-and-yellow-striped draperies. Green-and-blue- checkered bedspread. Blue and gold and silver wallpaper in a pale ameboid pattern. It looked like army camouflage for an alien planet.
“While you’re working on that,” Spencer said, “I’ll take Rocky out to do his business. He must be ready to burst.”
“Doesn’t seem in distress.”
“He’d be too embarrassed to let on.” At the door, he turned to her again and said, “I saw fast-food places across the street. I’ll walk over there and get us some burgers and stuff too, if that sounds like it would hit the spot.”
“Just buy plenty,” she said.
While Spencer and the pooch were gone, Ellie accessed the AT&T central computer, which she had penetrated a long time ago and had explored in depth. Through AT&T’s nationwide linkages, she had been able, in the past, to finesse her way into the computers of several regional phone companies at all ends of the country, although she’d never before tried to slide into the Colorado system. For a hacker as for a concert pianist or an Olympic gymnast, however, training and practice were the keys to success, and she was extremely well trained and well practiced.
When Spencer and Rocky returned after only twenty-five minutes, Ellie was already deep inside the regional system, scrolling rapidly down a dauntingly long list of pay-phone numbers with corresponding addresses that were arranged county by county. She settled on a phone at a service station in Montrose, Colorado, sixty-six miles south of Grand Junction.
Manipulating the main switching system in the regional phone company, she rang the Grand Junction Police while routing the call from their motel room through the service-station pay phone down in Montrose. She called the emergency number, rather than the main police number, just to be sure that the source address would appear onscreen in front of the operator.
“Grand Junction Police.”
Ellie began without any preamble: “We hijacked a Bell JetRanger helicopter in Cedar City, Utah, earlier today—” When the police operator attempted to interrupt with questions that would encourage a standard-format report, Ellie shouted the woman down: “Shut up, shut up! I’m only going to say this once, so you better listen, or people will die!” She grinned at Spencer, who was opening bags of wonderfully fragrant food on the dinette table. “The chopper is now on the ground in the Colorado National Monument, with the crew aboard. They’re unhurt but tied up. If they have to spend the night out there, they’ll freeze to death. I’ll describe the landing site just once, and you better get the details right if you want to save their lives.”
She gave succinct directions and disconnected.
Two things had been achieved. The three men in the JetRanger would be found soon. And the Grand Junction Police Department had an address in Montrose, sixty-six miles to the south, from which the emergency call had been made, indicating that Ellie and Spencer were either about to flee east on Federal Highway 50, toward Pueblo, or continue south on Federal Highway 550 toward Durango. Several state routes branched off those main arteries as well, providing enough possibilities to keep agency search teams fully occupied. Meanwhile, she and Spencer and Mr. Rocky Dog would be headed to Denver on Interstate 70.
Dr. Sabrina Palma was being difficult, which was no surprise to Roy. Before arriving at the prison, he had expected objections to his plans, based on medical, security, and political grounds. The moment he had seen her office, he had known that vital financial considerations would weigh more heavily against him than all the genuinely ethical arguments that she might have pursued.
“I can’t conceive of any circumstances, related to the threat against the President, that would require Steven Ackblom’s removal from this facility,” she said crisply. Though she had returned to the formidable leather chair, she no longer relaxed in it but sat forward on the edge, arms on her crescent desk. Her manicured hands were alternately fisted on her blotter or busy with various pieces of Lalique crystal — small animals, colorful fishes — that were arranged to one side of her blotter. “He’s an extremely dangerous individual, an arrogant and utterly selfish man who would never cooperate with you even if there
As pleasant as he ever was, Roy said, “Dr. Palma, with all due respect, it isn’t for you to imagine or be told how he could help us or how we expect to win his cooperation. This is an urgent matter of national security. I am not permitted to share any details with you, regardless of how much I might want to.”
“This man is evil, Mr. Cotter.”
“Yes, I’m aware of his history.”
“You aren’t understanding me—”
Roy gently interrupted, pointing to one of the documents on her desk. “You have read the judicial order, signed by a justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, conveying Steven Ackblom into my temporary custody.”
“Yes, but—”
“I assume that when you left the room to make telephone calls, one of them was to confirm that
