Lightning

'What's wrong?' Chris asked as she put the car in park, threw open her door, and got out.

Stefan opened the rear door and got out too. 'Laura?' She was looking at the limited expanse of sky that she could see from the bottom of the hollow, using her flattened hand as a visor over her eyes. 'You hear that, Stefan?'

In the warm, desert-dry day, a faraway rumble slowly died. He said, 'Could be jet noise.'

'No. The last time I thought it might be a jet, it was them.' The sky pulsed again, one last time. She did not actually see the lightning itself, not the jagged bolt scored on the heavens, but just the reflection of it in the upper atmosphere, a faint wave of light flushing across the blue vault above. 'They're here,' she said.

'Yes,' he agreed.

'Somewhere on our way out to route 111, someone's going to stop us, maybe a traffic cop, or maybe we'll be in an accident, so there'll be a public record, and then they'll show up. Stefan, we've got to turn around, go back to the house.'

'It's no use,' he said.

Chris had gotten out of the other side of the car. 'He's right, Mom. It doesn't matter what we do. Those time travelers came here 'cause they've already peeked into the future and know where they're gonna find us maybe half an hour from now, maybe ten minutes from now. It doesn't matter if we go back to the house or go on ahead; they've already seen us someplace — maybe even back at the house. See, no matter how much we change our plans, we'll cross their path.'

Destiny.

'Shit!' she said and kicked the side of the car, which didn't do any good, didn't even make her feel better. 'I hate this. How can you hope to win against goddamn time travelers? It's like playing blackjack when the dealer is God.'

No more lightning flared.

She said, 'Come to think of it, all of life is a blackjack game with God as the dealer, isn't it? So this is no worse. Get in the car, Chris. Let's get on with it.'

As she drove through the western neighborhoods of the resort city, Laura's nerves were as taut as garroting wire. She was alert for trouble on all sides, though she knew it would come when and where she least expected it.

Without incident they connected with the northern end of Palm Canyon Drive, then state route 111. Ahead lay twelve miles of mostly barren desert before 111 intersected Interstate 10.

13

Hoping to avoid catastrophe, Lieutenant Klietmann lowered the driver's window and smiled up at the Palm Springs policeman who had rapped on the glass to get his attention and who was now bending down, squinting in at him. 'What is it, officer?'

'Didn't you see the red curb when you parked here?'

'Red curb?' Klietmann said, smiling, wondering what the hell the cop was talking about.

'Now, sir,' the officer said in a curiously playful tone, 'are you telling me you didn't see the red curb?'

'Yes, sir, of course I saw it.'

'I didn't think you'd fib,' the cop said as if he knew Klietmann and trusted his reputation for honesty, which baffled the lieutenant. 'So if you saw the red curb, sir, why'd you park here?'

'Oh, I see,' Klietmann said, 'parking is restricted to curbs that aren't red. Yes, of course.'

The patrolman blinked at the lieutenant. He shifted his attention to von Manstein in the passenger's seat, then to Bracher and Hubatsch in the rear, smiled and nodded at them.

Klietmann did not have to look at his men to know they were on edge. The air in the car was heavy with tension.

When he shifted his gaze to Klietmann, the police officer smiled tentatively and said, 'Am I right — you fellas are four preachers?'

'Preachers?' Klietmann said, disconcerted by the question.

'I've got a bit of a deductive mind,' the cop said, his tentative smile still holding. 'I'm no Sherlock Holmes. But the bumper stickers on your car say 'I Love Jesus' and 'Christ Has Risen.' And there's a Baptist convention in town, and you're all dressed in dark suits.'

That was why he had thought he could trust Klietmann not to fib: He believed they were Baptist ministers.

'That's right,' Klietmann said at once. 'We're with the Baptist convention, officer. Sorry about the illegal parking. We don't have red curbs where I come from. Now if—'

'Where do you hail from?' the cop asked, not with suspicion but in an attempt to be friendly.

Klietmann knew a lot about the United States but not enough to carry on a conversation of this sort when he did not control its direction to any degree whatsoever. He believed that Baptists were from the southern part of the country; he wasn't sure if there were any of them in the north or west or east, so he tried to think of a southern state. He said, 'I'm from Georgia,' before he realized how unlikely that claim seemed when spoken in his German accent.

The smile on the cop's face faltered. Looking past Klietmann to von Manstein, he said, 'And where you from, sir?'

Following his lieutenant's lead, but speaking with an even stronger accent, von Manstein said, 'Georgia.'

From the back seat, before they could be asked, Hubatsch and Bracher said, 'Georgia, we're from Georgia,' as if that word was magic and would cast a spell over the patrolman.

The cop's smile had vanished altogether. He frowned at Erich Klietmann and said, 'Sir, would you mind stepping out of the car for a moment?'

'Certainly, officer,' Klietmann said, as he opened his door, noticing how the cop backed up a couple of steps and rested his right hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. 'But we're late for a prayer meeting—'

In the back seat Hubatsch snapped open his attache case and snatched the Uzi from it as quickly as a presidential bodyguard might have done. He did not roll down the window but put the muzzle against the glass and opened fire on the cop, giving him no time to draw his revolver. The car window blew out as bullets pounded through it. Struck by at least twenty rounds at close range, the cop pitched backward into traffic. Brakes squealed as a car made a hard stop to avoid the body, and across the street display windows shattered as bullets hit a men's clothing shop.

With the cool detachment and quick thinking that made Klietmann proud to be in the Schutzstaffel, Martin Bracher got out of the Toyota on his side and loosed a wide arc of fire from the Uzi to add to the chaos and give them a better chance of escaping. Windows imploded in the exclusive shops not only on the side street at the end of which they were parked but all the way across the intersection on the east flank of Palm Canyon Drive as well. People screamed, dropped to the pavement, scuttled for the cover of doorways. Klietmann saw passing cars hit by bullets out on Palm Canyon, and maybe a few drivers were hit or maybe they only panicked, but the vehicles swung wildly from lane to lane; a tan Mercedes sideswiped a delivery truck, and a sleek, red sportscar jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, grazed the bole of a palm tree, and plowed into the front of a gift shop.

Klietmann got behind the wheel again and released the emergency brake. He heard Bracher and Hubatsch leap into the car, so he threw the white Toyota in gear and shot forward onto Palm Canyon, hanging a hard left, heading north. He discovered at once that he was on a one-way street, going in the wrong direction. Cursing, he dodged oncoming cars. The Toyota rocked wildly on bad springs, and the glove compartment popped open, emptying its contents in von Manstein's lap. Klietmann turned right at the next intersection. A block later he ran a red light, narrowly avoiding pedestrians in the crosswalk, and turned left onto another avenue that allowed northbound traffic.