“I don’t think so.”
“The two of us can’t fight the entire organization that’s behind Kennebeck plus the staff of some secret military research center.”
“Danny’s going to make it safe for us,” she said confidently. “He’s going to use this power of his to help us get in there.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“You said you believed.”
“I do,” Elliot said, yawning and stretching elaborately. “I do believe. But… how can he help us? How can he guarantee our safety?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what he was telling me in the dream. I’m sure of it.”
She recounted the dream in detail, and Elliot admitted that her interpretation wasn’t strained.
“But even if Danny could somehow get us in,” he said, “we don’t know where they’re keeping him. This secret installation could be anywhere. And maybe it doesn’t even exist. And if it does exist, they might not be holding him there anyway.”
“It exists, and that’s where he is,” she said, trying to sound more certain than she actually was.
She was within reach of Danny. She felt almost as if she had him in her arms again, and she didn’t want anyone to tell her that he might be a hair’s breadth beyond her grasp.
“Okay,” Elliot said, wiping at the corners of his sleep-matted eyes. “Let’s say this secret installation exists. That doesn’t help us a whole hell of a lot. It could be anywhere in those mountains.”
“No,” she said. “It has to be within a few miles of where Jaborski intended to go with the scouts.”
“Okay. That’s probably true. But that covers a hell of a lot of rugged terrain. We couldn’t begin to conduct a thorough search of it.”
Tina’s confidence couldn’t be shaken. “Danny will pinpoint it for us.”
“Danny’s going to tell us where he is?”
“He’s going to try, I think. I sensed that in the dream.”
“How’s he going to do it?”
“I don’t know. But I have this feeling that if we just find some way… some means of focusing his energy, channeling it…”
“Such as?”
She stared at the tangled bedclothes as if she were searching for inspiration in the creases of the linens. Her expression would have been appropriate to the face of a gypsy fortune-teller peering with a clairvoyant frown at tea leaves.
“Maps!” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“Don’t they publish terrain maps of the wilderness areas? Backpackers and other nature lovers would need them. Not minutely detailed things. Basically maps that show the lay of the land — hills, valleys, the courses of rivers and streams, footpaths, abandoned logging trails, that sort of thing. I’m sure Jaborski had maps. I
“I suppose any sporting-goods store in Reno ought to have maps of at least the nearest parts of the Sierras.”
“Maybe if we can get a map and spread it out… well, maybe Danny will find a way to show us exactly where he is.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure yet.” She threw back the covers and got out of bed. “Let’s get the maps first. We’ll worry about the rest of it later. Come on. Let’s get showered and dressed. The stores will be open in an hour or so.”
Because of the foul-up at the Bellicosti place, George Alexander didn’t get to bed until five-thirty Friday morning. Still furious with his subordinates for letting Stryker and the woman escape again, he had difficulty getting to sleep. He finally nodded off around 7:00 A.M.
At ten o’clock he was awakened by the telephone. The director was calling from Washington. They used an electronic scrambling device, so they could speak candidly, and the old man was furious and characteristically blunt.
As Alexander endured the director’s accusations and demands, he realized that his own future with the Network was at stake. If he failed to stop Stryker and the Evans woman, his dream of assuming the director’s chair in a few years would never become a reality.
After the old man hung up, Alexander called his own office, in no mood to be told that Elliot Stryker and Christina Evans were still at large. But that was exactly what he heard. He ordered men pulled off other jobs and assigned to the manhunt.
“I want them found before another day passes,” Alexander said. “That bastard’s killed one of us now. He can’t get away with that. I want him eliminated. And the bitch with him. Both of them. Dead.”
Chapter Thirty
Two sporting-goods stores and two gun shops were within easy walking distance of the hotel. The first sporting-goods dealer did not carry the maps, and although the second usually had them, it was currently sold out. Elliot and Tina found what they needed in one of the gun shops: a set of twelve wilderness maps of the Sierras, designed with backpackers and hunters in mind. The set came in a leatherette-covered case and sold for a hundred dollars.
Back in the hotel room, they opened one of the maps on the bed, and Elliot said, “Now what?”
For a moment Tina considered the problem. Then she went to the desk, opened the center drawer, and withdrew a folder of hotel stationery. In the folder was a cheap plastic ballpoint pen with the hotel name on it. With the pen, she returned to the bed and sat beside the open map.
She said, “People who believe in the occult have a thing they call ‘automatic writing.’ Ever hear of it?”
“Sure. Spirit writing. A ghost supposedly guides your hand to deliver a message from beyond. Always sounded like the worst sort of bunkum to me.”
“Well, bunkum or not, I’m going to try something like that. Except, I don’t need a ghost to guide my hand. I’m hoping Danny can do it.”
“Don’t you have to be in a trance, like a medium at a seance?”
“I’m just going to completely relax, make myself open and receptive. I’ll hold the pen against the map, and maybe Danny can draw the route for us.”
Elliot pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. “I don’t believe for a minute it’s going to work. Totally nuts. But I’ll be as quiet as a mouse and give it a chance.”
Tina stared at the map and tried to think of nothing but the appealing greens, blues, yellows, and pinks that the cartographers had used to indicate various types of terrain. She allowed her eyes to swim out of focus.
A minute passed.
Two minutes. Three.
She tried closing her eyes.
Another minute. Two.
Nothing.
She turned the map over and tried the other side of it.
Still nothing.
“Give me another map,” she said.
Elliot withdrew another one from the leatherette case and handed it to her. He refolded the first map as she unfolded the second.
Half an hour and five maps later, Tina’s hand suddenly skipped across the paper as if someone had bumped her arm.
