Even if she was shining that brightness into a place you'd rather keep
dark sometimes, that didn't detract from her radiance.
'Yes, ma'am, you are the navigator.'
She smiled back, and looked at the car's dash-mounted GPS. The little
computer screen showed a map.
'Stay on this street--Market--until you get to Front Street, then turn
left. Immediately get into the right lane,
and turn right on the Hawthorne Bridge. The restaurant we want is
called Bread and Ink, and it's thirty blocks east of the Willamette
River.'
'Begging the navigator's pardon, ma'am, but that's pronounced
'Will-a-mett,' not 'Will-uh-me.' Accent is on the second syllable.'
'Ask me if I care.'
'Just trying to keep the navigator honest, ma'am.'
Howard's virgil chimed. He pressed the receive button.
'Yes?'
'Hi, Dad. This is Tyrone. Just calling to check in. We're fine here.
Everybody is fine, no problems, and how are you?'
'Nobody likes a smart-ass, Tyrone.' He shook his head.
'But thanks for calling.'
Tyrone put on his airline pilot's voice: 'Ah, roger that, parental unit
two-oh-two. We'll, ah, be standing by here for, ah, your return.
That's a discom.'
'He's a good boy,' Nadine said when Howard shut off the virgil.
'Yeah, I know. Too bad he's turned into a teenager.'
'You survived it.'
'Once. I don't know if I can do it again.'
'I have 'great faith in you. General Howard. You are, after all, a
leader of men. One boy, how hard could it be?'
They both grinned.
Friday, June 10th Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
A pair of armed guards--heavily armed guards--stepped from a cedar
planked and shingled kiosk and waved the cars to a stop at a big
wood-and-wire gate. The men were in camouflage clothing, and one of
them kept his assault rifle trained on the ground right next to the car
as the other man approached. Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms,
big sheath knives, and some kind of grenades strapped on.
They must be burning up in that, Morrison thought. It was in the high
eighties out here, even in the woods.
'Colonel Ventura,' the guard said. He saluted.
'Good to see you again, sir.'
Morrison's roommate of last night, Missey, was at the wheel. As they
drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall chain link fence topped with
coils of razor wire, Morrison said, 'Colonel Ventura? What is this
place?'
'The rank is honorary,' Ventura said.
'I did some work for the man who runs the place, once. And let's call
it a... patriot compound.'
There was a car in front of them with Ventura's operatives, and one
behind them, special vehicles rented at a place Morrison didn't think
