“I never think to bring music,” she said.
“Try the satellite.”
“I tore out your uplink, remember? You can tell by the way we’re not being chased by Hartwell Services and Terror.”
“Right. Do I get any clues where we’re going, or what we’ll be doing there?”
Lucia pulled the car off the road, onto a dirt patch marked as a scenic overlook. She parked and killed the engine.
“You didn’t have to stop.”
“Look ahead.” She pointed.
Ruppert looked for a long moment before he could see a pulsing blue aura at the edge of the trees and rock faces ahead.
“What’s that?”
“Roadblock,” she said. “We almost drove into it.”
“Why would they have a roadblock in the middle of the mountains in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Either they’re sweeping for smugglers, or they’re looking for someone specific. Hopefully not us.”
“What gets smuggled through here?”
“Everything. Drugs, books, people.”
“You think they’re looking for us?”
“I don’t want to find out. I’ve got a solid ID with me, but we don’t have one for you yet. And they’ll run your car, and then Terror will know where we are.”
“Great.”
“We should have gotten rid of it already,” Lucia said. “I was planning to do that at our next stop.”
“Let’s go back, then,” Ruppert said. “There must be another way around.”
“There might be,” she said. “Maybe smaller roads. We could check a map, but…” She gestured to the cavity where the satellite uplink had been. “I just don’t know my way around here. I’d kill for a phone right now.”
“You don’t have one?”
“You think I'm on the grid? A phone is just a portable tracking and listening device. I’m not paying money to bug myself for them.”
“Mine’s back at my house.” Ruppert thought it over. “What about those emergency call boxes?”
“They just link to the state police,” Lucia said. “Who we’re sort of trying to avoid right now.”
“But they hook into the grid, don’t they?” he asked. “Can you break into them?”
“Wait,” Lucia said. She opened her battered duffle bag, next to Ruppert’s Italian leather suitcase on the back seat, and removed the highly mutated remote control, along with a palmtop computer. “That might work, actually.” She connected a data wire from the computer to the remote. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll be telling them where we are.”
“What were our other choices?”
“Wait here until the roadblock breaks up,” she said. “Which could be a couple of hours, and they might send patrols down this way. Or we can go back and try to find another road, and get ourselves totally lost.”
“Do you think you can handle tapping the call box?”
Lucia shrugged. “Decent chance, as long it’s configured like a normal data system.”
“Let’s do it.”
They put the car in neutral and pushed it as far as they could to the edge of the clearing, and a little beyond, so that it hugged against the dense trees. Then they locked it up and began the downhill hike back the way they’d come, walking in the woods but keeping watch on the road.
It took fifteen minutes to reach one of the yellow call boxes mounted into a telephone pole by the side of the road. They moved towards it, then scrambled back into the undergrowth when a hulking pick-up truck barreled around a sharp corner.
“Hope he slows down before he hits the roadblock,” Ruppert said.
“I hope he crashes right into a Hartwell supervisor,” Lucia said. “That’ll distract them.”
They slipped back to the roadside, and Lucia opened the call box. Inside was a very old-fashioned telephone, the kind that sat in a cradle and was connected by a wire to the main console. The console itself had only one button.
“It doesn’t even have a screen,” Ruppert said.
“It’s ancient,” Lucia said. “Probably a copper line, too. Let’s see what we can do.”
Lucia opened the small toolkit she’d used to pry the uplink out of Ruppert’s car. She lifted the receiver very slightly, then took Ruppert’s hand and positioned his fingers to keep the latch depressed.
“Hold it down,” she said. “It may signal as soon as you lift the phone.”
Ruppert watched as she checked over the receiver unit, shook her head, then worked the flat tip of a screwdriver into the seam between the mouthpiece and the rest of the handset. She tried to pry it loose, grunted, then inserted it into another spot, and then another.
“This is taking too long.” Ruppert glanced in the direction of the roadblock.
“I can’t help it.” She continued working at it until, finally, the mouthpiece popped loose, trailing long strands of a clear, gummy glue after it. She lifted the microphone and wires from inside. “This is like something built by a caveman.”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“I’ve got a couple of programs that might work. This won’t help.” She tucked the modified remote control into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers worked quickly to patch the phone into her palmtop computer, but to Ruppert it felt like centuries were passing. He could imagine them finding his car up the road, and uniformed cops, possibly even bearing the Hartwell Civil Defense Services logo on their shoulders, poking around the Bluehawk, calling it in to their commanders.
“That’s the best I can do.” Lucia inserted an audio plug into her ear, then tapped at her palmtop. She frowned, tapped again. Frowned, tapped again. Ruppert felt sweat all over his body. His eyes twitched back and forth between the phone and the road.
“Okay,” she said. “Let it go.”
Ruppert released the latch. Lucia tapped at her computer again. Ruppert waited forever for her to speak.
“This is the courier,” she said. “I have the package, but-no, I’m calling from an emergency box. I know, so keep it quick. We’ve got a roadblock across our path-no, up ahead-no, they haven’t spotted us as far as I know, but-look, I just need an alternate route.” Lucia quickly described where they were, then paused for a painfully long time, listening. “But there must be something. I’d rather backtrack a hundred miles rather than-well, tell me quick, then.” There was another long, tense pause, during which Lucia stared at Ruppert with wide eyes.
“What’s going on?” he whispered, and she gave him an exaggerated shrug.
“Oh,” she said. “Is that-no, it’ll work, it just seems a little-okay, how long will that take?”
Ruppert saw very bright headlights around the next bend, approaching from the direction of the roadblock. Blue lights flashed through the trees.
“Lucia-” he said, but she waved him off.
The headlights brightened. It sounded like multiple cars approaching, and the lead one was turning the corner ahead. They were about to be spotted.
Ruppert grabbed Lucia around the waist and pulled her into the shadows. They stumbled for several feet, then lost their footing and rolled down a steep hill littered with sharp rocks, crashing through brambles along the way, finally coming to rest against the broad trunk of an old redwood.
“What the hell, Daniel?” she snapped, trying to disentangle her arms and legs from him. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pointed.
Up the hill, blue lights pulsed from the area where they’d been standing, sweeping out like sheet lightning through the trees and brush above them. He heard crackling voices from multiple radio channels.
“Right here,” a man’s voice said. “Yeah, someone’s been monkeying around back here. We must have just missed them. Their console’s still attached.” The man paused. “No, sir, we haven’t found a vehicle yet. I’ll have some men-yes, sir. We’re going to need more men for a foot search. I’ll radio-thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause, then the unseen police officer began belting orders.
