'Jeez, Doc!' Gabriel threw up his hands and stood up. 'Of course it is, but making a decision is like Braxton deciding he's acting out of his own free will when he's a puppet of the short circuits in his head.'
'We've all got short circuits. Which doesn't mean we can't exercise free will.'
'Can Braxton?'
Harper was silent for a thoughtful moment. 'Not entirely.'
'Does that make him insane?'
Again Harper let the silence grow around them. 'I suppose we are all a bit insane in our own ways, but the General? No. Not in the legal sense, anyway.'
'Oh, boy,' Gabriel mumbled as he made another circuit of the room. 'Oh, boy; oh, boy: that was a lot of help.'
'All I can say is you need to be open for nonobvious choices,' Harper said. 'Free will depends on choices. I have faith there are always choices if we can but see them.'
'Sure, Doc. Sure.'
CHAPTER 90
We landed at the Napa airport as the sun slouched toward the jagged western ridgetops and smoldered through the blood orange smoke and haze. A dark green Chrysler minivan with what looked like quarter- and half- sheets of thin plywood strapped to roof racks followed us as we taxied toward a row of hangars.
As the jet slowed to a stop, Kilgore motioned us to pull down the window shades and stay on board. He then opened the door and stepped out.
I reached for Jasmine's hand then, and she met me halfway. I gazed at her and marveled at the astounding energy of a simple touch. I thought about the deep, hidden power of this physical connection and visualized the contact where our skins met, taking it to smaller and smaller scales in my mind, skin to skin, molecules, atoms, all the way back to an ethereal quantum foundation where consciousness meets the essence of existence. In that moment of clarity, the twin blades of love and the fear of loss twisted again in my heart.
A moment later, Kilgore stuck his head into the cabin. 'Okay let's roll.'
We filed out with Rex carrying Talmadge by himself and climbed into a gearjammed minivan with Bill Lewis behind the wheel. Kilgore shoehorned himself inside and slid the door shut.
'We don't have a lot of time,' Lewis said. 'My Intel guys say the delivery truck with the wine is supposed to be at the General's palace in something over an hour. It needs to arrive within a specific time window, partly because of security and partly because there are a lot of vehicles for the big shindig tonight and they all have to be inspected before getting inside.'
Outside the airport, we passed a boring row of forgettable buildings and shortly reached a traffic light at Highway 29, then turned north toward Napa. Minutes later Lewis turned into a big shopping-center parking lot and steered us past the Home Depot, toward a large RV, a dark blue Chevy pickup with a matching camper shell, and a white Toyota. Lewis parked next to the RV.
'Okay, let's look as normal as possible,' Kilgore said. 'There's a lot of traffic and other RVs so nobody's likely to notice us. Everybody stay in the van but Anita and me. Well get Talmadge in and settled.'
As Lewis got Talmadge out of the van, Anita and Rex embraced and exchanged a kiss and a whisper. Then Anita was gone.
Kilgore filled the silence. 'Jasmine, you and Tyrone take the pickup.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. 'This is to the truck. The backseat and the camper shell are full of the stuff Bill got for you.' Kilgore looked at Tyrone. 'The laptop, WiFi cards, are still in their box.'
'So I have a little configuration to handle.'
'Yeah,' Kilgore said. 'But I have faith in you. Anyway, you two follow the map and the directions. There's a powerful walkie-talkie in the glove compartment with extra batteries and a connection to the cigarette lighter. It's all digital; encrypted and set to the same frequency as the rest of us. Turn it on as soon as you get in the truck and listen very carefully.'
Jasmine and Tyrone nodded.
'Any questions?'
They shook their heads.
'Okay, get moving.'
Jasmine gave me a hug and a kiss.
'I love you,' she told me.
Her words made me inarticulate. 'Me you too,' I stuttered. When she gave me one of her deep, inscrutable smiles, I tried to etch it in my memory in case I never saw her again. A memory worth making.
Then she and Tyrone drove away.*****
'Hey, these things are just stacked up here,' Dan Gabriel called down to Harper from his perch atop a stack of barrels. 'They're not fastened down or anything. All the barrels sit one on top of the other with a dinky little removable metal rack between each layer.' The stack shook ominously as Gabriel wrestled with one of the barrels on top.
'Yes,' Harper said. 'They come down all the time in earthquakes. But wine people are pretty clueless. They seem to have a fairly loose grip on reality'
'If we can make enough noise to get the guards to open the door, I can drop one of these on him.'
CHAPTER 91
Rex and I sandwiched ourselves behind the concrete support pillars of the Highway 29 underpass at Green Island Road and listened intently to the earbud connected to the walkie-talkies, which had set Bill Lewis's American Express card back more than $600 each.
We wore navy-blue Dickies coveralls, Red Wing boots, and khaki baseball caps with the Napa Valley Vintners Association on them. We had big cans of bear repellent, duct tape, cable ties, nylon cord, box cutters, and a handy piece of three-quarter-inch rebar about eighteen inches long. I had handcuffs; Rex had a funky red ball with holes in it and a strap Lewis had bought at a porno store.
The HK41 I had taken from the blond in Mississippi rested in a ballistic shoulder holster inside the coveralls. Rex wore his own 9mm the same way.
A constant vehicular surf rolled off the four-lane highway and washed around us, punctuated by the deep notes of tractor-trailers and pickups with glass packs. Every two or three minutes, a vehicle passed by our position, coming from or heading to the Green Island Road warehouse complex west of us. Kilgore preferred this spot, but had two other contingency locations.
'On his way.' My radio earpiece filled with Kilgore's voice. I pressed the tiny button on the foblike microphone.
'Ready'
Rex looked at me. 'This is freaking nuts.'
'That's why you and I are here.'
Rex smiled as we moved down the concrete slope. He squatted behind the steel guardrails; I sprinted to the other side of the road and took cover. Moments later, Kilgore's green minivan came around the sharp corner. Kilgore passed us, then hit the brakes and turned the minivan sideways, blocking the underpass road. Not two seconds later, a big delivery van came around the corner. The driver locked up the double rear tires when he saw the minivan.
Rex and I launched ourselves at the truck from both sides. The doors were unlocked so we discarded the rebar and jerked the doors open. I wrestled the startled driver to the middle of the cab as Rex slid behind the wheel. The driver's foot left the clutch, bringing the truck to a lurching halt. Rex had the truck restarted and moving in seconds.
