Quantrill gave a tentative nod, then clasped his hands and bowed over them. 'Before you decide to leave, will you bless the union of me and my helpmeet?'
'It don't always work that way,' Beasley said.
'Maybe — just
Time to set the hook. 'I'd have to think on it, pray on it. One thing sure, whatever happens me and Delight already said our vows before God.'
'You sayin' you're purely stuck on that little hightits I seen joggin' around the exercise yard?'
Quantrill, head bowed: 'We said our vows. I can't change that now.'
'We'll see,' said Beasley, and began to whistle a border tune through the gap in his front teeth. The youth retreated to the far corner of the cell, palms together, speaking in a near-whisper unintelligible from Beasley's bunk.
Quantrill had promised to pray for guidance. In a way he was doing precisely that. 'Tau Sector, Tau Sector,' he narrowcast, and waited for his critic to reply. Control had set them onto cold trails twice; this one felt warmer by the second.
Sandys jurnal Jul 18 Fri.
Mom says their going to librate profet Beasly soon as profet Jansen and his men get back from trading up north. They make lots ofhooraw about revlashuns but there afraid to say boo without Jansen. Mom says sooner or later theyll come back with a possy on their tails. Dont you wait for nothing me or Child either Sandy, she says, you hitail it. These dam profets wont let us be took alive.
Chapter Seventy-One
Though it had been dark for three hours, Quantrill was still perspiring as he lay on his sodden upper bunk cursing a week of inactivity and Beasley's body odor. An insomniac locust still sizzled outside, endorsing the summer heat. He heard the faint squeal of brakes in the distance, then only night sounds. Presently he heard a murmur beyond the lockup; someone talking with the lone deputy. Quantrill would never know how the deputy had been taken out, but knew from the muffled commotion outside the window that someone outside was not too worried about discovery.
'Gadianton,' said a male voice somewhere outside their window. In the front office, an alarm quavered, tripped by perimeter sensors.
Beasley rolled to his feet, chinned himself to the high window ledge. Quantrill noted the man's swift physical power. 'Lamanites,' Beasley hissed the countersign. 'Here; and hurry up, I got acolytes.'
A cargo hook grated on the ledge, linked to a steel beam that Beasley laid across inside the bars. Beasley was obviously experienced at demolition. From his upper bunk, Quantrill could see gloved hands arranging a one- cm, glass rope that stretched away into darkness. “We got maybe five minutes,' said the man outside; 'Jansen's got a reg'lar Saturday-night ruckus goin' in a roadhouse up north. But he didn't say nothin' about nobody else.'
'I got reasons he'll understand,' Beasley insisted. 'Now, haul away!'
'On yore head be it — and you better get under somethin', don't forget that roof collapse in Ros well.' Racing footsteps dopplered away.
A diesel coughed to life, steadied, clamored in the dark. At the window was only a keening scrape of protest while the cellmates lay curled beneath thin musty mattresses. Then a screech of metal, a shambling clatter of concrete and a puff of dust into the cell.
The hole started waist-high and extended to the ceiling. Beasley went through it with careful questing feet, backward, then was in urgent argument with others outside. Quantrill saw Beasley in the spread of half-light, now armed with a machine pistol. 'I've told you what betrayal means, boy,' he said. 'Among the prophets, I'm the only friend you got.'
'I want Delight,' Quantrill whined, scrambling through the hole, one eye closed as Marty Cross had taught him. If you kept one eye closed in the light, that eye would have better night vision.
'Ever' body wants delight,' an unfamiliar voice snickered. Faintly they could still hear the alarm; Quantrill felt sure it was patched into a radio alert.
'We got a little hightits vessel to get yet,' Beasley warned, scooping up the beam and glass rope.
'You get her yourself,' was the reply over receding steps of two men. Beasley stopped, indecisive.
'Go on,' Quantrill said, taking a chance. 'I'll find a way to get her out tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow, shit, you don't know much! There ain't time; leave her!'
'I dunno where pa buried the stuff, and she does,' Quantrill said, playing his hole card.
More cursing. A small vehicle thundered away without lights and Mitch Beasley sprinted to the larger vehicle. “Find the bitch so I can line up the truck,' he called, tossing the cable into a cargo bay.
Quantrill knew Sanger's location; knew also that Control had arranged the transfer of other prisoners. He warned Sanger to get under a mattress, then resumed his monotonic transmission to Control. If law enforcement people reacted too quickly, he warned, they might blow the whole operation.
Beasley backed the terratired vehicle furiously toward the far end of the lockup; rushed to aid Quantrill at the high window. 'Don't be scared, darlin',' Quantrill crooned through the window. 'The kingdom of God almighty is at hand,' and then the truck was lurching away, the glass cable humming as it came taut. The embedded windowframe came free this time, and a moment later Marbrye Sanger was wriggling past rough concrete. He grabbed her, felt the slide of lithe flesh, tasted the dusty, musty flavor of her mouth. Even in a jailbreak at midnight, he thought admiringly, Sanger gave award performances.
The cable and beam stowed, Beasley gestured Quantrill into the open cargo section and waved Sanger into the cab with him. When Beasley gestured now, he did it with a gun barrel. The truck sped away, going to battery mode for stealth, the hum of terratires and windsong muffling the electrics. The break had taken all of three minutes.
Alone, Quantrill spent the next ten minutes in an urgent dialogue with Control. “If Sanger acts too vulnerable to his religious doubletalk,' he warned, 'this Beasley character may decide to ice me and then sweet-talk her into showing him the stash. Tell her now, Control. He's quick; don't underestimate him.'
'We don't,' was the impersonal reply. 'Beasley's thumbprint was on Sabado's belt buckle. We will brief Sanger as soon as she can acknowledge transmission.'
Quantrill filed this for future reference. Sanger did not have to acknowledge a transmission, but inside that cab she was mostly surrounded by steel. Perhaps, after all, Control's own transmissions were more affected by a steel cage than T Section would like to admit. Quantrill reported that they were heading south on a secondary road, then cutting a trail to the east.
Beasley's helmsmanship was savage but unerring, the treadless terratires making a smooth spoor hard to follow. In an hour the truck, low beams flashing on when necessary, had covered fifty klicks of open country showing few and distant lights.
Quantrill roused himself as the truck stopped; saw the rhythmic flash of Beasley's lights, saw answering flashes from afar. Somewhere in the wild country on open range-land, T Section was about to enter the sacred sanctum of the Church of The Sacrificed Lamb.
Chapter Seventy-Two
By the last week in July, media broadcasts had done what SinoInd troops could not: US/RUS forces were pulling back on two fronts in fear of Chinese Plague. India's Parliament initiated a massive withdrawal of her expeditionary troops from Kazakhstan and repositioned them in an arc north of the Indian desert, on recommendation of the sly Kirpal. Everyone knew that a few of those troops had plague but, by isolating all
