“Doogie,” Sasha said, “is a man of many conveyances.”
“I am a wheel-o-maniac,” he admitted. “What happened to your eye, Rosie?”
“In a fight with a priest.”
The eye was better, still swollen but not to such a tight slit. The ice had worked.
“We ought to get moving,” Sasha said. “It’s weird out here tonight, Doogie.”
He agreed. “I’ve been hearing coyotes like no coyotes I’ve ever heard before.”
Bobby, Sasha, and I looked at one another. I recalled Sasha’s prediction that we hadn’t seen the last of the pack that had come out of the canyon beyond Lilly Wing’s house.
The cathedral-quiet fields and hills lay under a shrouded sky, and the breeze from the west was as feeble as the breath of a dying nun. In the live oaks behind us, the leaves whispered only slightly louder than memory, and the tall grass barely stirred.
Doogie led us around to the back of the customized Hummer and opened the tailgate. The interior light was not as bright as usual, because half the fixture was masked with electrician’s black tape, but even the reduced illumination was a beacon in these star-denied, moon-starved grasslands.
Just inside the tailgate were two shotguns. They were pistol-grip, pump-action Remingtons even sweeter than the classic Mossberg that Manuel Ramirez had confiscated from Bobby’s Jeep.
Doogie said, “I don’t think either of you boardheads is likely to shoot a hole in a silver dollar with a handgun, so these suit you better. I know you’re shotgun-familiar. But you’ll be using magnum loads, so be prepared for the kick. With this punch and spread, you buckaroos don’t have to worry about aiming, and you’ll stop just about anything.”
He handed one shotgun to Bobby, the other to me, and also gave each of us a box of ammunition.
“Load up, then distribute the rest of the shells in your jacket pockets,” he said. “Don’t leave any in the box. The last shell can be the one that saves your ass.” He looked at Sasha, smiled, and said, “Like Colombia.”
“Colombia?” I asked.
“We did some business there once,” Sasha said.
Doogie had lived in Moonlight Bay six years, and Sasha had been here two. I wondered if this business trip had been recent or before either of them settled in the Jewel of the Central Coast. I had been under the impression that they had met at KBAY.
“Colombia, the country?” Bobby asked.
“Not the record company,” Doogie assured him.
“Tell me not drugs,” Bobby said.
Doogie shook his head. “Rescue operation.”
Sasha’s smile was enigmatic. “Interested in the past, after all, Snowman?”
“Right now, just the future.”
Turning to Roosevelt, Doogie said, “I didn’t realize you’d be coming, so I don’t have a weapon for you.”
“I’ve got the cat,” Roosevelt said.
“Killer.”
Mungojerrie hissed.
The hiss reminded me of the snakes. I looked around nervously, wondering if the loco reptiles we had seen earlier would give us the courtesy of a warning rattle.
Closing the tailgate, Doogie said, “Let’s rock.”
In addition to the cargo area just inside the tailgate — which contained a pair of five-gallon fuel cans, two cardboard boxes, and a well-stuffed backpack — the customized Hummer provided seating for eight. Behind the pair of bucket-style front seats were two bench seats, each capable of accommodating three grown men, although not three as well grown as Doogie.
Thor Incarnate drove, and Roosevelt rode shotgun, figuratively speaking, holding our long-tailed tracker in his lap. Immediately behind them, I sat with Bobby and Sasha on the first bench seat.
“Why aren’t we going into Wyvern by the river?” Bobby wondered.
“The only way to get down to the Santa Rosita,” Doogie said, “is on one of the levee ramps in town. But tonight the town’s crawling with a bad element.”
“Anchovies,” Bobby translated.
“We’d be spotted and stopped,” Sasha said.
With the way illuminated only by its parking lights, the Hummer passed through a huge hole in the fence, where the ragged edges of the flanking panels of chain-link were as snarled as masses of string left with a playful kitten.
“You cut this open all by yourself?” I asked.
“Shaped charge,” Doogie said.
“Explosives?”
“Just a little boom plastic.”
“Didn’t that draw attention?”
“Shape the charge in a thin line, where you want the links to pop, and you’re using so little it’s like one really big beat on a bass drum.”
“Even if someone’s close enough to hear,” Sasha said, “it’s over so quick, he’d never get a fix on the direction.”
Bobby said, “Radio engineering requires way more cool skills than I thought.”
Doogie asked where we were headed, and I described the cluster of warehouses in the southwest quadrant of the base, where I had last seen Orson. He seemed familiar with the layout of Fort Wyvern, because he needed few directions.
We parked near the big roll-up door. The man-size door beside the larger entrance stood open, as I had left it the previous night.
I got out of the Hummer, carrying my shotgun. Roosevelt and Mungojerrie joined me, while the others waited in the vehicle in order not to distract the cat in his efforts to pick up the trail.
Pooled with shadows, smelling vaguely of oil and grease, home to weeds that sprouted from fissures in the blacktop, littered with empty oil cans and with assorted paper trash and leaves deposited by the previous night’s wind, surrounded by the corrugated-steel facades of the hulking warehouses, this serviceway had never been a festive place, not a prime venue for a royal wedding, but now the atmosphere was downright sinister.
Last night, the stocky abb with the close-cropped black hair, aware that Orson and I were close behind him in the Santa Rosita, must have used a cell phone to call for assistance — perhaps from the tall, blond, athletic guy with the puckered scar on his left cheek, who had snatched the Stuart twins only hours before. He had handed Jimmy off to someone, anyway, and then had led Orson and me into the warehouse, with the intention of killing me there.
From an inside jacket pocket, I withdrew the tightly wadded top of Jimmy Wing’s cotton pajamas, with which the abb had confused the scent trail. To be fair to Orson, who had been briefly baffled but never entirely misled, I was the one suckered into the warehouse by odd noises and a muffled voice.
The garment seemed so small, almost like doll’s clothing.
“I don’t know if this helps,” I said. “Cats aren’t bloodhounds, after all.”
“We’ll see,” Roosevelt said.
Mungojerrie sniffed the pajama top delicately but with interest. Then he took a tour of the immediate area, smelling the pavement, an empty oil can, which made him sneeze, and the tiny yellow flowers on a weed, which made him sneeze again and more vigorously. He returned for a brief inhalation of the garment, and then he tracked a scent along the pavement once more, moving in a widening spiral, from time to time lifting his head to savor the air, all the while appearing suitably quizzical. He padded to the warehouse, where he raised one leg and relieved himself against the concrete foundation, sniffed the deposit he had made, returned for another whiff of the pajama top, spent half a minute investigating an old rusted socket wrench lying on the pavement, paused to scratch behind his right ear with one paw, returned to the weed with the yellow flowers, sneezed, and had just risen to the top of my List of People or Animals I Most Want to Choke Senseless, when he suddenly went rigid, turned his green eyes toward our animal communicator, and hissed.
“He’s got it,” Roosevelt said.
Mungojerrie hurried along the serviceway, and we set out after him. Bobby joined us on foot, armed with his
