The Fear In Yesterday's rings

me even more nervous.

As it was, I was soaked with sweat, although it was a relatively dry, cool night; walking around knowing that at any second horrible, clawed death may leap out from the shadows to rip out your throat and bowels can have that effect on a man.

We'd left the ruined Plymouth in an alley beside a supermarket and rented a station wagon, which was now parked, with Harper and her loaded shotgun inside it, at the edge of one of the three parking fields where there was enough radiated light for her to be able to see anything and anybody that might approach. With the Colt in my suit jacket pocket and the.45 automatic in my right hand, I was working my way through lines of parked cars and pickup trucks toward a roped-off area behind the Big Top. There I knew I would find the penning enclosures as well as the parking field containing the trailers and the enormous Mack semis that hauled the circus around the country.

There was a man in a gray suit standing in the moonlight near the roped-off area. He was holding a walkie- talkie near his mouth, and there was a pronounced bulge in his suit jacket, near his left armpit. He was definitely not a circus roustabout, and I strongly doubted that he was a plainclothes state trooper. Rather, the man's presence suggested to me that the Zelezians had appealed to their government or corporate sponsor for a little additional help in case of any emergency I might try to cause. As I watched, the man spoke into the walkie-talkie, in English, and there was a crackling response.

In the section of the field just beyond the gunman in the gray suit, a dozen semitrailers were parked in rows of four, virtually nose-to-nose, with one row flush to the rear of the Big Top. That was where I wanted to go. I had been kept inside an old circus wagon, but there were no more of those in evidence. Garth was too big and obstreperous to try to keep in any mobile home, so I figured they might have him locked up in an animal cage inside one of the semis. In any case, the rows of parked trucks seemed the logical place to start looking. He would, at least, be in a position to return a signal.

If he was conscious.

Trying not to think of what might be slinking toward me in the darkness of the parking lot, I angled to my right, away from the gunman in the suit. I stopped fifty yards away and waited for him to look in the opposite direction, then darted out from behind a car, ran across a narrow dirt track, and ducked under a rope into a dark area near where the semis were parked. I crouched down in the night, forcing myself to take deep breaths and try to relax as I looked around me in the darkness and wiped sweat away from my eyes.

I had to hope Garth hadn't been drugged into unconsciousness; I had to hope he could respond to a signal. I could only start worrying about how to get him out after I found out where he was.

It was time to get off the ground, where I was vulnerable to a lobox attack from all sides. I hustled on over to the trucks, climbed up on the running board of the first one in the first line, clambered up onto the roof of the cab. Then I put the.45 in my other suit jacket pocket, jumped up, and caught the edge of the roof of the box with my fingers. I hauled myself up and over the edge onto the corrugated steel roof, then lay down in the darkness and again forced myself to take a series of deep breaths, seeking release from the terror that had gripped me from the moment I had left the relative safety of the station wagon. I kept reminding myself that I was safe from the loboxes, at least for the time being. The suited gunman was still pacing back and forth on the dirt track, speaking into his walkie-talkie, which meant that I hadn't been seen. I was still in business.

I began to feel better.

I was even beginning to feel just a tad of optimism.

I worked my way across the length of the box on the first semi, softly tapping out a Morse SOS code on the metal with the barrel of the automatic as I went along. When I reached the rear of the box, I eased myself over the edge and dropped to the hood of the tractor parked behind it. I hauled myself up to the roof of the box of that truck, again started tapping out the SOS code as I worked my way down its length.

On the roof of the box of the third semi, I hit pay dirt. I was halfway down, tapping out my signal, when I heard Garth's voice.

'Mongo?! That damn well better be you, brother! I need rescuing!'

I rested my head against the cold metal and breathed a sigh of relief. My brother didn't sound drugged, only angry. I tapped again.

'Mongo?! Is that you, you little fucker? I want you to know that I'm seriously pissed at you! And Mary's pissed at you, too!'

His words filled me with a new fear. It had never occurred to me that Mary might have come along with Garth and been captured too. If she had, it would present a host of new problems.

My knowledge of Morse was limited at best, and I didn't know if Garth knew any of it at all. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to recall the pages of dots and dashes from my Cub Scout manual.

Tappety-tap. M-A-R-Y H-E-R-E.

'No! Just me!'

W-A-I-T.

'Mongo, when I find out what you've gotten yourself into this time, I'm likely to tear your fucking head off!'

S-H-U-T U-P W-A-I-T.

I crawled on my belly back toward the front edge of the box, where there was an air vent, gently tapping all the way so that Garth could follow my progress. I could only hope that Garth had all of the interior of the box to move around in. When I was near the edge I paused to look around, but I didn't see any guards or roustabouts. I leaned over the edge, put my mouth close to the air vent.

'Garth? Can you hear me?'

'Yeah.' His voice sounded as if it was directly below me, which meant that he had not been locked in a cage inside a cage. Good. 'Sorry about all that yelling I did. It was just my way of letting you know I was happy to hear from you. It's getting a little stuffy in here.'

'Yeah, I know. You're forgiven.'

'When I didn't hear from you again for two days after our last phone conversation, I knew you'd gone and stuck that big nose of yours into Arlen Zelezian's business-just like I'd warned you not to. Christ, I was afraid you were dead.'

'Not yet.'

'But you're working on it, right?'

'That isn't exactly the way I'd put it.'

'What the hell's going on, Mongo?'

'You know about the loboxes?'

'What are loboxes? I don't know anything, except that you and your girlfriend are in deep shit. The police are looking for the two of you.'

'Yeah, that figures.'

'I take it they're missing something, but I could never make out just what it is. I only heard bits and pieces of conversation.'

'They're missing something, all right: two things. Look, have you got any lights in there?'

'No. This truck's filled with spare equipment, from what I can make out. I almost broke my neck following you over here.'

'Okay, you've got double doors that swing out at the rear of the box and in the middle, on your left as you're facing toward the cab-the way you're facing now. They're padlocked. I'm going to try to shoot the lock off the doors at the rear, because I have more cover there. The trucks are parked nose-to-ass, but there should be enough room there for you to squeeze out. The shot is going to attract some attention, so be prepared to move fast. I've got a friend waiting for us in a car, but we may have to shoot our way out through the parking lots. You ready?'

'And then some.'

'Here I come.'

I crawled back to the rear of the box, taking care not to let myself be silhouetted against the sky, lowered myself to the hood of the tractor parked just behind. The padlock on the double doors of the trailer box ahead was just about at waist level. I straddled the hood ornament, took the automatic out of my pocket.

'Hey, Mongo? You out there?'

I gently tapped the door in response, then aimed the gun with both hands at the padlock and waited. The gray-suited gunman and his colleagues were going to come running at the sound of the shot, and I needed