Page 13 (1/2)

Frost’s training had given him tactics and protocols for every situation that he had previously encountered in his career, but not for this He could see nothing that he and Dagget could do other than wait, observe, and hope for understanding The woe, and the pieces of bodies strewn here and there were proof that terrible violence had been committed in the house, but there was no proof that she coet them anywhere in these extraordinary circumstances She seemed to be half in a trance, not h Frost couldn’t make sense of what she’d said--I think --he detected in her tone the dis that she was a victiarded herself in thecloud of mist came off her skin, and for a moment she see And then theto her body

Dagget said, "Sonofabitch"

"Yeah," Frost agreed

"So worse," Dagget said

The woht hand to her face and stared at it in what appeared to be baffleet as if she had just remembered that she was not alone

She reached out to theht hand, and when her arm was fully extended, she revealed to the with teeth

Chapter 24

One-eyed, one-eared, with a steel-and-copper mechanical hand at the end of his left arm, Sully York could see and hear as well as anyone, better than some As well as anyone, he could serve up mixed nuts, three varieties of cheese, three varieties of crackers, thick slices of Are, and drinks, a forty-year-old Scotch for him and Bryce Walker, and a Pepsi for the boy, Travis Ahern, as only about ten, which in Sully’s opinion was four years too early either for Scotch or women, or life-and-death exploits

By the tiood whiskey now and then and could hold his liquor But of course he had been six feet three at that age, had looked twenty-one, on his own in the world and ready for adventure Back then, he hadn’t lost the eye yet or the ear, or the hand, and he hadn’t sustained the sabre slash froht eye to the corner of his mouth that left hiht In fact, at fourteen he hadn’t known much fun at all but was determined to have some, which he damn well did over the decades Back then, all of his teeth had been real, whereas they were all gold these forty-seven years later, and he had cracked and broken off and si and memorable fashion

They settled in Sully’s den, which was his favorite roo a fierce boar’s head, the tusks as pointed as ice picks, and with it the knife that Sully wielded to kill the beast One wall and his desktop offered fraraphs of hiles to deserts, froe tides, and in every case he and those good old boys--all dead now, each killed as colorfully as he had lived--had been in the service of their country, though never once in uniform The kind of work they did was so deep cover that it made the CIA seeanization Their group had no name, only a number, but they had called themselves the Crazy Bastards

On shelves and tables were souvenirs: a perfectly preserved six-inch-long hissing cockroach fro once worn by a dwarf Soviet assassin; a dirk and a dagger and a kris, all of which had cut him and all of which he had taken away fro in Hell; the knobkerrie that had knocked out his left eye and hich he had dealt ieance to the one who had half blinded hihan, intricately worked iron handcuffs, andleather armchairs around the coffee table where all the food was laid out, while Bryce and Travis recounted events they had witnessed--and escaped--at Me and , as the boy slumped in a bleak mood that damn well did not becoativists in general He would have given Travis soh-spirited response to everything in life, froapore to a knobkerrie in the eye, but he restrained himself because he suspected that in spite of the boy’s current annoying ht stuff Sully York had a nose for people with the right stuff, which was one of the reasons he was the only surviving Crazy Bastard

The story Bryce told--of patients being killed at the hospital, of some kind of mass-murder conspiracy that Travis insisted had to be the work of extraterrestrials--was so screwball and wild-assed that Sully quickly recognized it as the dead-serious truth Besides, Bryce had as ht stuff as anyone Sully York had ever known Bryce hadn’t spent his life cutting the throats of slick villains who needed their throats cut; he hadn’t pushed off cliffs the people who, in being pushed off, gave nobleto those cliffs Instead, Bryce had written Western novels, daood ones, full of heroism, in which he portrayed exactly how true evil operated and how good people sometimes had to deal hard with the bad ones if civilization was to survive

When Bryce finished, Sully looked at the boy, who sat holding a cube of cheese at which he had fitfully nibbled "Son, I really believe you’ve got moxie in your veins and steel in your spine I have a nose for people with the right stuff, and you sh heaven of it But there you sit as spiritless as that damn chunk of cheese Hell, the cheese looksornery than you do If half of what Bryce has told me is true--and I think it’s full true, front to back--then we have a hard job of work ahead of us, and we have to go at it with spunk and spirit and absolute confidence that we’re going to stor If we’re to be on the sa like this and that you have the guts and the love of glory to get up out of your funk and fight to win"

Bryce said, "Sully, hisTravis doesn’t know for sure, can’t know, but he thinks they got her He thinks shea fist of his mechanical hand, Sully said, "Maybe she’s dead? Is that all? Hell, no, she’s not dead Nobody’s dead until you see the stinking body I won’t damn well believe that I’m dead until I can look down on ns I’ve known people ere surely dead--he was flung out the door of a chopper at two thousand feet without a parachute, another supposedly took three rounds in the back and fell into an ice crevasse--but a year or two passes and one night in a dark alley or in a crowded bazaar in Morocco, here he is co you face-first into a huge old basket full of cobras! Dead, my ass You haven’t seen your mother dead, have you? If you haven’t seen her dead, she’s not dead, and we’re going to go out there and find her So eat the rest of that cheese and prepare yourself You understand me, short stuff?"

The flat dull look in Travis Ahern’s eyes had given way to a lively light

"Better," Sully York said

Chapter 25

Carson would have preferred to stay at the Sa all those well-intentioned, well-ar her back Not to mention the excellent coffee and the pu their nue of the about strategy and tactics, and the cell-phone videos of the horror at the roadhouse, they didn’t need Carson and Michael to recruit their neighbors and turn their block into a garrison

The ular gifts, only he would be able to drive the children out of Rainbow Falls, past the roadblocks, to the comparative safety of Erika’s house four miles west of town With no telephone service of any kind, they would need to track him down somehohich at first seemed to be an almost impossible mission in a town of nearly fifteen thousand

As Carson piloted the Grand Cherokee through a sea of snow, tides washing across the windshield and foa toward the center of Rainbow Falls, Michael said, "I’ve got an idea"

"You always have an idea You always have a dozen ideas That’s why I married you Just to see what ideas you’ll coht you married me for my looks, my sensitivity, and my fabulous bedroom stamina"

Carson said, "Lucky for you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder But I will acknowledge you really do an exhaustive job cleaning the bedroo? We have a full-tiaret is a great cook and a nanny She does only light housekeeping Keeping a spotless house requires someone with muscle, determination, and fortitude"

"Sounds like you"

Carson said, "Do you want me to clean, and fro and electrical proble and taxes?"

"No I’d wind up electrocuted trying to replace a valve in the toilet just before the IRS seized the house But back to my idea--we know Deucalion intends to take out the crews of as many of those blue-and-white trucks as he can So if we can locate one that’s still operating and we tail it, maybe we’ll find Deucalion when he finds the truck"

"That’s pretty estions from our plumber-electrician-mechanic-accountant"

They rode in silence for a couple ofabout this, Tonto"