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"Yes, sir, of course I saw it"

"I didn’t think you’d fib," the cop said as if he knew Klietmann and trusted his reputation for honesty, which baffled the lieutenant "So if you saw the red curb, sir, why’d you park here?"

"Oh, I see," Kliet is restricted to curbs that aren’t red Yes, of course"

The patrolman blinked at the lieutenant He shifted his attention to Von Manstein in the passenger’s seat, then to Bracher and Hubatsch in the rear, smiled and nodded at them

Kliete The air in the car was heavy with tension

When he shifted his gaze to Klietmann, the police officer sht-you fellas are four preachers?"

"Preachers?" Klietot a bit of a deductive"I’m no Sherlock Holmes But the bumper stickers on your car say ’I Love Jesus’ and ’Christ Has Risen’ And there’s a Baptist convention in town, and you’re all dressed in dark suits"

That hy he had thought he could trust Klietmann not to fib: He believed they were Baptist ht," Klietmann said at once "We’re with the Baptist convention, officer Sorry about the illegal parking We don’t have red curbs where I come from Now if--"

"Where do you hail from?" the cop asked, not with suspicion but in an attempt to be friendly

Klieth to carry on a conversation of this sort when he did not control its direction to any degree whatsoever He believed that Baptists were from the southern part of the country; he wasn’t sure if there were any of them in the north or west or east, so he tried to think of a southern state He said, "I’ia," before he realized how unlikely that claim seemed when spoken in his German accent

The s past Klietmann to von Manstein, he said, "And where you fro with an even stronger accent, von Manstein said, "Georgia"

From the back seat, before they could be asked, Hubatsch and Bracher said, "Georgia, we’re froic and would cast a spell over the patrolether He frowned at Erich Kliet out of the car for a moment?"

"Certainly, officer," Kliet how the cop backed up a couple of steps and rested his f right hand on the butt of his holstered revolver "But we’re late fora prayer -"

In the back seat Hubatsch snapped open his attache case and snatched the Uzi froht have done He did not roll down thebut put thehim no time to draw his revolver The carout as bullets pounded through it Struck by at least twenty rounds at close range, the cop pitched backward into traffic Brakes squealed as a car made a hard stop to avoid the body, and across the street display s shattered as bullets hit ashop

With the cool detach that made Klietot out of the Toyota on his side and loosed a wide arc of fire froive the Windows imploded in the exclusive shops not only on the side street at the end of which they were parked but all the way across the intersection on the east flank of Palm Canyon Drive as well People screamed, dropped to the pavement, scuttled for the cover of doorways Kliet cars hit by bullets out on Palm Canyon, and maybe a few drivers were hit orwildly from lane to lane; a tan Mercedes sideswiped a delivery truck, and a sleek, red sportscar jurazed the bole of a palift shop

Klietency brake He heard Bracher and Hubatsch leap into the car, so he threw the white Toyota in gear and shot forward onto Pal north He discovered at once that he was on a one-way street, going in the wrong direction Cursing, he dodged oncolove co its contents in von Manstein’s lap Klietht at the next intersection A block later he ran a red light, narrowly avoiding pedestrians in the crosswalk, and turned left onto another avenue that allowed northbound traffic

"We only have twenty-oneat the dashboard clock

"Tell o," Klietmann said "I’ the contents of the glove coloves, individual packets of catsup and mustard, docu open in his lap "You’re not lost This will connect with Palm Canyon where it becoht north onto route 111"

Approxis, where the barren land looked particularly ehway She slowly proceeded a few hundred yards until she found the place where the e desert and sloped sufficiently to allow her to drive out onto the flat plain Aside fronarly reen and rooted, soainst the Buick, and the loose ones fleay on the wind that the car created

The hard ground had a shale base over which an alkaline sand was drifted and whorled in places As she had done when they found the place a few nights ago, Laura stayed away froray-pink shale She did not stop until she was three hundred yards fro that well-traveled road beyond the radius of Vexxon’s open-air effectiveness She parked not far from an arroyo, a twenty-foot-wide and thirty-foot-deep natural drainage channel for hundreds of the desert’s brief rainy seasons; previously, at night, proceeding with caution but guided only by headlights, they’d been fortunate not to drive into that enor had not been followed by any sign of arency informed the moment; Laura, Chris, and Stefantoward an i detonation While Laura removed one of the thirty-pound Vexxon cylinders froh the straps on the sreen nylon backpack that was full of books, pulled the chest strap in place, and pressed the Velcro fasteners together Chris carried one of the Uzis twenty feet from the car to the center of a circle of utterly barren shale where not even a tuft of bunchgrass grehich looked like a good staging area for Stefan’s debarkation from 1989 Laura joined the boy there, and Stefan followed, holding the silencer-fitted Colt Cos on state route 111, Klieto, which was not hard enough The car had forty thousand miles on the odometer, and no doubt the old woman ned it never drove faster than fifty, so it wasn’t responding well to the deo faster than sixty, the Toyota began to shi him to ease up

Nevertheless, just two s city lihway Patrol cruiser, and Klietoing to encounter and arrest Laura Shane and her son The cop was doing just under fifty-five in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone

"Kill him," Klietmann said over his shoulder to Corporal Martin Bracher, as in the right rear seat

Klietlanced in the rearviewtraffic, but it was in the southbound lanes He swung into the northbound passing lane and began to move around the patrol car at sixty