He moved to the foot of the bed and studied the other twin, whose eyes also alternated between blihkless stares and abrupt, machinegun bursts of blinks. He wondered if he would do any physical or mental harm to them if he pulled out their IV lines, disconnected them from the machines, and moved them out of the house before their captors returned. Better to find a phone, call the police How long they were watching him he did not know, but suddenly he was aware that he and the twins were not alone. He jumped and whirled toward the door, where two men had entered the room. They were wearing dark slacks, white shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the collars unbuttoned, neckties loosened and askew. At the doorway behind them was another man, bespectacled and in a suit with his tie in place. They had to be government agents, for no one else would bother to wear business clothes while engaged upon activities of such a dubious nature.

One of them said, “And who the f*ck are you?”

Parker did not attempt to jive them, did not foolishly claim his rights as a U S. citizen, did not bother to say anything at all. He just took three running steps toward the drawn drapes, praying that a big window or slidingglass balcony door lay beyond them, that it would shatter on impact, that the drapes would protect him from serious cuts, and that he would be outside and gone before they knew what happened. If the drapes were a lot wider than the window, covering more blank wall than glass, he was in big trouble. Behind him, the men shouted in surprise ' just as he hit the drapes, for they'd obviously believed they'd trapped him. He went through the material with the unstoppable power of a locomotive. The impact was tremendous, sending a devastating shock across his shoulder and through his chest, but something gave way with a crack and a screech and a crash of glass, and he was through into daylight, vaguely aware that the doors had been French rather than sliding panels and that he had been lucky the lock was flimsy.

He found himself on a secondfloor balcony with a pair of redwood lounge chairs and a glasstopped table, over which he fell. Even as he was going down on top of chairs, banging knees and barking shins, he was already coming up again, up and over the balcony rail, leaping out into space, praying he would not land in a particularly woody shrub and be castrated by a sharp, sturdy branch. He fell only twelve feet onto bare lawn, jarring his other shoulder and his back but breaking no bones. He rolled, scrambled to his feet, and ran.

Suddenly, in front of his eyes, foliage snappedflutteredshredded, and he didn't know what was happening, and then as he continued to run, pieces of bark exploded off a tree, and he realized they were shooting at him. He heard no gunfire. Silencerequipped weapons. He zigzagged toward the perimeter of the property, fell in an azalea bed, scrambled up, ran on, reached a hedge, threw himself over it, and kept on running.

They had been ready to kill him to stop him from spreading the news of what he had seen in the Salcoe house. Right now, they were probably hastily movingor killingthe Salcoes. If he found a phone and called the police, and if the killers were agents of the U S. government, whose side would the police be on? And who would they believe? One eccentric and rather curiously dressed artist with a woolly beard and flyaway hair? Or three neatly attired FBI men claiming they were in the Salcoe house on a legitimate stakeout of some kind, and that Parker Faine was, in fact, the felon they had attempted to arrest. If they demanded custody of him, would the police cooperate?

Jesus.

He ran. Abandoning the Tempo, he sprinted down the sloped wall of a shallow glen, along the rocky course of a narrow brook, between trees, through underbrush, up another wall of the same glen, into someone's back yard, across that lawn and into another yard, alongside a house, out into a street, from that street to another. He slowed to a fast walk to avoid drawing attention to himself, but he continued to follow a twisty route away from the Salcoe house.

He knew what he had to do. The horror he had just seen had made the extremity of Dom's plight clearer than ever. Parker had known his friend was in danger, deep in a conspiracy of monumental proportions, but knowing it in his mind was not the same as knowing it in his guts. There was nothing for him to do but go to Elko County. Dom Corvaisis was his friend, perhaps his best friend, and this was what friends did for each other: shared their trouble, fought back the darkness together. He could walk away, go back to Laguna Beach to continue work on the painting that he had begun yesterday. But if he chose that course, he would never like himself very much againwhich would be an intolerable circumstance, for he had always liked himself immensely!

He had to find a ride back to the Monterey Airport, catch a flight to San Francisco International, and head east from there toward Nevada. He was not concerned that the men in the Salcoes' house would be looking for him at the airport. The only words any of them had spoken in his presence were: “And who the f*ck are you?” If they did not know who he was, they would most likely figure he was a local. The keys to the Tempo had a rentalcompany tag on them, but they were in his pocket. In an hour or two, of course, the bad guys would trace the car to the airport, but by then he should have taken off for San Francisco.

He kept walking. On a quiet residential street he saw a young man, about nineteen or twenty, in the driveway of a more modest house than the Salcoes', carefully scrubbing the whitewalls on the tires of a meticulously restored, banana yellow, 1958 Plymouth Fury, one of those long jobs with a plenitude of grille and big sharity fins. The kid had a slickedback ducktail haircut to match the era of his vehicle. Parker went up to him and said, "Listen, my car broke down, and I've got to get to the airport. I'm in a big hurry, so would you drive me out there for fifty bucks?"

The kid knew how to hurry. If he had not been a superb driver, he would have fishtailed out of control and spun them off the road into trees or ditches on a halfdozen tight turns, for he got all possible speed out of the big Fury. After they came through the third sharp turn alive, Parker knew he was in good hands, and he finally relaxed a bit.

At the airport, he bought a ticket for one of two remaining seats on a West Air flight leaving for San Francisco in ten minutes. He boarded the plane, halfexpecting it to be halted by federal agents before it could take off. But soon they were airborne, and he could worry about something else: getting another flight from San Francisco to Reno before they tracked him that far.

Jack Twist went through the Blocks' apartment from northto west- to south- to eastfacing windows, surveying the vast landscape for signs of the enemy's observation post or posts. At least one surveillance team would be watching the motel and diner, and no matter how well concealed they were, he had a device that would pinpoint their location.

He'd brought it from New York with the other gearan instrument the armed forces called the HS101 Heat Analyzer. It was shaped like a sleek futuristic raygun from the movies, with a single twoinchdiameter lens instead of a barrel. You held it by the butt and looked through the eyepiece as if peering into a telescope. Moving the viewfinder across the landscape, you saw two things: an ordinary magnified image of the terrain, and an overlaid representation of heat sources within that terrain. Plants, animals, and sunbaked rocks radiated heat, but thanks to microchip technology, the HS's computer could differentiate among types of thermal radiation and screen out most natural background sources. The device would show only heat from living sources larger than fifty pounds: animals bigger than housedogs and human beings. Even if they were out there in insulated ski suits that trapped a lot of body heat, enough would escape their garments to give him a fix on them.

Jack spent a considerable length of time studying the land north of the motel, through which he had approached the place last night, but finally he decided no one was watching from that direction, and he moved to the westfacing windows in other rooms. The west also looked clear, so he went next to the windows on the south side of the apartment.

Marcie had colored the last moon in her album, and when Jack set out with the HS101 to look for surveillance teams, she came with him, staying close by his side. Maybe she had taken a liking to him because he'd spent hours talking to her in spite of her failure to respond. Or maybe she was scared of something and felt safer in his presence. Or another reason too strange to imagine. He could do nothing for her except keep talking softly to her as she accompanied him.

Jorja followed along as well, and though she did not interrupt with questions, she was considerably more distracting than her daughter. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, but more importantly he liked her a lot. He thought she liked him, too, although he didn't suppose she was attracted to him, not in the manwoman sense. After all, what would a woman like her see in a guy like him? He was an admitted criminal, and he had a face like an old battered shoe, not to mention one cast eye. But they could be friends, at least, and that was nice.

At the living room windows, he finally spotted what he was seeking: points of body heat out there in the cold barrens. Across the top of the image that filled the lensNevada plains and overlaid heat patternscame a digital readout of data that told him there were two sources of heat, that they were due south of his position, and that they were approximately fourtenths of a mile away. That information was followed by numerals that represented an estimation of the size of each source's radiant surface, which told him he had found two men. He switched off the HS's heatanalysis function and turned up the magnification, using the device as a simple telescope, zeroing in on the area in which the heat had been detected. He had to search for a couple of minutes, for they were wearing camouflage suits.

“Bingo,” he said at last.

Jorja did not ask what he saw, for she had learned well the lesson he had taught them last night: Everything spoken in the apartment was sucked directly into the enemy's electronic ears.

Out there on the barrens, the two observers were prone on the cold ground. Jack saw that one man had a pair of binoculars. But the guy was not using the glasses at the moment, so he was not aware of Jack watching him from the window.

He moved to the east windows and surveyed that landscape, as well, but it was uninhabited. They were being watched only from the south, which the enemy figured was sufficient because the front of the motel and the only road leading to it could be seen from that single post.

They were underestimating Jack. They knew his background, knew that he was good, but they didn't realize how good.

At oneforty, the first snowflakes fell. For a while they came down only as scattered flurries, with no particular force.

At two o'clock, when Dom and Ernie returned from their scouting trip around the perimeter of the Thunder Hill Depository, Jack said, "You know, Ernie, when the storm really hits later, there might be some people on the interstate who'll see our wheels out front and pull in here, looking for shelter, even if we leave the sign and other lights off. Better move my Cherokee, the Servers' truck, and the cars around back. We don't want a lot of people rapping at your door wanting to know why you're giving rooms to some people and not to them."

Actually, certain that the enemy was even now listening to them, Jack was using the specter of weary snowbound motorists as a plausible excuse to move the pickup truck and the Cherokee, the two fourwheeldrive vehicles, out of sight of the observers south of I-80. Later, when heavier snow and the early darkness of the storm settled in, the entire Tranquility family would surreptitiously leave the motel from the rear, heading overland in the truck and the Cherokee.

Ernie sensed Jack's real purpose; equally aware of eavesdroppers, he played along. He and Dom went outside again to move all the vehicles around back.

In the kitchen, Ned and Sandy had nearly finished preparing and packaging the sandwiches that everyone would be issued for dinner.

Now they had only to wait for Faye and Ginger.

The snow flurries intermittently surrendered to furious but shortlived squalls. The day dimmed. By twoforty, the squalls turned to steady snow that, in spite of a complete cessation of wind, reduced visibility to a few hundred feet. Out on the barrens, the camouflaged observers were probably picking up their gear and moving closer to the motel.

Jack checked his watch more frequently. He knew time was running out. But he had no way of knowing how fast it might be running out.

While Lieutenant Horner repaired the sabotaged polygraph in the security office, Falkirk lectured the Depository's chief of security and his assistantMajor Fugata and Lieutenant Helmsletting them know they were on his list of possible traitors. He made two enemies, but that didn't matter. He did not want them to like himonly to respect and fear him.

He had not yet finished chewing out Fugata and Helms when General Alvarado arrived. The general was a lardass with a pot gut, fingers like sausages, and jowls. He stormed into the security office in a redfaced outrage, having just heard the bad news from Dr. Miles Bennell: "Is it true, Colonel Falkirk? By God, is it true? Have you actually taken control Of VIGILANT and made prisoners of us all?"

Sternly but in a tone that could not be construed as disrespectful, Leland informed Alvarado that he had the authority to include the secret program in the security computer and to activate it at his discretion. Alvarado demanded to know whose authority, and Leland said, "General Maxwell D. Riddenhour, Chief of Staff of the Army and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs." Alvarado said he knew perfectly well who Riddenhour was, but he did not believe that the colonel's mentor in this matter was the Chief of Staff himself. “Sir, why don't you call him and ask?” Leland suggested. He took a card out of his wallet and gave it to Alvarado. “That's General Riddenhour's number.”

“I have the Staff HQ number,” Alvarado said scornfully.

"Sir, that's not Staff HQ. That's General Riddenhour's unlisted home line. If he's not in his office, he'd want you to contact him on the unlisted phone. After all, this is a deadly serious matter, sir."

Burning a brighter red, Alvarado stalked out, the card pinched between thumb and forefinger and held away from his side as if it were an offensive object. He was back in fifteen minutes, no longer flushed but pale. "All right, Colonel, you have the authority you claim. So . . . I guess you're in command of Thunder Hill for the time being."

“Not at all, sir,” Leland said. “You're still the CO.”

“But if I'm a prisoner-”

Leland interrupted. "Sir, your orders take precedence as long as they don't directly conflict with my authority to guarantee that no dangerous personsno dangerous creaturesescape from Thunder Hill."

Alvarado shook his head in amazement. "According to Miles Bennell, you have this crazy idea that we're all ... some kind of monsters." The general had used the most melodramatic word he could think of, with the intent of belittling Leland's position.