Lock. We have a lock.
Trucks rumbling along back-country roads, and on triangulated flatbeds two hundred miles apart, microwave dishes swing at the night sky. Endless streams of electrons fly out on invisible batwings. Bounce, echo. The strong blip and the fading afterimage lingering until the returning swing of light illuminates it in a slightly more southerly position.
Solid?
Yeah. Two hundred miles south of Newark. It could be Newark.
Newark's on Red, also southern New York.
Executive Hold still in effect?
That's right.
We had him dead-bang over Albany.
Be cool, pal.
Trucks thundering through closed towns where people look out of cardboard-patched windows with terrified, hating eyes. Roaring like prehistoric beasts in the night.
Open the holes.
Huge, grinding motors slide huge concrete dunce-caps aside, shunting them down gleaming steel tracks. Circular silos like the entrances to the underworld of the Morlocks. Gasps of liquid hydrogen escaping into the air.
Tracking. We are tracking, Newark.
Roger, Springfield. Keep us in.
Drunks sleeping in alleys wake foggily to the thunder of the passing tracks and stare mutely at the slices of sky between close-leaning buildings. Their eyes are faded and yellow, their mouths are dripping lines. Hands pull with senile reflex for newsies to protect against the autumn cold, but the newsies are no longer there, the Free-Vee has killed the last of them. Free-Vee is king of the world. Hallelujah. Rich folks smoke Dokes. The yellow eyes catch an unknown glimpse of high, blinking lights in the sky. Flash, flash. Red and green, red and green. The thunder of the trucks has faded, ramming back and forth in the stone canyons like the fists of vandals. The drunks sleep again. Bitchin'.
We got him west of Springfield.
Go-no-go in five minutes.
From Harding?
Yes.
He's bracketed and braced.
All across the night the invisible batwings fly, drawing a glittering net across the northeast corner of America. Servos controlled by General Atomics computers function smoothly. The missiles turn and shift subtly in a thousand places to follow the blinking red and green lights that sketch the sky. They are like steel rattlesnakes filled with waiting venom.
Richards saw it all, and functioned even as he saw it. The duality of his brain was oddly comforting, in a way. It induced a detachment that was much like insanity. His blood-crusted finger followed their southward progress smoothly. Now south of Springfield, now west of Hartford, now-
Tracking.
MINUS 019 AND COUNTING
"Mr. Richards?"
"Yes."
"We are over Newark, New Jersey."
"Yes," Richards said. "I've been watching. Holloway?"
Holloway didn't reply, but Richards knew he was listening.
"They've got a bead drawn on us all the way, don't they?"
"Yes," Holloway said.
Richards looked at McCone. "I imagine they're trying to decide if they can afford to do away with their professional bloodhound here. Imagine they'll decide in the affirmative. After all, all they have to do is train a new one."
McCone was snarling at him, but Richards thought it was a completely unconscious gesture, one that could probably be traced all the way to McCone's ancestors, the Neanderthals who had crept up behind their enemies with large rocks rather than battling to the death in the honorable but unintelligent manner.
"When do we get over open country again, Captain?"
"We won't. Not on a due south heading. We will strike open sea after we cross the offshore North Carolina drilling derricks, though."
"Everything south of here is a suburb of New York City?"
"That's about the size of it," Holloway said.
"Thank you."
Newark was sprawled and groined below them like a handful of dirty jewelry thrown carelessly into some lady's black-velvet vanity box.
"Captain?"
Wearily: "Yes."
"You will now proceed due west."
McCone jumped as if he had been goosed. Amelia made a surprised coughing noise in her throat.
"West?" Holloway asked. He sounded unhappy and frightened for the first time. "You're asking for it, going that way. West takes us over pretty open country. Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh is all farm country. There isn't another big city east of Cleveland."
"Are you planning my strategy for me, Captain?"
"No, I-"
"Due west," Richards repeated curtly.
Newark swung away beneath them. "You're crazy," McCone said. "They'll blow us apart." "With you and five other innocent people on board? This honorable country?" "It will be a mistake," McCone said harshly. "A mistake on purpose." "Don't you watch The National Report?" Richards asked, still smiling. "We don't make mistakes. We haven't made a mistake since 1950." Newark was sliding away beneath the wing; darkness took its place. "You're not laughing anymore," Richards said.
MINUS 018 AND COUNTING