“GOT A REPORT from base, General. Says that the two choppers are making slow progress north. Been spotted three separate times, each time on the ground. Looks like they might have some kind of mechanical malfunction.”
Zelig nodded. They were approaching the end of their first day’s driving southward, and everyone was already cold and hungry and tired.
“Any news on weather?”
The man shook his head. It was hard to hear any conversation above the pounding of the powerful diesel engine, and he leaned closer. “Electric storms still bad in Oregon, General. A lot of breakup.”
“Won’t make it easier for their Chief, assuming that the young woman is riding with her troops.”
“Sorry? Can’t hear ya, General. Say again?”
“Doesn’t matter! I said it doesn’t matter.”
The man resumed his seat alongside the driver, and Zelig leaned forward, his head in his hands. He was trying to calculate what kind of mileage they’d eaten up that day.
At their present speed, it was likely to take them the best part of a week, bringing them very close to the turning of the year, and there was always the high risk of their missing Jim Hilton and his party.
Zelig sensed in his heart that this could be a vital point in the campaign of Operation Tempest against the Hunters.
If Margaret Tabor had really committed both of her main operational choppers to this risky mission, and was also throwing in a significant percentage of her armed force, then a defeat could prove to be utterly catastrophic for her and for the Hunters of the Sun.
Then again, if she wasted Hilton and the rest of them, and also won a victory in a firefight against himself and his convoy of M113s, then it could spell the beginning of the end for Aurora and everything it stood for.
MARGARET TABOR was walking up and down the windswept landing strip, fighting to contain a ferocious anger.
The camouflaged Chinook that carried most of their fuel and supplies was suffering from an ignition problem, so the engine was constantly misfiring. It seemed to have a link with the air-suction cooling, as the problem was worsened every time they encountered snow.
The original plan to cut across the Sierras and follow the coastline, keeping away from the worst of the winter chill, was doomed. They never managed to get enough altitude and nearly met total disaster not far from Lone Pine, when they were both forced to turn back toward the eastern flank of the Sierras by the whiteout blizzard.
Now it looked as if Tahoe might be their best option, though even that involved flying in poor visibility over a narrow and snowy pass.
“Shouldn’t be long, Chief,” said a young mechanic, saluting her.
“How long is not long?”
“Reckon about thirty minutes, Chief.”
“Thirty?”
“Yeah. Thirty.”
She considered repeating the conversation again, just for the satisfaction of watching the increasing blank panic overwhelm his face, the muscles around the mouth and eyes start to twitch in fear.
But it would have been a hollow and pointless satisfaction, like competing with a dead sheep in an intelligence test. She saluted the young man and let him go back to the white-shrouded Chinook fifty yards away.
Time was passing.
She knew that Zelig and his crew were on the move south, presumably to try to scoop up the Aquila’s survivors.
There was a powerful image that had come to her while she dozed during one of the repair breaks—a glass egg timer, filled with sand, running quickly through from top to bottom. But, as Margaret Tabor slept, the golden sand turned a darker color, crimson, and became liquid.
Flagg, her previous boss and lover and enemy, had been a believer in the supernatural, often only making his tactical decisions after casting the yarrow stalks or consulting the tarot cards.
She had often pretended to share his arcane beliefs, sometimes manipulating the pack for her own benefit, making sure he received the Hanged Man in unfavorable company, but now he was gone there was no longer a need to dissemble. Now it was simply a question of getting the job done.
But that still hadn’t stopped the dreams.