“Don’t walk so fast,” Marino complained when we were back outside.
“Have you checked out the mobile command post?” I asked. “The big blue and white RV? I saw it when we were flying in.”
“I don’t think we want to go over there.”
“Well, I do.”
“Doc, that’s the inner perimeter.”
“That’s where HRT is,” I said.
“Let’s just check it out with Benton first. I know you’re looking for Lucy, but for God’s sake, use your head.”
“I am using my head and I am looking for Lucy.” I was getting angrier with Wesley by the moment.
Marino put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and we squinted at each other in the sun. “Doc,” he said, “listen to me. What’s going down ain’t personal. No one gives a shit that Lucy’s your niece. She’s a friggin’ FBI agent, and it ain’t Wesley’s duty to give you a report on everything she’s doing for them.”
I did not say anything, and he did not need to, either, for me to know the truth.
“So don’t be pissed at him.” Marino was still gently holding my arm. “You want to know? I don’t like it, either.
I couldn’t stand it if something happened to her. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to either of you.
And right now I’m about as scared as I’ve ever been in my goddamn fucking life. But I got a job to do and so do you.”
“She’s at the inner perimeter,” I said.
He paused. “Come on, Doc. Let’s go talk to Wesley.”
But we did not get a chance to do that, because when we walked into the visitors’ center, we found him on the phone. His tone was iron-calm and he was standing tensely.
“Don’t do anything until I get there, and it is very important that they know I’m on my way,” he was saying, slowly. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. Use a bullhorn so no one gets close.” He glanced at Marino and me. “Just hold tight. Tell them you’ve got someone coming who will get a hostage phone to them immediately. Right.”
He hung up and headed straight for the door, and we were right behind him.
“What the hell’s going on?” Marino asked.
“They want to communicate.”
“What’d they do? Send a letter?”
“One of them yelled out a window,” Wesley replied.
“They’re very agitated.”
We walked fast past the helipad, and I noted it was empty, the senator and attorney general long gone.
. “So they don’t already have a phone?” I was very surprised.
“We shut down the phones in that building,” Wesley said. “They have to get a phone from us, and before this minute they haven’t wanted one. Now, suddenly they do.”
“So there’s a problem,” I said.
“That’s the way I’m reading it.” Marino was out of breath.
Wesley did not reply, but I could tell he was petrified, and it was rare that anything made him this way. The narrow road led us through the sea of people and vehicles waiting to help, and the tan building loomed larger. The mobile command post gleamed in the sun and was parked on the grass, the conical containments and the waterway they needed for cooling so close I could have hit them with a stone.
I had no doubt that New Zionists had us in their rifle sights and could pull the trigger, if they chose, pick us off one by one. The windows where we believed they watched were open, but I could not see anything behind their screens.
We walked around to the front of the RV where half a dozen police and agents were in plain clothes surrounding Lucy, and the sight of her almost stopped my heart. She was in black fatigues and boots, and was attached to cables again, as she had been at ERF. Only this time she wore two gloves, and Toto was awake on the ground, his thick neck connected to a spool of fiber optic line that looked long enough to walk him to North Carolina.
“It’s better if we tape down the receiver,” my niece was saying to men she could not see because of the CRTs over her eyes.