“Give it me, Heather.” Jim held out his hand for the radio.
“No. I can do it.”
In a moment of irrational anger, he nearly slapped his daughter, then he controlled himself. “Give it to me. Now,” he said.
The girl recognized the hard, cold edge in her father’s voice and handed him the set, turning on her heel, mouth set in a sullen pout.
“Come in, Jeremiah. This is Jim Hilton of the Aquila. Over.”
There was a long delay.
The small radio hissed and cheeped. Jim noticed that the hunting bird had zeroed in on some invisible prey. Hurtling, wings folded, it pulled up bare inches from the desert floor, seeming to have just missed its target.
He pressed the Send button and tried the call again.
“Hello, Jeremiah. Spoke a few weeks ago as we came in on the Aquila. You told us first about Earthblood. Remember? Over.”
“Remember you well, Jim. Heard that your ship came in fast and hard. Glad you managed to make it through. Loud and clear this time. You must be somewhere round the Mohave to be scaling nineteen from twenty for volume. Over.”
On an impulse, Jim Hilton decided that he wouldn’t immediately give away his location to this crazed prophet of the airwaves.
“Not far, Jeremiah. Not far. You in Barstow? How are things there? Strangers welcome? Over.”
“Welcome as broken glass in your breakfast cereal. Fresh as tomorrow’s sunrise. Hallelujah, Brother Jim! Many in your party?”
“Half a dozen. Over.”
“That’s a fine, strong fifty per cent of the Savior’s blessed sacred apostles, Jim. Sure you haven’t got one called Judas Iscariot hidden in among your number? Over.”
For a fleeting instant, Jim had a vision of Jeff Thomas, but he dismissed it from his mind.
“What we have is a broken pickup, Jeremiah. Know anybody around Barstow might come lend us a hand? Over.”
“Give us your fix, brother.”
“Coupla miles west of Calico ghost town. North side of the interstate. Over.”
“Heard there was some shooting last night over your way. Over.”
“Right. Helicopter came in from the north, and some guys opened up on it from the desert outside Calico. Blew it up. Over.”
“What happened to them?”
“Chopper or the others? Over.”
“Others. Saw the flash of the Chinook going right on down. Requiescat in pace.”
“Some of the others got hurt. Rest vanished.”
There was a long pause. Everyone had gathered around the black-and-silver radio, listening intently to the static.
“That the doctor man?” asked Sly.
“Could be,” replied Steve. “Wait and see, son.”
“You there, Jeremiah? Over.” Jim Hilton waited.
“Sure. Two miles west of Calico. Puts you around five miles from me. Be there in a half hour. Look out for me. Don’t take any wooden nickels, Jim. This is Jeremiah from Barstow saying over, out and Hallelujah!”
Chapter Ten
“What are we looking for, Nanci?”
The older woman seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding good campsites. Though she’d told Jeff that she hadn’t been in that part of the country for twenty years or more, she still seemed to know every side turning and where it would take them.
Early on Nanci had said that they were going to detour around Las Vegas. “Used to know a man there, a man called Flagg. Had some power. Might be dead now, might not.”
They’d cut off through a nonexistent blip on the map, called Icebucket Wells, then along the flank of the Spring Mountains, passing close to an Air Force base, but the road southward to it was blocked by a huge tangle of burned and rusted metal. Nanci stopped the car, letting the engine idle while she stared stone-faced at the wreckage.
“Gas tanker ran into a couple of M-754s. Big tanks. And there’s the remains of some APCs, as well. The way I read it, the base was being defended in numbers. Somebody took exception to that and came in fast and heavy.”
She slowly turned the wheel, easing the powerful sports car toward the north. They advanced across Sarcobatus Flat, then made a right at Tonopah, where someone fired a ranging shot at them from behind the ruins of a gas station.