they gotten where they were going, or were they still on their way?
Two hours after starting the patient search, the fingerprint database
brought back a name: Peter Wayne Bell. There was a perfect match,
right hand, thumb and first two fingers. The computer rated the match
on the partial from the little finger as very probable.
Thirty-one years old,” Brogan said. “From Mojave, California. Two
convictions for sex of fences Charged with a double rape, three years
ago, didn’t go down. Victims were three months in the hospital. This
guy Bell had an alibi from three of his friends. Victims couldn’t make
the H), too shaken up by the beatings.”
“Nice guy,” McGrath said.
Milosevic nodded.
“And he’s got Holly,” he said. “Right there in the back of his
truck.”
McGrath said nothing in reply to that. Then the phone rang. He picked
it up. Listened to a short barked sentence. He sat there and Brogan
and Milosevic saw his face light up like a guy who sees his teams all
win the pennant on the same day, baseball, football, basketball and
hockey, all on the same day that his son graduates summa cum laude from
Harvard and his gold stocks go through the roof.
“Arizona,” he shouted. “It’s in Arizona, heading north on US60.”
An old hand in an Arizona State Police cruiser had spotted a white
panel truck making bad lane changes round the sharp curves on US60, as
it winds away from the town of Globe seventy miles east of Phoenix. He
had pulled closer and read the plate. He saw the blue oval and the
Econoline script on the back. He had thumbed his mike and called it
in. Then the world had gone crazy. He was told to stick with the
truck, no matter what. He was told that helicopters would be coming in
from Phoenix and Flagstaff, and from Albuquerque way over in New
Mexico. Every available mobile unit would be coming in behind him from
the south. Up ahead the National Guard would be assembling a
roadblock. Within twenty minutes, he was told, you’ll have more
back-up than you’ve ever dreamed of. Until then, he was told, you’re
the most important lawman in America.
The sales manager from the Dodge dealership in Mojave, California,
called Quantico back within an hour. He’d been over to the storage
room and dug out the records for the sales made ten years ago by the
previous franchise owners. The pickup in question had been sold to a
citrus farmer down in Kendall, fifty miles south of Mojave, in May of
that year. The guy had been back for servicing and emissions testing
for the first four years, and after that they’d never seen him again.
He had bought on a four-year time payment plan and his name was Dutch
Borken.
A half-hour later the stolen white Econoline was twenty-eight miles
further north on US60 in Arizona, and it was the tip of a long
teardrop-shape of fifty vehicles cruising behind it. Above it, five
helicopters were hammering through the air. In front of it, ten miles
to the north, the highway was closed and another forty vehicles were
stationary on the pavement, parked up in a neat arrowhead formation.
The whole operation was being coordinated by the agent-in-charge from
the FBI’s Phoenix office. He was in the lead helicopter, staring down
through the clear desert air at the roof of the truck. He was wearing
a headset with a throat mike, and he was talking continuously.
“OK, people,” he said. “Let’s go for it, right now. Go go go!”
His lead chopper swooped upward out of the way and two others arrowed
down. They hovered just in front of the truck, low down, one on each
side, keeping pace. The police cars behind fanned out across the whole
width of the highway and they all hit their lights and sirens together.
A third chopper swung down and flew backward, right in front of the
truck, eight feet off the ground, strobes flashing, rotors beating the
air. The co-pilot started a sequence of clear gestures, hands wide,
palms out, like he was personally slowing the truck. Then the sirens