7
9:00 P.M.
AT DUSK, when the thunderstorm temporarily abated for the fourth time that day, a streamlined executive helicopter, painted bright yellow and black like a hornet, already gleaming with green and red running lights, fluttered into the east end of the Black River valley. It was flying low, no higher than sixty feet above the ground. It followed Main Street toward the town square, chopping up the humid air. A flat echo of the stuttering blades rebounded from the wet pavement below.
In the bell tower of the all-denominational church, also sixty feet above the ground–but safely hidden in the deep shadows that were cast by the overhanging belfry roof-Rya, Jenny, Paul, and Sam watched the aircraft as it approached. In the penumbral, purple-gray twilight the helicopter seemed dangerously close to them; but no one in it was looking their way. However, the waning daylight was still bright enough to allow them to see into the flight deck and into the cozy passenger cabin behind it.
“Two men besides the pilot,” Sam said.
At the square the helicopter hovered for a moment, then swept across the municipal building and settled into the parking lot ten yards from the spare police car.
As the evening quietude returned in the aircraft’s wake, jenny said, “Do you think those men are connected with Salsbury?”
“No doubt about it,” Sam said.
“Government?”
Paul said, “No.”
“I agree,” Sam said almost happily. “Even the President’s chopper is military-style on the outside-although probably not on the inside. The government doesn’t use sleek little executive machines like that yellow and black job.”
“Which doesn’t rule out the government’s having a part in this,” Paul said.
“Oh, certainly not. It doesn’t rule out anything,” Sam said. “But it’s a good sign.”
“What now?” Rya asked.
“Now we watch and wait,” Paul said, his eyes fixed on the white-brick municipal building. “Just watch and wait.”
The damp air still held an unpleasant tang of the helicopter’s exhaust fumes.
Up in the mountains, thunder rumbled menacingly. Lightning arced between two of the higher peaks as if they were terminals in Frankenstein’s laboratory.
To Paul time seemed almost at a standstill. Each minute ticked on and on and on. Each second was like a tiny bubble of air rising slowly through the bottle of glucose on the intravenous-feeding rack that he had watched for hour after leaden hour at Annie’s hospital bedside.
Finally, at 9:20 two cars came down Main Street from the municipal building: the second police cruiser and a one-year-old Ford LTD. The four headlamps sliced open the crescent darkness. Half a block beyond the church, they parked at the curb in front of the general store.
Bob Thorp and two men with handguns climbed out of the squad car. For a moment they stood in the splash of amber white light from the LTD; then they went up the porch steps and disappeared beneath the veranda roof.
Three men got out of the second car. They left the engine running and the doors open. They didn’t follow Thorp; they remained at the LTD. Because they were standing behind the headlights, they were for the most part in darkness. Paul couldn’t tell if they were armed or not. But he knew for certain who they were: Salsbury and the two passengers from the helicopter.
“Do you want to go down there and take them now?” Paul asked Sam. “While they have their backs to us?”
“Too risky. We don’t know if they’ve got guns. They might hear us coming. And even if we did catch them by surprise, one of them would get away, sure as hell. Let’s wait a bit.”
At 9:35 one of Bob Thorp’s “deputies” came down the porch steps and joined the three men at the second car. They talked, possibly argued, for a few seconds. The deputy remained at the LTD while Salsbury and his associates mounted the steps to the general store.
9:50 P.M.
Turning away from the bookshelves in Sam Edison’s study, Dawson said, “All right then. Now we understand how they might have pieced it together. Ogden, do they know the code phrases?”
Shocked by the question, Salsbury said, “Of course not! How in the hell could they know?”