“So how might it affect things for tonight?” Cade asked. They had agreed that what he heard over the phone could only mean that Evita and Miguel had been picked up. Cade still hadn’t recovered from the shock of realizing that they themselves must have escaped by mere minutes.
“Is likely they are watching everything at airport,” Hudro replied.
“How would they know anything about the airport?”
“Don’t have to. They suspect everywhere. Is way police mind works. We just have to wait if plans changed now. Is not our thing to control anymore.”
They turned on the news. In the former U.S., the provocations and responses by both sides had escalated to open belligerency. Twenty years ago it wouldn’t have been possible. Incredulous, Cade watched Union fighter-bombers attacking bases, rail centers, and highway interchanges in Texas, Colorado, and Utah, apparently to slow communications to what looked like becoming a war front. The situation was confused, and the commentator couldn’t make much sense of it. No city areas had been targeted as yet, but tensions and frustrations that had built up over years were suddenly being released, and things could heat up rapidly. Hudro was apprehensive of the effects if Hyadean weaponry were introduced on any significant scale. “So far we only use people-control tactics here,” he told Cade. “Police action. You haven’t seen what Hyadean war weapons do.”
“What if Asia comes in and backs the Federation?” Cade asked.
“Then Asia is finished too.”
“That would be practically an all-out planetary war.”
“Is not first time. Hyadeans call it imposing the peace. Their way of peace. So you learn order and civilization, and everyone is happy and grateful.”
“Unless Earth turns into another Querl,” Cade mused. He found he didn’t particularly like the image of passive submission.
“Not happen, Mr. Cade. Earth doesn’t have Querl army and weapons.”
They watched the lights going on across the canyon slopes as day darkened into evening. The phone rang, persisted for a while, but they left it alone. Don returned about thirty minutes later.
“We have to change the plan,” he said. “Every Hyadean inside the airport is being checked. But we’re going to try something that maybe nobody expects.” That was all he would tell them.
He led them back downstairs, where they found a small Fiat waiting with a figure in the driver’s seat. Cade and Don got in the back, and Hudro squeezed his bulk into the passenger side in front. The driver had a floppy hat, hooded zipper jacket over a sweater, and features impossible to make out in the darkness. He pulled away in silence and drove up from the city. When they came out onto the plateau he doused the headlights, and for the next half hour they picked their way carefully along roads and tracks, sometimes at little more than walking pace, with Don getting out twice to guide them through a difficult spot with a flashlamp. This brought them onto a dirt track following a chain-link fence with orange and blue runway lights beyond on one side, and knee-high grass on the other. The airport terminal facilities, outlined dimly in a halo of glows, were visible maybe a mile away to the right. After a few hundred yards, they came to a tube-frame gate. Don got out and stood scanning the area for several seconds. Then he walked up to the gate, tried it, then turned and waved his arm. Hudro and Cade got out with muttered thanks to the driver and hurried forward, while the car backed away among some rocks and scrub. The gate had been left unlocked. Don ushered them through, closed the gate carefully behind, and motioned them forward through the grass, checking from side to side at intervals to keep track of their bearings. Finally, he whispered, “Here,” and motioned them down. They settled into the grass to wait.
Lights appeared in the distance above, grew brighter with the sound of approaching engines, and a plane landed. Several minutes later, another moved out from the terminal, taxied up along the perimeter-way, turned onto the main runway, and took off. Soon after, another followed. Both of them halted within fifty yards of where the three figures were crouching before making their turn prior to the takeoff run. Don checked his watch in the light from his flashlamp, shielding it with a flap of his jacket. “Should be the next one now,” he whispered.