“And what makes you think he’s likely to do that?” Toddrel asked.
Drisson looked across the seat and smiled enigmatically. “Ways and means,” he replied.
CHAPTER TEN
NORTH CAROLINA STATE TROOPERS had set up a checkpoint on the road out of Greenville, a mile before the junction where Kestrel and Len in the battered farm pickup, and Olsen driving the truck laden with fifty-gallon drums of timber preservative, would go separate ways. Kestrel and Len would trace a route through the minor roads crossing the Great Smoky range; Olsen would keep to the interstates, following I-85 south to skirt Atlanta, then taking I-75 to meet up with them again in Chattanooga that night.
The Scorpion cell in Charlotte had been disbanded suddenly on terse instructions from above. Other members were dispersing to destinations known only to themselves and whoever gave the orders; the names Kestrel had known them by had been retired. On joining the Chattanooga cell, she would no doubt cease being “Kestrel” anymore, too. At first, CounterAction had given her the pseudonym Kay, but she rejected it. Care was needed in making sure that code words bore no accidental similarities or connections to the things they were supposed to disguise. Lives had been lost through such coincidences. “Kay” would have been too suggestive of her real name: Cade. Marie Cade.
A couple of jeeps manned by armed National Guard and mounting machine guns were positioned at the sides of the roadblock, ready to go. A sergeant came up to the driver’s window, while two troopers went back to probe among the bales of roofing shingles that the pickup was carrying. Len presented a wallet containing the vehicle documentation and his ID, then followed with Marie’s, made out in the name of Jenny Lawson, as she passed it across. The sergeant perused them casually, recited the names aloud into a compad and waited a moment for the screen’s response.
“Where are you heading?” he inquired, running an eye over the interior of the cab.
“Up to Hiawasee. Stuff for a cabin being remodeled along by the lake there,” Len replied. He looked the part: unshaven for two days, with a crumpled tweed hat, plaid shirt and padded work vest, a carpenter’s tool belt over blue jeans. His voice was gruff and neutral.
“That wouldn’t seem to me too much like a lady’s kind of work,” the sergeant commented, looking at Marie.
“What century are you from? I’ll hammer ’em as good as anyone,” she answered defiantly.
“Would you have such a thing as a bill of sale for this material?” the sergeant asked. Len produced one from Lowes in Spartanburg, where they had loaded the prom guns. The sergeant glanced back toward the rear of the pickup, where the troopers had been scanning the load with a hand-held spectral analyzer, explosives sniffer, and a metal sensor. “On your way,” he told them, waving. Len eased the pickup away amid rattles and grinding of gears, taking care not to seem too hasty. Marie kept her eyes ahead until they were a good hundred yards clear, then exhaled shakily. In the side mirror, she could see Olsen’s truck standing in line behind a couple of cars.
It had been intended that the load would attract attention. The prom guns were inside the double-walled back of the cab and the hidden compartment beneath the bed at the rear, between the chassis girders—both metal-enclosed, opaque to the regular search instruments. The guns Olsen was carrying were inside the false-bottom drums—although a spot check and sampling would have drawn the wood preservative they were supposed to be filled with from an internal chamber.
Interesting weapons, prom guns. They had disappeared from Hyadean stocks in South America, and the only details Marie knew were that they had come into the U.S. via Morocco and the Caribbean. “Prom” was a contraction of “programmable munitions.” The gun was the size of an assault rifle and launched a stream of self-propelled projectiles containing lateral-thrusting charges carried in a counter-spinning ring, which could be fired to alter the trajectory in flight. Quite complex control patterns could be programmed into the launcher, enabling targets dug in under cover, hidden around corners, or concealed by obstacles to be hit. A skilled user could seek out a target blocked by combinations of them. Marie had tested and practiced with them in remote parts of the mountains east of Charlotte.