'Somebody better be able to,'Thurse said gloomily. Gloom, Linda had noticed, seemed to beThurston Marshall's default position.'Three-quarters of the town is hoofing it out 119 to the Dome. The air quality's bad and it's going to be eighty-five by ten o'clock, which will be about the time the visitor buses arrive. If Rennie and his cohorts have done anything about providing shelter, I haven't heard of it. There's apt to be a lot of sick people in Chester's Mill before sundown. With luck, only heatstroke and asthma, but there could be a few heart attacks as well.'
'Guys, maybe we should go back,' Gina said. 'I feel like a rat deserting a sinking ship.'
'No!' Linda said so sharply that they all looked at her, even Audi. 'Rusty said something bad is going to happen. It might not be today... but he said it might be. Get your lead for the ambulance windows and go. I don't dare wait around. One of Rennie s thugs came to see me this morning, and if he swings by the house and sees the van's gone - '
'Go on, go,'Twitch said.'I'll back up so you can get out. Don't bother with Main Street, it's already a mess.'
'Main Street past the cop-shop?' Linda almost shuddered. 'No thanks. Mom's taxi goes West Street up to Highland.'
Twitch got in behind the wheel of the ambulance and the two young nurse draftees got in back again, Gina giving Linda a final doubtful look over her shoulder.
Linda paused, looking first at the sleeping, sweaty baby, then at Ginny. 'Maybe you and Twitch can go back to the hospital tonight to see how things are there. Say you were on a call way the hell and gone out in Northchester, or something. Just, whatever you do, don't mention anything about Black Pddge.'
'No.'
Easy to say now, Linda thought. You might not find dummying up so easy if Carter Thibodeau bends you over a sink.
She pushed Audrey back, shut the slider, and got behind the wheel of the Odyssey Green.
'Let's get out of here,' Thurse said, climbing in beside her. 'I haven't been this paranoid since my off-the-pig days.'
'Good,' she said. 'Because perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.'
She backed her van around the ambulance and started up West Street,
4
'Jim,' Randolph said from the backseat of the Hummer, 'I've been thinking about this raid.'
'Have you, now. Why don't you give us the benefit of your thinking, Peter?'
'I'm the Chief of Police. If it comes down to a choice between crowd control at Dinsmore's farm and leading a raid on a drug lab where there may be armed addicts guarding illegal substances... well, I know where my duty lies. Let's just say that.'
Big Jim discovered he didn't want to argue the point. Arguing with fools was counterproductive. Randolph had no idea what sort of weapons might be stockpiled at the radio station. In truth, neither did Big Jim himself (there was no telling what Bushey might have put on the corporate tab), but at least he could imagine the worst, a mental feat of which this uniformed gasbag seemed incapable. And if something should happen to Randolph... well, hadn't he already decided that Carter would be a more than adequate replacement?
'All right, Pete,' he said. 'Far be it for me to stand between you and your duty.You're the new OIC, with Fred Denton as your second. That satisfy you?'
'You're gosh-damn right it does!' Randolph puffed his chest. He looked like a fat rooster about to crow. Big Jim, although not renowned for his sense of humor, had to stifle a laugh.
'Then get down there to the PD and start putting together your crew. Town trucks, remember.'
'Correct! We strike at noon!' He shook a fist in the air.
'Go in through the woods.'
'Now, Jim, I wanted to talk to you about that. It seems a little complicated. Those woods behind the station are pretty snarly... there'll be poison ivy... and poison oak, which is even w - '
'There's an access road,' Big Jim said. He was reaching the end of his patience. 'I want you to use it. Hit them on their blind side.'
'But - '
'A bullet in the head would be much worse than poison ivy. Nice talking to you, Pete. Glad to see you're so...' But what was he so? Pompous? Ridiculous? Idiotic?
'So totally gung-ho,' Carter said.
'Thank you, Carter, my thought exactly. Pete, tell Henry Morrison he's now in charge of crowd control out on 119. And use the access road'.
'I really think - '
'Carter, get the door for him.'
5
'Oh my God,' Linda said, and swerved the van to the left. It bumped up over the curb not a hundred yards from where Main and Highland intersected. All three girls laughed at the bump, but poor little Aidan only looked scared, and grabbed the longsufFering Audrey's head once more.
'What?'Thurse snapped.' What?
She parked on someone's lawn, behind a tree. It was a good-sized oak, but the van was big, too, and the oak had lost most of its listless leaves. She wanted to believe they were hidden but couldn't.
'That's Jim Rennie's Hummer sitting in the middle of the goddam intersection.'
'You swore big,'Judy said. 'Two quarters in the swear-jar.'
Thurse craned. 'Are you sure?'
'Do you think anybody else in town has a vehicle that humon-gous?'
'Oh Jesus,' Thurston said.
'Swear-jar!'This time Judy and Jannie said it together.
Linda felt her mouth dry up, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Thibodeau was emerging from the Hummer's passenger side, and if he looked this way...
If he sees us, I'm going to run him down, she thought. The idea brought a certain perverse calm.
Thibodeau opened the back door of the Hummer. Peter Randolph got out.
'That man is picking his seat,' Alice Appleton informed the company at large. 'My mother says that means you're going to the movies.'
Thurston Marshall burst out laughing, and Linda, who would have said she didn't have a laugh anywhere in her, joined him. Soon they were all laughing, even Aidan, who certainly didn't know what they were laughing about. Linda wasn't sure she did, either.