Six Seconds (26 page)

68

Cold Butte, Montana

Logan woke with his heart racing.

He was a little scared because of something Billy Canton had said about the entire world watching them today.

The entire world. Man, oh, man.
But meeting the pope wasn’t the only reason Logan was nervous. He had to carry out his plan when the time was right. Okay, first things first. He glanced out his window wondering if his dad had…
Yes!
Logan saw his dad’s red truck. He’d got back in time like he’d promised.
Logan’s anxiety turned to excitement as he hurried to his dad’s bedroom door. It was open slightly, offering a sliver view of his arm hanging over the side. Logan was about to enter when he was suddenly pulled away.
“Let him sleep,” Samara whispered and shut the door. “He got in late.”
“But he’s coming, right?” he whispered.
Samara pushed him gently toward the kitchen.

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“Absolutely. He’s going to join us later at the school.” “Will there be time?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. One of the other fathers will pick

him up. Come, I’ve made your favorite, bacon and eggs. When you’re done, get washed up and put on your suit. We have to leave very soon. I’m going to get ready.”

As he ate, Logan noticed the smell of fried bacon mixed with cleaning soap, like the floor had just been washed. Weird. When he heard the shower start he looked down the hall at the closed bathroom door.

Good.
He glanced at the TV with the sound turned low. Local stations out of Billings were running live

coverage of the visit. They showed live pictures of Logan’s school, the crowds, reports of the pope before massive stadium crowds in cities he’d already visited.

On top of the TV Logan saw Samara’s purse. Her cell phone was inside.
Now was the time.
If he couldn’t reach his mom on their phone here, maybe he could reach her on Samara’s cell phone. Just one call. Keeping an eye on the bathroom door, Logan plucked the phone from Samara’s purse. He pressed his home area code and number. He waited for the connec tion, praying that in seconds, he would hear his mom’s voice.
He nearly burst, before his heart sank.
His call didn’t go through. He tried again. It didn’t work. The battery level was good. He tried again. Nothing. What was he doing wrong? Maybe he should wake Dad for help? After their talk he’d let him call, wouldn’t he? Things were getting better. Weren’t they?
Logan looked at the bedroom door.
Hold it.
He’d forgot to press 1 for long distance.
Logan tried it again. Good. It was working this time. There was lots of noise on the line like a thunderstorm of static but it was ringing and ringing. It clicked and Logan caught his breath.
“Maggie Conlin,” she said.
“Mom?”
“Logan! Is that you!?”
“I miss you, Mom.” Static filled the silence. “Mom, Dad said he misses you, too.”
“Oh, Logan, I love you! I love Daddy! He’s just confused.”
“Mom, I want to come home, I—” Their connection buzzed.
“Where you are? I’m coming as fast as I can! Honey, just tell me!”
The call went dead.
The shower stopped.
Logan switched off the phone, placed it back in Samara’s purse, his entire body tingling.
He’d talked to Mom!
He’d have to figure out a way to try again later, he thought as he brushed his teeth, washed up, then put on his suit. His dad had already knotted the tie for him. Combing his hair at the mirror, Logan wished his dad would wake up.
The suit was comfortable. It looked pretty cool.
“Oh, you look so handsome,” Samara said when Logan stepped into the living room, where she’d been working on her computer. “Come, quickly.” She stood

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and grabbed her camera. She looked pretty. Almost like a model in her new suit. “Here. Let me take some pictures to share with my friends.” She stood him before a plain wall, studied the camera settings and took several frames. “Everyone will be so proud. Don’t move. Wait a few seconds.”

They waited.
“Nice,” she said. “Now some of us together.” Pleased, Samara then fixed the camera to a tripod,

set it, then joined Logan. Not only did she look nice, she smelled good, too. Like flowers, Logan thought, as the camera flashed and automatically fired off several more frames of them together.

She checked them on her laptop, waiting a moment. “Good.”
Samara set to work downloading the pictures into her

computer.
“What about Dad?”
“What about him? He’s still sleeping.” Samara was

typing rapidly on her keyboard. Her attention was on her computer work.
“Don’t we need pictures with him, too?”
“Sorry.” She glanced at the live TV coverage of the visit, then back to her computer as if she were rushed. “Sorry. No, we’ll take more with him at the school with the pope.”
Logan went to her, to see what was so important on the computer. She didn’t mind him looking over her shoulder. Samara was checking her copy of the official program for the pope’s visit—it looked like a minuteby-minute breakdown. He noticed she’d run a cable from the TV to her laptop, so some coverage was playing live on her screen. Then he saw pictures of Samara under a palm tree in Iraq with her son and husband. Then he saw the photos she just took of himself in his new suit, and her.
“What’s all this? What’re you doing?”
Samara’s eyes widened and she smiled.
“Logan, we’re taking part in the honor of a lifetime. I want to share it on the Web with my friends around the world. Almost done.”
Samara entered codes and commands.
A small timer emerged and started counting down.
“All right. Done.”
Samara left her computer on with all of her programs running, picture, timers, live news coverage.
“Let’s go—we have to get over to the community hall for our briefing and checks before they take us to the school.”
She got another camera from her bag.
“Is that a new one?” Logan asked.
“Yes, a very special one I want to use at the school.” Samara lowered herself to Logan and smiled. “Who could ever have imagined this? Very soon, we are going to be meeting one of the most powerful people on earth. You and I will have a place in history, Logan. Soon everyone in the world will see our faces and speak our names.”
“They’ll say our names? But why?”
“Because we’ll be part of history.”

69

Highway 200, eastbound for Cold Butte, Montana

“Did the number come up? Call back,” Graham said.

Maggie checked. No number. She hit the call-back feature, got a busy signal. Graham passed her his notebook with the DMV info for Burt Russell, pointing. “Try this number.”

The line rang, then an automated response. The number was not in service. Maggie tried the school. That line was busy.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she said.

The rental’s engine roared as Graham wheeled hard into the right shoulder. The line of jammed cars, vans, RVs, charter buses, pickups blurred by them as he raced for nearly a mile before a siren sounded.

A Montana Highway Patrol car appeared in his rearview mirror, light bar flashing. In the distance behind it, Graham saw a white sedan following the police car. Traffic cops hated queue jumpers and the lemming effect they inspired.

At a junction just ahead, several Montana Highway Patrol cars had established a choke point where patrol men were diverting some traffic to secondary roads. One spoke into his shoulder mike, stepped in Graham’s path and leveled a finger at him.

Graham stopped.
Three patrolmen, including the one in pursuit, un strapped their holsters as they approached, ordering Graham and Maggie to put their hands on the dash. Far behind, the white sedan slipped unnoticed back into the traffic line.
Graham cooperated as they studied his badge and Maggie’s California license.
Moe Holman, the most senior patrolman and a chronic gum-chewer who’d worked the border at Coutts and Sweetgrass, recognized Graham from years gone by. He’d handle it, he told the others and waved Graham out, taking him aside.
“Hi, Moe.”
The men shook hands.
“Key ripes, Daniel, what the hell’re you doing? Your passenger’s a long way from home and you’ve got no authority to drive like a sinner. The pope’s not going to save you from my ticket.”
Graham explained that he and Maggie just needed to get to an address in Cold Butte to check on her boy; it was a pressing domestic matter related to Graham’s multiple death case, and that Graham had alerted the FBI in Billings.
Gum-snapping, Holman nodded between traffic calls on his radio. The last thing his crew needed now was more work. The pope deal had them stretched. He let Graham go ahead with a warning, radioed his okay to troopers down the line.
“Drive safely, Daniel. Got a lot of folks filled with the spirit today.”
Traffic moved faster as Graham and Maggie left the junction, continuing east for Lone Tree along the two-lane highway that sliced across Montana’s midway point.
Maggie fought tears as she tried to reconnect with Logan and the school. Her fingers shook each time she pressed the numbers. Phone service was sporadic, strained by the heavy call volume related to the visit.
No luck.
She kept trying.
Graham made good time swinging into the oncom ing lane, passing when it was clear. At a rare, sweeping curve, he fell into line among several slow-moving rigs when a car blazed by them at high speed.
A white sedan.
“That idiot’s going way too fast.” Graham shook his head. “We’re almost there.”
He handed Maggie detailed maps for Cold Butte and began discussing a plan. She touched one finger on the school, one on Crystal Creek Road then jumped in her seat as the rig ahead blasted its air horn.
“Oh, God!”
In an instant the rig’s brake lights glowed, its trailer veered to the shoulder, stones peppered the car; the truck bucked, something emerged at terrifying speed through smoking rubber.
Something bearing down directly on Graham and Maggie!
Maggie covered her face for the impact as Graham’s training took over; he tapped the brake, swerved to the shoulder. A blinding force whipped by within inches of hitting them and the rig behind them.
Graham glimpsed the white car, a missile in his rearview mirror. It launched cleanly off the highway, airborne for some thirty feet before smashing into the grassy plain, rolling end over end, swallowed by a dust cloud that spat fragmenting metal and glass before emitting a thud then a fireball, and a black column that billowed skyward.
The driver in the rig ahead grabbed his fire extin guisher and ran to the car, followed by Graham and the truck driver from the rig behind them. They got within twenty yards when the air split—thwack-boom thwackboom thwack-boom—as lightning explosions released concussion waves that forced the men to the ground.
The air reeked of gas and melting plastic. Flames and heat engulfed the overturned car, leaving the men helpless to get closer.
“Christ almighty, there are two people in there!” one of the truckers said. “No way they’ll survive!”
As the car burned, sirens sounded. Soon, Montana Highway Patrol cars, a deputy sheriff, two firetrucks and an ambulance had arrived.
Water hissed as firefighters doused the blaze.
Moe Holman shook his head at the carnage. “We’re going to need this stretch of road to investigate. People stuck way back there will not see the pope. I’m telling you, today just keeps getting better.”
His radio crackling, Holman looked at the traffic as his people tried controlling it.
“You really think he was coming at you?” Holman said to Graham and the truck drivers as he took notes. “Sounds crazy. Maybe he had a seizure?”
“Seizure, my ass.” One trucker spit and nodded to Graham. “Looked to me like he was gunning for you, like some dang fool kamikaze.”
Graham noticed Maggie off by herself, kneeling on the grass, and went to her. She was looking at a warped object.
“What is it?”
Without touching it, she pointed at a twisted piece of charred metal, the remains of a Montana license plate and a rental logo framed around it.
“It’s the guy we just saw in the truck stop parking lot.” She checked her notes. “Maybe the same guy on the plane. And I think I saw him watching us in the restaurant in Las Vegas.” She looked at Graham. “What’s happening?”
“Get in the car. Keep trying your calls.”
Graham got Moe Holman’s attention and the two men talked alone.
“Moe, it’s possible the fatalities in this car are linked to my case and maybe an unconfirmed, uncorrobo rated threat.”
Holman’s gum chewing ceased in mid-chew.
“Here? Against the pope?”
“Could be.”
“By who and what means?”
“I don’t know.”
“We never heard anything about this at the briefings this morning. No lookouts, or anything. Maybe you got it confused with the Seattle business yesterday.”
“What Seattle business?”
“All I’d heard is they detected some kind of security breach in Seattle. I heard they took care of it but are keeping a lid on the details. Don’t think it even got into the press yet. They don’t tell us, we’re just traffic control.”
Graham considered what Holman said.
“What’re you holding back from me on your case, Daniel?”
“My case may be related to some raw intelligence out of Africa.”
“Africa? What the hell else do you know?”
“A reporter from Washington, D.C., following the story was recently killed, along with his family, while camping near Banff. Looked accidental but we’re not certain.”
“What? Do you know these people in the car?”
“No. When you run the plate and get a name, alert the FBI and the people on the pope’s security detail. Ask for Secret Service Agent Blake Walker. Give him my cell number.”
“Count on it. But I’d bet my left one the feds will call me first for everything we’ve got on this crash. I’ll tell them what you said.” Holman nodded toward a military helicopter patrolling above the crash. “They’ve re stricted the airspace for the pope’s chopper from Great Falls to Cold Butte. The show’s going to start soon.”
“I need to go,” Graham said. “You have what you need from me.”
“Could you hold off so I can send someone with you. Make me feel better.”
“How long?”
“Until we get things under control here. We can’t spare anyone at the moment.”
“I want to go now, Moe.”

Six Seconds
405

Holman’s radio crackled. A busload of pilgrims from South Dakota had hit an RV near Sand Springs. No serious injuries, just another traffic headache.

“This is what happens when the state’s population triples and everyone decides to visit your backyard for the day.”

Holman resumed chewing, waved Graham off, then spoke into his radio.

To make up for lost time, Graham drove as fast as the line of traffic would permit.
He used every gap to cut in, waving apologies to drivers he’d cut off. He tried calling Walker but his phone couldn’t get through. Maggie studied maps and tried calls in vain.
When Cold Butte lay ahead, Graham’s phone rang.
“Dan, it’s Stotter. Where are you?” Static filled the line. “Graham? Can you hear me?”
“Still in Montana. At Cold Butte. Before you tear into me—”
“Cold Butte? All right. Listen, something’s come up. Arnie Danton did a luminol test at the scene and found blood near the river. I know we should’ve scoped it before. Arnie said it would’ve got by us if not for your hunch.”
“Did he find a weapon?”
“Maybe a rock. Bang them on the head, put them in the canoe. Would’ve been consistent with the river. Damn near perfect.” Stotter’s other line rang. “We’ve still got some lab work to do, so stay put and stay tuned.”
“Wait! Mike, I need help. You’ve got to reach Special

406
Rick Mofina

Agent Blake Walker. He’s Secret Service with papal security down here. Advise him on Jake Conlin, aka, Burt Russell. Montana DMV has him. He could be with an unidentified female and a child, male. If Tarver was murdered, it gives credence to his conspiracy story.”

“We’re on it.”

As Graham and Maggie got nearer, the traffic flowing into the small town slowed to a near standstill. People had pulled their cars off the highway to park on the grass. They opened trunks and side doors, emptied rooftop racks, collected lawn chairs, coolers, blankets, banners, placards.

Welcome Holy Father, Montana Loves The Pope.

In some cases, groups of men and teenaged boys were carrying elderly people in wheelchairs.
Approximately every twenty or thirty yards there was a volunteer or a uniformed officer directing every one in steady, peaceful streams toward the school and Buffalo Breaks, site of the shrine where the pope would celebrate Mass for thousands.
“We’ve got to split up,” Graham said. “You get to the school, ask for Special Agent Blake Walker. I’ll find the house on Crystal Creek Road.”
Before Maggie got out, she took Graham’s hand, squeezed it hard and looked into his eyes. There was so much she wanted to tell him but there was no time.
“Go find your son,” he said.
Her chin crumpled. She nodded, then hurried into the crowd as helicopters thundered above them in the eternal prairie sky.
Time was ticking down.
Book Six: Death Signal