Extreme Denial Part 46

He hesitated.

"What are you waiting for?" Beth asked.

Decker stared at his right hand where it was about to turn the key. Sweat beaded his brow. "Now is when we find out whether I'm right or wrong that Renata didn't rig this car with explosives."

"Well, if you're wrong, we'll never know," Beth said. "To h.e.l.l with it. We were talking about faith. Do it. Turn the key."

Decker actually smiled as he obeyed. Waiting for the explosion that would blow the car apart, he heard the roar of the engine. "Yes!" He backed out of the parking s.p.a.ce and drove as quickly as safety allowed past travelers putting luggage into their cars, any of whom might be his enemy. A half a minute later, he was leaving the garage, stopping at one of the collection booths, paying the attendant, and joining the stream of cars speeding from the airport. Headlights glared.

His heart pounded furiously as he rounded a curve and pointed toward the lights gleaming in almost every window of the fourteen-story Best Western hotel. "Right now, there's a lot of activity in one of those rooms. The needle on their homing-device monitor is telling them this car is in motion." He wanted to increase speed but stopped the impulse when he saw the roof lights of a police car in front of him.

"I'm so nervous, I can't stop my knees from shaking," Beth said.

"Concentrate on controlling your fear."

"I can't."

"You have to."

Ahead, the police car turned a corner.

Decker lifted the hatch on the storage compartment that separated the two front seats. He took Esperanza's service pistol from where Esperanza had left it in the car when they had flown to New York. "They'll be out of their room now, hurrying toward the hotel's parking lot."

"How do you stop from being afraid?"

"I don't."

"But you just said-"

"To control it, not stop it. Fear's a survival mechanism. It gives you strength. It makes you alert. It can save your life, but only if you keep it under control. If it controls you, it'll get you killed."

Beth studied him hard. "Obviously I've got a lot to learn about you."

"The same here. It's like everything that happened with us before the attack on my house last Friday night was our honeymoon. Now the marriage has begun." Decker sped onto the interstate, merging with a chaos of headlights. "They've had time to reach the hotel's parking lot. They're getting in their vehicles."

"Honeymoon? Marriage? ... Was what you just said a proposal?"

"... Would that be such a bad idea?"

"I'd always disappoint you. I could never be the ideal woman you risked your life for."

"That makes us even. I'm definitely not the ideal man."

"You're giving a good imitation of that hero I told you I dreamed about as a little girl."

"Heroes are fools. Heroes get themselves killed." Decker increased speed to keep pace with traffic, which was doing sixty-five in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour zone. "Renata and her friends will be rus.h.i.+ng toward the interstate now. The homing-device monitor will tell them which direction I've taken. I have to keep ahead of them. I can't let them pull abreast of me and force me off a deserted section of the highway."

"Do you mind talking?"

"Now?"

"Will it distract you? If it doesn't, talking would help me not to be so afraid."

"In that case, talk."

"What's your worst fault?"

"Excuse me?"

"You were courting me all summer, showing me your best side. What's your worst?"

"You tell me yours." Decker squinted toward the confusion of headlights in his rearview mirror, watching for any vehicle that approached more rapidly than the others.

"I asked first."

"You're serious?"

"Very."

As the speed limit changed to sixty-five, Decker reluctantly began.

15.

He told her that his father had been a career officer in the military and that the family had lived on bases all over the United States, moving frequently. "I grew up learning not to get attached to people or places." He told her that his father had not been demonstrative with affection and in fact had seemed to be embarra.s.sed about showing any emotion, whether it was anger, sadness, or joy. "I learned to hide what I felt." He told her that when he entered the military, a logical choice for the son of a career officer, the special-operations training he received gave him further reinforcement in controlling his emotions.

"I had an instructor who took a liking to me and spent time talking with me on our off-hours. We used to get into philosophical discussions, a lot of which had to do with how to survive inhuman situations and yet not become inhuman. How to react to killing someone, for example. Or how to try to handle seeing a buddy get killed. He showed me something in a book about the mind and emotions that I've never forgotten."

Decker kept glancing apprehensively toward the headlights in his rearview mirror. Traffic was becoming spa.r.s.e. Nonetheless, he stayed in the pa.s.sing lane, not wanting to be impeded by the occasional cars on his right.

"What was it he showed you?" Beth asked.

"'When we make fateful decisions, fate will inevitably occur. We all have emotions. Emotions themselves don't compromise us. But our thoughts about our emotions will compromise us if those thoughts aren't disciplined. Training controls our thoughts. Thoughts control our emotions.' "

"It sounds like he was trying to put so many buffers over your emotions that you barely felt them."

"Filters. The idea was to interpret my emotions so that they were always in my best interest. For instance"-Decker tasted something bitter-"Sat.u.r.day night two friends of mine were killed."

"Helping you try to find me?" Beth looked sickened. "My grief for them threatened to overwhelm me, but I told myself I didn't have time. I had to postpone my grief until I could mourn for them properly. I couldn't mourn for them in the future if I didn't concentrate right then on staying alive. I still haven't found time to mourn for them."

Beth repeated a statement from the quote he had given her. " 'Thoughts control our emotions.' "

"That's how I lived." Again, Decker checked the rearview mirror. Headlights approached with alarming speed. He rolled down his driver's window. Then he veered into the no-pa.s.sing lane, held the steering wheel with his left hand, gripped Esperanza's pistol with his right, and prepared to fire if the vehicle coming up on his left attempted to ram him sideways off this barren section of the interstate.

The vehicle's headlights were on their brightest setting, their intense reflection in Decker's rearview mirror almost blinding. Decker reduced speed abruptly so that the vehicle would surge past him before the driver had a chance to put on the brakes. But the vehicle not only rushed past; it continued speeding into the distance, its outline that of a huge pickup truck. Its red taillights receded into the darkness.

"He must be doing ninety," Decker said. "If I give him a little distance and then match his speed, that truck will run interference for me with any state trooper parked at the side of the interstate. The trooper will see the truck first and go after it. I'll have time to reduce speed and slip past."

The interior of the car became quiet.

"So," Beth said at last, "emotions make you uncomfortable? You certainly fooled me this summer."

"Because I was making a conscious effort to change. To open up and allow myself to feel. When you walked into my office that first day, I was ready, for the first time in my life, to fall in love."

"And now you feel betrayed because the woman you fell in love with wasn't the woman she said she was."

Decker didn't respond.

Beth continued, "You're thinking it might be safer to go back to what you were, to distance yourself and not allow any emotions that might make you vulnerable."

"The notion occurred to me."

"And?"

"To h.e.l.l with my pride." Decker squeezed her hand. "You asked me if I wanted to make a fresh start. Yes. Because the alternative scares me to death. I don't want to lose you. I'd go crazy if I couldn't spend the rest of my life with you.... I guess I'm not reverting, after all."

You'd better revert, he told himself. You have to get both of us through this night alive.

16.

Tension produced the familiar aching pressure in his stomach that he had suffered when he worked for the Agency. The omelette he had eaten that morning on the plane remained in his stomach and burned like acid, as did the quick take-out burgers and fries that he had grabbed for everyone while picking up equipment during the afternoon. Just like old times, he thought.

He wondered how close his pursuers were to him and what they were deciding. Did they have members of their group waiting ahead of them in Santa Fe? Maybe only a few of Renata's friends had been stationed at the Best Western hotel, not enough to attempt an interception. Maybe they had used a cellular telephone to call ahead and arrange for reinforcements. Or maybe Decker was wrong and his car didn't have a homing device hidden in it. Maybe his plan was useless. No, he told himself emphatically. I've been doing this for a lot of years. I know how this is done. Given the circ.u.mstances, I know how Renata would behave.

Well, he thought dismally, isn't it nice to be certain?

When he pa.s.sed the three exits to Santa Fe, continuing to speed along Interstate 25, it amused him to imagine the confusion his pursuers would be feeling, their frantic discussions as they tried to figure out why he hadn't stopped and where he was going. They would all be after him now, though, the ones in Santa Fe as well as those who followed him from Albuquerque. Of that, he was sure, just as he was sure that he had not yet faced his biggest risks of the night-the isolation of state road 50, for example.

It was two-lane, dark, narrow, and winding, with sporadic tiny communities along it, but mostly shadowy scrub brush and trees. It offered perfect opportunities for his pursuers to force him off the road, with no one to see what happened. He couldn't possibly keep driving as fast as he had on the interstate. At the first sharp curve, he would overturn his car. In places, even forty-five miles an hour was extreme. He hunched forward, peering at the darkness beyond his head-lights, trying to gain every second he could on the straight-aways, reducing speed, steering tensely around turns, once again accelerating.

"I can't risk taking my eyes off the road to check the rearview mirror," he told Beth. "Look behind us. Do you see any headlights?"

"No. Wait-now I do."

"What?"

"Coming around the last curve. One ... I'm wrong-it looks like two cars. The second just came around the curve."

"Jesus."

"They don't seem to be gaining on us. Why would they hold back? Maybe it's not them," Beth said.

"Or maybe they want to know what they're getting into before they make their move. Ahead of us."

"Lights."

"Yes. We've reached Pecos."

Near midnight on a Tuesday night, there was almost no activity. Decker reduced his speed as much as he dared, turned left onto the quiet main street, and proceeded north toward the mountains.

"I don't see the headlights anymore," Beth said. "The cars must belong to people who live in town."

"Maybe." As soon as the glow of the sleepy town was behind him, Decker again picked up speed, climbing the dark and narrow road into the wilderness area. "Or maybe the cars do belong to Renata and her gang, and they're holding back, not wanting to make it obvious they're following us. They must be curious what we're doing up here."

In the darkness, the dense pine trees formed what seemed to be an impenetrable wall.

"It doesn't look very welcoming," Beth said.

"Good. Renata will conclude the only reason anybody would come up here is to hide. We're getting closer. Almost there. Just a few more ..."

17.

He nearly shot past the Contact Stephen Decker realty sign before he reduced speed enough to turn into the barely visible break between fir trees. Terribly aware that he could be trapping Beth and himself as much as he was attempting to trap Renata, he crossed the wooden bridge above the roar of the swift, narrow Pecos River, entered the gloomy clearing, parked in front of the steps up to the house, and turned off the engine. Only then did he push in the k.n.o.b for his headlights-the sequence activated a feature that kept his lights on for an additional two minutes.

With the aid of those lights, he got Beth's crutches and the carry-on bag from the backseat. He felt a desperate compulsion to hurry, but he didn't dare give in to it. If Renata and her gang drove past and saw him rus.h.i.+ng up to the cabin, they would immediately suspect that he knew he was being followed, that he antic.i.p.ated their arrival, that they were being set up. Tensely repressing his impatience, he allowed himself to look as weary as he felt. Following Beth up the log steps, he reached a metal box attached to the cabin's doork.n.o.b. The lights from his car provided just enough illumination for him to use his key to unlock the box. He opened the lid, took out the key to the cabin, unlocked the door, and helped Beth inside.

The moment the door was closed and locked, the lights turned on, Decker responded to the urgency swelling inside him. The blinds were already drawn on the cabin, so no one outside could see him support Beth while she dropped her crutches and picked up camouflage coveralls that Decker had bought at the gun shop. She pulled them on over her slacks and blouse. As soon as she tugged up the zipper and took back her crutches, Decker hurriedly put on his own camouflage coveralls. Before leaving the cabin to go to the airport, they had already put on the polypropylene long underwear he had bought. Now Decker smeared Beth's face and then his own with dark grease from a tube of camouflage coloring. When they had rehea.r.s.ed these movements early in the evening, they had gotten ready in just under two minutes, but now it seemed tensely to Decker that they were taking much longer. Hurry, he thought. To avoid leaving fingerprints, they put on dark cotton gloves, thin enough to be able to shoot with, thick enough to provide some warmth. When Decker switched on a small radio, a country-and-western singer started wailing about "livin' and lovin' and leavin' and ..." Decker kept the lights on, helped Beth out the back door, shut it behind him, and risked pausing in the chill darkness long enough to stroke her arm with encouragement and affection.

She trembled, but she did what had to be done, what they had rehea.r.s.ed, disappearing to the left of the cabin.

Impressed by her courage, Decker went to the right. At the front of the cabin, his headlights had gone off. Away from the glow of the cabin's windows, the darkness thickened. Then Decker's eyes adjusted, the moon and the unimaginable amount of stars, typically brilliant in the high country, giving the night a paradoxical gentle glow.

When Decker and Esperanza had walked around the property, a.s.sessing it from a tactical point of view, they had decided to make use of a game trail concealed by dense bushes at the back of the cabin. Unseen from the road, Beth was now moving along that trail and would soon reach a thick tree that the trail went around. There, Beth would lower herself to the forest floor, squirm down a slope through bushes, and reach a shallow pit that Esperanza had dug, where the two doublebarrel shotguns lay on a log, ready for her to use.

Meanwhile, Decker crept through the darkness to a similar shallow pit that he himself had dug, using one of the camp shovels he had bought at the gun shop. Even wearing three layers of clothing, he felt the dampness of the ground. Lying behind a log, concealed by bushes, he groped around but couldn't find what he was looking for. His pulse skipped nervously until he finally touched the lever-action Winchester .30-30. The powerful weapon was designed for midrange use in brush country such as this. It held six rounds in its magazine and one in the firing chamber and could be shot as rapidly as the well-oiled lever behind the trigger could be worked up and down.

Next to the rifle was a car battery, one of the other items he had purchased before leaving Santa Fe. And next to the battery were twelve pairs of electrical wires, the ends of which were exposed. These wires led to canteens that were filled with fuel oil and a type of plant fertilizer, the main component of which was ammonium nitrate. Mixed in the proper ratio, the ingredients produced an explosive. To add bite, Decker had cut open several shotgun sh.e.l.ls and poured in buckshot and gunpowder from them. To make a detonator for each bomb, he had broken the outer gla.s.s from twelve one-hundred watt lightbulbs, taking care not to use too much force and destroy the filament on the inside. He had gripped the metal stem of each bulb and inserted a filament into each canteen. Two wires were then taped to the stem of each bulb. The canteens were buried at strategic spots and covered with leaves. The pairs of wires, concealed in a like manner, led to the car battery next to Decker. The wires were arranged left to right in a pattern that matched where the canteens were located. If Decker chose a pair and pressed one end to the battery's positive pole while pressing the other end to the negative pole, he would complete a circuit that caused the lightbulb filament to burn and detonate the bomb.

He was ready. Down the lane and across the narrow Pecos River, on the other side of the road, Esperanza was hiding in the forest. He would have seen Decker drive onto the property and would be waiting for Renata and her friends to arrive. Common sense dictated that when their homing-device receiver warned them that Decker had turned off the road, they wouldn't just follow him into the lane without first taking care to find out what trouble they might be getting into. Rather, they would pa.s.s the entrance to the lane, drive a prudent distance up the road, and park, proceeding cautiously back to the lane. They would want to avoid the bottleneck of the lane, but they wouldn't be able to, because the only other way to get onto the property was by crossing the swift river, and in the darkness, that maneuver was too risky.

The moment Renata and her group were off the road and moving down into the lane, Esperanza would emerge from cover and disable their vehicles so that if the group had a premonition and hurried back to the cars, they wouldn't be able to escape. There would probably be two vehicles-one for the surveillance team at the airport, the other for the team in Santa Fe. As soon as Esperanza had made them inoperable by cramming a twig into the stem valve of several tires, the slight hiss of escaping air m.u.f.fled by the roar of the river, he would stalk the group, using the .22 semiautomatic rifle with its thirty-round magazine and two other magazines secured beneath his belt, attacking from the rear when the shooting started. Although light, the .22 had several advantages-it was relatively silent, it had a large ammunition capacity, and it could fire with extreme rapidity. These qualities would be useful in a short-range hit-and-run action. The canteens would be exploding; Beth would be using the shotgun; Decker would be firing the Winchester, with the Remington bolt-action as a backup. If everything went as planned, Renata and her group would be dead within thirty seconds.