Ted Bell - Tsar

The center horse, between the wooden shafts, was clearly the lead. He was trotting. The two outside horses, with one rein apiece, were harnessed at slightly divergent angles so that all three animals were arranged like a fan. The horse on the far right was galloping furiously, while the one on the left was more coquettish. It was a style of coaching developed over many centuries, and it worked.

Hawke noticed she never used a whip but spoke to the three stallions, calling on each one continuously, urging them onward with a combination of flattery and invective.

“What are their names?” he asked her, leaning close so she could hear.

“Storm, Lightning, and Smoke. My favorite horses.”

“Which is which?”

“That’s my great galloping Storm on the right. Smoke does all the work in the center, and Lightning canters on the left. You! Storm! What are you looking at? Get on with you! Go!”

Presently, they came to a stop under a stand of birch trees at the top of a hill. Below them lay a small valley. There was a frozen lake, gleaming white, and standing along its banks was a magnificent palace, ablaze with light glowing from hundreds of windows. It was three stories of gold and grandeur, a mix of the best of Russian and European architecture, with galleries and flanking wings that stretched along the lakefront for at least 900 meters.

“My God, Anastasia,” Hawke said, gazing down at it, his eyes wide with delight.

“What is it, darling?”

“Don’t look now, but we’re living in some kind of bloody fairy tale.”

“I’ve been living in one since the afternoon I discovered a naked man sleeping on a beach. Might I tell you a great big secret?”

“Yes, you might.”

“I might be falling in love. Not with you, of course. But with my life again,” she said.

“Life’s lousy in bed, darling. You’ll need men for that.”

She laughed, kissed his cheek, and, snapping the reins, said, “Storm! Are you awake? Home! Fly away! Fly!”

All Beef Paddy liked to whistle while he worked. Now he was whistling one of his favorites, an oldie but goodie called “Be True to Your School.” Beach Boys. After he’d finished cleaning up over at the Bailey household, he’d gone back to the little riverside park the next morning, where he kept his truck hidden in the bushes, then hiked through the woods to his deserted motel and caught some Z’s. Must have slept six hours. He’d seen a couple of cruisers on the way, parked, uniforms having their morning coffee gabfest, and managed to avoid them.

Now he parked his white Happy Baker Shoppe truck, fitted with carefully counterfeited Kansas plates, in the Cottonwood Elementary School parking lot. He loaded up his dolly and hurried inside to make his delivery. Even though the entire school, like the parking lot, like the whole damn town, was completely empty by now, he had boxes and boxes of delicious doughnuts on his dolly.

Under the doughnuts, in the bottom of every box, was a little surprise. Just like Cracker Jacks, only much, much more surprising.

Paddy, still in his white Happy the Baker outfit, was not even slightly surprised to find one of the side doors to the school unlocked. Seemed like every door in town was open, half of the ones he’d tried, anyway. He was on his third elementary school and had only Central High School left to do before he, too, got out of town in a hurry. A busy baker is a happy baker. Busy, busy, busy.

Paddy had waited patiently all day, till the police had got everyone cleared out. Then he’d started driving around, making his doughnut deliveries. He’d been driving all night, all over town, lights out, of course. Office buildings, shopping malls, the town hall, the water works, you name it. It had been fun. He loved playing cat and mouse with the local cops. They were having a tough time, trying to do a murder investigation in the middle of an emergency evacuation. He’d counted on that, and he’d been right.

They had cruisers out patrolling the streets, mostly looking for stragglers, not coldblooded murderers, and Paddy had gotten really good at avoiding them. If he even saw headlights coming, he’d pull into a lot or just to the side of the road and slump down below the windows. He had his little snub-nose.38 handy in case anybody got nosy, but so far, nobody had.

Everybody had left town in pretty much of hurry when, twelve hours ago, the bodies had been found. And the cell he’d left on Monie’s body. Then the police had started cruising up and down the streets of Salina with loudspeakers blaring, giving the order to evacuate because of some unspecified threat to the town. He had his radio tuned to a local talk show. Rumors were flying. Some callers said it was a problem out at the fertilizer factory, some said it was a natural-gas problem, and a few even said it was bird flu. Everybody was busy packing up and getting the hell out of Dodge.

What nobody was saying was that it was terrorism. The police were mum on that subject. Besides, terrorism just didn’t seem to be on Salina’s radar, and you could see why. It was the most white-bread place Paddy had ever been to. Very few raisins in this batter. And the tallest building in town was, what, ten stories maybe, not exactly World Trade Center material. Who the hell would want to blow up Salina, take out a freaking Kmart? Puh-leeze, right?

These al-Qaeda creeps were crazy, you could tell the people of Salina thought, but they weren’t crazy enough to have Salina, Kansas, high on their priority target list.

By now, the police were busy looking into the Arm of God and Tehran connection, Paddy thought, laughing to himself as he drove his bakery truck west. He cruised under Interstate 135 on West Magnolia, headed for the deserted parking lot of the Salina Municipal Airport. It looked sad and empty, the airport did, like a spot that could use a few doughnuts.

I-135, the interstate that ran north and south, and I-70, the one that ran east and west, had immediately turned into parking lots as 40,000-plus people tried to blow out of town at once. Now the interstates, too, were empty. Highway Patrol had shut them down, ten miles outside the city limits. All roads leading into town had been closed when the evacuation warning went out.

As he wheeled his dolly down the school’s center hallway, rolling past all the empty classrooms, he liked the echo of his song off the linoleum tiles of the long, empty corridor. There were Christmas decorations everywhere, and he sort of got into the spirit. It was fun having an entire town all to yourself. Sort of like being invisible. He started whistling “Jingle Bell Rock,” getting into it.

He entered the principal’s office and saw that they’d all left their Wizard computers right on their desks, so no delivery there. He strolled next door to the science lab and saw that there were still a few computers at the workstations, but most of them seemed to have disappeared along with the kids. So, he placed a half-dozen doughnut boxes on the dissecting tables and moved on to the library, where he knew most of the computers would be-that is, if there were any left.

His deliveries complete, he headed back to the truck with an empty dolly. It was now just after five o’clock in the morning, and the sun was breaking over the little town of Salina. Paddy had been here, what, a week, staying at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of town, following the mayor around, scoping out her daily routine.

He’d also been watching the local news, keeping abreast of the situation so he could report in. Now that the country knew about what was going on, it was nonstop news on CNN and Fox. But they weren’t letting any new crews inside the barricades surrounding the town, so all you were left with was talking heads who didn’t know what the hell their heads were talking about.