F Wilson: Deep as the Marrow

“Great. Where are you?”

“Over deep woods about five klicks southeast of Sooy’s Boot. At thirty-eight degrees, forty-six minutes north, seventy-four degrees, thirty-three minutes west, to be exact.”

Bob glanced at Vanduyne who’d been acting as navigator all day. “That any help?”

Vanduyne shook his head and pointed to an area of the local map that was mostly empty green. “There’s nothing there—not even a road.”

“How do I get there. Search One?”

“Well, we’ve got a road in sight, but it’s not on any of our maps. The only way you’ll get here is to have someone lead you, and I guess that’ll be us. Give us your present location and we’ll find you. You can follow us here.”

“We’re lost. Search One.”

Vanduyne was looking at the map again. “Tell him we’re somewhere south of 532 and west of 563.”

“We copy,” the transceiver said. “Find a clearing and get ready to wave a shirt or something. We’ll be overhead soon.”

“I think this is it,” Vanduyne said, still staring at the map. He seemed transformed, as if someone had hooked him up to a wire and was pumping juice into him. “I can feel it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Got to be a lot of red panel trucks out here.”

Vanduyne shook his head. “We’ve only spotted three all day, and all of them were sitting out on the street. This is the first one tucked away deep in the woods. That’s Poppy’s truck. I know it. We’re going to find Katie.”

“If I may quote you from earlier: From your lips to God’s ear.” He slapped his hand against the dashboard as he thought of something. “You know what we could use right now? A GPS unit. Damn! Why didn’t I think to bring one?”

“What’s that?”

“A global positioning system. It would tell us exactly where we are.”

Vanduyne shrugged. “As long as we’ve got the helicopter to follow, we don’t need it.”

Yeah, Bob thought, but I should have thought of it. Never even crossed my mind. But Vanduyne was right. The helicopter would get them there. Besides, no one could think of everything.

11

Snake pulled his Jeep off 563 in a tiny place called Jenkins. He attached the suction cup of the GPS antenna to his roof, then got back in and fired up his laptop. The GPS card was already snapped into the PCMCIA slot. The grid appeared. He tapped a few keys and waited for the program to pick up the signals from the satellites miles above, run a triangulation on them, and pinpoint his exact position on the earth.

Snake loved this: Using the Department of Defense’s thirteen billion dollar satellite system to outmaneuver its fellow federal agencies.

The laptop beeped softly as a blinking dot appeared in the center of the grid next to the coordinates.

“Okay,” he said aloud. “There’s me. Now let’s see how far it is to this ‘object vehicle’.”

Snake punched in the coordinates he’d copied from the copter conversation he’d monitored on his VHP transceiver. A few seconds later his dot jumped to the lower left of the screen as a blinking star appeared in the upper right. The readout said: 17.2 km—43 NE. Not far at all. About seven miles… as the crow flies.

But out here, that might mean fifteen, twenty, thirty miles by road—if you could find the roads. His software had the capacity to link him up to a street map and lead him to his destination—but no software developer in the universe offered a package on the pinelands. Too bad his GPS program couldn’t download a satellite photo of the area.

Maybe next year.

But he had the next best thing: He’d scanned a sectional map of Central Jersey into his hard drive. He fixed his blinking dot on the town of Jenkins, entered the scale, and voila!—he was in business.

Now he had to find a way to get his dot to that blinking star in the middle of nowhere before the feds. The ‘object vehicle’ might not be Poppy’s truck, but he couldn’t risk sitting here and doing nothing.

He heard a deep rumble and glanced at the sky. Thunder. That storm was coming on fast. He threw the Jeep into gear and started moving. Not quite as good as having a helicopter to follow, but at least he’d know when he was heading in the right direction and when he wasn’t. And he’d be approaching the spot from the opposite direction. Maybe he was already closer than the feds. And who knew? Maybe the storm would help him get there first.

As he drove he passed through an area of burned-out trees. Lightning? A careless camper? Whatever, it looked like there’d been a helluva fire here. All the trunks had been scorched coal black, the smaller branches seared right off. But the trees weren’t dead. Every trunk had little branchlets forcing their way through the charred crust of the bark and sprouting new bright-green needles. Can’t kill these damn things, he thought. Then he grinned. Maybe this is a good place for me. I like these pines. No matter what you do to them, they keep coming back. I’m just like your pines. Poppy. You can’t kill me, can’t stop me. I keep coming. And I’m coming for you, bitch.

12

Dan Keane stared out his office window, wondering why he hadn’t heard anything from Decker since this morning. He checked his watch. A little after three already. Had anything happened at that motel in Tuckerton? Should he call? Would that make him appear too interested?

But how could you appear too interested in something like this? Yes, he should call. He was useless here, otherwise. Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think about anything else.

But as he reached for the phone, his intercom buzzed. That might be Decker now. He hit the button.

“Yes?”

“A restaurant just called,” his secretary said.

“A restaurant?”

“Yes. Very rude. Said you were supposed to call them about confirming a reservation. Il Gia-something. They hung up before I could get the name straight.”

Dan stiffened. Salinas’s place. Calling here? Oh, Lord. It could only be bad news.

“I know the place.”

“Want me to—?”

“No, thanks. I’ll take care of it later. Hold my calls, Thelma. I’m going out for a short walk.”

The heat on Sixth Street hit him as soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk. Like summer. He peeled off his wool suit coat and went searching for a phone.

Wild thoughts danced around him as he walked. What could Salinas possibly have to tell him? What was so important that he risked a call to the DEA offices?

He spotted a phone at the corner by NASA and picked up his pace toward it. As he fished for a quarter, he made his usual survey of the area to make sure no one was too close. Pretty clear. Not even a pretzel cart this time. Just a bicycle messenger speeding along in his direction. No problem there. Those guys could really move. He’d be past before Dan finished dialing. He found the quarter and plunked it into the slot. As he waited for it to register, he glanced around again. The bike messenger was almost on top of him—racing helmet, dark sports glasses, skin-tight bicycle pants and top, riding a slim French street bike. But he seemed to have lost speed. As Dan watched, he pulled something metallic from his messenger pouch. It was pointed at him before he recognized it as a silenced automatic. He saw the tiny muzzle flashes light the dark hole of the silencer bore.

Before he could move, before he could scream, he felt the slugs hit him. No piercing pain—more like iron-fisted punches to his chest and abdomen, exploding through his back, lifting him off the ground and hurling him backward. He saw the intense blue of the sky for an instant, and then it, the street, the city, the world all dimmed and went away,

13

“Move, you son of a bitch! Move!” John Vanduyne felt as if his shoulder was about to pull out of the socket, but he wouldn’t back off.