Fire with Fire(64)
“And what’s wrong with the road to the main site?”
She looked over her shoulder at the woman in the hard hat, who had resumed her fixated roadside crouch. “Apparently, the sensors steered someone right over an embankment earlier today. So they have to keep the grid active—but empty—while they run their diagnostics and fix the problem.”
“Uh . . . Opal, I’ve got to confess: I’m still getting the hang of these quasi-cars. I might not be the safest driver.”
Her smile was back. “We’d be in a hell of a lot more trouble with me behind the wheel. So drive on: I have every confidence in your manly automotive abilities. Besides, like I told you, I’m immortal—so you’ll be safe as long as you’re with me.”
Her radiant confidence was gratifying, but not particularly reassuring. Caine forced himself to return her smile, restarted the car in manual, turned off the computer, eased slowly into gear. Driving like a maiden aunt on her way to church. “So we take that turn up ahead?”
“Yup. Let me see; the woman back there said that most rentals have maps in the glove compartment.” She opened it and rummaged through the various manuals and registration papers.
As he moved off the shoulder of the road and back into the northbound lane, Caine checked the rearview mirror: no traffic—and the hard-hatted road worker had apparently finished her chores, coming to stand at the side of the road, walkie-talkie in hand.
Opal was muttering and still rummaging: “Every damn promotional brochure known to man, but if you need to find a map—” Caine stole a quick sideways glance; she was bent over, face almost in the glove compartment. A hint of the elfin in the faintly retroussé nose, the delicate, almost pointed chin, the bright, wide, vaguely feline eyes. Since being reawakened six weeks ago, he’d occasionally wondered if his libido had followed his lunar memories into limbo: it was reassuring to discover—as he did now—that this was not the case.
“You turn here.” Her head had swiveled toward him, and, smiling, she cocked it in the direction of the oncoming white concrete marker.
Caught staring. Damn. “Um . . . yes, right.”
He checked the rearview mirror before turning. Still no traffic, although the road technician seemed to be looking after them. Wondering if the tourists understood the directions, he surmised, turning in at the marker, kicking up dust from the unused roadbed. Evidently satisfied, the technician removed her hard hat, opened the door to her own car, and got in.
Chapter Seventeen
MENTOR
Downing checked his watch. This was taking too long. And besides, it was madness.
The old-fashioned hand radio on the passenger seat paged once. There was no subsequent sound of a channel opening—and there wasn’t supposed to be: coded signals only.
He looked at the hand radio, looked up at the rough-hewn slopes two kilometers to the north. There had to be a better way, a safer way. But he hadn’t been able to think of one—and now it was too late. The Fox is in the woods—let’s just hope there are no Hounds around to chase it . . .
ODYSSEUS
As the car bounced over a rock and down into a pothole, Opal’s hand flinched to support her recovering liver. “Damn, this really is a goat trail.”
“Sorry,” Caine apologized through gritted teeth.
“Not your fault,” she said through a slow, measured exhalation.
They entered a short, straight stretch of road, refreshingly dark under the glowering brows of a steep upslope overhang. Spoor of the prior year’s abandoned construction efforts—piles of gravel, a half-completed drainage ditch, a flatbed with a load of PVC pipe sagging against weathered downslope straps, a forlorn shovel twinned with an equally forlorn pickaxe—seemed to huddle in the shade as they went past, and the incline increased.
The car skittered on some of the gravel; Opal bounced against the door again, briefly went pale. Caine winced in sympathetic pain: “We could go back.”
She shook her head, checked the map. “Naw, we don’t have much further to go.” The car’s engine began wailing unsteadily as the incline became even steeper, the bone-dry dust swirling up around. “Assuming this car can get us there, that is.”
Caine nodded, looked at the gauges. “It’s overheating. Too much engine strain.” He reached over, snapped a switch. The air conditioning sighed and died. The engine immediately ceased its high-pitched, surging struggles, eased back into a consistent and steady hum. “With the AC off, the engine should be able to handle the slope. But you might want to open your window.”
Opal smiled her assent, sought the window controls, pushed the button with two downward pointing arrows—just a moment after Caine noticed that there was another button alongside it which had only one such arrow. “Wait—!” he said.