The Memory Collector Part 43

Jo sat behind the wheel of the idling Tahoe, parked in an empty office parking lot just off the 101 in San Jose. Through the windshield she saw Calder hang up her phone. Calder ran across the parking lot and jumped back in the Tahoe.

She put the SUV in drive for Jo. "Go."

Calder's cheeks were flushed, her pupils dilated. She looked like she'd just gotten a jolt of sugar. From watching the woman on the phone, and seeing her rub the dolphin necklace, Jo guessed she'd been talking to the intoxicant called Ian Kanan.

Jo pulled back onto the freeway and continued south through San Jose. She couldn't honk, couldn't put down the window and yell at other drivers. She could speed or wreck the Tahoe but knew that if she started swerving, Murdock would turn somebody's face into an exit wound. She stayed in her lane and drove at the speed limit, rolling toward the San Jose airport under the yellow glow of sodium streetlights. In the far back of the SUV, fixed under the barrel of Vance's pistol, Seth and Misty held still.

Two minutes later, Jo saw the airport. The perimeter fence practically ab.u.t.ted the freeway. The end of a runway lay just on the other side of it. Despite everything, she felt a burst of optimism. Heading to the airport had to mean Riva was planning a getaway. And an airport was as stupid a place to kill hostages as Jo could conceive of.

"Take the exit," Murdock said.

With her wrists cuffed to the steering wheel she couldn't signal. Calder hit the blinker.

Heart drumming, she pulled off the freeway. In the distance she could see the airport terminals, the control tower, and a jet rolling down the runway. She prepared to turn right.

"Go left," Calder said.

Jo looked at her sharply. "What? Where are we going?"

"Drive."

Instead of turning toward the terminals, they went south on Airport Boulevard, around the perimeter fence at the south end of the runways. They pa.s.sed bristling electronic masts. On her right, a chain-link fence offered glimpses of the tarmac. The runways were black gashes brightened with Christmas-tree lighting. Jo drove past a long, gleaming jet blast deflector. A 737 screamed overhead, lights glaring, engines at high pitch, and touched down.

Ahead, on the far side of the airfield, the private aviation terminals were brightly lit. A phalanx of corporate jets and charter aircraft gleamed under brilliant hangar lights.

Riva made a phone call. "We'll be there in ten minutes. Be ready to go."

This was not good. This was, in fact, very bad.

Kanan slowed the pickup and swung around the off-ramp. He scanned the road ahead and turned onto Coleman Avenue, west of the airport. Mineta San Jose International Airport-International meant that plenty of airliners lifted off from there and winged away to Mexico, South America, Canada, as well as the U.S. Midwest and East Coast.

He could see over the perimeter fence and across the runways. Jets were lined up at the commercial terminals, hooked to Jetways and fuel hoses like piglets suckling at the teats of a sow. The airfield was a dark expanse between the airliners on the east side of the airport and the private terminals on the west. The runway and taxiway lights shone vividly. Red, yellow, green. He saw them with prism clarity, so clearly that he thought he could pinpoint their exact frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum.

The thing in his head, the memory eater, was bizarre. It was chopping out most of his world, scooping away his experiences like a combine, collecting all information before he could store it as memory. But this thing wasn't only about recall. It wasn't simply collecting. It was firing inside his head. He felt, when he slowed his breathing and concentrated, that he'd been rewired. He felt like his brain went to eleven.

He could use that to get his family back.

The voice of the GPS purred at him. "You have reached your destination."

She had no idea.

"Keep it slow," Calder said.

At ten fifteen on a Friday night, Coleman Avenue was quiet. It was a major road, but the business parks and warehouses along the road were dark, chilly, and empty. To the west were railroad tracks and, beyond them, Santa Clara University. All the activity was east, beyond a block of industrial parks and aviation businesses, at the airport.

"Turn right," Calder said.

Jo turned from Coleman onto a side road and headed through a business park toward the airfield. The buildings, the ubiquitous white concrete and blue gla.s.s architecture of Silicon Valley, were shut for the weekend. The road ran east for eighty yards, made a left turn, and ran north-south between Coleman and the airport runways. It was absolutely deserted. Jo pa.s.sed more bristling microwave and radar towers and the entrance to the airport traffic control center.

"Slow down," Calder said.

Jo slowed the Tahoe to a crawl. At a corner, Calder held up her hand.

"Stop. Pull over."

Jo pulled to the curb. On the lawn of an office complex, eucalyptus and pines stood cold in the night. To her left, the cross road offered a clear view back toward Coleman. She could see streetlights and, very occasionally, a pa.s.sing car.

To her right, the cross road narrowed to an access drive. It ended after seventy yards at a gate with a swing arm. Beyond were the private aviation terminals.

There was no guard at the gate, only a card-reading machine and a one-by-four piece of plywood painted black and white. Jo reminded herself yet again that airport security was a game. It was played to placate the flying public and keep security personnel employed and feeding their ma.s.sive authority complex.

In the sky above, the landing lights of an airliner blared and turbines whined. A jet crossed the runway threshold, flared, and touched down. As it streaked past its thrust reversers howled.

On the airfield ap.r.o.n, parked at varying angles, tail in, tail out, edge on-like a flock of gulls that had circled and landed all askew-were white corporate jets. They were mostly locked up, windows dark. But one jet wasn't tucked in for the night. It was large, with a T-tail and two engines at the back. The door was open and the stairs were down. Inside the lights were aglow. She saw a man walk up the aisle, pa.s.s the door, and go into the c.o.c.kpit.

She wondered if the same crew that had flown Alec Shepard in from Montreal that morning was prepping Chira-Sayf's jet for its flight tonight.

Riva planned to get Slick from Ian Kanan and then fly away. And the only way she could get Slick was by showing Kanan that his wife and son were alive. Jo clutched tight to that thought.

But why exchange them here, instead of at the Valley Fair Mall ten minutes down the freeway? Did Riva plan to put Jo and the Kanans on the plane and fly them someplace where they'd never be seen again-such as the Pacific Ocean?

But that would never work. The pilot would never agree to it. The idea was crazy.

Crazy, however, seemed to be Riva Calder's business plan.

"Cut the lights," Calder said.

Jo looked at her. "How?"

Chagrined, Calder reached over and turned off the Tahoe's headlights. Jo sat, hands growing numb from the plastic handcuffs, and watched the pilots moving around inside Chira-Sayf's corporate jet.

Next to her, Calder shifted and her energy swelled. She was looking past Jo out the driver's window, back toward Coleman Avenue.

A truck was stopped at the curb there, lights blazing.

"That's him," Calder said.

She opened the door and got out. Leaned back in and looked into the back seat. "I'll call you with instructions."

Murdock leaned forward. "Give me your field pa.s.s."

"I'll bring it back."

She shut the door and jogged across the street. Keeping to the shadows, she headed for the distant truck.

"What do I do now?" Jo said.

Murdock shifted and exhaled. "You wait."

Kanan kept the truck idling at the curb and surveilled the area. Traffic on Coleman Avenue was sporadic. Three hundred eighty-five meters to the east, an American Airlines 757 taxied into takeoff position. Two hundred forty-five meters north, in the parking lot of a commercial building, two parked cars sat cold and empty.

A tap on the pa.s.senger window startled him.

He turned, and anger washed over him. Then confusion. "Riva?"

He unlocked the door. She jumped in the cab.

"What happened to you?" he said.

She touched a hand to the blistered red burn mark on her forehead. "Accident."

She was breathing fast and her pupils were dilated. She leaned too close and put a hand on his arm.

"This is it." Her hand was hot. "I'm scared."

"It?"

Confusion clouded her face. "Yes-Ian, I called you. What-"

"The exchange?"

"Yes, of course. I don't-"

"What did the kidnappers say? Just tell me. We get Misty and Seth back, and then I'll explain everything."

"I don't-Ian, please..."

He pulled his arm away from her. "I don't think we have any time left. What do I need to do?"

She lowered her hand to her lap but kept looking at him like he was a drug, a hit of crack she wanted.

A look of hurt and self-restraint came over her. She got out her phone. "We tell them we're here."

Jo was wound like a countersunk screw. The zip ties cut into her wrists. The SUV idled like a disgruntled bear.

Murdock's phone rang. He put it to his ear, listened, and said, "Got it."

He climbed over the center console, slid his sausage body into the front pa.s.senger seat, and pointed ahead. "Drive up to the next block and cut back over to Coleman." He put the SUV in gear. "Slow and steady, chickie."

She drove slowly up the side street.

Chaos was the world's great leveler. It entered lives with neither forethought nor purpose and cut like a scythe through the dreams and plans of everybody it touched. For years she had convinced herself that this truth must be acknowledged. And now that chaos was here, h.e.l.l if she was going to accept it.

She knew she couldn't control the chaos. But she could try to control what happened to her and the Kanan family. She could try to get them all out of this.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. She saw Misty's eyes staring back, deeply frightened. And determined.

The red digital clock on the dashboard read 10:17. She drove up a block, turned left, crossed through another darkened business park, and turned left again onto the broad sweep of Coleman Avenue.

"Pull over," Murdock said.

She stopped at the curb facing south. "The stuff that Kanan's going to exchange is extremely volatile. n.o.body should be around it. And especially not at an airport."

"Shut it," Murdock said.

Vance said, "What if she's telling the truth?"

"I said, shut it. All of you." Murdock straightened and stared out the windshield. "Here we go."

Several hundred yards down the road, parked facing them on the other side, was the pickup truck. It sat, headlights bright, idling.

Kanan peered up Coleman Avenue. An SUV had turned this way from a side street and pulled to the curb several hundred meters away. It looked like a Chira-Sayf corporate SUV, one of those brawny vehicles his brother loved and trusted.

He forced his eyes to focus. He forced his mind to concentrate. He forced his heart to still.

The SUV was a blue Chevy Tahoe. Misty's Tahoe. It held his family.

Hold on to that, he told himself. He was seconds away. He could almost touch them, almost feel Misty in his arms, hear Seth calling his name. They were real, they were there, they were coming home. Hold on to it.

Riva rustled through his backpack. "Where is it?"

"The computer battery."

She took it out, weighed it in her hand. And she smiled. It looked like joy. Like victory.

"Ian," she said.

He looked at her.

"What did the kidnappers tell you before you went to Africa?" she said.

"That I had till Sat.u.r.day to get the sample of Slick for them, or my family wouldn't survive."

"Do you know what day it is?" she said.

He searched, found nothing but blank s.p.a.ce. "No."

She leaned toward him an inch. "It's Sunday."