Hawke laughed and slung his bag into the rear of the sleigh behind the leather-upholstered bench seat. The sleigh was smaller inside than he’d imagined, just room enough for two, filled with blankets of sable and mink. He climbed up and joined her inside, pulling a mink blanket over both of them.
“I’m fast,” she warned him, taking up the four reins.
“Fast is good,” Hawke said, watching her carefully and inspecting the unusual rig. He’d never seen a troika up close and was fascinated at the complicated arrangement of the horses. “Usually,” he added, striving for nonchalance.
“Shall we go?” she asked him, smiling, flicking the reins lightly.
“Ever onward.”
She spoke a few urgent words to her chargers, and they were off at breakneck speed, careening wildly through the trees and then racing down across the face of a broad, snow-covered meadow. At the bottom of the vast meadow, a narrow lane led off into the hills to the south. The tinkling sound of the many silver sleigh bells added to the magical quality of their journey, and Hawke was content to remain silent, sucking the cold air down into his lungs and watching the girl, the horses, and the white clouds scudding across the face of the fat yellow moon.
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!”
A
ll 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.
He climbed up behind the wheel and cranked the engine. He was just pulling out of the lot, planning to hit the high school over on East Crawford Street, when the flashers lit up in his rearview, and he knew party time was over. He smiled, got the little snub-nose pistol out of the pocket in his baker’s jacket, and stamped on the go pedal. No way he could outrun the local PD’s Crown Vic, but he could get where he wanted to get to, at least. He didn’t speed, just kept going, acting like he didn’t know there was a squad car right on his ass, blinkers and sirens going.
“Pull over!” he heard from the loudspeaker. Pull over? Were they crazy? The whole town was going to go up in smoke in a nanosecond or so!
He hung a right on East Iron Street. It led all the way up a hill to a town park he’d staked out earlier. It was just some trees, a creek, and a baseball diamond, but it sat up high overlooking the little town, and he thought it would be a perfect place to bring his mission to an exciting conclusion. He slowed going up the hill, taking his time, watching the rosy dawn spread across the doomed village. The cops dropped back, content to follow him up the hill, see what the hell Happy the Baker was up to. They were probably running his plates, too. Which was good. They’d see the plates belonged on a 1973 Chevy truck, just like the one he was driving. The devil was in the details.
It was five-thirty
A.M
.
The deadline his guys in Iran had put in the cell phone he’d left at the mayor’s house was six
A.M
. Central Standard Time. Half an hour. Plenty of time to enjoy the moment.
He crested the hill and drove under the little arch that said “Hickory Hill Park,” his hideout. He wound around a little, cops right behind him, until he came to the spot he’d chosen that first evening, before he started stalking the mayor and her family. It was what they called a scenic overlook, and he parked right out at the edge of the little lot there. Then he killed the motor, slipped the snubbie into his pocket, and sat there waiting for the fuzz to come bust him.
Come to Papa, boys.
H
e watched the cops exit the cruiser in his rearview. They got out with their guns drawn, approaching him from the rear on either side of the truck. When the guy on his side was abreast of the driver’s window, he rolled it down, gave the young cop a big smile, and said, “Was I going too fast?”
“Sir, I’d like your driver’s license and registration, please.”
“Absolutely, officer,” Paddy said, handing him the fake license and registration papers.
“Your real name is Happy? That right?”
“Yessir. Named after my old man. He was Happy, too.”
“Sir,” the cop said, looking from his license photo to him and back again, “are you aware that this town is under an evacuation order?”
“I was wondering where the hell everyone went. Evacuation, huh? What’s going on?”
“How did you get this vehicle past the police barricades, sir?”
“Weren’t any barricades up when I arrived.”
“And when was that?”
“Few days ago.”
“And in the meantime?”
“You mean since I arrived?”
“Correct.”
“I’ve been asleep.”
“You’ve been asleep for three days?”
“Correct.”
“Where?”
“At the Motel 6. Real nice place.”
“Sir, no one sleeps for three whole days.”
“I do. I get these dang migraines. Once I get ’em, I just pop a bunch of Dalmane pills and nod on out. If I wake up, I take another handful.
Wham,
I’m out like a light. Hell, I just woke up a few hours ago.”
“And what exactly are you doing?”
“Delivering doughnuts.”
“To an empty town?”
“Well, see, here’s my thinking on that. Are you familiar with the franchise system?”
“Franchise system.”
“Yeah. My thought is this. I’m a baker. I bake the best damn doughnuts west of the Mississippi. And my business plan is to take my product direct to the consumer. I’ve delivered product in Junction City, Wichita, hell, all the way to Topeka. Don’t charge a nickel. I just deliver the boxes and let folks discover them for themselves. Now, I’ve got my Web-site address right on top of every box. People eat them, like them, and want more. That’s my strategy. Right now, I’m a one-man distribution system. But pretty soon, hell, folks are going to be knocking my door down. I’m going to open up a string of Happy Baker Doughnut Shoppes from here to Canada.”
“They do smell pretty darn good back there.”
“You see? That’s just what I’m saying! And you know what? They taste better than they smell. I’ve got some fresh glazed back there, you and your partner want to try a couple.”
“Hey, Gene, you want a warm doughnut?” the young cop said to his older, and much fatter, partner.
“Damn right I do, Andy,” Gene said. “You can smell them things a mile away.”
“There you go,” Paddy said with a smile. “Let me go around and open up the truck. We’ll have us a nice hot breakfast up here on the hill. I got a thermos of steaming black New Orleans French Quarter coffee back there, too.”
“Well, I guess we can do that. Not much else we can do. Andy, go back and get on the radio, will you? Tell them we’ve got a gentleman up here needs assistance, and we’ll be standing by in case, you know, anything happens.”
Happy climbed out and opened up the back. He slid the loading platform out and opened up a box of glazed, a box of cream-filled, and a box of jelly.
The two cops dug in, and while they did, he poured all three of them steaming cups of black coffee.
“Dang!” Andy said, polishing off a glazed in two bites. “That is one hell of a doughnut.”
“You feel happy, Andy?”
“I sure do.”
“Good. ’Cause that’s my new advertising slogan. ‘Eat Happy.’ You like it?”
“Love it. Can I have another one of the cream-filled?”
Ten minutes later, they were all sitting on the platform, talking football, whether or not the Chiefs would make the playoffs, and, of course, the war on terror. Andy said he thought the whole evacuation thing was a crock. Something dreamed up to scare ordinary Americans and make a laughingstock out of a whole town. That was the town consensus, he said.
“Yeah?” Paddy said. “Well, maybe you’re right. Will you excuse me a sec? I got to get my smokes. Call me crazy. I can’t drink my morning coffee without my smokes.”
“Go ahead. We’ll hold down the fort back here. See if the town blows up,” the young cop, Andy, said.
“Yeah,” Gene said. “I can hardly wait. What a damn deal we got here. If she blows, we’re screwed. If she doesn’t, we’re a national joke.”
It was five-fifty-five
A.M
. when Paddy unlocked the glove compartment and took out the rectangular black plastic box that had been sent from Moscow, through Iran, and delivered to him by courier in Miami a week ago today. It represented the very latest in remote-detonation technology. Every Zeta machine built had a GPS broadcast device built in, as well as the eight ounces of puttylike explosive called Hexagon. The machines also broadcast an ID number, much like the squawk system used by aircraft. So you always knew which machines were where before you decided to arm them or detonate them.
The box Paddy held in his hand contained dual microprocessors in addition to the radio-signal command that would cause the Zetas to explode. The system was currently preprogrammed to detonate only those devices now inside the city limits of Salina, Kansas.
“Hey, Happy,” Andy called, “c’mon back. You’re going to miss her if she goes.”
“Yeah, right,” Gene said, laughing, “Miss the whole shebang. The whole damn shooting match.”
It was five-fifty-nine
A.M.
, coming up on six
A.M.
“I won’t miss it, Andy. I can’t find my damn smokes, that’s all. You got any?”
“Hell, no. Cops can’t smoke for insurance reasons. Besides, my wife’d up and kill me she thought I was puffing on them cancer sticks. Why, she’d—”
Paddy was walking back toward the rear of the truck with his finger on the button, eyes glued to the red digital display that was spinning down to zero.
Now.
You could feel the ground shaking, even up here on Hickory Hill. The three men stood and stared down in wonder at the little town as it exploded. It was like watching a movie of a building coming down, only it was all of the buildings, all of the neighborhoods, and they were all coming down at once, sending a huge cloud of smoke rolling skyward as the noise and sheer force of the blast came rolling up the hill and rocked the truck, spilling the coffee from all three cups and sending the doughnut boxes flying off the back of the truck.
“Holy shit!” Andy screamed, walking out to the edge of the overlook. “They freakin’ did it! The goddamn A-rabs blew up our whole goddamn town!”
Fires broke out everywhere. Power lines sparked, ignited, and came down, writhing like angry snakes in the streets. Underground gas lines exploded up through asphalt intersections, the power station was sparking into yet another inferno, and every last filling station in town had turned into a brilliant fireball that climbed into the dawn sky and lit up what used to be Salina like the Fourth of July fireworks every summer up at Hickory Hill.
Paddy had his snubbie out, was looking down the barrel at the backs of the two Kansas policemen. He could easily put a bullet in each of them, shots to the back of the head, walk away. He raised the pistol, put a pound of pressure on the trigger…and then changed his mind.
Having admired his work from afar, Paddy climbed up into his truck and stuck the key into the ignition. He had a long way to go and a short time to get there. He was catching the next thing smoking out of Topeka to Miami. There was a lot to be done before
Pushkin
lifted off in a matter of hours.
He left Officers Andy and Gene standing there at the edge of the bluff, looking down at what was left of the town they’d both grown up in, tears already drying on their cheeks.
Happy had mixed emotions about sparing the lives of Officers Andy and Gene of Salina PD. But, but, but. He was a professional. He didn’t kill people for fun. Only for money. Or for a good reason. And he could see no good reason to off these two guys. If the two cops identified a crazy baker delivering doughnuts to a deserted town, so what? He’d be long gone before anyone could tie him to the multiple explosions that had flattened the place. And he seriously doubted anybody ever would.
Anyway, by the time anybody had a clue what had blown Salina to smithereens, the world would be an entirely different place. A lot of America might look like the blackened ruins smoldering at the bottom of the hill. And Happy? Hell, he’d be sailing the skies above the blue Atlantic, enjoying the many pleasures of the floating pussy palace on what promised to be a very interesting voyage to Stockholm.
The Happy Baker, his mission accomplished, silently rolled away, gone in a flash.
Taking care of business, baby.
TCB.