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  “But they figured that one out with science,” Pinto said.

  “Sure,” Sam agreed. “But there are some things science can’t test. Variables you can’t control. Things we can’t even detect and measure. And if you can’t measure and control, you can’t do science.

  “The physicists claim there’s this stuff called dark matter and dark energy out there. They theorize that it makes up ninety-five percent of the universe. Another four percent is invisible atoms. So ninety-nine percent of everything is stuff they cannot see, feel, hear, or detect in any way. They don’t know what it is. They don’t really know if it’s even there. The only reason they say it’s there is because they can’t get their equations to work without it. But they’re just doing some big-brain guessing. And their equations are changing.

  “The universe holds far more mysteries than we can begin to unravel at this point, including the technology of God. You can talk to somebody thousands of miles away with a radio or satellite; I’m sure God’s got his own science. I’m a hundred percent sure he’s got the technology to hear and respond.”

  Pinto said, “I never said God couldn’t help. I only said you need to have the right expectations. Not get your panties in a wad if things aren’t happening all television style.”

  The plane droned on. The little fairy with the acorn hat slowly swung to the plane’s vibration.

  “All I know,” Frank said, “is that I need to get Tony back. And my assets are two hicks—no offense, big guy—a cookie man, and this plane.” He looked up. “And you, God, if you want to play, which would be first class.”

  Sam smiled. “The petition has been made.”

  Frank said, “Let’s just hope it hasn’t been filed with some divine desk jockey.”

  Henry had been looking at the men like he was trying to follow what they were saying. Frank gave him a scratch on the head. “You think it went to a desk jockey?”

  Henry shimmied.

  Frank shook his head. Typical Golden Retriever.

  At that moment Tony’s phone blooped. Frank pulled it out of his pocket and saw an anonymous text. It said, “Jockstrap, this is God.”

  “Is it Kim?” Sam asked.

  “We vibrated,” Frank said, “and brought back the devil Ed Meese.” Then he texted, “I am two minutes away from calling the cops.”

  A moment passed, and then the phone blooped a reply: “Not a nice way to talk to your maker.”

  “One minute forty-five and counting,” Frank texted.

  He got down to one minute nine before Tony’s phone rang. Frank tapped Talk and said, “Put him on.”

  Ed laughed, a big belly buster, like he was laughing so hard he might fall over, like his eyes were all squinting up with laffy tears. “You followed that phone,” Ed said and laughed some more. “You followed that phone! Priceless.”

  “You now have forty-five seconds.”

  Ed regained some control. “Come on, Frank. You’ve got to admit it’s funny. Mr. Green Beret Army hunter chases the phone. Did you do some recon?”

  “Thirty-nine seconds, Ed.”

  “You’re no fun, Frank. No fun at all.” Then he must have held the phone out for Tony to speak because his voice came through as from a distance. “Say something to Uncle Frank.”

  “Tony?” Frank asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “Location?”

  Ed’s voice came up close to the phone. “Uh-uh,” he scolded. “None of that. No reason to keep Tony around if he’s just going to blab our whereabouts. You want me to get rid of him? Is that what you want, Frank?”

  Frank’s anger rose up in him, but he kept control. “Put him back on.”

  Ed’s voice was far away again. “Go on, my minutes are ticking.”

  Frank said, “They touch you?”

  “I’m okay,” Tony said.

  Ed chimed in, “He’s got a mouth on him, but he’s learning real good, aren’t you? I’ll have him trained here soon enough. Maybe you’ll rent him to me.”

  Frank said, “Meese, you’re digging your own grave.”

  Ed’s voice was close now. “None of this would have happened if you had just lent us your car.”

  “Just like a con—everything is everyone else’s fault.”

  “Then Tony here went all Lone Ranger, saving the damsel in distress. My hands are tied. The boy’s got to learn: this is what happens when you stick your fingers in somebody else’s pie.”

  “I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”

  “Naw,” Ed said. “You can see it in his eyes—he wants payback. The material just hasn’t quite sunk in. Sometimes people are slow. But we’ll call you around ten. Just a few more hours and this will all be over.”

  “Ed—,” Frank said, but Ed hung up the phone.

  Frank looked at the phone, his anger running through him like ice. A few more hours gave Ed a total of nine on the road. Plenty of time to slip the net, to be so far away Frank couldn’t catch him. But it was the tone in Ed’s voice that chilled him. If Tony pissed those two off, if he threatened them, if they thought he would go to the authorities later, Ed would slip a bullet in his head and not look back.

  They’d have Frank to deal with then. Except they knew he had nothing. Frank hadn’t kept tabs on any of his cell mates. He’d tried to forget every last detail about them. And even if he could track down these two pieces of trash, it would be too late. Because Tony would be gone. Dragged to the side like road kill. And no amount of vengeance would bring him back.

  Frank was not going to lose that boy. “This plane go any faster?”

  “She’s topped out.”

  “But we have the wind,” Sam said.

  Pinto asked, “What did this Meese jerk say?”

  Frank related the details of the call, and then Pinto said, “If we were in California, I’d be calling a couple of my brothers right now.”

  “Ha,” Frank said. “I knew you were in WITSEC.”

  But Pinto was right: they needed more assets. Frank asked, “What about Henry? Can he put on a ferocious guard dog show?” A ferocious show of intent, even if Henry did nothing but bark, could put Ed and Jesus on their heels. There was something about a mouth full of sharp canines that tended to psychologically deter someone from contemplating stupid acts.

  “You’d be a bit hard pressed,” Pinto said. “He does the big happy slobber, and he fetches, mostly sticks and frisbees. That’s the extent of his current skill set.”

  “Maybe we can convince him Ed is a big frisbee,” Frank said.

  Henry knew they were talking about him. He woofed and thumped his tail.

  They flew on, the hills passing below them, the wind bumping the airplane every now and again. Frank thought of old Bowling Ball back in prison. He thought of the stories Ed told of his other victims. Then he used the rest of the time to think of ways he might break Ed’s neck.

  * * *

  About an hour and forty-five minutes after they took off, they flew over the last mountain range in southeastern Wyoming. The beginning of the great American plains rolled out before them toward Nebraska. A string of huge windmills rotated a few miles ahead of them. Beyond the windmills, Cheyenne rose from the landscape like a big oasis.

  Frank had a bit of a headache to go along with his low grade nausea.

  “We’re going to have to go south or skirt around,” Pinto said.

  “We got gas troubles?” Frank asked.

  Pinto pointed up ahead. “No, that’s Warren Air Force base.”

  “We don’t need to go that far,” Frank said. “I figure we drop down to I-80 and then follow it back.”

  “You feel good about your calculations?”

  He’d gone over them about twenty times in the last hour, and there were a hundred variables that could throw everything off. The fact was the more he thought about them, the less sure he became. “It’s a bit late if I’m wrong,” he said.

  “Roger that,” Pinto said. He radioed into Cheyenne Regional. They cl
eared him and gave him a code, which he punched into his transponder so they could easily track him on their radar. Then he banked a gentle turn and headed south for the interstate. The fields below stretched to the east. From here on out things just got greener and greener. Another hundred miles and it would be nothing but wheat, corn, and soybeans.

  Pinto kept close to the mountains. They passed the Air Force base on their left, and then the interstate came into view, the semis and cars racing east and west.

  “Why does he call you Jockstrap?” Sam asked.

  “I found God down in Pleasant Valley. I’d always believed, but prison makes you focus. For the first time in my life I started actually reading wisdom books—the Bible, some Buddhist meditations, books on the afterlife. Ed thought it was funny. Thought it was all a show for the parole board, which for many it is. He started calling me Preacher Shaw. Then he landed on ‘Jockstrap’ because I gave others such fine spiritual support.”

  “You want me to shoot this Ed fellow?” Pinto asked.

  “I just need you to fly.”

  Pinto took the plane across the cars and turned so they were flying parallel to the interstate. That way both Frank and Sam could get eyes on the road. Pinto slowed the plane way down. The pitch of the motor dropped. “We’re at 500 feet,” Pinto said. “This is as low as I can legally go unless I’m landing.”

  Frank picked up his glasses, found the interstate in them. He could make out the faces of the people in the cars. “This will be just fine,” he said.

  9

  Crosswind

  THE CARS AND SEMIS raced along the interstate. The motion of the plane and looking through the binoculars made Frank’s stomach heave. He chewed his gum that had long ago lost its flavor and took in measured breaths to steady his gut and kept searching, but there was no Ed, no Jesus.

  There was everything else. A bored male driver. A woman driver with kids in the back watching TV. A woman reading a book and a man spitting something out the window, probably shells from sunflower seeds. There were two adult men in one car singing and rocking out to some tune. There were Fords, Chevys, Toyotas, Hondas. There was some Ferrari-looking thing all black and low like it belonged to Batman. But there was no two-tone Nissan.

  Cars and trucks spaced in between semis. Semis spaced in between trucks and cars, all of them barreling down toward Cheyenne.

  Pinto kept the plane steady, and they followed the road back to the foot of the mountain range, and then up along the ridge. They left the controlled airspace around Cheyenne. A few minutes later they entered the airspace controlled by Laramie Regional and reported in the same transponder code. They followed the interstate up to the summit and the Lincoln Monument rest stop. Someone had thought it would be a good idea to refresh weary travelers with the sight of Abraham Lincoln’s head—it was bronze, set stylishly atop a thirty-five-foot granite base of stones, and about the size of a FedEx truck. Every day hundreds of weary travelers came chugging up the hill, and there was Lincoln looking down at them like a beacon, reminding them that this was still the blessed U. S. of A., even in the middle of nowhere Wyoming.

  But Frank wasn’t thinking about Lincoln. The rest stop had a parking lot and bathrooms. No reason for Ed and Jesus to stop, unless maybe their car was overheating after the steep climb up from Laramie and needed to cool off.

  Frank told Sam to keep his eyes on the road while he searched the parking lot. In the last twenty minutes Frank had seen a number of silver cars. A number of gray cars. He’d seen a few two-toned cars of various colors. But not the Nissan.

  Except what was that on the third row with dark cola glass?

  He looked closer, but it was some Volkswagen outfit.

  He cursed under his breath. Pinto asked if they needed to circle, but he told him to go on. The thought began to tickle the back of his mind that maybe his assumptions had been all wrong. Maybe they should have started farther east. They flew past Lincoln and followed the freeway which dropped into a canyon that ran down the other side of the mountain toward Laramie.

  Sam trained his glasses on the road ahead; Frank searched the stretch that was alongside the plane. Henry looked out his window as well; at what, Frank had no idea. But then Henry started to whine.

  “I believe Henry has got to go,” Pinto said.

  “Can he hold it?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The wind was pretty rough on this side, and the plane bounced around. By the time they reached the bottom, Frank was truly sick. “I should have taken a Dramamine,” he said.

  “I wondered about that,” Pinto said.

  “He’s not the only one,” Sam said, looking a little green.

  “Pantywaists,” Pinto said. Then he fished around up by his seat and produced two more barf bags just in case and handed them out.

  “At this low altitude, we’re going to need to stay clear of the airport,” Pinto said. “But I think we’ll be okay following the road.”

  “They should be well beyond this point,” Frank said. Well beyond. And then he realized they had another problem. The interstate through Laramie had four exits into the city. Each exit had its collection of motels, gas stations, restaurants, and truck stops. They were going to have to check the parking lots of each one of them.

  “Lord,” Frank said. “I think I’m going to go blind.”

  But he and Sam split up the work. One of them kept an eye on the interstate while the other checked all the parking lots and on-ramps. Frank figured this is where they’d miss them. And by the time they came to the last exit, he was sure they had slipped past or were already behind them when they’d first turned in Cheyenne. And that was if they’d even come this way at all.

  His heart began to sink. If they’d gone west, they could be in Nevada by now. South, deep into Colorado. He couldn’t imagine they’d gone north, unless Jesus had some drug distribution route that took him to Jackson Hole.

  Frank began to search the parking lots of the businesses around this last exit. There was a Wendy’s, a couple of gas stations, a Best Western, and some store on one side. He made sure to search in lines so he didn’t skip, but the Nissan wasn’t there. He flipped to the other side. There were two hotels with mostly empty parking lots. More importantly there was no Nissan in either of them. The last spot was a big truck stop with two buildings and what looked liked four acres of parking lot. It was huge. There were more than a dozen semis in the lot out back, and it didn’t even begin to fill the area. There were rows of parking for cars out front.

  Frank searched the rows. It took him so long he made Pinto circle round. But in the end, there was no Nissan.

  He sat back and sighed in frustration. It was now 7:01 p.m. Four and a half hours since Tony had been taken. There was no way Ed was going this slow. And he’d seemed smug enough when he’d called last, so Ed wasn’t broken down somewhere on the side of the road. Frank had missed him. Or he was tooling along hundreds of miles from here in another direction.

  Frank dialed Kim. No answer. He texted her: “you’re freaking me out! call now.” No reply. He dialed her home phone and went to voicemail.

  “What do you want me to do?” Pinto asked. “We’re getting close to the halfway mark. I’m going to have to turn back or set Yolanda down and get some fuel.”

  Option A, Frank just let Ed play out his game. But that girl had talked to Tony, which meant Tony knew things he shouldn’t. And even if he didn’t know things, Ed was involved. Option B, Frank called the cops. But with Kim not responding, he didn’t know she was safe. And Ed would want payback. If Frank sent him to jail again, Ed would most assuredly exact payback. And that payback would not be focused on Frank’s person. Ed would go after the kid; he’d go after Kim. So for Frank to pull this off, Ed needed to know that when he screwed with Frank, he was bringing a mountain down on top of himself.

  But Frank had nothing. It’s hard to pound a guy like an avalanche when you don’t know where he is. Frank brought up the keypad on his phone
to dial 911.

  Sam said, “I think I see them.”

  The words shot through Frank. He leaned forward. “Where?”

  Sam was looking through his glasses and pointed beyond the truck stop. “About two miles west of Laramie coming our way. They’re drafting behind that McDonalds semi.”

  Frank followed the interstate west, saw the McDonalds semi, saw it was a Nissan with his naked eye. He found the car in his binoculars. The windows were too dark to see in the back, but sitting in the front were Ed and his personal zombie Jesus.

  “Thank you vibrating genie!” Frank said.

  “Post hoc,” Pinto said.

  “How do you know God didn’t smite that car?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t care if it was Buddah or the University of Wyoming Cowboy. We’ve got our target.” Then Frank looked up. “Unless, of course, you were involved. Don’t want to give any offense.”

  The Nissan sped below.

  Frank started to get anxious. “Turn the plane around,” he said.

  Pinto executed a banking turn.

  Frank kept his eyes on the car. It rolled up to the outskirts of Laramie, exited the freeway, and headed for the huge truck stop. “I need to get on the ground,” Frank said.

  “The airport’s right there,” Pinto said.

  “No, by the time you call in and get down and then back up to spot for me, we’ll lose them. I need to get down here; while they’re in the truck stop. This is it.” Frank scanned the area for a suitable spot. “Look, there’s a road just a few hundred yards west.”

  “Maybe Heber can catch them,” Pinto said. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. A moment later, he said, “Where are you?”

  He and Heber exchanged their locations, and then he hung up. “Heber’s just past Elk Mountain. He’s about an hour away.”

  “Not good enough,” Frank said.

  “Is it even legal to land?” Sam asked.

  “There’s no FAA rule against using roads,” Pinto said. “As far as they’re concerned, you can land a plane anywhere. The great State of Wyoming hasn’t banned it either. But I don’t know if the controlling municipality has passed any laws. But legality isn’t the problem. The problem is that road. It’s one thing to land on a country road used mostly by jack rabbits out in the bush. It’s quite another to land on one close to town. You’ve got to watch for cars and power lines. A roadside sign can easily wreck a wing.”