He had driven out of the Sierra Nevadas into the expanse of the Mojave Desert, past forests of gnarly Joshua trees. Some of the towns on his map were no more than rusty signs, boarded-up houses, and abandoned motels.

The car expired as he reached the intersection of Highway 136, coming from the Lone Pine Indian Reservation. The two roads met at a stop sign, but Spencer could not imagine two vehicles being on the road at the same time. He was totally alone.

He stood beside the open car door and peered into the distance. Nothing. The surrounding stillness swallowed all other background noise. He saw the volcanic Inyo Mountains in front of him, swirls of caustic white powder whipped up like dust devils from breezes over the dry lake bed to his left. He saw no blade of gra.s.s, no living thing other than a few mesquite bushes and cactus.

And he was stranded there. Spencer hoped someone would come by sooner or later. He listened to the wind. He popped the hood, listening to the faint sounds of gurgling and wheezing in the engine. The Mazda was a rental car, after all, but he could see nothing obviously wrong, no snapped belts, no loose hoses. The radiator had not overheated. The rotten-egg smell clung to everything, but he could not imagine where it came from. He sighed, feeling his stomach churn. This was supposed to be a relaxing trip, a way to get away from it all. Perhaps he had gotten too far away from it all. . . .

Ten minutes later, he was decidedly uneasy. Still no cars. Could people die out here because their cars broke down? Chances of a highway patrol cruising this section of road seemed slim. He realized with a sinking feeling that Rita Fellenstein had only a vague idea where he was. How long would it be before anybody started searching for him? Or would they?

He suddenly felt thirsty. There was no place for shade, and he did not want to leave his car. He had to stay there, just in case somebody came.

Just in case.

Fifteen minutes more. His shirt clung to him. How long would he wait? The desert silence was maddening.

Finally Spencer heard a throbbing in the air, a distant hum, and he snapped to alertness. He wondered if it might just be a plane flying overhead. He squinted down the road, watching the liquid heat make the air ripple over the blacktop like gasoline fumes rising from a tank. In the clear, empty air, Spencer heard the engine much sooner than he made out the shape of the approaching vehicle. As soon as he could discern a jeep clipping toward him at 90 miles an hour, Spencer stood in the middle of the road waving his hands.

What if the driver pa.s.sed him by? Spencer didn't usually stop to help people with car trouble. He redoubled his efforts and shouted, "Hey!"

The pitch of the oncoming engine changed as the driver downshifted. Spencer stepped back to his car, trying to figure out what to say.

His rescuer drove a black jeep jacked up for high clearance and off-road driving. The jeep slewed in a partial doughnut, spraying sand and gravel from the road shoulder as it stopped. The canvas top flapped from a loose snap, showing tools, a cooler, and rumpled clothes tossed in the back. Spencer walked toward the jeep as the driver's door popped open.

The young man's face was sunburned. The size of a football player, he looked clean-cut and friendly. He wore tattered jeans, a t-shirt with NAVY emblazoned on the front, and a broad grin. "Boy, lousy place for a car to break down."

"You're telling me!" Spencer said. "Could you lend me a hand? I think I've got a leak in the gas tank-I just filled up a couple hours ago, but I'm on empty already. You don't happen to have a spare can with you, do you? A gallon or two would get me to another town where I can dump this hunk of junk."

"Take more than a gallon to get to a town where you can trade in a rental car." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Bobby Carron. I don't have a spare gas can, but I do have a hose. We could siphon some of my gas into your tank. That should get you to Lone Pine, about twenty miles back on 136."

"All I need is a phone."

"Then that'll do ya. Ridgecrest is where I'm heading, China Lake Naval Weapons Center. A lot bigger city, but that'll take you an hour. If you got a leaky gas tank, I wouldn't chance it."

Bobby Carron rummaged around in the back of his jeep, finally pulling out a length of narrow hose. "I do a lot of off-roading in this puppy. Need to be prepared for most anything."

From the dust and caked mud on the sides of the jeep, Spencer could imagine some of the places Bobby Carron might have taken his vehicle. "Anything I can do to help?" asked Spencer.

"Yeah, pop your gas tank," Bobby said, sliding one end of the hose into his own tank. He got down on his knees, put the end of the tube in his mouth and sucked, puckering his cheeks as he drew gasoline out of his tank.

When fuel finally gushed out, Bobby grimaced and spat, then jammed the other end of the hose into Spencer's tank. The spoiled reek drifted out of the rental car's gas tank. "Problems with the catalytic converter, I think," Spencer repeated d.i.c.k Morgret's diagnosis.

Bobby sniffed. "I smell like that myself when I've had too much Mexican food."

Bobby let a few gallons flow into Spencer's car, then pulled out the hose, letting the gas trickle back into his jeep's tank. "That should take you far enough to get some decent help. Sorry I couldn't do more, but I gotta get back to the base."

"You're a life saver, Bobby. Thanks a million!"

Bobby made a dismissive gesture. "No problem. Glad to be of service." He rolled up the hose and tossed it in back of his jeep. "Let's prime your carburetor so you can get going."

Spencer let Bobby tinker under the hood for a few moments. "All right, try it!" Bobby said.

Spencer started the car, heaving a sigh of relief to hear the engine rumbling. If his tank did indeed have a leak, he would lead-foot it to the next town. He'd had enough of this supposedly relaxing side trip. It was time to call an end to this vacation, and just get himself back to White Sands.

Bobby Carron honked the jeep's horn as he spun around, then peeled off on the desert highway toward the China Lake Naval Base.

Chapter 25.

The coffee at Stanford's Tressider Union wasn't any better than the stuff from Iris Shikozu's own pot-but sometimes she just had to get out of the lab, smell the morning air, and watch the other students going about their business.

When she had only light teaching duties to muddle her post-doc work, she took a break each morning to sit under one of the red-and-white umbrellas at Tressider, sipping coffee as she read the student paper. But today she took a large cup to go and tucked a copy of the paper under her arm.

A shocking picture of a scrawny, grime-smeared black man holding an oil-smothered pelican dominated the front. An old photo of herself, oversized gla.s.ses and all, appeared in the lower right-hand corner. The article said that Stanford researcher Iris Shikozu had overseen the Prometheus spraying. The reporter made Iris out to be a patsy for the big oil company, while Todd Severyn and Alex Kramer, not to mention Oilstar management, were the bad guys. Some students, irate at her involvement, had made crank phone calls to her lab, but Iris just snapped back at them.

On the kiosks she had seen flyers announcing a rally against Oilstar that morning, but the turnout of protesters was much lighter than Iris expected-only a few people waving banners and attempting to pa.s.s out leaflets to other students who had no interest. Their noise seemed insignificant in the laid-back flow of students in the mall.

Stanford hadn't experienced a real protest in years, but she thought that frustration over the Zoroaster Zoroaster spill would have brought the demonstrators out screaming. Maybe everyone wanted to see if Prometheus worked before they complained-and although thick crude continued to gurgle from the sunken tanker, the spreading slick was shrinking measurably. spill would have brought the demonstrators out screaming. Maybe everyone wanted to see if Prometheus worked before they complained-and although thick crude continued to gurgle from the sunken tanker, the spreading slick was shrinking measurably.

A few people claimed a connection between Prometheus and the rash of car breakdowns supposedly caused by a "bad batch" of gasoline from the Oilstar refinery. To disprove those rumors, Iris herself agreed to perform a quickie a.n.a.lysis for one of the TV stations looking for a scoop, just to prove that the two couldn't be linked. She had even shipped blind samples via overnight mail to a few of her colleagues.

Now, as she took her styrofoam cup of coffee and made her way across campus, dodging bicyclists and skateboarders, Iris barely noticed the groups of students playing tag-football, frisbee, or just lazing in the sun. By the time she returned to her lab, the combustion-product spectrograph a.n.a.lysis of the bad gasoline would be complete.

The door to her lab was unlocked. Refilling her cup from the coffee pot at the table, Iris listened to the answering machine. After a message from the TV station querying about her a.n.a.lysis, Todd Severyn's tw.a.n.gy voice came on, stuttering in an attempt to ask her to return the call. She smiled. It must have been hard for the old cowboy to ask her to do that. I wonder what he'd be like in bed I wonder what he'd be like in bed . . . . . . . .

Sipping the coffee, Iris strode around the gas chromatograph hooked up to the experimental chamber, then slid into the chair and tapped on the keyboard. This would prove once and for all there was no connection between the breakdowns and Prometheus.

A long string of numbers appeared, highlighting an array of expected parameters. Frowning, Iris clicked on an additional data file and compared the two in silence. It didn't make any sense.

She put down her cup, intently watching the screen. The jagged trace of a spectrograph jittered across the monitor, exactly matching the first.

She ran back her a.n.a.lysis of the Prometheus microbe eating the spilled oil and a sample she had obtained of the supposedly bad gasoline.

No difference.

The Prometheus microbe had infected the gas tanks in the cars that had broken down.

They can't can't be the same! she thought. There was no vector. How did the microbe find its way into the gas tanks? be the same! she thought. There was no vector. How did the microbe find its way into the gas tanks?

Her hands shook as she ran through her computerized rolodex to find Kramer's number at Oilstar. First the Prometheus reaction rates were drastically different from what she had observed with her control specimen. Now, the organism seemed to have gotten into automobile gas tanks. Had it found a way to go airborne? Before giving her unofficial OK to the spraying operations, Iris had run numerous tests on the control sample-none of this should have been possible.

Unless Kramer had used two different microbes: one for her initial tests, and a more voracious one to be sprayed onto the Bay . . . where it would cause all sorts of havoc.

After six rings, a computerized voice instructed her to leave a voicemail message for Dr. Kramer. She hung up and tried again. Who could she call if Alex wasn't around? She tried to remember-there was that jerk at the party . . . what was his name, Mitch.e.l.l Stone? She dialed again, asking the Oilstar operator to connect her. Iris waited impatiently for him to answer, then finally slammed the phone down.

d.a.m.n! She brushed her black hair with a quick swipe and reached for her coffee. Draining the dregs, she paced, thinking of Mitch Stone, then Kramer's party . . . then Todd Severyn. She brushed her black hair with a quick swipe and reached for her coffee. Draining the dregs, she paced, thinking of Mitch Stone, then Kramer's party . . . then Todd Severyn.

It would would be an excuse to call him. Otherwise, that Wyoming cowboy would keep bugging her until she went out with him, saying "ma'am" and "aww, shucks" every chance he got. Normally, she wouldn't allow herself to be distracted by personal affairs, but there was something about him . . . was it his honesty that attracted her to him, or his naivete? be an excuse to call him. Otherwise, that Wyoming cowboy would keep bugging her until she went out with him, saying "ma'am" and "aww, shucks" every chance he got. Normally, she wouldn't allow herself to be distracted by personal affairs, but there was something about him . . . was it his honesty that attracted her to him, or his naivete?

She decided to wait before calling Todd to see if he knew how to reach Alex Kramer. She would recheck her work. First order of business. Drawing in a breath, she turned back to the spectrometer. She vowed to watch over every incubation period, recheck every procedure until things turned out right.

Things didn't turn out right.

Iris watched the screen, at a loss for words. Being overly meticulous, she had taken three hours to go through the two-hour checklist. In the meantime she placed cautious calls to the labs where she had Fed-Expressed blind samples the day before. Her colleagues confirmed her a.n.a.lysis, but she gave them no details.

Kramer's microbes were breaking down the oil spill, and now they were in the gas tanks. Eating gasoline.

Another quick call to Oilstar confirmed that Kramer was still out. Frustrated, she hung up the phone just in time to have it ring again, startling her. She grabbed the receiver, but it was only the TV news crew bugging her about the a.n.a.lysis. She put them off by using multisyllable technical jargon and saying she needed to recalibrate her results. If she talked now, she would send them into a panic!

Her mind started to reel with the implications of what she had discovered.

No use putting it off anymore; Todd might know how to reach Kramer. Plus, he probably had more common sense than most Oilstar people. Or anyone else, for that matter. She tapped the black lab table for a moment, then returned to the phone.

Rewinding her answering machine, she listened to the message again and dialed Todd's number.

Chapter 26.

Just off the exit ramp Connor Brooks could see the colored lights of BP, Union 76, Sh.e.l.l, Chevron, Texaco, and Oilstar gas stations. If Connor was going to rip anybody off, he decided it should be Oilstar. No question about it. They had already done enough to him.

He had hiked in the breakdown lane from the dead hulk of the lavender Gremlin as traffic whooshed past. Though it was ten o'clock at night, cars pulled in and out of the gas stations cl.u.s.tered in the exit-ramp oasis in a steady stream.

He glanced at the cars at the pumps, but did not see what he was looking for, nothing he could use. The tile-roofed station looked too quaint to be real. He went inside the Star-Shoppe convenience store and, using some of the money Dave Hensch had given him, bought one of the three-foot-long ropes of jalapeno beef jerky. The overweight clod running the cash register looked about as interested in his job as an Army doctor checking a thousand new recruits for hernias. All the better, Connor thought. Then he went out to stand at the pay phone.

Connor chewed on his beef jerky, picked up the phone and pretended to talk into it as he watched the cars come and go.

A mustard-yellow Volkswagen bus, a silver Honda, a red Nissan pickup, a Chevy, another Honda, a Toyota, a big black Caddy, a rusty pickup piled high with old furniture and cardboard boxes, a low-rider El Camino, three Winnebago campers in a convoy. He saw college students in the cars, families with kids, grandma and grandpa with a poodle barking behind a rolled-up window, a group of college girls coming back from a skiing trip.

But Connor saw no opportunities. Still, s.h.i.t would happen, if he waited long enough.

He hung up the phone, walked around the building, then went back to his vigil. He had eaten all but four inches of his beef jerky by the time he made his move.

An old station wagon with fake wood sidewalls pulled up; it had only one man inside. The driver opened the door and clambered out, dressed in old jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, needing a shave, and stumbling as if he had been driving for the last four years without a break. Like a horse with blinders on, the gangly man headed for the rest room. He left the station wagon's lights on, the engine running. Perfect.

Connor strode toward the car. Hesitation only wasted time.

By the time the driver had slipped through the battered gray door of the men's room, Connor reached the station wagon. Not the type of vehicle he would have preferred, but he wasn't picky.

He opened the driver's door and slid inside. Connor's heart pounded. No one had seen anything yet. Maybe this would teach the jerk to be more careful next time.

The seats were worn, and the interior smelled like burned garbage. The ash tray overflowed with crushed-out cigarillo tips. Connor scowled. Slob! But he didn't care, as long as the car could take him to Flagstaff, Arizona. He adjusted the seat, gunned the engine, then put the station wagon into gear. "Ready or not, here I come!"

Just as the station wagon started moving, the gangly driver suddenly walked out of the rest room. He stopped for a moment, as if astonished to see someone stealing his car. Then he jumped in front of the station wagon, waving his hands for Connor to stop.

What? Does he think I'm stupid?

Connor jammed the gear shift into reverse and lurched away from the driver. The man had stringy black hair, dripping wet, as if he had just gone in to splash cold water on his face. His flannel shirt hung unb.u.t.toned over a grimy t-shirt, flapping like wings as he flailed his arms.

Before Connor could put the car into gear again and drive the other direction, the driver s.n.a.t.c.hed at the door handle. "a.s.shole! Get outta my car!"

Connor used his elbow to shove down the door lock, then reached behind him to lock the back and the pa.s.senger side doors. The driver shouted, pounding on the windows, yelling for help.

Connor gunned the engine again and began to move. People turned and stared at the scene. For G.o.d's sake, Connor thought, did the whole world get extra points for causing him trouble?

The driver threw himself in front of the car, hammering his fists on the hood. Connor tried to swerve, but in a split instant he realized that even if he did get away, the driver would call the police, give the license number of his car, a description of the thief-and the highway patrol would be crawling all over the interstate looking for him in no time. Christ, what a mess!

It would be better if this guy couldn't say anything coherent for a little while, Connor thought. Just a little while.

Without spending a lot of time checking it out with his conscience, Connor yanked the steering wheel to the side and brought the station wagon around into the shouting driver. Beside the gas pumps stood a black oil drum with a plastic liner. Connor swerved to knock the man into the trash barrel.

He didn't notice the concrete support pillars holding the barrel in place. The station wagon crushed the driver into the barrel and then the reinforced concrete pillar. Instead of toppling the trash can out of the way, the car smashed the man with a loud, sickening crunch. The front b.u.mper of the station wagon struck him at the hips, ramming into the unyielding cement. The oil drum buckled.

A flower of blood burst out of the driver's mouth, accompanied by a scream that Connor barely heard. He pulled the shift into reverse, backing the car away.

The man fell to the pavement. The crumpled oil drum rolled on top of him. Other gas station customers began shouting, running toward him.

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" Connor said. "Why didn't you get out of the way?" If he stopped to help the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he'd be caught red-handed stealing the car. When the cops ran his ID check, they would find the outstanding Zoroaster Zoroaster charges. All because this jerk felt his c.r.a.ppy old station wagon was worth dying for? Of all the stupid things! charges. All because this jerk felt his c.r.a.ppy old station wagon was worth dying for? Of all the stupid things! No thanks. No thanks.

The car's owner lay bunched against the gas pumps as two people bent over him. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose. The fat kid swaggered out of the Star-Shoppe to see what the fuss was about, then turned so pale his pimples faded.

"Forget this!" Connor said, then stomped on the accelerator pedal, spinning tires and squealing out of the parking lot.

He could get back on the Interstate, hook east on the 210, then north on I-5 to I-40, which would take him to Flagstaff. If he didn't stop, he could make it in six or seven hours.

It would take the cops an hour to figure out what had gone down at the gas station, even longer if the driver wasn't in any condition to talk. Connor could sail right past them. And the highway patrol would expect him to try to vanish into the sprawl of Los Angeles, not head east to the state line.

Besides, it wasn't his fault.

Connor roared up the entrance ramp, flowing into the relentless stream of traffic. Behind him, the lights of the gas station oasis dwindled in the distance.

Now he was home free.