THERE WAS A quick shorthand discussion between Joe and the other men in the team. Routes and a timetable were roughed out. Then the motel room emptied. Knightly and a partner drove out of the lot first. Munder and his wingman took the second car, and Joe and I took the third position out to the Sea to Sky Highway.
I could imagine that this roadway must be gorgeous in daylight, but the empty two-lane highway was unlit, and the impenetrable woods to the left and the steep, treed cliffs rising a hundred feet straight up on our right seemed menacing.
Joe’s phone was in a holder attached to the vents in the dash, and he was in ongoing communication with Knightly. Knightly was also on the phone with the two CIA cars ahead of us, the truck and the sedan that had been following Muller’s convoy from the moment they left her safe house.
Word came down the line that Muller’s three cars had split up. Knightly’s voice crackled over the speaker.
“They made us, goddamn it. We don’t know which god-damned car she’s in.”
New plans were hatched, and Knightly reported to Joe that our team had now also been split, assigned different routes with hopes that someone would locate Alison Muller’s car.
Joe punched coordinates into the GPS and stepped on the gas. The car leapt forward, and Joe drove fearlessly, hugging curves and speeding at eighty through blackness and dark shades of gray.
I was frankly scared out of my mind, watching the needle bounce around the dial as we shot through the wilderness. Joe was gunning it over ninety when our headlights flashed on a sign for Whistler Resort.
Joe spoke over the phone to Knightly. “We’re passing Whistler now. On track to that airfield in Pemberton.”
More conversation ensued, Knightly saying, “I’ve notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. If we don’t catch up with her shortly, we’ll see you at the airfield.”
Joe slowed to a steady seventy miles per hour, and when an intersection came up on our right, he whipped around to make the turn too fast. The car fishtailed on the empty roadway, then regained traction, and we headed east and picked up speed. Starlight and a sliver of a crescent moon revealed the ghostly shapes of trees looming alongside the road and a glimpse of the Lillooet River.
Joe glanced at the GPS map, said to me, “Hold on,” and took the turnoff to Airport Road at near sixty.
I was holding on, but the Audi’s wheels hit a rut. The steering wheel bucked under Joe’s hands and the car slewed hard to one side, then the other. I may have screamed.
Knightly was on speaker and he was saying, “We’ve lost her.”
The word her was just out of his mouth when the connection shattered into squawks and static hissing.
Joe yelled, “Knightly! Knightly, can you hear me?”
No, he couldn’t. We had lost our connection with our lead car and had no idea where in the world Alison Muller was.
“Well, this is just perfect,” said Joe.
And then, just ahead of us, another turn branched out under overhead lines. Joe took the turn at way too fast and our tires slid on gravel. The car rocked onto two wheels; then, as before, the tires grabbed and we shot on ahead under an endless, gunmetal-gray sky.
CHAPTER 91
AS WE TURNED onto the airport road, the Coast Mountains, which had formed a forested and impenetrable wall off to our right, were now dead ahead. In front of us and as far as we could see was flat meadowland, rectangular in shape, like five football fields placed side by side and divided by a ten-foot-wide rut of a road.
As we took that dirt road, our headlights hit a cluster of lightweight aluminum sailplane trailers parked haphazardly up ahead and to our left. Peering into the dark, I could just see a small airplane hangar at the far end of the road and off to the right. I could make out several cars to the right side of that hangar, their headlights illuminating a pair of small, stationary airplanes on a landing strip. The runway appeared to be at an angle to the hangar, heading east-west and parallel to the mountains.
Joe doused our lights, eased his foot off the gas, and slowed the car to a crawl.
“That’s got to be her,” he said. “See if you can raise Knightly.”
I reached over to the phone and pressed the Redial button, but as before, there was only static.
I clicked off, then tried again.
I heard bursts of Knightly’s voice, and I shouted, “We’re at the airfield. They’re here.”
Only crackling came over the speaker.
“You’re breaking up. Please repeat,” I said, but the connection failed again.