“You are a cynic.” Sarah laughed.

“I know. What can I say? I founded the party and our numbers just keep growing. We have our government to thank for this.”

“Whatever happened to Jimmy Carter?”

“He lost to Ronald Reagan in the next election. Reagan wrinkled his brow, took one look at Iran on his way to take the oath of office, and the Iranians released all the hostages that day.”

“Reagan was that strong?”

“He had a big advantage. He was standing tall, on top of the heap of mistakes made by Carter. It’s always easier when someone else has cleared the way through the minefield. Carter tried to negotiate the release of the hostages. The Iranians used the negotiations to humiliate him. It failed. He tried a rescue mission. A U.S. plane and a helicopter collided in the dark in the desert, and that failed. The Iranians knew that the American public had reached the end of its tether. Americans weren’t just angry, they were mad as hell. It was the reason they elected Reagan. He had a mandate to kick the crap out of Iran, and the Iranians knew it. And he wasn’t coming into office on a platform of human rights singing ‘Kumbayah.’ It’s a noble concept, but worn on a presidential sleeve and advertised to the world as the guiding principle, it tells the devil more than you want him to know. The Iranians figured they’d milked the hostage crisis for all they could get. So why put Reagan to all the trouble of fueling up the B-52s?”

Harry could see the sign and the off-ramp coming at them fast, up ahead. He eased to the right and took the ramp up the incline. At the top he hung a right, went a little ways, and pulled into the truck stop. There were fuel pumps off to the left under a large corrugated metal roof. To the right was a hexagonal building with signs out in front, what looked like a shop and a restaurant.

“Tell you what, that looks like the restaurant, and maybe a small shop next to it,” said Harry. “I’m gonna drop you off right in front and go get gas so that we’re ready to go when we’re done. I’ll be over at the pumps. Why don’t you check out the menu, and here, get me a bottle of water.” Harry reached into his pocket for some cash.

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got money. You’re the one who’s hungry. Why don’t I get the gas, and you can go in and check the menu and get some water?”

“No,” said Harry. “Listen. I want you to go in and look at the menu. See what the place looks like. If you don’t see anything you like, we’ll go on to the next town.”

“Whatever.”

He drove over in front of the building. Sarah grabbed her purse and got out. She closed the door and Harry drove away slowly, heading in the direction of the fuel pumps about a hundred yards away.

Harry watched Sarah in the rearview mirror as she went inside the restaurant and closed the door. He wasn’t comfortable leaving her alone, even for a minute. But he had no choice. He glanced down at the car’s fuel gauge. He still had a quarter of a tank, plenty of gas to get to the next town.

Harry had been nervous as a cat since the previous evening when he’d failed to find a good truck stop to take care of business. It was why he’d parked the car so far from the motel the night before. If Sarah had known, she would have been in his face. It violated her rule of no more secrets.

Harry counted seven large trucks, sixteen-wheelers, parked in the back along a gravel strip just beyond the pumps. Off to the right there were four more big rigs. These were over behind the back of the restaurant.

Harry took one look and turned right. He figured there was a better chance that the drivers of these four trucks would be down out of their cabs, probably inside the restaurant having lunch. The last thing he needed was an ugly confrontation with an angry truck driver.

Three of the trucks were long-haul jobs with sleepers behind the cabs. One of them was hauling an empty flat-bed trailer. He didn’t like the rigs with the sleepers. Harry couldn’t be sure that somebody wasn’t up inside taking a nap. Instead he picked the red Peterbilt. The load on the back was covered by a tarp. It was perfect, and unless the driver was stretched out low across the seat, sleeping, the truck’s cab was empty.

Harry drove all the way around the back of the semitrailer, pulled up behind it, and turned off his engine. He stepped out of the car and stood behind the open door for a second, then looked around to make sure nobody was watching. He reached down into the wheel well of the car and pulled the lever. He heard the latch pop.

Harry quickly closed the driver’s-side door, went to the front of the car, and lifted the hood. He didn’t have to waste much time looking. Herman had done a good job. For Harry, driving with it for two days, knowing it was there, was like driving with a bomb under the hood.

Herman had located the GPS tracking devices a week earlier, about the time Jenny was murdered. He’d discovered them while doing an electronic sweep of the office and Paul’s house. The sweeps had become routine after they’d discovered a year earlier that the law office had been bugged during the period just before the attack at Coronado. Herman found nothing in the office or the house. But he got a weak signal from the front of Paul’s car, in the driveway, where he found the GPS device affixed to a magnet under the front bumper.

At that point he checked all the cars. He found similar tracking devices on Sarah’s VW bug, his own car, and Harry’s. The vehicles belonging to the rest of the office staff were clean. It was the reason they were confident that if they got the staff out of the office now, they would be in the clear. Liquida hadn’t targeted any of them because he figured there was no need. He could easily keep tabs on the two lawyers, Sarah, and Herman.

The tracker was smaller than the palm of Harry’s hand. It had a tiny antenna about the size of a toothpick and was shaped like a twig that swiveled out to pick up the satellite signal. For long-term power it was connected to the car’s battery by a wire from underneath up into the engine compartment.

The day before they left, Herman purchased two small batteries and went to work on Harry’s and Paul’s cars, the two they were going to use.

If he pulled the trackers and tossed them, Liquida would know it. So he disconnected the wire from the car batteries and reattached it to the new ones. The small battery would provide power for about five days. In Harry’s car the extra battery was held in place by bailing wire in an open area along the side of the engine compartment.

Harry used his fingers to unwind the wire. In a few seconds the battery came loose. He reached underneath and pulled the tracker off the bumper, and then fished it up from the inside using the power wire connected to the battery.

The normal GPS most people use plots the position of a vehicle on a map and shows it to the driver on a software-provided map displayed on a small screen located in the receiver. You key in your destination and the GPS either talks to you and tells you when to turn or shows you waypoints on the map.

But not the little tracker Harry had in his hand. It gathered positioning data and sent it to a remote receiver where it could be plotted in any number of different forms, including map references. You could purchase this service from several different vendors. It was used by employers to make sure drivers weren’t off on some private frolic when using a company vehicle. It could locate a stolen car or track a load of freight across the country, making it easier to project delivery schedules. In Harry’s case it would allow Liquida to track them right to the farm in Ohio, where he could stalk them at his leisure.

Harry glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. He walked over to the back of the semitrailer, lifted the tarp, and slid the battery underneath. Quickly he ran a loop with the bailing wire around the battery connecting it to the load under the tarp so the battery wouldn’t slide around. Then he dropped the tiny tracker into one of the steel postholes along the rear of the truck bed. He heard the metallic click as the magnet attached. Harry used his fingers to push the thin power wire from the battery into the crack between two of the scarred wooden boards on the bed of the truck. Then he checked the antenna. Unless the driver was neurotic, there was now a tiny twig that no one should notice just sticking up out of the posthole.