“A two-hundred-buck jacket and a seventy-five-buck replacement allowance,” Harry lamented.

“That thing’s bright enough for any three jackets, Harry,” Waylon advised. “Submit in triplicate.”

“I’ve tried before. The bean counters only pay in monotone.”

Waylon turned my way. “You didn’t see any features, Carson?”

I put my hands in front of my eyes as if holding binoculars. “They were all wearing those full-face helmets used in racing. Gloves. Shades. Hell, I couldn’t tell you if they were white or black. Didn’t see an inch of skin.”

“Plates?”

“Taped. Duct tape. I noticed it when the bike dropped, filed it away. I did manage to note body types. I had a well-built guy as one of the drivers – the bike that stayed up – maybe six to six two. Wide shoulders, slim waist. He had a heavier, shorter passenger, leaning to fat, maybe why I hit him in the love handle. The other two bikers were pretty large, six two to six four. Shaded to the slender side. The passenger on the first bike, not the injured guy, had a ponytail out the back of the helmet. Brown and greasy, like a foot of dirty rope.”

I saw the picture in my head, but it was like I wasn’t there.

“Nice memory, Carson, and the description’s pure poetry,” Waylon said, writing in a neat little leather notebook. “How about the guys in the truck?”

“The guys in the truck weren’t roaring at me. Grubby clothes, medium builds. That’s about all I recall of them.”

Waylon nodded, wrote a couple lines.

“Anything from the local hospitals?” I asked, figuring the wounded guy would at least be dropped in the parking lot of a clinic or hospital by his accomplices. Maybe they’d simply taken him somewhere to die. But that was at odds with the guy who’d been boosting him into the truck.

Waylon said, “Nada. At least so far.”

I leaned against Waylon’s cruiser and replayed the action with a clear head. It had been planned by someone with both intelligence and a penchant for detail. I figured the gunners had planned to blow twin barrels of double-ought through our windscreen, one guy targeting Harry, the other one me. The Harleys would roar away just as the truck zoomed up from behind, ready to handle any clean-up chores, like if Harry or I were still breathing through our headless necks.

The only fly in the planner’s ointment had been the intervening freighter. Had Harry and I not been train aficionados, I never would have looked through the freight-cars, noticed the shotguns coming out. The oncoming bikers and the shooters in the following pickup would have blown us apart in ten seconds and been on their merry way.

I heard a squeal of metal over metal as the Crown Vic was pulled from the wreckage of the old train station. It would be winched on to a platform tow truck and taken to forensics for a full inspection. There were no windows remaining and the panels were pocked with holes, thankfully most of them on the trunk side with only a couple of holes in the upper quadrant of the door panels.

Harry stood beside me and watched as a worker ran up and sprayed a still-smoldering tire with a fire extinguisher. A door fell off as the winch groaned the car backward.

My hand started shaking. I jammed it in my pocket.

Dr Matthias sat down at his laptop, entering data. He’d spent the whole day inside, re-reading texts he’d already perused a half-dozen times. But one had to be sure. The texts were always interesting, dealing with the migration of early human tribes. There was a great deal of information on the measurement of nucleotides contained in DNA, the haplotypes. The diversity of the genetic variations decreased with distance from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This had been discovered within the incredible amount of work accomplished on the Human Genome Project, a project that Matthias had been instrumental in organizing, at least in its early days.

The HGP had generated so much information that biologists and geneticist would be analyzing it for years, drawing conclusions, building theories, making major leaps in the understanding of biology, medicine, evolution, human genetic diversity and its manipulation, accidental and otherwise…could the word eugenics be used any more? No, but perhaps something useful would replace it, a term that carried no baggage. Eugenics, as he had discovered, was politically incorrect.

Matthias started to close down his computer, but paused. He saw an end to this leg of his research, and there was much to do back in Mobile. Drawing threads together. Checking on Anak and Rebecca and finding them better lodgings than out in the hinterlands. Reporting his latest findings to his employer. Wouldn’t that be interesting.

Matthias opened his Bookmarks list, tapped an entry. The British Airways site opened. That would do just fine. A flight to Atlanta, then the connection to Mobile. All he needed was to assemble his final report. The prices for flights were insane, he thought as he studied the schedules. But he wasn’t paying, so First Class it was.

He filled in a few boxes. Reserved his seat for the return flight.

When we got back to the department, word of the ambush had spread and we had to relive the moment for the other cops, trying to keep it brief. Since there had been no eyewitnesses, the description had been minimized, morphing into what appeared to be a robbery attempt by some bad boys on motorcycles, foiled when the innocent travelers they had chosen at random turned out to be cops. There had been enough weirdness in the press of late, what with a baby found on a beach – more minimization – and an attempt to steal the baby from the hospital. We didn’t want the public spooked any more than necessary, plus, unfortunately, such stories weren’t all that unusual any more.

Harry decided to see if forensics had picked up anything useful from the scene, and I went along to kill time. The lab was a flurry of activity as techs analyzed shell casings, glass from a broken motorcycle headlamp, photos of tire marks on the roadway.

“Hey, there they are,” called a voice at our backs. “I was just about to call you.”

We turned at the voice, saw Ed “Pieboy” Blaney, the forensics guy who handled the automotive division. He took the nickname from his lunch habits, which were the same every day: a piece of pie and a cup of coffee from a bakery off Old Shell Road. Didn’t matter what kind of pie it was, as long as it was fresh made. Cherry, pecan, mud, peach, coconut cream, grasshopper…all were fuel for Pieboy’s singular passion, the study of cars.

“Hey, Pieboy,” Harry said. “S’up?”

Pieboy ran a pink hand through thinning blond hair. He was pear-shaped, probably an effect of all the pie. Or maybe the spare tire was showing empathy for cars.

“You guys are tough on vehicles. What, you moonlight in demolition derbies?”

“You sell it for scrap yet?” Harry asked.

“About to. We’re done with it.” He dug in his pocket. “Here’s why I was calling. I got something to show you.”

He picked up a metal disc, tossed it to me. It was the size of a fifty-cent piece, black anodized case, a small wire embedded in a worm of clear glue on one side. On the other was a rough patch of rubber cement.

Harry stared at the disc. “A bug, right?”

“A GPS locator. And a fine one at that. Expensive.”

“Where was it?”

“Stuck to the rear undercarriage. I almost didn’t see it. It’s basically a sophisticated version of tracking systems folks put on their dogs’ collars to let them know where Fido is at any given moment. Didn’t find any prints, unfortunately. This version probably cost a couple grand with the satellite receiver. They knew your location down to about a ten-foot circle.”

“We’re two dead dogs,” Harry said.