Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [110]
“Can I help you with something?” the man asked, motioning with his clipboard.
Janos ignored him.
The man stepped closer, trying to cut him off. “Sir, I asked you a question. Did you hear what I—?”
Janos whipped the clipboard from the man’s hands and jammed it as hard as he could against his windpipe. As Spring Break doubled over, clutching his throat, Janos stayed focused on the parking lot, where the black Suburban was just pulling out of its spot.
“Shelley . . . !” a fellow miner shouted, rushing to Spring Break’s aid.
Locked on the gleaming black truck, Janos raced for the lot—but just as he got there, the Suburban peeled out, kicking a spray of gravel through the air. Undeterred, Janos went straight to his own Explorer. Harris and Viv barely had a ten-second head start. On a two-lane road. It’d be over in no time. But as he reached the Explorer, he almost bumped his head getting inside. Something was wrong. Stepping back, he took another look at the side of the truck. Then the tires. They were all flat.
“Damn!” Janos screamed, punching the side mirror and shattering it with his fist.
Behind him, there was a loud crunch in the gravel.
“That’s him,” someone said.
Spinning around, Janos turned just in time to see four pissed-off miners who now had him cornered between the two cars. Behind them, the man with the Spring Break ’94 T-shirt was just catching his breath.
Moving in toward Janos, the miners grinned darkly.
Janos grinned right back.
56
WITH MY EYES ON THE rearview mirror, I veer to the right, pull off the highway, and follow the signs for the Rapid City airport. There’s a maroon Toyota in front of us that’s moving unusually slow, but I’m still watching our rear. It’s barely been two hours since we blew out of the mine parking lot, but until we’re on that plane and the wheels are off the ground, Janos still has a shot—a shot he’s aiming straight at our heads. Slamming my fist against the steering wheel, I honk at the maroon car. “C’mon, drive!” I shout.
When it doesn’t budge, I weave onto the shoulder of the road, punch the gas, and leave the Toyota behind us. Next to me, Viv doesn’t even look up. Since the moment we left, she’s been reading every single word in the Midas Project notebook.
“And . . . ?”
“Nothing,” she says, flipping the notebook shut and checking her side mirror for herself. “Two hundred pages of nothing but dates and ten-digit numbers. Every once in a while, they threw in someone’s initials—JM . . . VS . . . there’s a few SCs—but otherwise, I’m guessing it’s just a delivery schedule.”
Viv holds the book up to show me; I look away from the road to check the schedule for myself.
“What’s the earliest date in there?” I ask.
Resting it back on her lap, Viv flips to the first page. “Almost six months ago. April fourth, 7:36 A.M.—item number 1015321410,” she reads from the schedule. “You’re right about one thing—they’ve definitely been working on this for a bit. I guess they figured getting the authorization in the bill was just a formality.”
“Yeah, well . . . thanks to me and Matthew, it almost was.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“But it almost was.”
“Harris . . .”
I’m in no mood for a debate. Pointing back to the notebook, I add, “So there’s no master list to help decipher the codes?”
“That’s why they call ’em codes. 1015321410 . . . 1116225727 . . . 1525161210 . . .”
“Those are the photomultiplier tubes,” I interrupt.
She looks up from the book. “Wha?”
“The bar codes. In the lab. That last one was the bar code on all the photomultiplier boxes.”
“And you remember that?”
From my pocket, I pull out the sticker I ripped off earlier and slap it against the center of the dashboard. It sticks in place. “Am I right?” I ask as Viv rechecks the numbers.
She nods, then looks down, falling silent. Her hand snakes into her slacks, where I spot the rectangular outline of her Senate ID badge. She pulls it out for a split second