"How can I get in touch with somebody who was on that train? A conductor, maybe?"

The woman picked up a phone. Minutes later Knox relayed his request to a supervisor in his office. The man made some calls and told Knox he was in luck. One of the conductors who'd been on that train had just gotten back to town. He came in an hour later to the station after the supervisor phoned him. He was shown the picture but didn't recognize the man. Knox handed him another composite with the beard and glasses removed.

"Yeah, this could be the guy who got in the fight."

"Fight?"

"Laid out three guys a lot younger than him on the train."

"Is that right?"

The conductor went on to explain what had happened, ending with Stone and the other men getting off at the next station. He told Knox the name of the town.

"He wouldn't give me any ID. Offered to get off the train instead. Little suspicious, I thought."

"Did you get the names of the other guys?"

"Nope. They said they'd get off the train too and they did. No skin off my nose. Saved me from filing a police report. Damn punks."

"Give me descriptions of all of them."

After Knox finished writing this information down he glanced at the supervisor. "Can you pull the ticket records for that train trip?"

"Yeah, but we can't match them to faces on that train."

"I'll take a list of the names anyway. Something might turn up."

The manager printed out this information and gave it to Knox.

"So is this something big?" the conductor asked eagerly.

"So big you'll probably never hear anything about it ever again. And I'd strongly suggest that you two gents forget I was ever here."

Knox hustled out of the station with Annabelle following. His truck rumbled off from the parking lot and the van eased after it.

The Rover picked up its pace and threatened to leave Caleb and Annabelle behind. When Caleb started cutting in and out of traffic in an effort to keep up, Annabelle told him there was no need.

"But we'll lose him."

"No we won't." She pulled a small device from her bag. "When I was in his truck in Georgetown, I placed a transmitter under the seat. It has a range of about twenty miles."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?"

"I'm sorry. I've had a lot on my mind."

Caleb grumbled for a bit but then said, "That was a pretty good idea. Putting that in his truck."

"And that way we can hang back a little just in case he's checking."

"He strikes me as a man who checks and often."

"Me too."

"So Oliver took a train?"

"Appears to be."

Knox's Rover turned on to Interstate 66 heading west. After traveling out past Gainesville, the Rover exited off the highway.

"I don't believe the train goes this way," Caleb said.

"Let's just see where he's headed."

Twenty minutes later Annabelle said, "Shit! There goes my perfect record."

They watched as Knox climbed into a chopper and it rose from the ground in a whirl of power.

"Now what?" Caleb asked.

"Back to Union Station, just as fast as you can." She glanced at Caleb with a quizzical look. "Wait a minute." She grabbed her camera. "Take off your ball cap and that sweater."

"Why?"

"I need to take your photo."

She snapped his picture. "We'll stop on the way into town at a photo place. And then I'll need to grab a laminator and some other supplies."

"What are you going to do?" Caleb said as he put the van in drive.

"You're about to change careers."

CHAPTER 41

THE CHOPPER DROPPED Knox off about thirty miles from the town where Stone had detrained. A truck was waiting for him there. The aircraft had come courtesy of Macklin Hayes, who had sounded heartened over the phone that Knox finally had grabbed hold of a solid lead.

His instructions to Knox had been clear. Locate Carr but do not move in.

"Phone me and I'll take it from there."

I'm sure you will, General.

When Knox pulled into the town he decided he'd better hit the first place that looked promising. His prayers were almost immediately answered. The sign of the One T restaurant loomed ahead. He parked, went in, settled himself at the counter and ordered some food. There weren't many people in the place, but still, Knox figured if Carr had come by to eat after ditching the train someone could remember seeing him. He showed his composite and asked his questions and thirty minutes later he walked out, not knowing much more than when he'd gone in.

Neither the people behind the counter nor the customers were the observant type apparently, or else didn't like to volunteer any information about anybody. All he got in response to the artist's comp were dull shakes of the head. Even the flash of Knox's creds had not helped matters. In fact, it might have hurt. Knox had to keep in mind that around here the federal government was probably only a bit more popular than Osama bin Laden.

There was a bus station, he found, though it was now closed and wouldn't reopen for a while. Apparently folks up here didn't need to travel every day.

Knox sat in his truck and studied his map. The terrain around here was rugged and the towns few and far between with the roads connecting them two-lane and serpentine. He decided to find a place to sleep and start anew in the morning. He would have to come back to the bus station when it reopened. He'd asked around about the people that worked there, but they operated on some sort of circuit basis and wouldn't be back in town for a couple days. Yet Knox was counting on the bus station to pop for him if nothing else turned up in the meantime. There were probably limited ways out of this dump, and a bus was at least one of the more promising ones. Carr might have taken one after losing his ride on the train.

The motel was yellow-painted concrete and crummy, the rates so low they were easily covered by his government per diem. Crackers and a soda constituted room service that he grabbed out of the vending machine outside the tiny office. He showed the artist's comp to the manager but the man shook his head and went back to his TV and can of Bud. Knox spent another hour roaming the streets, showing the picture to passersby and shop owners. Either no one had seen the man or else they wouldn't confess to it.

Knox sat fully clothed on the bed in his room, crunching his miniature cheese and peanut butter sandwiches and sipping his diet Coke. He channel-hopped from wars to natural disasters to corruption scandals to ESPN, NASCAR, and finally settled on the TV Land channel watching, of all things, a decades-old episode of Happy Days.

Carr was the hunted and Knox the hunter. Those were the official roles anyway. In reality those identities could be switched at any time, and with Carr's skill level, the odds that they would reverse at some point were pretty good. And after what he had learned, Knox had quite the misgivings about his exposed rear flank, because there lurked the master of the ambush and blame game, Macklin Hayes.

He pulled out his phone and punched in the number.

"Hello?"

"Melanie, it's Dad."

"Hey, I was just thinking of you. Do you want to get together tomorrow night? I've got center orchestra seats. Wicked is playing."

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I can't. I'm out of town."

"Where are you? Paris? Amsterdam? Kabul? Tikrit?" Her tone sounded light and upbeat, but Knox knew his daughter well enough to sense the anxiety behind the casual words.

"I'm a little west of you. And a little rural."

"Terrorists hiding out in the hollers, Dad?"

"You never know, honey. Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"I got an e-mail from him this morning. He sounds good. He sent some pictures. There was some bad news, though. His deployment was supposed to be up in four weeks but they just got notice of extension for another six months. Apparently the Taliban is really coming back with a vengeance. Mark said they're pulling twenty thousand troops from Iraq to send to Afghanistan and he might end up there."