“No,” he admitted. “It’s not just that. I swore to protect my city, and now bastards are shooting at innocent people and thousands are still trapped. Right there in the Superdome, men have been beaten to death. NOLA is going to pieces. If I get on a bus, I’ll be a rat abandoning a sinking ship.”
She reached out and covered his mouth with her hand. He kissed her fingers and then took her hand between his. “I got to stay. This is my home. I’m a New Orleans cop, and I can’t leave my people defenseless. And you got no time to lose. The only way you’ll ever catch him is by getting there ahead of him. We don’t know if that’s even possible, but you have to try.”
She nodded, understanding.
“Go. Track him down. Take him out.”
“Like a bloodhound?” she suggested, trying to make light of it.
“You’re no bloodhound. You’re my supercop.”
They went around the rear of the bus, where the police officer was waiting. He beckoned to them.
Two armed soldiers were posted at the rear door as another pair worked their way down the waiting line, choosing priority evacuees. One approached Bobby and Nana. He saw Bobby was holding her up. “Is that your mama?”
Bobby nodded.
“You two get on the bus.”
A chorus of protest broke out. The soldier ignored it and continued down the line.
Bobby staggered forward carrying Nana. At the bus door, another soldier gestured toward a pile where people had abandoned the bundles and plastic bags they’d dragged across the city for days.
“No more than one small item per person,” the soldier ordered. “Take your documents, your medicines, only the most essential things. They’ll give you everything else you need when you get to Houston.” Bobby turned to show the little pack hanging behind him. The soldier checked it quickly and with a jerk of his head sent them on board.
Amaia saw transparent plastic sacks filled with photographs, some still in their frames, kids’ toys, stuffed animals. Black-and-white images burst into her mind. She shuddered and shook her head, trying to clear it of those blurry black-and-white photographs of Nazis forcing Polish Jews to abandon their possessions in the Kraków ghetto.
Amaia turned to Charbou. “My pistol! I can’t identify myself; Lenx might be in line, maybe even on the bus. Even if he isn’t, when I tell them I’m FBI, I’ll have a hell of a time explaining later why I didn’t ask for help or use military channels to contact Quantico. I can’t give up my gun.”
Charbou’s expression was earnest. “He won’t take it from you.”
“How can you be sure? He’s searching everyone they let on the bus.”
“Just look at him,” Charbou said. “He’s a young guy, pretty much a kid playing soldier. He doesn’t know if he’s in the USA or Afghanistan; it’s all the same to him. He’s treating these people who’ve lost everything like scum. And then look at you—white girl, pretty, and he’s going to make you ride in a bus full of black folks. Give me your ballistic vest, and maybe he won’t even notice.”
Appalled, she stared at him. “But what are you saying?”
He was deadly serious. “Do what you need to do. And don’t let him take your weapon.”
She turned to study the people in line. A woman was approaching the bus, held up by her teenage sons. She was weeping bitterly.
One of the soldiers peered at her. “What you crying for, ma’am? We’re rescuing you.”
She lifted her head and stared him in the eye. “That really what you think, son?”
An hour before midnight, one of the soldiers motioned to the policeman, who signaled her to get on the bus. Charbou grabbed her by the waist and quickly kissed her. “Go, supercop. Go get him!”
She returned the kiss, pressed herself against him, pulled away, and hurried to the bus without looking back. Her money, cards, and badge were carefully tucked away, but as Amaia had feared, the soldier saw the pistol holstered at her belt. “Miss, you can’t get on the bus carrying a weapon.”
“I have a permit,” she murmured, doing her best not to call attention to their exchange.
“That doesn’t change things. Those are the regs. No weapons. You have to leave it here.”
She shut her eyes and then—feeling as low as she ever had in her life—she opened them, looked into his eyes, and pleaded in a whisper, “Listen, I’m all alone. Two times they nearly raped me, and this was what saved me.” She waved a hand toward the worn faces of sleeping passengers pressed against the windows. “I can’t go in there without protection.”
The soldier looked in the direction she was pointing. Two seconds passed, and they seemed like an eternity. Then he looked away and waved her on board. Amaia stepped up and took an aisle seat, the only one left. She scanned the crowd outside and caught a glimpse of Charbou just as the bus pulled away.
He raised one hand and kept it high until the bus disappeared from sight.
The woman sitting in front of Amaia reached into her blouse and took out a photo. She held it up so the young man beside her could see it. The image was of a teenage girl with dark eyes and long, curly hair; a girl seated beside her, younger, was looking up at her adoringly. Both were smiling. The elderly woman kissed the photo and began to weep.
“It’s all gonna be all right,” he consoled her. “You gonna be with me, and I can take care of you till we come back home.”
“Promise me that,” the old woman begged.
“I promise you, we gonna come back home.”
Amaia shut her eyes.
The trip to Houston took six hours. Registration and accommodation at the Astrodome took another two. She walked out then and, in twenty minutes, found a taxi. The driver told her the car rental agencies had no more vehicles but took her to a used-car lot operated by a friend of his. On the strength of her FBI badge and still valid Massachusetts driver’s license, the owner agreed to a one-way lease at an exorbitant rate, provided she deposited the equivalent of ten days’ rental and returned the car to his brother-in-law’s lot in East Austin. The three-year-old Lexus had no navigation system, but he told her all she had to do was get on Highway 290 and follow it to Austin.
Three hours later, as she was approaching the capital, she stopped at a service station to buy an Austin map. It turned out that the address Landis had given her wasn’t in Austin proper but in Lakeway, a municipality twenty miles west.
It was almost noon when Amaia pulled up before an impressive two-story house on a residential street just three blocks from the town center. She got out, surveyed the carefully landscaped yard, and noticed oil stains on the concrete driveway in front of the vast garage. It was obvious that someone regularly left an automobile parked outside, but the car wasn’t there now. She stepped into the yard to take a closer look.
A woman pushing a baby carriage passed along the sidewalk and went up to the house next door. Amaia was glad she’d made herself more or less presentable in the gas station bathroom and put her blond hair up in a ponytail. Her blouse was relatively presentable, much more so than her stiff, stained trousers. She hoped the Lexus she’d rented in Houston would help vouch for her.
“They’re not home!”