Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede - Bradley Denton (best thriller books to read TXT) 📗

table that held a Mac, a video monitor displaying a stretch of country road, and oscilloscopes, receivers, transmitters, and other gadgets, including Ringo’s blue eye.

“Impressive, huh?” Pete said as he sat down at the Mac and began typing. “I paid for the flying lessons, but she bought all of this herself. She does systems consulting at eighty bucks an hour, when she can get it.” He saw me looking at the video monitor. “The road surveillance camera was Mike’s idea. They started setting it up while you and I were working on your Ariel yesterday. It took them longer than they thought it would, though. If they’d had it ready sooner, I’d’ve known Curt was coming. Not that it would have made much difference.”

“They should’ve asked me for help,” I said. “I’m a whiz at that sort of crap.” I thought, not for the first time, that it was the only thing I was a whiz at.

Ringo let out a howl, put his front paws on the table, and rubbed his nose against the monitor. Pete and I looked at the picture but saw nothing. Ringo barked at us.

Then, far down the road, a black speck appeared.

I yelled and ran for the stairs, Ringo bounding ahead of me. As we reached the living room, Gretchen emerged from the spare bedroom.

“What’s all the goddamn noise?” she asked.

“The Bald Avenger’s coming!”

I must have run to the utility room, pulled on my helmet and gloves, and sprinted to the garage with Pete and Gretchen close behind. The next thing I remember clearly is being on Peggy Sue, following the Oklahoma Kamikaze down the driveway at gravel-slinging speed. Gretchen was in the Barracuda with Pete, and Ringo was running alongside me and the Ariel. The Doberman stopped at the mouth of the driveway.

As Peggy Sue bounced onto the road, I saw that the Bald Avenger’s Jaguar was within a hundred yards. The Kamikaze ran right at it, and the Jaguar swerved toward the ditch. The Kamikaze blew past, and the bike and I squeezed by just as the Jaguar began to swerve back to block our path.

I didn’t look behind to see whether the Jaguar was able to turn around in the narrow, muddy road. I knew, though, that Ringo wouldn’t let it use the driveway. He had elected to stay behind and guard the Holden homestead.

When we reached the highway, Pete waved for me and Peggy Sue to take the lead. “We slipped him!” he yelled out his window as the Ariel and I passed, and indeed, the Jaguar was nowhere in sight. But I didn’t expect that to last long. When the Bald Avenger reached the highway, he would know what direction we had taken by the trail of mud we would leave behind.

For the first time in days, the sun was breaking through the cloud cover. I would have a scenic ride until the Avenger ran me into the ground. Which would happen eventually. Pete and I had ten cylinders between us, but the Avenger had twelve.

When he caught up, he was going to set his foot down on me and never lift it.

SHARON

Notes on client Oliver Vale, continued…

Monday morning. After holding us in custody for twenty-four hours (we slept on vinyl divans in our interrogation room), the Texas Rangers have released us.

The reason: Buddy Holly’s grave is empty.

Either Oliver is already in Lubbock, or the world as we know it has come to an end. Either way, the Rangers see no purpose in holding us any longer.

Likewise, I have told Bruce that there is no point in continuing to Lubbock. If the authorities can’t find Oliver there, then we have no hope of finding him either. I still want to help him, but I will have to wait until he contacts me or is captured.

Bruce is relieved that I have “come to my senses.”

Yet I feel that I have done just the opposite. There are things going on that I cannot understand and that I can do nothing about. But I have always felt in control of myself, of my friends and clients, and of my world. Thus my sense of failure. Thus my anger at Bruce, who is connected with that failure.

I know, rationally, that I cannot be responsible for everything. The radio tells us that there is panic, even looting, in every major city of the world and many of the minor ones. I’m not responsible for that, am I?

The radio also tells us that Buddy Holly TV broadcast does in fact originate on Ganymede. Oliver is either an innocent or an extraterrestrial.

And I know I don’t have anything to do with that.

… unless the clues have been there all along in his behavior and in the things he has said in private and in the Group. In his stories about his mother’s UFO studies and her belief that he is the reincarnation of Holly…

Perhaps we should be paying more attention to what the broadcast has said: “For assistance, contact Oliver Vale.”

Perhaps he has been chosen as liaison between us and Whomever. Like in that old movie with the giant chandelier.

The radio says that the Ganymede signal has not repeated itself since it began. Technology aside, no human being would have the patience to create three days of that.

But whatever he is, human or alien, Oliver is my friend. And I wish that I could help him.

RICHTER

Early Monday, his leg and mind well rested, Richter left his Lawton hotel room and drove to the Comanche County sheriff’s office. There he presented his FCC identification and asked to see all reports of regional “Oliver Vale sightings.” He made it clear that, for security reasons, there was to be no record of his visit.

Most of the “Vale sighting” reports were the ravings of crackpots, but two caught his eye. The first stated that an elderly couple had spotted Vale at two-thirty in the morning, and that he had been in the company of a muscular woman. The second stated that a housewife had observed a certain Peter Holden hauling a motorcycle on his flatbed truck a short time later.

Richter hadn’t seen the vehicle that had stopped at the rest area while he had been hiding under the Jaguar, but its engine noise had been that of a truck. It could have been a flatbed.

He handed the second report to the sheriff. “Directions to Holden’s,” he said.

The sheriff shook his head. “Don’t bother. A deputy checked this out, and it turned out to be nothing.” He chuckled. “Lucky for that Vale character that he wasn’t there. My deputy says Holden’s got himself a big old Doberman that like to bit his arm off.”

Richter’s leg began throbbing.

“Directions,” he said.

He would have them this time, and since he was no longer on the assignment, he would have no one to answer to for what he did.

They wouldn’t even know that he was coming.

Except that, somehow, they did. He was driving slowly, looking at names on mailboxes to be sure he found the right place, when a white muscle car exploded from a stand of trees and came at him. It happened so quickly that he couldn’t see who was inside, and he was barely able to swerve to the edge of the road in time to avoid a collision.

Then he saw Vale. He swerved back, hoping to block the motorcycle or hit it, but he was too late.

Ahead of him, standing beside a mailbox, was the dog who could spit bullets.

For an instant Richter was torn—but if he stopped to try to kill the Doberman, Vale would disappear yet again. Richter turned the Jaguar around and pursued. The muscle car and the motorcycle were already out of sight, but that meant nothing. This time the chase was in daylight. He would find them again soon.

And when he did, he would not aim for the tires.

SKYVUE

The two smiling, dark-suited ministers of the Corps of Little David emerged from the projection room, Khrushchev glared at them.

“Everything all right?” Eisenhower asked.

“All of our equipment is in working order, praise the Lord,” the taller minister said. “Satan’s hellish waves have no effect on our video projector.”

“The Reverend Willard blessed it before we brought it up from Oklahoma City,” the second minister said.

“Satan’s hellish waves wouldn’t bother it regardless of whether it was blessed,” Khrushchev said. “It’s closed circuit, without broadcast reception capability, right?”

The tall man nodded. “Indeed, brother—”

Khrushchev growled. Eisenhower elbowed him.

“—for the Reverend Willard wishes to be seen and heard by all in this community and the surrounding region who wish to see and hear him. Even as he stands atop this building, preaching courage during this campaign of the Antichrist, his image shall be relayed from our cameras to the projector, and thence to the screen of this theater, larger than life, a beacon of Truth—”

Khrushchev put a finger into his mouth and made gagging noises.

The minister stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“My associate is grumpy because he hasn’t been able to watch reruns of My Mother the Car on his five-inch color set since Satan’s broadcast commenced,” Eisenhower said.

“And if you jerks broke that little TV while you were futzing around in there,” Khrushchev added, “you can forget about getting your deposit back.”

The second minister cleared his throat. “I believe we agreed on a rental fee of six thousand dollars.” He handed Eisenhower a check.

“That’s right,” Eisenhower said. “You do understand that we can’t provide security officers?”

“No matter,” the tall man said. “The Corps of Little David will provide its own security. After all, the Reverend William Willard himself will be here.”

“We know, we know,” Khrushchev said. “And we aren’t going to collect the admission fees for you either.”

“We wouldn’t want you to,” the second minister said. “We’ll have a member of our Ladies’ Auxiliary in the ticket booth.”

“And I believe that concludes our business for now,” the tall man said. “I trust that our equipment, tools, and accessories will remain undisturbed until our projectionist arrives.”

“Of course,” Eisenhower said.

“Assuming that the blessing holds up until then,” Khrushchev muttered.

The two ministers left.

Eisenhower regarded Khrushchev sternly.

“What’re you looking at?” Khrushchev snarled.

“Are you trying to ruin everything?” Eisenhower asked. “What if they’d taken offense and called the thing off?”

“I’d be delighted. As it is, this place is gonna be packed with several thousand Willyites who’ll be whipped into a frenzy by their Fearless Leader’s apocalyptic hysteria. It’s bad enough that your Buddy Holly stunt has instigated violence in major metropolitan areas, but now it’s going to happen out here in the sticks too.”

Eisenhower looked thoughtful. “Could be,” he said.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Khrushchev bellowed. “Don’t you care?”

“Yes.”

“Then why let Bill Willy come to our birthplace and pollute it until it’s as rotten as the rest of the fleshbound world?”

Eisenhower went to the projection room’s doorway and looked inside at the video projection equipment.

“Because,” he said, “everybody likes a good show.”