Roses Are Red

Chapter Sixty-Four

Betsey was already on another line talking to Kyle Craig. They were making a plan to get us to Tinden, Virginia, in a hurry. Mrs. Morris continued to talk my ear off, literally. Bits and pieces were coming back to her. She told me that she had seen the tour bus turn on to a small, country road not far from where she lived.

"There are only three farms on the road and I know 'em all very well. Two of the farms border a deserted army base built in the eighties. I've got to check this funny business out for myself," she said.

I interrupted her right there. "No, no. You sit tight, Mrs. Morris. Don't move a muscle. We're on our way to you."

"I know the area. I can help you," she protested.

"We're on our way. Please stay put."

One of the FBI helicopters searching the nearby woods was brought over to the railroad station. Just as it was arriving so did Kyle. I'd never been so glad to see him.

Betsey told Kyle exactly what she hoped to do in Virginia. "We take the chopper in as close as we can without being spotted. Four or five miles from the town of Tinden. I don't want too large a ground force involved. A dozen good people, maybe less."

Kyle agreed to the plan, because it was a good one, and we were off in the FBI chopper. He knew the agents at Quantico he wanted involved and he dispatched them to Tinden.

Once we were on board the helicopter we reviewed everything we had learned during the bank robberies. We also began to receive information on the area where Mrs. Morris had seen the bus. The army base she mentioned had been a nuke site in the eighties. "ICBMs were kept underground at several nuke bases outside Washington," Kyle said. "If the tour bus is on the site, a concrete silo could shield it from heat-seeking search helicopters."

Our chopper began to settle down on to an open area near a regional high school. I glanced at my watch. It was way past six o'clock. Were the hostages still alive? What sadistic game was the Mastermind playing?

Bright green athletic fields stretched out behind an idyllic-looking two-story red brick school. The entire area was deserted except for two sedans and a black van waiting for us. We were four or five miles from the state road where Mrs. Morris had seen the' Washington On Wheels' bus.

Isabelle Morris was sitting in the first sedan. She looked to be in her late seventies, a stout woman with an inappropriately cheery, false-teeth smile. Somebody's nice grandmother.

"Which farm should we go to first?" I asked her. "Where might somebody be hiding?"

The old woman's bluish-gray eyes narrowed to slits as she thought. "Donald Browne's farm," she finally said. "Nobody lives there these days. Browne died last spring, poor man. Someone could hide out there easy."