and pushed himself to his feet. Gracie stood up, her face locked in shock, and stepped over to join him.
He cast his eyes around the suite, and a grim realization hit him. There was no transmitter in the room. No control master board. And no Danny either. He thought back to Ogilvy wandering around the stadium, to the shooters’ position when he’d come through the door. It had been a trap. They were waiting for him, using Ogilvy to draw him in. The transmitter had to be nearby—the signal had come from that general area—but it didn’t matter anymore. He was sure they wouldn’t have risked having Danny inside the stadium. He had to be outside somewhere. That is, if he wasn’t controlling the transmitter from across the state, or the whole country, for that matter.
Matt’s heart sank. He frowned as Gracie took a couple of steps and looked out through the suite’s floor-to-ceiling glass pane, into the heart of the arena. He edged over and joined her. The sign had risen through the open roof. Its bottom edge was just beyond the tangent to the roofline, dipping into the cube of empty air over the stadium floor. Father Jerome was still on the stage, his arms outstretched, mumbling a prayer. And every single person in the stadium was still standing.
A warble snapped his attention. It was Dalton’s cell phone. Rydell was calling.
He picked it up.
“We think we’ve got them,” Rydell blurted out breathlessly. “Get your ass out here. They’re here.”
Chapter 77
“Where? What’s going on?” Matt asked, his voice racing. “There’s a tall building that backs up against the entrance of the red lot on the north side,” Rydell said. “Might be a hotel, I’m not sure. It’s got a pool on one side and a parking lot all around it. There are four guys on the roof. They’ve got the launchers.”
The words were like an afterburner to his senses. He glanced out the glass wall. The sign was hovering over the stadium now. His mind rocketed back to Rydell telling him it could stay up around fifteen minutes before it burned out. He knew it wasn’t long before it would vanish, and once that happened, the crew with the launchers would also be gone. Taking Danny—if he was there—with them.
“Where are you?” Matt asked.
“At the east end of the lot, by the Center.”
Matt was recalling the park’s layout from the website they’d studied the night before. “So if I come out the north gate—”
Rydell jumped in. “Just head straight up across the lot and you’ll hit it, it’s about five hundred yards away.”
“I’m on my way. Keep this line open and keep me posted.” He turned to Gracie, his face alight with hope. “They’ve got a fix on the launchers. I’m going after them.” He stepped over to the downed shooters, retrieved two of their handguns, and stuffed them under his belt. He pulled his shirt out and let it hang down to cover them. “Come on. You get back to the car and wait with the guys.”
“You can’t go after them alone,” she protested.
“Don’t really have a choice,” he told her. “We’ve got to go.”
OUT IN THE RED LOT, Rydell and Dalton stood transfixed before the laptop’s screen. The Draganflyer was in a holding pattern about two hundred and fifty feet over the target, its night-vision lens on full zoom. They were probably the only people for miles not to be staring at the blazing sign that had now cleared the stadium’s roof and was hovering in the night sky above it. It was a mesmerizing, awesome sight, visible for miles around. The thousands of onlookers in the parking lots and on the jammed freeways were just rooted in place, utterly enthralled by the otherworldly apparition.
Rydell checked his watch. He knew what was coming, and sure enough, it happened almost on cue. The sign pulsed slightly, like a beating heart, then just faded out like a snuffed-out candle. The crowd reacted with an audible collective intake of breath and scattered cries of “Praise the Lord” and “Amen.”
He glanced at the screen. The guys on the roof were moving fast now, packing their gear. He knew how efficient they’d be. They didn’t surprise him. Within a minute, they’d stowed the launch tubes and the rest of their gear and disappeared into the building.
“Come on,” he mumbled, almost to himself, and craned his neck, angling to get a better view of the stadium’s north entrance, as if he could spot