Termination Shock

After the tanker exploded, Squeegee Ninja ran down the line of gas pumps to the parking lot beyond, obviously headed for the location where Burrito Guy’s semi rig had been parked. It was no longer there because Burrito Guy—who had got back to the rig without incident a couple of minutes earlier—had put it in gear right after the explosion and pulled out to a greater distance from Ground Zero. The bafflement of Squeegee Ninja was clear from his body language—one could almost see a huge exclamation point and question mark hovering in space above him—but then he turned his head in the direction of the truck and homed in on it. Fifteen seconds’ sprint across the parking lot took him to the passenger door of the rig, which was already rolling forward as he scampered up into it. Within moments they had passed beyond the purview of T.R. Micks’s security cameras. From one angle, though, it was just barely possible to see the rig’s turn signal flashing out on the main road as it approached the on-ramps to Interstate 15. The truck was headed south.

At the same time, the drones were headed back to the little RV. Three had gone out. Two came back. The consternation of the RV’s occupants was obvious. Where was the third drone? Equipment was fiddled with. Heads were shaken. Fucking binoculars were produced and used to scan the disaster scene. Again though, body language was eloquent as these two guys concluded, Fuck it, that thing is toast, let’s get out of here! Which they did, signaling the same southbound turn as the semi had done a few minutes earlier.

> There will be a drone that was left behind at the site. Maybe destroyed. But maybe someone there has found it.

> Will inquire

Rufus turned his attention now to the strange case of this turban-wearing badass who roamed the western U.S. in an anonymous semi rig shadowed by high-tech drone geeks in a small but expensive RV (those Sprinter conversions didn’t come cheap, and this one looked new).

It was but a few moments’ work to turn up many examples from all over the Western world of turbaned Sikhs being mistaken for Muslims and persecuted as such by people who took a dim view of the religion of Islam. So this was just another case of that.

Noting his sudden interest in the Sikh religion, YouTube helpfully revamped his feed, expunging videos about wild horses, feral swine, drones, eagles, the Dutch royal family, and climate change, and replacing them with a slate of content featuring various aspects of that religion and culture. Scanning through those, Rufus’s gaze snagged on a clip showing a dude in a turban brandishing a sword and standing in the middle of a ring of spectators, giving some kind of martial arts demo. Or maybe a dance performance? His hopping and twirling movements seemed far removed from any fighting style that Rufus had ever seen. But he had seen a similar move performed recently, at Pump 37G, when Squeegee Ninja had inexplicably sensed that Revolver Man—who was behind him—was fixing to shoot him in the back.

This—once he’d confirmed it by split-screening the YouTube guy and Squeegee Ninja—sent Rufus down two parallel tracks. One, which was fairly trivial, was familiarizing himself with the martial art in question. It was called gatka and it made a lot of use of sticks—which explained why the subject of this inquiry was so handy with a squeegee. The other, which was more of a brainteaser, related to the drone operators in the RV and the nature of their relationship to Squeegee Ninja.

> Found it. You will have it later today

> Thanks

Rufus replied, pausing briefly to wonder how that delivery was going to be accomplished. Was T.R. going to charter a jet? A jet helicopter? Both? Probably.

His initial, obvious assumption had been that the guys in the RV were in some sense adversaries of Squeegee Ninja and Burrito Guy. Because they were all kinds of sneaky and sinister. The fly in that ointment was obvious, once Rufus gave it a moment’s thought: the RV had pulled in ahead of the semi. It must have been miles ahead of that rig on the interstate. If they were covertly tailing the rig, they would have to, well, tail it. Not drive way ahead.

So maybe they were all members of the same team, split across two (or more?) different vehicles. This would help explain certain other oddities that Rufus had noticed about the actions of Squeegee Ninja. There were a couple of moments when he had exhibited situational awareness that was pretty fucking exceptional. Rufus had frame-by-framed the interval between Revolver Man cocking the hammer of his weapon and Squeegee Ninja making his move for the Bug-Solv bucket. It was—well, either a mere coincidence or superhuman. And shortly thereafter he’d made his eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head move.