There are times when all the logic one can possibly bring to bear on events simply won't solve the problem at hand. If you're fortunate, this is merely a matter of crucial information not being available as quickly as you'd prefer. If you're very unfortunate, it's a matter of lacking the time to think at all. Indeed, the latter sort of incident is demonstrated on the highways of the world on a daily basis, too frequently in the form of fatal collisions.

I was all too aware of the possibility that we were about to end our careers with the Institute in exactly that manner as Wayback gunned the engine. Having ridden with Buckaroo for many years, I was not especially troubled for my own life, but it was quite impossible to be certain which of the other cars were being piloted by Xan's minions and which carried civilians. If we'd been convinced that there were only bravos on the road with us, I might have enjoyed the contest, but the chances of that were exceedingly slim. Any miscalculation from Wayback could too easily cost innocent lives as well as our own. Thus far, he'd been making the right moves, but they were close enough to textbook responses that they could easily have been taken into account already. One does not always surprise the other side by inverting the expected; there are times when tangential motion is far more effective.

Wayback, it seemed, was accomplishing this in more than one respect, although I didn't immediately realize it. Having been forced away from the last exit, he had no choice but to cross the bridge, something he was no longer inclined to do in a sedate or readily predictable manner. On wet pavement alone, the traffic we were in would have made it an impressive bit of driving had he done no worse than sideswipe someone. With the windshield in pieces across the dash and seat, it should have been flat out impossible. He should have felt compelled to step on the brakes hard, or else try for nothing more complicated than straight line driving; instead he was making the chase cars work hard just to keep up.

It is perhaps a measure of my own state of shock that it took me several long seconds to notice what he was doing, and the better part of a minute to question it. By that point it was clear that he either knew what he was up to or was exceptionally talented at making it up as he went. Certainly this was something that went far beyond anything I could write off to pure luck, but the accomplishment was considerably more pertinent just then than his methodology. Even now, far removed from those perilous moments, I am not altogether certain that understanding would have eased my mind immediately about anything more than the breadth of his informal education. Those of us privileged to live and work at the Institute often become even more pragmatic in some respects than we were upon arriving there, and much more open-minded in others, but Wayback was ahead of the usual curve in that regard from the moment we'd first seen him. He'd spent just enough time on the streets as a youth to have discovered no source of knowledge regarding psionic abilities was to be discarded lightly, even sources which could best be described as third-hand.

Regular readers of these chronicles will know that I have described our first encounters with most of our gypsy residents to some degree of detail in previous volumes. While I have always been somewhat constrained in regard to issues touching upon their personal security, I have nonetheless made mention of several instances when each of them displayed abilities none of us had seen at close range before. Jet and Cameo in particular were almost evenly matched; although it had taken some while (and no little intervention from Raven) before any of the rest of us realized they were sisters, they'd trained with and against each other for more years than either wanted to admit. Raven herself was only scarcely a late-comer in that regard, and had competed or cooperated with either or both of them as circumstances demanded since her own childhood. All three had been known to pull the proverbial rabbit out when it really counted, sometimes at significant personal risk.

As the first of them to make residency, however, Jet bore the brunt of Wayback's personal disapproval. Cameo, and later Raven, had only been following a rather questionable precedent so far as he was concerned. None of this meant he was above studying whatever information he could get regarding any of their psionic abilities; the notion that they could accomplish anything telepathically or telekinetically that he couldn't learn to duplicate had simply never occured to him. If one -- or all -- of them could navigate effectively in zero visibility conditions without hitting friendlies or missing targets, then it was clearly possible. He only needed to work out the proper approach. At present, it was really only an issue of locating other minds and maintaining enough distance from any and all of them to allow for the space a vehicle occupied. This was something much simpler than the kind of tactical plot our gypsies might use; separating bravos from civilians wasn't an absolute necessity when the former would make their own locations plain enough by behavior alone. Nor was it needful for Wayback to try to locate the inanimate steel of the bridge span when he could use the relative locations of other drivers as a indicator of his own lane positioning.

This was hardly something the bravos could have expected him to maintain for more than a few heartbeats, even presuming they'd allowed for his attempt to outrun them at all. The sniper was sufficiently taken aback that he missed a hastily aimed second shot at our rear, apparently an attempt to stop us permanently there on the bridge, or at least to limit the distance we could travel to that allowed by whatever gasoline would remain in a punctured tank. The cars intended to box us in and force us over at a spot of their choosing were relegated to a flat-out chase role instead, something they certainly hadn't intended. Altogether it added up to something other drivers on the road reacted to rather differently than you see in the movies; while it's true most of them did their best to stay out of the immediate action and some even collided, Hollywood's idea of pursuits inevitably involves rather more spectacular degrees of damage and never seems to include so much as one civilian motorist bright enough to try using a car phone to call the local police.

Already alerted to the possibility that something might be going down along the interstate in their jurisdiction, the St. Charles Police had been in the process of getting a car on station just west of the bridge when we'd cleared that position. This made the incoming citizen call merit more attention than was normally the case for something in motion eastbound that close to the county line, and dispatch passed the information on to the marked unit headed that way. The officer behind the wheel immediately flipped on the lights and siren and put her foot on the gas pedal as hard as road conditions allowed; her partner changed frequencies on the radio and called ahead for the Bridgeton PD to intercept.

None of this affected Wayback's driving. I believe it entirely likely that he was unaware the authorities were being alerted; tracking where he was and what he was doing might not actually have required his full attention, but it was something he'd never conciously attempted before. It was also something he couldn't continue indefinitely even if his concentration never faltered. Sooner or later the bravos would start targeting the other vehicles as a deliberate tactic to force us to stop. Without knowing the area, finding any real cover was unlikely, which meant the best we could realistically hope to do was take this away from the innocent bystanders before someone else was killed. Doing so was going to make navigation much more difficult, and our chances of losing our pursuers, already slim, would nosedive, but there really wasn't much help for it.

We were curving down the first available exit ramp almost before I realized it. What little I could see of the signage indicated a large industrial park on the north of the interstate, and the visible terrain to the south seemed to lack buildings altogether. The light at the bottom was definitely red, a single car waiting for it to change, and Wayback pulled the wheel even further to the right to take the clear path to the south. The intent expression he'd worn on the bridge had softened considerably, as though lives of those on the highway were more than sufficient repayment for whatever fate had in store for him. It was a look I have seen come over more than one face in my time with the Institute, though never without mixed emotions of my own. On this occasion I could only wonder if studying "Replay" had taught him something about keeping the likes of Xan out of his own head; it is one thing to accept death without fear and quite another to understand that there are worse fates.

***

Aware that the eastbound span of the Blanchette Bridge was blocked by a multi-car pileup, a St. Louis County officer took the Earth City Expressway exit to make his routine turnaround instead of making the normal momentary out-of-juridiction swing through the edge of St. Charles just at the west end of the bridge complex. Everything to the north of the interstate along here was Bridgeton's turf; they could just pick up anything in the two miles or so he was leaving uncovered today. It wasn't like it was going to hurt him in terms of stops or arrests anyway; chasing speeders was a questionable manuever there to begin with, and with even a one-car accident on either span everyone wanted to gawk, not speed. Besides, in this weather, who wanted to pull people over just for speeding anyhow?

He'd just come to a stop at the bottom of the ramp when something flashed by to the south of the overpass. A second look through the now-diminishing rain confirmed that he had a possible target, a blue Camero going southbound on the the Expressway at much too high a speed for conditions. There was next to nothing south of the interstate to justify that; if it had been someone late for work, the moron should have stayed on I-70 for the next exit, then left I-270 at Dorsett to get there; it would have been a lot quicker. This meant that the driver was probably up to something more serious. The officer switched on his lights and sirens before putting his foot back on the gas, and was just starting southward himself when an unmarked white panel van followed the Chevy down the ramp going excessively fast as well, clearly trying to keep up with the sportscar. "All units, all units," Dispatch said from the dash radio, "I have an APB for a blue 1987 Chevy Camero, partial Missouri plates six two niner, and a green 1986 TransAm, partial Missouri plates whisky three eight, both wanted in connection with a 15-car accident on the I-70 bridge. Both vehicles may also be involved with the attempted murder of Team Banzai personnel. Subjects in the Camero are two Asian males between the ages of 30 and 35, medium build and height; the TransAm is driven by a male caucasian, approximately 25, red hair, about 200 pounds. Subjects may be heavily armed."

He picked up the mike and identified himself. "I have a blue Camero southbound on the Earth City Expressway, followed by a white panel van, both speeding. Request backup and ambulance." He wasn't sure what was up yet, but he was willing to bet that neither driver had a clue about the first bend in the road. Things were about to liven up considerably.

***

Wayback learned about the curve almost at the last minute himself when another car came around it toward us before we got there. But for that lone driver, and the fact that the Canadian hadn't quite given up tracking everything alive, we would undoubtedly gone crosscountry. At one time this might have been intended to eventually become a 4-way intersection, but something had prevented that, leaving only a 90-degree turn in the middle of a field without anything to show why the street department had made it break left so abruptly. We only just made it around that curve on the pavement, going somewhat more than 10 mph in excess of the posted bad- weather speed limit. That was not fast enough to maintain the distance between ourselves and the first of the chase cars. It had trouble with the turn as well, not gaining as much ground on us as I would have expected, but gaining nonetheless. Something larger behind it which I couldn't see well enough to identify didn't make it at all, bounding over the shoulder to lose traction, if not more than that, in the field beyond.

We were just starting to hear sirens when a break in the rain let us see the stoplight at the next intersection. If anything, the turn that looked most likely to carry us away from bystanders was almost as sharp as the first one had been, and I braced for an impact with the signal standard that probably would have ended the chase, if not someone's life, had we hit it. Somehow, Wayback kept it under control, only to have to brake hard and swerve a few hundred yards later in order to avoid colliding with a police car arriving on the scene. Belatedly we realized we hadn't taken the rain coming through the destroyed windshield into account when we'd estimated that the sirens had been much further away.

Behind us, the blue Camero wasn't so lucky. With his self-confidence buoyed by success in the first turn, the driver had put on a bit more speed in order to catch us and thus missed the yield lane altogether, blowing through the intersection into a broad U-shaped loopback. Trying the southward turn again, he noticed the St. Louis cop too late to avoid that vehicle. The resulting collision took down the standard Wayback had so narrowly avoided, and every light in the sub- grid went out at once.

I put my pistol on the dash and my hands on my head to wait for officers to come over. If they were really the police, I didn't want to be mistaken for a threat. If not, then there was little I could do about it.

***

Pecos and Big Norse were the first to emerge from the relative cover of the door to dash for the bus, sidearms out and seeking targets they didn't encounter. Rawhide spent another moment under shelter from the weather, not commenting about Buckaroo's orders although it was clear he would have prefered to bring up the rear himself. Once he moved out with Dingo across his shoulder, however, he wasn't slow about it; even if Dingo was one of Xan's spies, that didn't make him, or anyone with him, any less of a target for whatever bravos might be about.

This left Buckaroo alone with Jet, something he would not ordinarily have felt any need to make excuses for. He didn't waste the time asking her if she was up to this; she wasn't, really, and they both knew it, but it had to be done and there was little use delaying. Still, she was probably the prime target. "Here," he said, stripping off his own jacket and handing it over. He could not help but think back briefly to a day some three years before when she'd forcibly loaned him her well- abused flight leather and wonder if she'd been any more certain she was doing the right thing than he was now.

From the way she looked at him when she took the black leather, he began to think she remembered the garment, or at least one enough like it to understand how this one was rigged. She slipped it on fast enough to suggest that warmth wasn't the highest consideration, and wasn't surprised at all when she put one hand in and immediately pulled a matte-black .22 autoloader out of the concealed hold-out holster built into that side of the jacket. The gun looked almost toylike in her hand compared to her usual choice of sidearms, but there was nothing playful about the way she checked the load before handing it to him. If the body armor had calmed her to the point she'd rather he be armed, so be it. He'd tried arguing with her about tactical issues almost three years ago and didn't expect to be any more successful now. "Ready?"

"More than I was," she said. To his relief, she sounded more confident in that than she'd been of anything but Dingo's condition since waking. "Go."

Aboard the bus, Rawhide was beginning to fret noticably at the delay when Buckaroo burst from the recessed doorway to cross the parking lot as fast as he could move on the wet pavement. The explanation for that delay was immediately obvious, and Rawhide grabbed a second towel before meeting Buckaroo at the steps. "Anything else I should know about?"

Buckaroo didn't answer, but turned to look out the windows for himself just in time to see something he'd hoped to avoid. Jet was scarcely halfway across the pavement when the first bolt of lightning arced out of the sky directly toward her, attracted by all the metal in her body where a number of old injuries had been repaired. With dry footing, she might just have had the reflexes to avoid being hit; with her psionics intact, she would have been able to predict it enough to make some other, taller object the final target by altering her own path. Neither was to be this time. Something on the order of 1.21 gigawatts of electricity hit her in the center of the back, then split and arced away to either side of her as she lost her footing and went down, still conscious. Thunder overrode any other sound for some seconds while everyone's eardrums recovered.

Surprised by the near-hit to the bus, Perfect Tommy turned for a look of his own and saw Jet as clearly as the rain would allow anyone to see. The pavement itself was blackened to either side of her, and the leather across her back had been seared away to expose armor, but she was still moving somehow, doing the fastest infantry crawl he'd seen in his life and still on track for the doors of the bus. He lost that astonishing view just as Buckaroo and Rawhide started to recover enough from the flash to distinguish dark from light, and before he could find words to convey what he'd seen, T-Bear was opening the doors.