Kaveh put down his binoculars to get a better view with his own eyes. He was perhaps one of the few binocular owners who used them for spying purposes on the regular instead of birding or being a pervert, but it had been a while since he’d been in this position. Right now, that position was parked on the side of a hill about two miles away from the compound where Obelus’s old Similar body was being held.

They’d been there for two hours, and while there were indeed a ton of Gadsden Liners surrounding the entrance to the complex, easily in the hundreds, there was no sign of extraterrestrial activity, nor any indication that anything had happened yet.

“What kind of movement?” asked Cora.

Kaveh put the binoculars back to his eyes. “Looks like the gate is opening. Oh, shit. That’s National Guard. They’re clearing the Liners off the road.”

“Maybe it is happening tonight.”

There was a large police presence as well, both county sheriffs and police from nearby towns. At least he didn’t see any goddamn black vans with any goddamn Tesla coils on top, but even from this vantage point, he couldn’t see everything.

The road was now clear, the entrance open, blocked on either side by National Guard. Then one helicopter rose from the base, then another, and finally the beginnings of a motorcade emerged from the gate.

“Oh, shit,” Kaveh muttered. “I think it is.”

Several military-grade vehicles emerged, then a few Hummers, and finally an armored car flanked in the front and back by police vehicles. The helicopters hovered over the procession like flies, flies with spotlights on the crowd.

“He’s here,” she said absently.

“I thought you said you couldn’t sense proximity,” he said, lowering the binoculars and turning on the Land Rover’s engine.

“I can’t, but I can sense other things. Like . . .” She crushed her eyes closed. “Like . . . the sound of people in a big crowd agitates him in a certain way. If he’s not down there, then he’s being agitated by a different crowd, which is not likely.”

“Maybe we can follow the motorcade at a distance,” he said. This complex only had a straight road about two miles long that connected the entrance with the main road. Kaveh had chosen this spot on the hill because it would be a simple matter to head them off, providing the motorcade didn’t start tearing off down this little desert road at eighty miles per hour.