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57.
"Where is he going?" Linsey muttered as she sat in the Highway Patrol helicopter.
Below them, the Harbor Police car driven by an unknown person—or alien, or ex-person, whatever one properly called the mushroom people—was driving eastward at a sedate pace of 55 m.p.h. As it left the El Cajon city limits (past San Diego, past La Mesa) it speeded up slightly to the legal limit of 65 m.p.h.
"He's staying out of trouble," the pilot said. "I have 30 minutes of flying time left and will have to set down in the next 15 minutes. There is a Highway Patrol helipad out here at—"
"Look!" the co-pilot cried out. He handed Linsey the binocs.
"Holy Tomato," the pilot exclaimed.
Linsey looked down and noticed a glowing light in the windshield of the speeding patrol car. At first she thought it was a reflection of the sunlight, but the car was heading east away from the evening sun descending on the ocean miles behind it. As she looked, she noticed another dot of light glowing with incandenscent intensity in the front seat.
"What's he doing?" the pilot asked.
Linsey said: "It looks like he is lighting road flares and laying them on the dashboard."
"I see smoke trailing out of the windows," the co-pilot said.
"Oh man," the pilot said gravely. "Put out an alert."
"Right." The co-pilot radioed CHP units to pursue, to block, to clear the path, to do whatever they must to save lives.
"The whole trip out here was a diversion," the pilot said. "He's committing suicide down there."
"It goes to show that they have no regard for their own lives. It's throwing itself away casually just to lead us from the ship. That probably means they knew we were up there."
"But do they care anymore," the pilot said while the other man chattered with his base station radio operator. "Or are the so far along that it doesn't matter anymore?"
"I don't know," Linsey said. Below, the black and white unit started to trail a heavy tail of thick black smoke stretching a quarter mile behind. As she watched, pale flames began to lick up around the roof in the rear. The flames got more intense, darker, orange, finally red. Then the trunk lid blew off as the gas tank exploded. Like a missile trailing black smoke, the patrol car burst totally into flame and shot off the road, hitting a tree and finishing off with a huge fireball.
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