Panic

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘I’m McNee, out of the Mexico City office. This is Pierce from HQ.’ She handed Frame their credentials. ‘Who’s Bricklayer?’

  ‘I am.’ Bedford didn’t introduce the others.

  ‘Sir, you have several calls to return… regarding the bombing in London yesterday. If you take the Navigator, you can talk privately.’ She gave privately the subtlest stress.

  Frame nodded at Carrie and Evan. ‘They can ride in the Town Car with McNee and Pierce.’ He handed Carrie her Glock; they had all given their weapons to Frame before boarding the plane.

  ‘Do you have a piece for Evan?’ Bedford asked. ‘I don’t want him unarmed until our target’s in the morgue.’ As if he didn’t even want to say the word Jargo aloud, in a crowd.

  ‘You know how to use?’ Frame asked.

  Evan nodded. Frame went to the Navigator, brought back a Beretta 92FS, showed Evan how to check, load, unload, and put on the safety. Evan put the gun inside the laptop bag and kept his grip on the decoy laptop. ‘I’d like to keep hold of the goods, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Fine,’ Bedford said.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ Evan asked.

  ‘A safe house in Miami Springs. Near the Miami airport. Courtesy of the FBI. We told them we had a Cuban intel agent willing to defect,’ McNee said.

  ‘Then you’ll make your phone call,’ Bedford said.

  McNee gave Evan a kind smile. ‘I promise when we get to the house, you’ll get a good meal. I like to cook.’ She popped open the trunk and Carrie and Evan put their luggage inside. Evan kept the decoy laptop clutched against his chest, as though it were the dearest object in the world to him, and McNee held the back door open for them. Pierce, the other CIA operative, got in the front seat.

  They slid onto the cool leather of the backseat. McNee shut the door, got in the driver’s seat, and started up the car. ‘We’ll shake any shadows first.’ She powered up the dividing window between the front and rear seats so that Carrie and Evan could talk in private. Evan glanced back; Bedford was in the passenger seat of the Navigator behind them, already talking on a phone.

  Evan stared out at the night. The air felt as warm as a kiss. Billboards, palm trees, and speeding vehicles flashed by. The two cars made a long series of turns and backtracks around the airport, stopping and checking and ensuring no one followed, and then McNee headed onto I-95 South. Even after midnight it was a busy highway.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘You shouldn’t go to the rendezvous point,’ Carrie said.

  ‘I’m the bait.’

  ‘No. Your call is the bait. I don’t want you near Jargo. You can’t imagine… what he would do to you if he catches you.’

  ‘Or to you.’

  ‘He’d give me to Dezz,’ Carrie said. ‘I’d rather die.’

  ‘I’m going. End of story.’ Evan read the signs. I-195W to the Miami airport. McNee inched over into the right lane. But then she wheeled over fast, taking the 195 East exit toward Miami Beach.

  He looked through the rearview window; Bedford’s Navigator swerved around two cars, horns blaring, staying with them, narrowly avoiding a pickup truck.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Evan said.

  McNee flashed a look in the rearview mirror, gave a shrug. She pointed at the wire in her ear, as if to suggest she’d been radioed new instructions.

  Pierce – the CIA guy in the front seat – unhooked his earpiece, fidgeted with a frown. Then he slammed backward into the passenger door and slumped down. McNee raced around a truck, putting distance between her and the Navigator.

  Pierce wasn’t breathing. A bullet hole in his throat. McNee stuck the pistol in the drink holder.

  Evan kicked at the reinforced divider as McNee swerved across more lanes of traffic. It didn’t budge. ‘She’s kidnapping us,’ he told Carrie.

  Evan stared through the back windshield. Bedford’s Navigator vroomed up next to them, a black Mercedes in fast pursuit behind him. Bullets pinged against the driver’s side of the Town Car as McNee tore away from Bedford’s Navigator. Bedford, from his passenger window, shot at McNee. Flashes, the Mercedes firing at Bedford. But beyond the Mercedes, Evan spotted another car, a BMW, revving up next to the Navigator.

  McNee cranked it to ninety, heading for Miami Beach. The towers of downtown Miami glittered beneath the clouds.

  ‘Stop or I shoot!’ Carrie ordered. McNee shot her the finger. Carrie fired at the divider, at a point between the dead man and McNee’s head: the glass was bulletproof, and the slug hammered flat into the faintly green material.

  Evan tested the locks. They’d been stripped; the controls didn’t work. He kicked at the window. It was reinforced.

  Bedford’s Navigator accelerated close to the Town Car, like a lion chasing down a gazelle, looking for the battle-ending tenderness of throat. The Mercedes roared on the Navigator’s other side in pursuit. Bullet fire from the Mercedes peppered the side of the Navigator’s windows, the glass popping into small concentric circles but holding.

  Evan slid back the cover on the sunroof, framing a gleam of the moon as it slid between two heavy clouds. He thumbed the control. Sunroof stayed still. He pulled the Beretta from his laptop bag and fired into the sunroof’s glass. It held. The boom hurt his ears inside the closed car.

  ‘We have to get out,’ Carrie said. The Mercedes nicked the Navigator, sparks flying up between the cars like a fountain of light. Gunfire erupted from the Mercedes and the side windows in the Navigator shattered.

  Evan saw Bedford return fire from the front passenger side of the Navigator. The Mercedes answered with a burst of bullets and Bedford collapsed, half out the Navigator’s window, a smear of blood along the door and the front window.

  Bedford. Gone.

  McNee’s voice crackled to life on the intercom: ‘Quit shooting, and you won’t get hurt.’

  There has to be a way out. Not the windows, not the roof. The seats. Evan remembered a news report he’d seen about a trend in recent models, to make backseats more easily removable to accommodate the constant American hunger for trunk room. Please, God, don’t let the Agency have modified everything or we’re in a death trap. He dug his fingers into the seat and pulled. It gave a centimeter. He yanked again.

  He glanced over his shoulder: McNee’s eyes burned into his in the rearview, otherworldly, distorted by the pocks in the bulletproof glass. He heaved again at the seat, and now he saw the Navigator veer behind them, its side crunched, Bedford’s limp body dangling over the shattered glass, with a horrifying percentage of his head pulverized away. The Mercedes approached to attack the driver’s side.

  Frame wasn’t surrendering. He wasn’t abandoning them.

  Around them, other late-night Miami Beach traffic sped and spun out of their way, cars steering to the shoulder, drivers reacting in alarm and shock to the war waging in the lanes. With bay on both sides, the highway offered no place to exit until Alton Road and the residential neighborhood edging South Beach.

  She has to slow for the exit. Our chance to get out. Evan eased the seat back, exposing the dark of the trunk.

  ‘Go!’ Carrie shouted.

  Evan wriggled through into the pitch-black. He swept his arm in the darkness ahead of him. Looking for the thin wire and handle that would release the trunk door from inside. Assuming there still was one. Maybe the CIA or McNee had removed it.

  Bullets dinged above his head, hitting the trunk’s top.

  The Town Car careened to the right, then again to the left. Evan lay wedged in the narrow opening, and the charging rocked him back and forth. He twisted, pulling himself through the tight gap, pushing their small luggage out of the way. Carrie pushed his feet and he popped through the leather canal into the full dark of the trunk. She pushed the laptop bag into the trunk after him.

  Evan found and jerked the release cord.

  The trunk popped up and the wind of traveling at ninety miles an hour boomed in his ears. The night lay vacant of stars, the clouds
low and heavy over the city like a pall, and the Navigator drove up close to the bumper, ten feet from him, Frame’s face a white smear behind the dazzle of the lights.

  McNee urged more from the engine, the speed surging past one hundred as she barreled onto the South Alton Road exit, blasted through a green light, standing on her horn, cars screeching as drivers slammed brakes to avoid crashing into the Town Car.

  The Mercedes charged close and a man leaned out of the passenger side, gun leveled at Evan. Dezz. Grinning, hair flying around his face. Gesturing him back into the trunk.

  Evan hunched down. Reached back into the rear seat, groped for Carrie’s hand. Nothing.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled to her.

  The Mercedes rammed the Navigator again and a second burst of gunfire flared. The Navigator flew over the median through a gap in the palms and flipped. Bedford’s body flew from the wreck and tumbled along the asphalt. The Navigator slid on its side in a shower of sparks, nose-diving into a darkened storefront, metal and glass splintering and shattering.

  The Mercedes retreated to the right, then revved forward, coming up close behind the Lincoln. Dezz leaned out the passenger side, fired into the trunk hatch. The bullet hit above Evan, ricocheted into the night. Warning shot; he didn’t doubt Dezz could put a bullet through his throat.

  Evan steadied his gun and fired.

  Missed. He was no pro. He fired again and the bullet popped into the Mercedes’s hood. The Mercedes backed off twenty feet. He didn’t know the pistol’s range, but he wasn’t about to waste another bullet. And too many people around; he could miss, kill an innocent bystander.

  McNee lay on the horn, driving with insane abandon, powering down Alton Road, through the maze of beautiful people in their beautiful cars. She would kill people, he couldn’t stop her.

  But he could shoot out the tires.

  The idea occurred to him with almost eerie calm. Before she killed innocent people, before she got back on a highway. It was the only way he could take command of the situation.

  Evan leaned out again, aimed the gun at the tire below him. He wondered if the tire’s exploding would kill him, if the car would somersault into the night sky and kiss the unforgiving concrete. In the car, Carrie might survive. He wouldn’t have a prayer.

  He held the gun steady and the Lincoln slowed.

  They see me and they radio McNee. It’s like having a gun to her head.

  He fired.

  The tire detonated. The blast of pressure and the car’s swerve threw him back into the trunk. The Town Car spun into the oncoming lane; a banner for Lincoln Road passed above his head. Then the car stopped, amid a shriek of brakes.

  The passenger window shattered from inside, Carrie emptying her gun onto the same fracturing point, firing the clip empty. Carrie went out, feet first, hitting the concrete in a tight roll, her arm out of the sling, and the Mercedes skidded to a stop thirty feet from her, crashing into a Lexus.

  She held the decoy laptop in her good hand, raised it like a trophy. And ran. Away from both cars, into the snarl of traffic.

  Dezz and Jargo came out of the Mercedes and fired at her. Evan took aim but two people got out of the Lexus, between him and Dezz, and he stopped, afraid of hitting them.

  Dezz fired once at him, pinging the trunk lid, and Evan ducked down. People on the street, in the cafes, fled and screamed. He risked a look.

  But Dezz and Jargo ignored him; they saw Carrie had the laptop. Carrie bolted toward the western end of the street; she hurtled into the parting crowd, into traffic, and the two men followed her.

  They vanished around a corner.

  Evan heard a police siren approach, the spill of blues and reds racing along the scorching path they’d taken. He grabbed the laptop bag and jumped out of the trunk; McNee’s door was open, she ran hard in the opposite direction, her gun out, aiming at anyone who tried to stop her.

  The BMW – that had been behind the Mercedes on the highway – headed straight for him. Braked. The window slid down. ‘Evan!’

  His father behind the wheel, dressed in a dark coat, a bandage on his face.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Get in! Now!’

  ‘Carrie. I can’t leave Carrie.’

  ‘Evan! Now!’

  Clutching the laptop bag, Evan got in. This was not what he had expected; he thought Jargo had his father locked in a room, tied to a chair.

  ‘Here.’ Mitchell Casher pulled away from the Mercedes, tore along the sidewalk, steered off the chaos on Alton, took a side road. Then another side road.

  ‘Dad; oh, Jesus, Dad.’ He grabbed his father’s arm.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. I’m fine. Carrie-’

  ‘Carrie is no longer your concern.’

  ‘Dad, Jargo will kill her if he catches her.’ Evan stared at his father, this stranger.

  Mitchell took a street that fed back onto Alton, two blocks away from the chaotic mess of the crash, then went onto 41 and cruised up to the speed limit on the stretch of road that cut through the bay. On the left, giant cruise ships shimmered with light. On the right, mansions crowded a spit of land, yachts parked on the water.

  ‘Carrie. Dad, we have to go back.’

  ‘No. She’s not your concern anymore. She’s CIA.’

  ‘Dad. Jargo and Dezz killed Mom. They killed her.’

  ‘No. Bedford’s people did, and we’ve taken care of them. Now I can take care of you. You’re safe.’

  No. His dad believed Jargo. ‘And Jargo just let you go.’

  ‘He made sure I had nothing to do with your mother stealing the files and running to Gabriel.’

  ‘You were CIA, too. Bedford told me. If one loved, one feared. I know the code.’

  Mitchell kept his eyes on the road. ‘The CIA killed your mother, and I didn’t want Bedford coming for me. All that matters now is that you’re alive.’

  ‘No. We have to be sure Carrie got away from them. Dad, please.’

  ‘The only person I work for now, Evan, is myself. The only job I have is to keep you safe, where none of these people can ever find us again. You have to do exactly what I say now, Evan. We’re getting out of the country.’

  ‘Not without Carrie.’

  ‘Your mother and I made enormous sacrifices for you. You have to make one now. We can’t go back.’

  ‘Carrie’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make, Dad. Call Jargo. See if they got her.’

  His father drove the BMW past the emergency vehicles racing toward Miami Beach, eased them back onto I-95 North. ‘Where are we going, Dad?’ Evan still had the Beretta in his lap, and he imagined the unimaginable: pointing the gun at his father.

  ‘Not a word, Evan, say nothing.’ His father tapped at his phone. ‘Steve. Can you talk?’ Mitchell listened. ‘Evan ran into the crowd. I’m still looking for him. I’ll call you back in twenty.’ He didn’t look at Evan. ‘They have Carrie. Dezz winged her in the leg. They carjacked a ride, they escaped from South Beach. But he has Khan’s laptop.’

  ‘The laptop she had is a decoy,’ Evan said. ‘Call him back and tell him I’ll trade the files for her safety.’

  ‘No. This is over. We’re getting out. I did what you asked.’

  ‘Dad, stop and call them back.’

  ‘No, Evan. We’re talking, just you and me. Right now.’

  42

  H is father drove Evan to a house in Hollywood. The homes were small, with metal awnings, painted from a palette of sky: sunrise pinks, cloudless blues, light eggshell the shade of a full moon. Fifties Florida. Stumpy palmettos lined the road. A neighborhood, of retirees and renters, where people came and went without attracting attention. Evan remembered reading, with a chill in his chest and spine, that a group of the 9/11 hijackers had lived and gone to flight school in Hollywood because no one got noticed there.

  Mitchell Casher steered into the driveway and doused the lights.

  ‘I’m not abandoning Carrie.’

  ‘She ran. She abandoned
you.’

  ‘No. She drew them away from me. She knew the laptop was empty, she knew they’d follow her. Because I can still bring down Jargo.’

  ‘You put a lot of faith in a girl who lied to you.’

  ‘And you put no faith in Mom,’ Evan said. ‘She wasn’t leaving you. She wasn’t running without you. She was coming to Florida to get you.’

  Mitchell’s mouth worked. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  As soon as they stepped in the door, Mitchell closed his arms around Evan. He leaned into his father’s embrace and hugged him back. Mitchell kissed his hair.

  Evan broke down. ‘I… I saw Mom… I saw her dead…’

  ‘I know, I know. I am so sorry.’

  He didn’t break the embrace with his dad. ‘How could you have done this, how could you?’

  ‘You must be hungry. I’ll make us omelets. Or pancakes.’ Dad was always the weekend cook, and Evan sat at the island counter while his dad chopped and mixed and skilleted. Saturday breakfast was their confessional. Donna always lounged in bed and drank coffee, left the kitchen to the men and stayed out of earshot.

  He thought of that kitchen, his mother’s strangled face, him hanging from the rafters at the end of a rope, dying, stretching his feet toward the counter before the hail of bullets cut him free.

  ‘I can’t eat.’ He stepped away from his father. ‘You’re really not much of a captive, are you?’

  ‘Be happy I’m free.’

  ‘I am. But I feel like I’ve been played for a fool. I risked my life… so many times in the past week, trying to save you…’

  ‘Jargo only agreed to let me talk to you this way today. Just today.’

  ‘He made it sound like he would kill you.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have. He’s my brother.’

  Evan’s stomach twisted. It was the truth of a fear that had lurked in the back of his mind since he’d seen the photos from Goinsville. It explained his father’s gullibility, his torn allegiance. He looked in his father’s much-loved face for echoes of Jargo’s scowl, Jargo’s cold stare.

  ‘I don’t know how you can claim him as your brother. He’s a vicious murderer. He tried to kill me, Dad. More than once. In our home, at Gabriel’s, in New Orleans, in London. And just now.’