by Sean McFate
My intuition was pinging: something was awry. All these vehicles behind me, but none in front? It was a trap. They were flushing me forward, into an ambush zone with tire spikes and SWAT. I had to find a way out.
I dropped to 30 mph, allowing the chase vehicles to catch up, then found my impossible corner: an alley that ran behind rotting row houses. I jerked the wheel one quarter to the right and slammed the brakes. The car drifted right, into the alley, with the piercing squeal of tires and smell of rubber. The left rims hit the alley’s curb so hard that the BMW lifted up on two wheels, then bounced down, jerking my head. I warped from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds, which sucked the breath out of me, and I heard the crash behind me. The lead cruiser had attempted the tight turn but smashed into a row house instead, blocking the alley for follow-on police.
Now to get out of here, I thought. Too late. A police Harley turned into the alley two blocks ahead and sped for me. Gutsy sucker, I thought, then I saw his play. All he had to do was close the gap between me and the next street exit. If he could seal it off, I would be trapped in the alley between him and the crashed cruiser. I floored it.
“Come on!” I shouted, as I raced for the next street and the cop for me, in a twisted game of chicken. We made the street simultaneously. I pitched left, skidded, and felt the lateral g-force pull my body against the seat belt. The tires clung to the pavement, but what I would have given for thirty minutes on a skid pad a day ago. The motorcycle went down and smashed through a derelict storefront, its rider expertly rolling across the pavement.
The police chopper was waiting for me, flying fifteen feet above my head, its blades just clearing rooftops. The rotor wash kicked up dust and trash, so I couldn’t see, but I punched through and emerged onto a main thoroughfare. The BMW swayed violently as I slalomed through traffic at speed.
I could hear the sirens now. A battalion of them. I flashed my lights and honked, trying to get people out of my way. RFK Stadium was ahead, then the freeway. Avoid the highway. It’s the first rule of motorized escape and evasion because the police box you in and cut you down.
“Find an exit,” I commanded myself, as I sped around the stadium at 90 mph. I veered through the traffic but could not lose the nimble police Harleys.
“Bollocks!” I shouted as a black SUV appeared in front of me, its blue lights flashing through its grill. It was headed for me, as if to ram me off the road. I swung right so violently that the car nearly flipped, and I shot three lanes over and launched onto the highway. The motorcycles and SUV were jammed in the maelstrom of traffic I left in my wake.
“Bollocks!” I yelled again, as I accelerated up the highway. It was the one place I didn’t want to be. Hugging the left shoulder to avoid congestion and oncoming cars, the BMW vibrated unnaturally as I ran through a debris field. A flat at this speed was lethal.
Another police car and the black SUV materialized behind me, and the chopper’s shadow crossed overhead. Then a second. I glanced up and saw the police helicopter had picked up a pal, a news chopper. There goes my cover, I thought. I should have listened to Lava.
Ahead was a large iron bridge that spanned the Anacostia River, and I topped 120 mph going across it. I felt the car shimmy beneath me. The police helicopter flew at eye level, and the pilot and I regarded one another, each wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy day.
A police car was waiting for me as soon as I got off the bridge. I slammed the brakes and heard the screech of tires as I decelerated from 120 to 60 mph. I thought I would rear-end the police cruiser but it sped up, then slowed down to block me. The second cruiser rode my tail, boxing me in. I skewed left, then right, but the police matched my every move. Our bumpers mashed as they slowed down, taking me with them. I was trapped.
Grrr, I grunted, as I slammed on the brakes and knocked the cruiser behind me. More important, it cleared a few precious inches between me and the lead vehicle. Enough to get free. In that space I swerved right, escaping the cruisers, then rammed the lead car’s rear right panel. The impact was visceral, as I lifted the cruiser’s back tires off the pavement. When they reengaged the road, the police car turned violently sideways at 40 mph. I tapped my brake, allowing the cruiser to spin around my nose in a graceful arc before smashing into the Jersey barriers. I dodged the wreckage, but the trail vehicle hit it head on.
I veered across the lanes and took the first exit too fast, heading back into DC. The black SUV followed me with unexpected grace. Once I hit the city streets, I blew through lights and snaked around traffic, hoping to lose the heavier SUV. It wasn’t working. A turning dump truck caused me to nearly skid out, and the SUV almost rear-ended me. I could see the woman driving it, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses, too. I accelerated, taking a series of sharp lefts through intersections, hoping the oncoming traffic would ensnarl her. It didn’t.
She’s good, I thought. Maybe she was one of Winters’s people. Two miles ahead was the Capitol dome. I needed to disappear before I hit that warren of cops. First, I had to ditch the SUV, and then outsmart the choppers. I reached for my Mark 23 and rolled down the windows. I could tell the SUV was uparmored by the way it listed heavily around turns. The driver’s skill was the only thing keeping it upright. But armored vehicles have a weakness. They can’t roll down their windows, which meant they couldn’t shoot back. I readied one of my HK Mark 23 handguns.
I took a side street with thin traffic, allowing me space. She followed. I timed an upcoming four-way intersection and jerked the wheel a quarter turn right then hit the brakes, sending the car’s back end skidding. The BMW careened into a J-turn and stopped, so that I sat perpendicular to the oncoming SUV. The driver gave a toothy smile and accelerated, intent on ramming me.
I lifted my Mark 23 and unloaded the clip through my open window and into the SUV’s front tires, then accelerated before the beast could T-bone me. The SUV tried to make the turn but flipped on its shredded tires. Run flats don’t perform high speed turns, regardless of what manufacturers promise.
Both choppers climbed after witnessing the gunshots. Fine by me. I lurched around cars, both my bumpers half dragging on the ground from the collision with the police cruisers. I headed toward the bridges and tunnels of I-395 and the train tracks near the waterfront. Maybe I could lose the chopper in that scrum of concrete and steel. It was my only chance before the next wave of police arrived.
The police helicopter anticipated my plan and zoomed ahead to keep an eye on me as I approached. I heard sirens approaching. A lot. Change of plan, I thought. I skidded right, taking advantage of ten-story buildings to break the chopper’s line of sight with me. DC has few tall buildings owing to a law prohibiting anything taller than the Capitol building. This gave the helicopter an advantage, but not always. I glanced at my mirrors, but I didn’t see the chopper. Still, that didn’t mean it couldn’t see me.
Must find an underground garage or get to a safe house before being spotted again, or I’m finished, I thought grimly as I wound through traffic, drove on empty sidewalks, and fishtailed through a small park. It was all drivable terrain. Minutes later, I rolled into the empty part of Southeast, home to feral cats and my safe house. In the distance I could see the police helicopter circling around the spot where it lost me, the ten-story buildings. The news chopper hovered above it. No doubt an army of police were sealing the buildings’ underground garages and exits.
Satisfied, I crept toward my safe house using trash alleys to avoid other vehicles until I pulled into my dilapidated ex-taxi home. Once inside, the warehouse doors shut automatically behind me, and I killed the engine. The roofing was thick enough to conceal the hot engine from a police chopper’s thermal imaging lens, but I was taking no chances.
I rested my forehead on the BMW’s steering wheel, breathing deeply in the dark. Only one question remained: How did they find me so fast?
Chapter 32
Jackson stared in disbelief at the TV, his mouth agape. The high-speed car chase was being covered live on international
news, showing smashed police vehicles and the black BMW driving like a maniac through the streets of Washington, with the Washington Monument as backdrop. Pillars of black smoke beset the landscape as if it were Yemen and fire engines screamed throughout the city.
In the nation’s capital! he thought, as if it were a personal affront. The gall!
The news reported the terrorist escaped, which his sources confirmed minutes earlier. But the damage was done. The city began panicking like New York and people started evacuating en masse. Highways grew into parking lots and gas stations went dry. The president was not a patient man and would demand answers. So would Jackson.
It was supposed to be a simple snatch and grab, he thought. What went wrong? Winters warned him about Locke, but his intuition screamed there was more to Tom Locke than Winters was divulging. In fact, there was more to everything than Winters was revealing, a pattern he could now see clearly from the start.
Winters has been playing me the entire time. The realization made him woozy. Jackson did not esteem himself a fool, yet it was embarrassingly obvious that their secret partnership was a sham. It was a one-way street, and he was facing the wrong way. But what game was Winters playing, and what did it mean for national security? Nothing good. No more games, he thought.
“Get me Winters,” yelled Jackson to his executive assistant. “Now!”
Ten minutes later, Jackson and Winters met at the lowest level of a downtown garage, their respective black SUV convoys filling up much of the space. All the exits were sealed, and the depth of the garage guaranteed no electronic eavesdropping. The wall-to-wall concrete and dim fluorescent lighting were a stark contrast to the Cosmos Club. The two men faced off in the middle of a circle of bodyguards wearing dark suits, earpieces, and shoulder holsters. It looked like a geriatric fight club.
“Get them out of here!” yelled Jackson, and Winters waved his bodyguard away. Jackson followed suit, and both security details returned to their vehicles, waiting out the confrontation. Only Jackson and Winters remained.
“Who the hell is Locke?! He’s no ordinary operator, but a worst-case scenario. Just like everything else you've been feeding me, it’s all bullshit!” Jackson fumed. “You’ve been a huckster from the start, Winters, getting me to clean up your myriad in-house problems while you fall short on your end of the deal. I am no longer your corporate janitor. This ends here! Now!”
“Balderdash,” Winters croaked. “I’ve been holding up my end of our agreement, but you keep manifestly failing and then blame me for your ineptitudes. You can’t even eliminate a single man! If anything, I warned you: Locke is crafty. Worse, he’s lucky. The only failure here is yours, because you let him get away.”
“Me?!” yelled Jackson, eyes bulging. “This is not about Locke.”
“It is all about Locke!” snarled Winters, jabbing his cane in the air at the national security advisor. “You came to me for a favor; you wanted a lead on the nuclear bomb. I didn’t have to, but I gave you one. In fact, I gave you more. I lined up the man responsible for the headshot and you missed. Now he’s gone to ground, and you won’t get another shot. You’re an imbecile!”
“This isn’t about Locke, you fossilized moron, it’s about you!” shouted Jackson, stabbing his index finger at Winters. “Locke is part of a wider pattern of your vast incompetence. Remember, Locke is your guy. How did he get loose in the bullpen in the first place? Because you lost control of him. Then you called me in to clean up your fiasco. Don’t fuck with me, Winters. I’ve been at this longer than you, and I will put you down.”
Winters laughed. “Don’t threaten me. We’ve both been at this a long time. You wish to discuss patterns of incompetence? The mark was the president and not the vice president. How could you screw that up? I upheld my end of the deal, now uphold yours! All the residual problems are yours to rectify.”
“It’s not my fault POTUS got sick that day and the VP took his place,” said Jackson defensively. “They don’t announce last-second changes like that for security reasons.”
“POTUS was your responsibility. And if the president wants your scalp for the Locke debacle, so be it. I’ll find a new partner.”
Jackson took a step back, aghast at the concept. “Ridiculous! I could shut you down in hours, Winters. Remember that.”
“You perfidious swindler,” rasped Winters, his face contorting with rage. He knew it was true, but somehow he expected Jackson would never stoop so low. It was a bullet in the corporate head.
“One phone call. That’s all it would take, Winters. That’s all you’re worth to me.”
Winters’s anger gave way to a hoarse belly chuckle, surprising Jackson. “You’re just a swamp creature. Remember that. You came to me. You asked for my help eliminating a spineless president, rallying the nation around the flag, and galvanizing a complacent country against foreign enemies. You said . . . how did you put it? ‘Killing three birds with one stone.’ You told me a massive terrorist attack at home was the only way to unite a bitterly divided nation. We even negotiated the acceptable casualty rate for collaterals,” he said. “I said six thousand minimum to make it look plausible, but you insisted on less than five hundred. I said you were squeamish and you told me my estimate was overkill. Remember that?”
“Yes. That was the plan, and it is in jeopardy now thanks to your rogue agent, Locke. You were supposed to stage a fake terrorist attack to scare people, but instead you produced an actual nuclear terrorist who might blow up a city. Locke is your guy, Winters, and he’s off the leash. That’s on you, Winters. Your stupidity created this nuclear Frankenstein!”
Winters ignored him. “The plan was I take out POTUS, you blame terrorists, and then you give me big contracts to go after them in faraway lands. Forever wars are my business model, something you accepted. You would play the hero, I would get rich, and America would come together against common enemies. That was our arrangement, Jackson.”
“Then why is my interagency spun up about Russia?” asked Jackson in anger. “I blame you, Winters. Your guy Locke smuggled in a nuke through New Jersey using the Russian mob. Half the intelligence community is implicating the Kremlin, and Moscow is getting twitchy. Once again, your incompetence has become my emergency. Now I have to avert World War Three in addition to cleaning up your mess.”
Winters grinned wide, showing scraggly teeth. “And who says the Russians are not a part of my plan?”
Jackson stammered but no words came out. He felt woozy again.
“Don’t fuck with me, George. You’re out of your depth,” warned Winters.
Jackson recovered. “You commit high treason, and then seek to dictate terms to me, the national security advisor? You are soft in the head, Brad. I can pin everything on you. I can connect you to the bridge, Locke, and the nuke. It will be done before the morning news cycle is over, and there are no favors or tricks you can pull that will save you this time. I’ll have your ass in manacles and finish what the Saudis started. Consider it a promise, and you know I’m a man of my word.”
“The only person here who will hang for high treason is you! Because that’s where the evidence will lead. I can dust my tracks and disappear, but you leave a paper trail.”
“You really believe that?” sneered Jackson. “I can manipulate the government, you cannot. I can direct investigators, influence findings, and steer presidential decisions. What do you have, Winters? A board meeting?” Jackson laughed. “You will burn, and I will light the fire.”
Winters’s bad leg nearly buckled, and he wavered on his cane. Damn Locke! he thought. Locke’s ill-timed resurrection made him susceptible to Jackson, putting his grand plan at risk. As long as Jackson could plausibly frame him for everything, the man had leverage. There was only one way to rebalance the equation. I must remove Locke, he thought.
Jackson sensed Winters’s vulnerability and went for the kill. “You fix Locke, or I fix you! He’s your man and that makes him your nuclear terrorist. You think eliminating one man is
nothing? Good, then Locke should be easy for you to kill. I want proof of death. And get me that nuke!”
“Fine, I will kill Locke. I will clean up your mess,” said Winters with a smile. He couldn’t resist adding the last bit.
“Your mess, Winters! Your man, your mess,” corrected Jackson as he moved in close. “And don’t ever threaten me again. Remember that I feed you and remain your master, not the other way around.” Jackson was pointing to the floor in front of him, as if commanding a dog to sit. “I have dealt with detritus like you my entire career. Never forget that I have the power to send you to hell and keep you there.”
Winters chuckled, which was not the reaction Jackson expected. “You are a swamp creature, and that makes you predictable. It’s why I took out an insurance policy. Three, to be precise.”
Jackson’s expression changed from wrath to bewilderment.
“Locke doesn’t have the nukes. I do.”
“Bullshit,” said Jackson, but Winters stood motionless like a tripod, waiting for him to think it through. “Impossible. I don’t believe it,” muttered Jackson, but his apprehensive tone betrayed his strong words.
“Three,” taunted Winters, with the joy of a cat playing with its prey. “Not one. Three.”
“Three?” replied Jackson weakly. He expected Winters was lying again, but could he really take chances if it were remotely true?
“Correct. The nukes are already hidden in America’s largest cities. You will never locate them, so don’t try. I will not hesitate to pull the trigger if I feel threatened. If anything should happen to me, three American cities will evaporate—and on your watch, Mr. National Security Advisor.” Then Winters bayoneted Jackson’s weak spot. “Think of your legacy. How will American history remember you?”
