“What do you think I do for a living?” Harry asked. “I break the law. It’s what I’m trained to do.”
“Not our country’s law,” she replied, an edge creeping into her voice. “We all know that’s where that line is drawn — it’s the first thing they teach at the Farm.”
“And like a lot of things they teach in a classroom, it becomes irrelevant once you leave those walls.” Harry’s eyes narrowed as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. The CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary — the Farm, as it was called — was good, but there were so many things you just couldn’t teach.
There was a motorcycle in back of them, two vehicles back as they moved through the small township. “The first time you go out on protective detail, you realize life’s a lot simpler. And there’s only one law that really matters: protect your principal. Do whatever it takes to keep them alive.”
Carol looked over at him. “It didn’t even do us any good. Just exchanged one hot car for another.”
“Not quite,” Harry observed, taking another look into his rear-view. “It bought us some time and a car we could be sure wasn’t bugged. Couldn’t say that about mine. Not in the time I had.”
“How long has that motorcycle been following us?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
Well done. She hadn’t forgotten all her fieldcraft from the Farm, Harry thought, accelerating to pass a slow-moving truck. Desk types often did. “Too long,” was his only reply.
There were two men on the cycle. Unbidden, his mind flickered back to an operation in Italy, just a few years before. Different climate, different time. The same sight. Following years of political assassinations, the Italian government had banned motorcycles from carrying a passenger.
Not that the law had mattered to the Tunisian assassins that had attacked the motorcade of the American ambassador — with the CIA’s chief of station, James Holbrook, caught in the cross-fire. Not that it mattered now. This wasn’t Italy.
The distance had closed now. “The police?” Carol asked, her voice striking his ears as though from afar.
He shook his head, focusing on the threat at hand. “No, it’s not the cops. And they’re way too aggressive for a tail.”
“Then why are they following us?” The tone of her voice told him she already knew.
“Ever been shot at?” he asked, cutting in front of a tractor-trailer. The urge to floor the accelerator nagged at him, but he fought the impulse. Not yet.
“No.” Harry looked over to see her reach inside her purse for the Kahr. Her face was pale, but he glimpsed a flash of determination in her eyes as her hand closed around the semiautomatic. Her father’s daughter.
The cold air flowed fast around Pavel Nevaschkin’s body as he bent low over the motorcycle, accelerating rapidly down the highway. Their target was in full evasion mode now. They had been spotted. All that remained now was to go in for the kill.
He heard the squeal of airbrakes as they swung in front of a tractor-trailer, chasing down their prey. In so many ways, their task was made easier by the fact that their target was driving a stolen car. With his own vehicle, they would have had to factor in the possibility of armor. That was no longer in the equation.
Taking one hand off the handlebar, Pavel reached back and tapped his partner on the knee. Be ready.
Harry stole another glance in the mirror. The motorcycle was closing fast now. No question about it. They weren’t the cops. And they hadn’t been sent to tail Carol. They were a kill squad. “Put it away,” he instructed, motioning toward the Kahr in her hand.
No matter how the movies portrayed it, shooting at a combat-trained biker was more a matter of luck than skill.
And they had no time for luck. Not now.
The motorcycle appeared in his driver’s side mirror now, angling for a side shot. At him.
He was the target? He pondered the question for a moment, then dismissed it out of hand. It didn’t matter. Not now.
The assassins hadn’t opened fire yet. That alone bothered him more. These guys were pros.
He swung the car toward the median, crossing two lanes of traffic in the space of a heartbeat. Harry winced as a car slammed on its brakes behind him, only to immediately be rear-ended by an SUV.
Nothing matters. Nothing except the life of the principal.
The motorcycle was still coming, faster now as it wound its way through the chaos behind them, but now he was tight against the median and his left flank was secure. The Suzuki was designed for speed, not off-road traction.
“Get down,” he ordered, never taking his eyes off the road, “and get ready.”
With the Impala speeding tight up the side of the median, the only side the kill team could approach from was Carol’s. Hollowpoint slugs could punch straight through the plastic body of the car, but if they were going to fire blindly, he reasoned, they would have already started.
At times you could even use people’s very professionalism against them.
“They’re going to come up on your side,” he declared, speaking slowly, calmly. Nothing was so serious that it couldn’t be made worse by miscommunication. “And they’re going to come up shooting.”
From her position on the floorboards, Carol nodded, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “At my signal, I need you to push your door open, as hard and fast as you can. Can you do it?”
Another nod. To her credit, she didn’t ask for an explanation. They were running out of time…
A curse exploded from Pavel’s lips as the car slid back tight to the median, forcing him to throttle back or risk a collision. He didn’t dare lose time taking the Suzuki onto the turf.
There was only one option left to them. Go up the passenger side. He tapped Grigori’s knee twice. Going in.
He couldn’t hear the Glock slide out of the saddlebags behind him, but he knew it was there, in his partner’s hand.
There: the man they had been sent to kill was behind the wheel, still relatively upright in his seat. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but undoubtedly she had taken cover. No matter.
Pavel gunned the cycle, coming directly alongside the Impala. Time to end this.
The roar of the Glock struck Harry’s ears almost simultaneously with the sound of shattering glass. He heard the bullet whine past his ear, exiting through the driver’s side window by his head.
Time itself seemed to slow down as he glanced right, assuring himself one more time. All he saw was the cold black muzzle of the Glock staring back at him.
“Now!”
Pavel was steadying the bike, moving in closer so that his partner could get a better shot, when suddenly the door of the sedan flew outward, slamming against his left knee.
The handlebars of the cycle twisted in his grip as the bike flew off course and off balance. Nearly blinded by pain, the ex-Spetsnaz paramilitary fought to regain control of the bike as it slid across two lanes of traffic. He saw the SUV in just enough time to scream…
“You all right?” Harry asked, looking down to where Carol sat on the floorboards, the doorhandle still in her hand. He’d brought the Impala to a stop, pulled off to the side of the median.
She nodded, seeming dazed by what had just occurred. He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached out a hand. “Come on, come on. We have to go.”
The Chevy Tahoe that had struck the assassins’ motorcycle had stopped by the side of the road. Traffic was starting to back up. With a backward glance to make sure Carol was following, Harry strode purposefully across the highway, alert for further danger. The Colt was in his right hand, ready for use.
The driver of the Tahoe, a heavy-set, middle-aged woman, was already out of the vehicle, sobbing hysterically into her cellphone.