“OK then, we talk to Simon. And, once—” he stopped, a sound catching his attention.
Sirens.
Both suddenly turned to the door. The pitch-changing calls wailed from a distance, increasing in volume.
The police were approaching.
43
“To the car, Francisco! Through the woods, the way we came!”
They dashed out the door and sprinted across the yard to the trees. Lopez felt like the criminal everyone now believed him to be — in disguise, running from the scene of a horrific murder, the police seconds away. They passed the smoldering wreckage of the truck, and Houston pulled out her gun once again. Will we be killing police officers next? He couldn’t imagine such an action. Who am I now?
As they approached the woods, the sirens increased sharply in intensity, and they heard the sounds of a vehicle braking over a pebbled drive. A car door opened, and Lopez glanced behind him and saw two officers outside their vehicle. One was running into the ruined cabin. A fine surprise he is going to find. The other held a microphone in his hand. A voice called over a loudspeaker.
“This is the Delaware County Police! Stop and return! I said stop and come back to the dwelling! This is the county police! Stop and return immediately!”
They did not stop. Instead they plunged into the trees, Lopez praying to God that Miller’s security system was truly dead. An active mine could end their journey very quickly. A gunshot was fired behind them. Lopez instinctively looked behind but could see no one following them.
“Faster!” yelled Houston.
Lopez ran faster. Branches slapped against his face and nicked his cheeks, and he stumbled several times over exposed roots, but he managed to increase his pace. His breath began to come in ragged gasps, his chest feeling like it was going to explode.
The loudspeaker voice called again but much more faintly. “Return to the property! If you do not, you will be considered hostile and subject to arms fire.”
Houston slowed him for a moment. “They’re not in pursuit, or they wouldn’t have called out.” She paused, her breathing labored. “They must be calling for backup. They’ll find the body soon. It will be a giant manhunt.”
“They don’t know what our car looks like or what we look like.”
“It won’t matter if we don’t get out of the roadblock radius. Let’s go!”
They continued their sprint. Soon they were back to the main road and located their car quickly. They cleared some of the fallen branches and leaves that they had used to conceal it and then rushed into the vehicle, Houston driving again. She gunned the engine, rocketing the car out of the ditch and onto the road. Within seconds, they were out of sight of the cabin and headed south, back to the DC area and the lair of the killers. Headed for the mouth of the dragon. Lopez closed his eyes tightly.
Mother of God!
A blond man lay prone on a hill overlooking the Miller property. Through a targeting scope, he followed the movement of the green sedan as it made its escape. He pivoted the scope toward the cabin he had partially destroyed and saw one of the young officers run out of the structure, waving his arms and screaming at the other, who had gone to the edge of the woods.
He rolled onto his back, the rifle held up and away from his body, and sat up. His scope was attached by a thin wire to a small black box. Pressing a button on the box, a credit-card sized LCD screen lit up, and he shuffled through several photos of the man and woman, selecting the best head shots for identification.
Moving to a crouch, he placed the rifle down into a case and removed a smartphone. A Bluetooth transmitter was hooked around his ear, and he toggled a smartphone app to increase the volume from the recording equipment he had left in the cabin. He picked up the officers’ conversation as they entered the structure. Their loud tones cut through the poor audio quality.
“Jesus, Danny! God, I’m going to be sick!”
The unmistakable sounds of retching could be heard. A second voice spoke.
“You okay? You all right, Joe? Okay. Okay,” came an anxious voice. A deep breath followed. “Okay — we call this in. Don’t touch anything! Damn! We call this in, and we get the right people here for this. We put out an APB, block all the roads out of the area, as soon as they can set it up. I should have shot those bastards!”
He had heard enough. The officers were acting predictably. By tomorrow, the place would become a forensics laboratory, and the chaos would begin soon after. He tapped the screen, and the app displayed a list of recordings and dates. He picked the most recent, and pressed ‘play.’ A woman’s voice could be heard speaking over considerable white noise and static.
“He’s got contacts, remember? The Watchmen. He’ll do everything he can to dredge this muck up and get it out of the Agency. He’ll find where they’re hiding.”
He smiled, closing the app, and opened another on the phone. A map appeared of the area with crisscrossing lines for roads and county demarcations. A blue circle pulsed at his current location. Moving away from the blue circle was a red dot. He tapped it, and a small window opened on the map displaying distance and speed. The transmitter he had placed on their car was functioning optimally.
He disconnected the camera from the scope, stowed it in the case next to the rifle, and closed the case. Rising from his prone position on the incline, he jogged down the road to his truck toting his equipment. Opening the door, he stowed the rifle on the rear window rack and jumped inside, slamming the door. He paused for a moment, then removed a handgun from the glove compartment, placing it next to him in the drink rack. He hoped that the local police would not complicate his mission.
Mounting the phone and its map display on the dashboard, he started the engine, turning onto the road along the direction of the red dot. He accelerated, observing their speed and distance, calculating a matching speed to approach them before any major highway intersections. All he had to do was follow them, track them for however many days it took, concealing himself. Their conversation was clear. They were motivated and skilled, especially the woman.
They would lead him where he needed to go.
44
The police scanners were in chaos. Lopez could not keep track of all the different conversations back and forth, coded terms, and local roadways that erupted in sound from the device. His smartphone told a grim story, as well. One after another, red cones on his traffic app indicated blocked roads. One after another, they switched roads, frantically mapping new ways around the closing net. They were running out of options.
“Oh, shit.” Houston stared ahead.
They were on a two-lane country road, surrounded by forest on each side. Lopez looked ahead and saw something in the road. As they approached, he began to make out police cars lengthwise across the concrete. The lights were flashing on the tops of the cars.
“What do we do? Turn around?” he asked.
“We can’t! This was the last open road, remember? We’ll be cut off for sure if we turn around.” She began to slow the car as they neared. “They just set this up. If we can get past this, the highway is just a few miles ahead. Right? That’s what you said?”
“Yes!” he said, confirming on the map. “But how do we get by?” A growing desperation was seizing him.
“I don’t know. They don’t know us. They might not recognize us. We bluff.” She nodded towards the scanner. “Glove compartment with that!” Lopez hid the device.