Guys with guns! Not likely. All there was within reach was a set of keys in the coin tray between the front seats. Not much.
But it’s something, you wimp! George reached gingerly with his left hand and picked up the keys, actually just one large key on an equally large keytab. He gripped it tight in his hand, swearing to himself that if the guy even twitched on the trigger, he was going to jam the key home into his killer’s eye. I’m dead, you’re blind, he thought, feeling quite brave but having no idea why.
“South La Brea! Where’s the air unit?”
“Air Twenty. “
“Air Twenty, we’re a minute out.” The observer in the helicopter saw the flashing lights of the patrol car, and, quite a ways off, the lights of the North Hollywood unit racing to join the chase. “Six L Fifty, we’ve got you on visual.”
The pilot was going too fast. The pursuit was going to pass below them soon, so he started a turn to the left to set up on a following course. In the process he gained a hundred feet of altitude in a planned ascent.
“There!” Frankie yelled, pointing directly to their front through the windshield.
Art saw the pursuit pass from right to left a block from them, heading south on La Brea and passing Sunset. He slowed at the intersection, a red light causing him to interject caution when he wanted to drive like a bat out of hell.
“Clear!” Frankie said, her eyes sweeping traffic from the right. Lights and sirens weren’t some impenetrable shield.
Art floored it through the light, turning tight onto La Brea. Two blocks down he could see the pursuit passing Fountain. What he saw next was in the sky.
The KNTV chopper pilot was eyeballing the pursuit from a thousand feet, approaching it from the east. His cameraman was on the right side, and he knew he’d have to clear that side for a good shot. Plus, he’d have to get lower. He started the diving left turn and checked his airspace for any… SHIT!!!!
Air Twenty’s pilot, a veteran of the U.S. Army who had flown combat missions in Grenada, never saw what hit him. The KNTV chopper, traveling at 110 miles per hour, hit the LAPD helicopter from above and behind, disabling the tail rotor. That damage mattered not at all a split second later as Air Twenty’s main rotor sliced into the news chopper’s fuselage, killing both occupants instantly and turning the Bell Jet Ranger into a tumbling ball of fire that fell toward the earth.
Air Twenty’s crew didn’t suffer such a merciful death. They both were conscious as their million-dollar aircraft spun out of control and impacted in the center of La Brea, a block behind Six L Fifty, and exploded into a cloud of black and orange.
Burns saw the flash in his rearview, and it drew his attention long enough that he missed what was happening to his front until it was too late.
Tomás knew the light was red but had no choice. He kept on going, accelerating even, and didn’t see the compact car come through the intersection from his left. He clipped the back end, sending the smaller car spinning and a car following it crashing into its rear. The Lumina spun also, its rear end impacting a set of parked cars on the east side of La Brea and throwing Jorge to the left onto Tomás.
George felt the hit but didn’t know what had happened. Just a bright flash and the crashing of metal. It was his chance, maybe his last one. He pulled the latch on the right rear passenger door and rolled into the street, his survival instinct propelling his legs faster than he’d run in years east on Santa Monica Boulevard. A few seconds later he was nowhere to be seen.
Sergeant Burns saw the crash ahead too late to brake and maneuver around the second car. He hit it almost broadside, pushing it into the light pole at the southwest corner of La Brea and Santa Monica. He could see the suspect car a hundred feet down on La Brea and someone rolling out of the backseat, but couldn’t get out of his patrol car to do anything about it. Looking down, he saw the telltale signs of a compound fracture of his right femur, the bright white bone protruding grotesquely through his dark blue uniform pants.
He reached for the microphone just as the blue Chevy started to move again. “Six L Fifty. TC at Santa Monica and La Brea. Officer down.” He glanced into his side mirror and started to cry, but not from the pain. “Air Twenty is down. Jesus.”
Tomás got the Lumina moving again, his head searching for other cops as Jorge reached back for Su—
“He’s gone! Dammit!” He raised his head, feeling a sharp soreness in the back of his neck, and looked out the…open door. Fuck! He moved as much as he could as the vehicle’s motion closed the rear door, his eyes sweeping the area. Nothing. Sullivan was nowhere.
“What now?” Tomás yelled, blood spattering from a cut in his mouth as he talked.
“Get us out of here. Fast!”
Art laid down over a hundred feet of skid marks, the Chevy coming to a stop fifty feet from the inferno that had fallen from the sky. A second glowing column of smoke was rising into the dark sky about a block to the east. He threw the car into reverse as soon as it stopped and backed another hundred feet away, blocking traffic coming south on La Brea. The relay that the pursuing LAPD car had crashed came a second later.
“Call it in,” Art directed. He stepped from the car, the heat from the blaze half a football field away causing his cheeks to flush. He slammed the door and went to the trunk, pulling flares out and setting a barrier of small, bright fires across the wide boulevard.
Frankie reported to the communications center that which she was certain LAPD already knew of. More death. Dead cops. She got out of the car and walked a few yards toward the hot wall of orange that completely blocked La Brea. Her right hand came up and snapped the thumb-break strap shut. They’re on the other side of that. Just through the fire.
Art saw his partner standing alone fifty feet away, just staring into the flames. She was statue-like, unfazed by the heat or the thought of what had… Of course.
“Frankie,” Art said as he walked up from behind. “Frankie.”
A portion of the white-and-blue tail of the helicopter was protruding from the inferno, but it was soon consumed, changing from a once-beautiful craft to a blackened hunk of metal. Changed. Frankie watched it, her partner’s words eliciting no immediate response.
“You okay?”
Frankie turned around, facing her partner as the pulsating blaze silhouetted her from behind. “Fine.”
Art watched her walk past toward the car, knowing a lie when he heard it.
The DDI made some half-funny joke about burning the candle at both ends that Healy found no humor in. The mere possibility of a leak in Drummond’s directorate necessitated that he and the DDO do the grunt work on the new situation involving Cuba. CANDLE would have to wait.
“Our illustrious leader on his way down?” the DDO asked.
“In the air,” Drummond affirmed.
“Better than here.” Healy had even less respect for the DCI than Drummond did. That came more from his gut than from any overt knowledge. He was an Agency lifer with enough experience in the field that his ability to read people had picked up on Merriweather’s real makeup long before he was ever confirmed for the position. The man had been a nemesis on the Hill when he chaired the Oversight Committee, and now he was a more potent nemesis within the ranks. His trust of his subordinates was low, Healy had recognized, giving few of those “underlings” reason to reciprocate with acceptance. The DDO, five years older than his Intelligence counterpart, had seen a lot of changes and personalities in his years at Langley, but nothing on par with this. He had even found himself hoping that the President, if he didn’t come to his senses, would fall short in the election just two years off. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to contemplate, or very professional, but Mike Healy, like many at the Agency, was at the end of his rope.