The car leapt forward and the two men grew steadily larger in the windshield. The gunman seemed to be talking, asking Shane a question or maybe threatening him. Nothing in Shane’s demeanor gave away the fact that a speeding car was hurtling toward them. At the last moment Shane dived to the side, just as it seemed to occur to the man in the suit that something was wrong.
Shane hit the pavement and rolled. He disappeared from sight as the Datsun plowed into the man with the gun, catching him in the side with a sickening thud. His body flew up and over the hood. He crashed into the windshield and then tumbled over the roof in an ungainly somersault.
Tracie watched in the rearview mirror as the man dropped onto the pavement and lay still. She slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop just shy of a big vehicle with U.S. Government plates. Then she jammed the car into reverse and began backing up, one eye on the gunman, still crumpled in an unmoving heap in the middle of the parking lot, one eye searching for Shane.
She spotted him crouched between two parked cars just as the base building’s front door crashed open and two more men exited the building at a dead run. The men wore suits similar to the downed gunman and each was holding a gun. They turned right and ran toward Tracie and their injured conspirator.
And Shane.
Tracie leaned across the front seat and shoved the passenger door open. “Get in here, now!” she screamed. She reached down and unsnapped her gun. The men were closing fast, shouting something unidentifiable.
She leaned out the smashed window and twisted, pointing the gun in the general direction of the pursuers. She aimed above their heads and squeezed off two quick rounds. The two men hit the deck, flopping face-first to the pavement.
Shane dived through the open passenger door, a sprawl of arms and legs, landing on the floor-mounted gear shift and unintentionally pushing the Datsun into neutral. By now the two men had risen from the pavement and were almost on top of them. Tracie jammed the car into first gear and popped the clutch and the little vehicle spun its wheels and then took off.
One of the men had reached the driver’s side door and held doggedly to the door frame as he ran along beside, screaming at Tracie, trying to aim his gun. She jerked the wheel from side to side, zigzagging out of the parking lot, trying to break his grip. Finally the man tumbled away from the vehicle. He rolled into a grassy field next to the roadway.
Shane was screaming, “What the hell’s going on here? What the hell’s going on here?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Tracie answered, realizing she too was screaming. Her hands were shaking as adrenaline flooded her system. She lowered her voice and tried to calm down, to think clearly. “Right now,” she continued, “we have to get the hell out of here. We’ve got barely any head start and those guys know what vehicle we’re in. They’ll be right on our tail. If they have any kind of decent wheels at all, they’ll catch us in no time.”
The Datsun screamed past the dead officer’s police cruiser, Tracie keeping the gas pedal pinned to the floor. There was nothing anyone could do for the cop, and slowing down for another look might just get them killed. They rocketed toward the phalanx of news vans and curious onlookers, the surprised faces growing rapidly larger in the cracked windshield.
She glanced right and saw Shane making a visible effort to get himself under control. He had lifted into a sitting position and now buckled his seat belt — a smart move, under the circumstances. Tracie saw blood sprinkled across his face and clothing. He didn’t seem to notice. He took a deep breath and ran his bloody hands through his hair.
Tracie blasted into the intersection of the airport access road and the cross street, barely slowing, somehow managing not to T-bone a passing car and kill them all. She turned right, toward Bangor proper and Interstate 95, risking a glance in the rearview mirror, certain the two men in the suits would be right on their tail, but they were alone. For now.
When Shane spoke again, his voice had modulated, although it was shaking and he was panting as if he had just completed the Boston Marathon. “First off,” he said, “thank you for saving my life. I think I was down to my last couple of seconds on earth when you ran that guy down. That was some quick thinking and some unbelievable driving on your part.”
She shook her head and started to answer, but he interrupted. “Second,” he said, “what the hell have you gotten me into?”
26
I-95 buzzed beneath the tires of the Datsun, evergreen trees flashing past outside the windows, the empty terrain of northern Maine beautiful but monotonous. After leaving the airport and their attackers behind, Tracie had driven straight to the interstate, but rather than turning south, as Shane had expected her to, she had instead driven past that access ramp and headed north.
“Where are we going?” he asked, confused.
“Those goons know I have to get to D.C. as soon as possible. They’ll assume we high-tailed it in that direction. Once they get their act together and come after us, that’s the way they’ll go. If we’d gone south before changing vehicles, they’d have been on us before we knew what hit us. We’d be dead before we made it ten miles.”
“But they didn’t even follow us out of the airport.”
“Yes, they did. Trust me. The only reason they didn’t run us down before we even got off airport property is because they had to go back and toss the guy I ran over into the back of their car. They can’t afford to leave him there, and he’s injured, so that slowed them down. Once they hustled him into their car, though — and I guarantee it didn’t take very long — they started out after us. Going north instead of south will buy us a little time, give us a chance to catch our breath, acquire a new vehicle, and formulate some kind of plan.”
Shane raised his eyebrows. “Acquire a new vehicle? Don’t you mean steal?”
“Acquire, steal. Tomato, tomahto.”
He shook his head. “‘Acquire a vehicle’? ‘Formulate a plan’? Who the hell are you? And what kind of trouble are you in? Because that was a goddamned bloodbath back at the airport. There are dead people lying all over the inside of the tower base building. I’m almost certain I’m the only one who wasn’t killed.”
When she didn’t answer, Shane pressed the issue. “Come on, Tracie, I know I owe you for saving my life, but the way I see it, my life wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t hauled your ass out of that burning airplane last night, so I think you owe me, too. How about some answers?”
She chewed her lip as she drove, clearly conflicted about what — or how much — to share. He kept quiet, letting her fight her inner battle. Finally she spoke, but it wasn’t to shed any light on the situation. “You can’t go home until this is over,” she said reluctantly. “Thanks to the news media, those guys know your name, which means they can find out where you live. They probably already have. They want to use you to find me. They may well be searching your apartment right now if they have the manpower.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve gotten mixed up in something big, something that I don’t even understand completely, and you won’t be truly safe until it’s over.”
“All the more reason, then, to answer my questions.”
Tracie nodded. “I know,” she said. “But let’s find a new car first and get something to eat. Once we get started southbound we’re going to have a long drive ahead of us and I’ll try to fill you in on as much as I can, then.” An exit ramp was approaching rapidly and she flicked the turn signal and exited the highway.