“You can go ahead and shoot us,” Haviland said, “but I’m not stopping this car.”
The sudden acceleration was obvious. Payne glanced at the speedometer and saw the needle gliding past thirty-five miles per hour. As he looked down to grab for the door handle, Haviland suddenly slammed on the brakes.
Payne’s head and right shoulder smashed into the front seat. He felt a hand on his arm as Haviland floored the accelerator. He fell backward, fighting to maintain a grip on his handgun with his right hand while trying to find the door handle with his left. The door popped open — and the frigid wind hit him in the face, momentarily vacuuming away his breath.
He closed his eyes and — despite Waller’s hand gripping his suit jacket from behind — he leaned forward.
And leaped from the moving vehicle.
47
The initial impact was absorbed by his shoulder. But as Payne tumbled and rolled along the pavement, the only thoughts spinning through his mind related to protecting his head. Another concussion was something he definitely did not need.
A few more rolls amidst the blaring of an approaching horn and he was scrambling to his feet. He dodged an oncoming van and zigzagged across the avenue. As he landed on the curb with his left leg in full stride, he felt a ripping sensation in his thigh. He knew the stitches had torn open, at least partially. But the adrenaline was pumping, and if there was any pain, he was not feeling it.
He half-hobbled and half-ran down the street, in the opposite direction Haviland had been driving, looking for a restaurant, somewhere he could hide. But this was Washington, and this part of the city had no night life to speak of. It consisted mostly of government buildings that had long since closed. He needed a side street, a bar or hotel, somewhere to get off the main drag.
Twenty yards away, he saw something better.
Haviland slammed on the brakes, the tires screeching to a halt. “You see him?”
“Where’s my fucking gun?” Waller was on the floor in the backseat, his hands skimming the carpet, fingers getting nicked by the sharp edges of the seat track. “Turn the goddamned light on!”
Haviland hit the switch on the overhead dome light and located the two Glocks.
“He took my mag,” Waller said. “Give me the one from the glove box.”
“What are you going to do, shoot him?”
“Whatever I have to do to stop him. Take out his other leg if I have to. Son of a bitch.”
Haviland handed him the spare magazine and grabbed the radio handset.
“What are you doing?”
“Backup—”
“You fucking out of your mind? Knox will have our badges if we broadcast Payne’s escape across the radio.”
“And if we don’t find him?”
“We will,” Waller said, slapping the magazine into the handle of his Glock. “He’s a gimp, he won’t get very far.”
“So we go it alone?”
“Alone.”
Leaving the car in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, Waller opened the door and dodged a couple of oncoming cars as his eyes suddenly locked on a moving figure a couple of blocks away.
Haviland was running alongside Waller, forty caliber in hand. “There, by Seventh—”
“I see him.”
“He’s headed for the Mall.”
“Then we’ve got him.”
Payne was winded. His lungs were burning from the cold air, and he was now beginning to feel pain in his leg. But going back to the Academy and continuing on as Knox’s puppet — or worse — did not appeal to him. He needed to find out what the bigger picture was… and despite his suspicions, he needed facts.
And then there was Lauren.
He turned right off Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed through a wooded planter, which provided dense cover from the silhouetting headlights of the oncoming traffic. He emerged in a cobblestone plaza, which was part of the side entrance to the National Gallery of Art’s West Building. He shuffled alongside the structure, moving parallel to Fourth Street. Forty feet ahead was the Mall, the 146-acre elm-tree-lined park that stretched from the Capitol at the east end to the Lincoln Memorial at the far west end.
Payne turned right, following the footprint of the Gallery, now moving parallel to the Mall. Unfortunately, because the art museum was such an exceptionally long building — more than two blocks in length — it left him exposed, unable to escape should Waller or Haviland locate him.
He glanced to his left, and in the shadows of the dim streetlight, he noticed a man walking toward him. He threw his back against the darkness of the building’s cold marble facing. Payne squinted, trying to make out the gait and size of the person. Could it be Haviland or Waller? As he stared, he could see the silhouetted form of a leashed dog at the man’s side.
He gulped down a few bitingly cold breaths of air before rolling off the building’s side and continuing on, scampering along the base of the steps of the entrance, in the direction of the west end of the Mall. Built in Washington’s time-honored multi-columned facade-and-canted-roof motif, the entrance was designed to be grand — and the illumination, with bright orange mercury spotlights, certainly helped accomplish this goal.
But the foot of the steps was comparatively dark. After making his way across the stairs, he stayed close to the bushes that lined the entire front of the building. If he could make it to the edge of the Gallery before Waller or Haviland saw him, he would greatly increase his chances of success. He hoped that they were off searching another part of the District by now, since he figured that from their perspective he could literally be anywhere. If a cab had been passing as he was fleeing Haviland’s car, he could be on the other side of the Potomac by now, headed for the airport. Or back the other way, headed toward Union Station and a rail system that could take him anywhere in the District, or, for that matter, anywhere in the country.
He realized the ability to be instantly somewhere far away from here was not only appealing, but his best hope for a successful escape while he regrouped and tried to determine his next course of action. But he had a bad feeling that Waller and Haviland were not far off — and if he was not careful, he would end up running right into them.
He tried to picture the map of the District he had studied late one night at the Academy. If he recalled correctly, about three blocks away his closest means of escape awaited him… the entrance to Washington’s subway, the Metro.
“I saw him, over by the Gallery. West Building,” Waller said in between breaths.
“I don’t… see anything,” Haviland puffed. After having recently recovered from a broken ankle, he was still out of shape — and the chase had left him deeply winded, his throat burning with each gulp of air.
“He was there.”
“Where’s he… headed?”
Waller pondered the question as they continued their pursuit at a slow jog. “If I were him, there’s only one place I’d go.”
“Don’t keep it… a secret, Jon. Where?”
“Metro.”
“Which station? Archives or Smithsonian?”
“My bet, Archives. Closer.”
“Let’s cut him off,” Haviland said, heaving large clouds of vapor into the air in front of him.
“And if we’re wrong?”
Haviland nodded. “So we split up. You go Metro… I’ll go Mall.”
“This is insane,” Waller said. “Should’ve called for backup.”
Haviland stopped and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees as Waller continued on. “You know, Jon,” he said, calling after his partner, “sometimes… you’re such an asshole.”
Payne shuffled alongside the building, approaching the west end of the National Gallery of Art.