More AK-47 slugs came at the back of Jeffrey’s car. The attackers were smashing their way through the rear windshield, concentrating their fire in a single spot. Bullets chewed and chipped at the armored glass.
A handful of men in black uniforms ran from around the far side of the cement mixer. They took up positions and began to engage the attackers on the ladder truck.
Friendly troops. Who are they? Their only insignia were small American flag patches on their sleeves.
The smoke of burning rubber and diesel was thick. The stench of it got into Jeffrey’s car.
The men in black combat fatigues advanced steadily. Some fired their weapons on full automatic while others dumped empty magazines and reloaded their assault rifles. The weapons didn’t look at all like M-16s. They had boxy optical sights, with a little video imagining screen and mirrors to see around corners. The men worked their way up the street. They shot and moved with skill, darting from cover to cover, advancing relentlessly.
A rapid-reaction force. Are there enough of them?
AK-47 rounds from the fire truck poured in Jeffrey’s direction. Bullets hit the back bumper and pounded into the trunk. The vehicle jolted with each heavy impact.
“Jesus,” Jeffrey’s father said under his breath. Streaks and puffs of dark smoke drifted everywhere outside.
The friendly troops worked their way past Jeffrey’s car, closer to Ilse’s. Now Jeffrey saw they wore thick flak vests and ballistic-ceramic battle helmets, and talked to one another by tactical radio with microphones next to their lips.
Jeffrey looked around. He saw a young woman lying on the sidewalk, curled up and clutching at her abdomen. There was a lot of blood, and she looked pregnant.
One of the friendly troops shouted something. Jeffrey read his lips. “Grenade!”
The man aimed a grenade launcher at the ladder truck. The launcher was clipped beneath the barrel of his rifle. The launcher and rifle kicked. There was another tremendous concussion — against the side of the fire truck.
Jeffrey saw his chance. He unlocked the door and dashed from the car.
“What the—” the bodyguard shouted. Jeffrey couldn’t hear the rest. Ricochets screamed; rifle reports were much louder outside the car; the smell of burning things was awful. There was more blood on the woman’s dress already, and Jeffrey needed to drag her behind good cover and stop the bleeding fast. The bodyguard opened his door enough to take aim across the top of the town car. He emptied his Uzi at the ladder truck. Hot spent brass flew everywhere.
A man in black ran up to Jeffrey with his rifle held at port arms. In that fleeting instant Jeffrey saw that a wire ran from the rifle to a computer pack on the soldier’s thigh; he also wore a keypad strapped to his forearm; there were tiny disk and rod antennas on his shoulders over his flak vest.
With his left hand the soldier grabbed Jeffrey by the front of his uniform, throwing him backward into the car and slamming the door.
The soldier screamed to Jeffrey’s driver. “Go! Go! Clear out of here!”
Jeffrey landed with his head in his father’s lap. His father looked down at Jeffrey and his expression seemed to say he wasn’t sure if his son was very brave or incredibly stupid. Jeffrey sat up and refastened his seat belt.
Bullets continued to snap in all directions. The attackers were putting up a stiff resistance. The friendly counterattack began to slow down — the closer the engaging troops got to the fire truck, the more lethal was the return fire from the assassins dressed as firemen.
“How the fuck are we supposed to clear out of this?” The bodyguard cradled his smoking Uzi, and now the stink of burning inside the town car was very strong.
Jeffrey saw what he meant. On the near side of the street was a row of apartment buildings, beyond a line of parked cars. On the opposite side of the town car sat all the abandoned and shot-up cars in the other lane of traffic on the two-way street. Beyond those were more parked cars by the other sidewalk — that most had near-empty tanks because of the fuel shortages was the only thing that kept the whole street from becoming one huge gasoline-fed conflagration.
Beyond that far sidewalk, Jeffrey saw a wrought-iron fence. Beyond the fence the ground dropped off too steeply.
“Hold on,” the driver said. He did something with the gearshift.
He began to make a broken U-turn, forcing other autos out of the way. The transmission protested, but gradually the town car worked itself sideways. The car backed up, smacking into cars parked on the same side of the street, in front of the buildings.
The driver floored the accelerator, in very low gear. He aimed at the narrow space between two cars left in the street. The town car elbowed them aside, but then the engine stalled from the effort. More smoke from everything burning stained the windows with oily yellowish soot. More bullets smacked and pitted the window glass. It was becoming harder and harder to see outside. Jeffrey caught glimpses of another wave of men in black, except these sported white armbands with big red crosses, and their helmets bore red crosses in circles of white. They carried not weapons but heavy satchels of combat first-aid supplies. These men crouched near the wounded, opened their satchels, and went to work fearlessly under fire.
Jeffrey’s driver restarted the engine and backed up, very hard. Jeffrey and his father were thrown around against their seat belts. The driver changed gears and pressed down on the gas. The town car lurched forward, smashing into two parked cars on the opposite side of the street. There was a screech of smoking rubber, and for an endless moment the armored town car didn’t move.
Then the two parked cars were shoved up onto the sidewalk and out of the way.
The town car flattened a stretch of the wrought-iron fence. The car began to run downhill, accelerating. Jeffrey looked back. The tires — designed to be bullet resistant — were throwing up divots of grass and clods of earth. Jeffrey saw the car with Wilson and Ilse following him, looking banged up but intact.
The cars rumbled down the slope at a frighteningly steep angle. Bushes were dragged under the car and spat out behind. The noises of shooting receded, but the fight they’d left behind seemed barely diminished. Jeffrey spotted people in the park, hiding behind pathetic cover, benches or sapling trees. Some of the people had children with them, or dogs.
The cars leveled off and made a tight turn and accelerated; the going was very rough. They were on a path in Rock Creek Park — here the park comprised the sides and bottom of a wide and deep ravine. Both town cars continued along the pavement of the walking path as fast as they possibly could. Rock Creek was close beside.
Jeffrey heard sirens now. On the opposite side of the ravine, a parkway paralleled the creek. A parade of police cars, fire engines, ambulances was trying to catch up with Jeffrey. But they were out of reach. To Jeffrey’s immediate left was the twenty-foot-wide creek, water churning in its rugged course. The creek was lined with stands of trees too old, too sturdy, to smash through.
Jeffrey’s driver pressed on hard. Outside the battle-scarred windows, tree trunks and overhead branches went by in a blur. The cars zoomed under the high archways of road bridges carrying cross streets above the park. They reached a place where the ravine’s bottom narrowed, and the sidewalk they’d been using came to an end.