Now the guard handed Tooley an Uzi. He inspected the clip to ensure it was fully loaded, then pulled the bolt back into the cocked and ready position and engaged the safety. Then he reached for the grocery sack the guard offered him and inserted the weapon in it. After checking their Uzis, the two gunmen put them under their coats and walked to their car as the guard watched through the one dirty window. Satisfied, he opened the door again and motioned to Tooley and Harrison Ronald.
Tooley got into the backseat of the Chrysler while Harrison Ronald slid behind the wheel and put the dope on the floor on the passenger’s side.
Two youngsters about ten years old were playing basketball on the street. The hoop was mounted on a backboard on a pole right by the edge of the pavement. They stood aside while Harrison eased the car past them and headed north, toward Rhode Island Avenue. The chase car, a dark Pontiac Trans-Am, followed four car lengths behind.
Ford glanced in the rearview mirror. Tooley had the Uzi out and was examining the safety.
“Put that fucking thing down where nobody can see it.”
“Just drive, mother.”
“And point it in some other direction.”
Tooley grinned. He didn’t have a nice grin. He kept the gun aimed in the center of Ford’s back. “I told you to drive, motherfuck.”
At Rhode Island the light was red. Waiting, Ford checked the rearview mirror. Tooley was just sitting back there, watching the back of Ford’s head, with his hand on the trigger and the gun pointed at Ford’s back.
“Turn right here,” he said.
“You heard Ike.”
“Little change of plan.” He prodded Harrison in the back of the neck with the barrel of the submachine gun.
The light turned green.
“Now! Turn right.”
Ford kept his feet on the brake and clutch and sat staring into the rearview mirror, trying to read what was in Tooley’s face.
“Do it, Z, or I’ll blow your fucking brains right out the front windshield.” Tooley jabbed him with the barrel, hard.
Ford cranked the wheel and turned right.
“Now what?”
“Just do like I tell you.”
“Freeman’ll kill you. Slow.”
“Who’s gonna tell him, man? You?”
“He’ll find out. He always does.”
“Your problem is your mouth. I’ve got a cure for that. Turn left up ahead on Thirteenth.” Tooley glanced behind to see if the Trans-Am was following. It was.
As they went around the corner, Tooley looked over his shoulder again to check the chase car. As he did so Harrison Ronald stiffened, rose, and half twisted in his seat. He used the bottom of his hand in a swinging backhand chopping motion that caught Tooley in the throat.
The gunman gagged, then choked. The Uzi fell to the floor as he clawed at his throat. Harrison applied the brakes moderately and brought the Chrysler to a swift halt. Then he turned and chopped again with all his strength at the hands around Tooley’s neck. His larynx crushed, the gunman collapsed.
The rear window and front windows both popped as a bullet punched a neat hole in them and left them crazed, with radiating and circular cracks.
Harrison Ronald Ford popped the clutch and slammed the accelerator down, both in one fluid motion.
The tires squawled and smoke poured from the rear wheel wells as the big engine revved and Ford tried to keep the steering wheel centered.
He cranked it over and slid around the first corner, braking hard, then jamming on the gas halfway through the turn. The engine snarled and responded with neck-snapping power.
The Trans-Am stayed with him. Several more shots. Another bullet punched glass. In the backseat Tooley was still struggling to breathe, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords, his feet kicking spasmodically.
Ford took another right, then shot across oncoming traffic in a sweeping left turn, still accelerating, onto Rhode Island northeast-bound.
The fat was in the fire now. The two men in the chase car had to kill him. If they didn’t, Freeman McNally would kill them, just as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow.
Fifty, sixty, seventy … he stayed on the gas and weaved around slower traffic. The engine was willing and the tires gripped well. The Pontiac was behind, still coming.
What to do? Think. Swerve to avoid a VW turning left, straight through a red light with horn blazing. Eighty … He backed off the gas, afraid to go faster.
Cops — where are the fucking traffic cops with their fucking speed guns and ticket books?
He was going to get the green light at South Dakota Avenue. Amen. At the last instant he slammed on the brakes and swerved right and went around the corner on two wheels.
Back on the gas. Around a truck, brakes on hard for a sedan just piddling, skidding some, then clear and in the right lane and back on the throttle.
They were still following. Flashes from the passenger side. Another bullet punched through the glass and he felt several more thump into the bodywork.
He was up to ninety approaching Bladensburg, crowding the centerline. Another green light. Hallelujah! Feathering the brake he dropped to about fifty and used the whole street to make the sweeping right onto Bladensburg southwest-bound.
Now he was heading into the heart of the city, toward the Capitol, which was still four miles or so ahead. The Capitol area would be crawling with tourists and cops. Right now Harrison Ronald wanted to see the flashing lights of a police cruiser more than he wanted anything else.
As he sawed at the wheel and tapped the brakes and swerved to avoid traffic, he realized he would never outrun the car behind. In spite of his car’s capabilities, the gunmen in the Trans-Am had the telling advantage. Harrison Ronald was trying to keep from killing pedestrians and motorists while the men behind didn’t care. They had bet their lives when they decided to rip off Freeman McNally. If some little old lady got run over, that was her tough luck.
Harrison Ronald held his horn down. He slammed the accelerator to the floor and went through a yellow light at the New York Avenue intersection at seventy-five.
The headlights of the dark Trans-Am were almost fifty yards back. In the rearview mirror he saw someone pull into the intersection in front of the speeding Pontiac and get lightly clipped. The left front fender of the Trans-Am disintegrated, the man at the wheel fought desperately to hold it on the road, and the black car kept coming.
With horn braying and the big hemi engine throbbing, Harrison Ronald straddled the painted centerline. He used his left foot to flash the low and high beams up and down.
His luck couldn’t hold. It didn’t. A yellow light ahead. It would be red when he got there.
He slowed. The Trans-Am grew larger in the rearview mirror.
More bullets spanged into the Chrysler. One buried itself in the dashboard.
He picked a gap between the cars crossing in front of him and aimed the Chrysler for the gap. Now — clutch out and on the throttle, skidding some, going through, pedal to the floor.
He checked the mirror. With luck the Trans-Am would hit somebody or stop to avoid a collision.
No luck. The Pontiac shot a gap and kept coming, but too far back to shoot.
Now he was on Maryland Avenue, a boulevard that went straight as an arrow toward the Capitol building. The lighted dome rose straight ahead above the trees.
The four lanes were crowded. Harrison Ronald straddled the median, which scraped the bottom side of the Chrysler, a ripping, grinding sound that sounded loud even above the engine noise. Something came off the car. The muffler and tailpipe. He ran over three traffic signs but had to swerve from the median to avoid the lightpoles.