Early Warning. Michael Walsh
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guys. Like Bogey, before he became a good guy.”
“Right—who is Bogey?”
Devlin took a deep breath. “He was a bad guy before he became a good guy.”
She moved the car ahead faster, but not too much faster. Maryam was an expert. She knew that too sudden a movement would indicate they had something to hide, or, worse, something to flee from.
She swerved around a low-riding Chevy and a Prius, then cut in front of both of them as she took a hard right on St. Charles Avenue. The Howard Avenue roundabout was coming up fast.
“Where are you—”
“Shut up,” she said. “And hang on.” She floored it.
The car behind them picked up speed. Whoever was tailing them was inexpert and obvious. But he was a good driver.
They shot under the Pontchartrain Expressway. The Garden District was dead ahead, served by the famous St. Charles Avenue streetcar, which trundled down the middle of the boulevard from Canal Street to the terminus, thirteen miles away. “Slow down,” said Devlin. Maryam obeyed instantly, knowing he would have a reason.
Devlin used the darkness of the underpass to flip over into the backseat, where his briefcase was. There were weapons in it, but he didn’t need a weapon at the moment. A special hand-held would do just fine.
Most drivers didn’t realize it, but today’s cars were basically computers attached to a drive train, and topped with a home entertainment center. The days of “driving” a car were long gone; the computer drove it and you just steered it. There was no need anymore to shoot out tires of a pursuing vehicle, or run it off the road; all you had to do was knock out its computer and a $50,000 Mercedes became just another expensive piece of immobile junk. And the jalopy behind them was no Mercedes.
Devlin punched the make and model of the car into his PDA. It was a little something of his own devising, which he had developed in his spare time in his office at Fort Meade. At close enough range, it could access a car’s onboard computer and get a complete readout of the vehicle, including its VIN; via a satellite uplink, Devlin could then take control of the car, jam it, disable it, or even wreck it if he so chose. All he had to do, once the readout was complete, was push a button.
Sam Raclette was enjoying the ride. It wasn’t every day that he got a call from a big-shot network correspondent to “follow that car,” but today was his lucky day, in more ways than one. For one thing, he had just happened to be hanging around RAND when the call came in, hoping to squeeze off a shot or two of somebody famous, but idling in the parking lot having coffee, all he saw was some dumpy guy get into a car. Then Ms. Stanley stuck her head out as if she was looking for him, so naturally his curiosity was aroused and he decided to grab a couple of pictures of the Principessa when she saw him and started to chew his ass out until she had a better idea.
“Follow that car,” she said, just like in the movies, and slipped him a couple of hundred fresh simoleons. Well, as it turned out the damn car didn’t go anywhere except into the parking garage, but he never saw the dumpy guy get out and when the car next to it pulled out, he decided what the hell, especially after he got a load of the babe behind the wheel.
And now here he was, chasing a woman into the Garden District and enjoying it. He’d catch up to her soon enough, somewhere at a light on St. Charles, and try to calm her fears. All he wanted to do was talk to her, ask her a couple of questions, maybe get her number. He heard cops did that sort of shit all the time, pulled over a hot chick just for the heck of it, pretend she was doing 50 in a 35-mph zone, check out her license and registration, let her off with a friendly warning and then give her a call a couple of days later.
There she was, just ahead. The damn tinted windows made it hard to see through the back windshield, which was really pissing him off. He was going to have to get closer, but she kept pulling away from him.
Suddenly, the car in front of him slowed. Maybe she was getting tired of the game. Maybe she’d caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror and liked what she saw. He was known to have that effect on women, if he did say so himself. NOLA was a pretty easy town to get laid in, especially if you didn’t mind big girls, but Sam liked a challenge, and who didn’t?
Something caught his eye, something he hadn’t noticed before. There was somebody else in the car with her: a man. A man who had just climbed into the backseat. Damn! Suddenly his whole fantasy of scoring with the hot chick didn’t seem so plausible anymore. Now it was back to business, try to flag them down and—
What if the guy in the car was the dumpy guy? Then he’d really be on to something. There was an underpass below the Pontchartrain Expressway just ahead. If he sped up now he might be able to catch them in the darkness.
He gunned it.
Something was wrong. The readout on the car came through okay, but that was part of the problem. It was an ordinary, off-the-lot Taurus from a few years back, nothing at all special. If the guy following them was really on to them, he would have been driving something up to the challenge. If he really suspected something or if he were sent by somebody who did, he would be driving a lot differently. If it really was an enemy and not a random dope, they wouldn’t even have spotted him until it was almost too late. Something was definitely wrong.
It can’t be, thought Devlin, his finger on the button. What were the odds of a civilian picking them up and giving chase? None at all. Plus the handoff in the garage had been clean, of that he was sure. His mind raced, trying to spot the flaw in his argument, but he couldn’t find any. Not on short notice.
And the guy was following them.
Still…what if the guy was an amateur…
Too late. He pushed the button.
Sam Raclette was closing fast on her when all of a sudden his car stopped.
Except it just didn’t stop. It went from 40 to zero almost instantly. The engine shut off, the brakes locked, and the steering went out. There was a sharp jerk and then the back of the car came up off the ground and flipped over. The car’s windows exploded outward from the impact, the airbags popped and the theft-alarm system went off. In the gloom of the underpass, it spun on its roof once or twice, then settled. Tires screeched, horns honked, as the other cars tried to avoid the wreck.
Inside, Sam followed it head over heels in its tumble, and found himself hanging upside down by his seat belt. This fucking piece of shit he thought to himself. Outside, he heard the screech of tires as the cars behind him braked and squealed around him. All he needed was some idiot to smash into him now, before he could get out.
The noise inside the car was deafening; it was hard for him to hear any of what was going on outside. Still, the first thing was to get the hell out of there. With some difficulty, he released the seat-belt catch and slid down the seat. He was covered with broken glass, and there was blood running down his face, but nothing seemed to be broken except the damn car. Although he was stunned from the impact, Sam could still think clearly enough to understand that he had to get out fast, and that he was going to sue the ass off Ford Motor Company once he did.
And then he heard the klaxon of a semi, right behind him.
Devlin had a ringside seat as the truck clipped the Taurus. “Shit!” he exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” Maryam glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see the aftermath.
The Taurus spun crazily, a lopsided top sent careening toward one of the stanchions that held up the highway. The truck driver delay-reacted, swerving only after it was far too late, which caused several other cars to leap out of the way as best they could. Unable to stop, the truck righted itself and continued to plow on until the driver could bring the vehicle under control.
“We’ve gotta stop. Go back,” said Devlin. Unbidden to his mind came the memory of that FBI agent he’d killed in his home in Falls Church. The woman he’d shot in his bathroom—
Evalina Anderson. That was her name.