Collision (18 page)

“But Gumalar . . .”

“Never mind Gumalar. Our investigation is shut down.”

“But the Dragon . . . they killed him, they, Jesus, they chopped off his hands. Someone inside betrayed us.”

“Yes. One of his informants.”

“No. His informants didn’t know about me. They grabbed him
after
they grabbed me. The only people who knew the Dragon and me were working together were the CIA.”

Raines frowned, as though personally insulted. “Listen, then the Dragon talked after you came to town. He was a black ops dirty job guy, he didn’t exist even before he died. He was a free wheel, he wasn’t an actual agent.”

“I’m telling you we have a leak inside the Agency. Gumalar knew about my family, they knew my name . . . I never mentioned any personal details to the Dragon.”

“Then we’ll seal the leak. But you’re blown. You’re going home. Gumalar’s family knows about the investigation. We’re being asked to back out by Indonesian intelligence. They will handle it.”

“Gumalar owns someone inside Indonesian intel.” Choate put his face in his hands. “He’s dumping money to terrorists. He kidnapped us because we got close and he wanted to scare the Agency off.”

“What part of
go home
do you not understand? It’s not your problem anymore. Your flight leaves tomorrow morning. Be grateful and happy you’re alive, Randall.”

The nurse brought his dinner and Randall Choate thought,
No, I’m not leaving tomorrow. I’m not leaving until the people who threatened my family are dead.
And he felt a debt to the Dragon, a need to see justice done. He nearly laughed. He had not wanted a partner; now he was going to avenge the only one he’d ever had.

24

The bullet shattered the glass, tunneled through the door, and plunged bent and misshapen into Delia Moon’s right eye.

Ben caught her as she fell, dead. A second shot splintered the lock, the bullet passing above his neck as he knelt, lowering her. He flinched.

A third bullet boomed and the lock shattered.

Delia’s gun; he remembered she’d set it down on the kitchen counter.

Ben retreated to the kitchen. He grabbed the gun. Heard the front door kicked open.

The back door off the kitchen was a French door, studded with glass panes, painted a cheery yellow. The back door was visible from the front foyer, and for a few seconds when he rushed the door, he would be in the line of fire. But he hesitated, telling himself,
Stop overthinking, just do; stop overthinking, just do,
and over the rattle of his panicked breathing he heard a footstep on the tile.

He’d waited too long, let himself be cornered. Stupid. Now he couldn’t reach the back door. Not for sure, not without shooting the gunman.

So shoot him.

I can’t shoot another human being,
he’d said, and meant it, but he also couldn’t stand there and allow Delia to die unavenged and himself to be killed. Pilgrim’s taunt—
You don’t have what it takes
—ran hard in his ears. Ben put both hands on the gun. He didn’t know what he was doing. But he would have to do it.

The house was suddenly as hushed as an empty church. The noise of his own breathing seemed loud as a drumbeat. He tried to swallow but couldn’t.

Ben aimed the gun at the opening in the far corner of the kitchen, which faced out onto the foyer. Where would the shooter think he would stand or hide? He had no idea. He hunkered behind the kitchen island, watching around the corner. He could retreat entirely behind the island, but then he couldn’t see from which way the shooter would come.

A rush of movement past the corner and Ben fired the gun; he didn’t anticipate the kick, and plaster flew from the corner where his bullet struck, well wide of the mark.

He pivoted further around the kitchen island’s corner, extending the gun again, and Jackie, the kid from the parking garage with the elfin dark Irish face, fired at Ben.

Ben felt a tug in his flesh through the jacket, then heat, and with horror he realized his arm was hit.
Shot.
He hesitated and tried to fire again and missed, the bullet plowing into the tile.

Jackie kicked Ben in his wounded arm. He gasped and Jackie shoved the barrel of his gun onto Ben’s forehead.

“Drop it!”

Ben obeyed, letting go of Delia’s gun. Ben closed his hand around his arm and blood pulsed between his skin and his cheap jacket.

“You’re Forsberg.”

Ben nodded.

Jackie yanked him to his feet. Dizziness washed over him. “Pilgrim. Where is he?”

“I don’t . . . know. He . . . took off.”
I’m shot
, he thought crazily.

“I don’t believe you.” He shoved Ben back with the gun, caught him off balance. “Tell me where Pilgrim is.”

“No.” Ben collapsed against the granite counter.

Jackie put the gun in his pocket and slipped out a large knife. Steel gleamed in the fluorescents and he seized Ben’s hair with one hand, put the knife close to Ben’s throat. He watched Ben’s eyes widen as the blade drew near to skin. “You ever hear of a pound of flesh? I’ll carve a pound off you. Then I’ll carve off another. Whittle you to the bone.”

Ben closed his eyes. If he convinced Jackie he was truly ignorant about where Pilgrim was, he was instantly useless. And therefore dead. “I won’t tell you.”

The tip of the knife twirled and Ben felt its edge pressing into his flesh. He opened his eyes.

Jackie gritted his teeth into a smile. The knife moved to Ben’s chest, sliced through his shirt, poked at a nipple. Ben felt flesh part under the steel. Then the tip danced along his stomach, downward toward his groin. Stopped.

“You’re holding your breath now. Wondering where I’m gonna stick it. Depends on you. Pilgrim killed my brother, you useless shit. You’re gonna tell me where to find him.”

“I . . . I . . .” In the quiet, they heard the rumble of a passing car from the shattered front door.

“Let’s go where we can have a nice productive chat. You help me, you live. I want Pilgrim dead more than I want you dead.” Jackie put the knife back against the side of Ben’s neck and hurried him toward the door, past Delia’s crumpled body.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said to her. He thought he was going to vomit from fear and pain. The knife felt sturdy and sharp enough to decapitate him.

“What are you sorry for?” Jackie said. “I killed her.”

Blood splashed out of the meat of Ben’s arm; sudden, bone-deep pain bloomed bright in his flesh. They hurried through the front door. Jackie shoved Ben across the yard. He staggered, kept his balance. He had to get away. But Jackie was as tall as he was, heavier with muscle, and several years younger. Ben was sure he could not straight-out beat him in a physical fight, especially with a wounded arm, and Jackie had the knife and a gun.

So rattle him. Get him off guard. He became aware of resolve settling into his skin. Odd—a day ago he would have been frozen in panic; now fear was a luxury. “My arm . . .”

“Shut up your whining.”

“My arm . . .” Ben faltered again, falling into the turned earth of the un-sodded lot next door to Delia’s house. A “FOR SALE” sign stood in front of him, sporting a stylized logo of a rose. The realtor’s name was Rosie. Cute.

“On your feet,” Jackie said and Ben closed his fingers into the loose dirt. Jackie grabbed his hair again and yanked, baring Ben’s throat.

Ben threw the dirt over his head, dusting Jackie’s face and eyes. He pushed hard back into Jackie, catching the knife between them. Jackie yelled, his hands going to his eyes, staggering at the push.

The cloud of grit caught Ben’s eyes, too, but Jackie got the worst of it. Ben yanked on the Rosie Realtor sign. It pulled free from the soil and he swung it hard into the blur of Jackie’s face. The flat of the sign connected with Jackie’s jaw and cheek with a satisfying thrum. He swung again and knocked Jackie to the ground.

Ben already had one bullet wound; down from loss of blood, he couldn’t risk losing to Jackie in a fight. So he dropped the sign and ran, clawing the dirt from his eyes.

Jackie spat in rage and frustration. He swung the knife hard where he thought Ben was, the razor-sharp edge hissing through the empty air. He pawed one-handed at the blinding grit, trying to clear his vision.

Ben stayed low, running for his car. He shoved his bloody hand into his pants, fingers findng his keys.

Jackie’s hand closed around the weight of his pistol. He fired, aiming at the sound of retreating footsteps, and Ben heard the crack of the shot pressing just wide of his shoulder.

Ben reached his car, got in, hunkered low as he started the engine.

In the rearview he could see Jackie running toward him, wiping his eyes, vision clearing. Jackie paused to sheathe the knife under his pants leg and then, blinking, fired the gun at the purr of the engine’s ignition. The bullet dinged the Explorer’s bumper.

Ben floored the car in a peal of rubber. He veered away from the curb and Jackie’s next shot almost got lucky, starring the rearview mirror on the driver’s side.

Ben pressed the accelerator hard against the floor. The Explorer— graceless, then finding its speed—roared down the street. A stop sign stood at the end of the street but Ben accelerated, took the turn hard, a police car honking at him as it slammed on its brakes. The development was all new, curving streets and cul-de-sacs and circles, and the wrong turn would leave him no place to go.

Wiping grime from his eye and steering with his elbow—his right arm hurt as though a lit match had been jammed under the skin—Ben saw, in the rearview, the police car closing in on him. Perhaps someone had heard the sounds of shots inside Delia’s house. He weighed stopping, telling the officer everything, and started to slow down. The police car came close behind him.

But then, revving up behind the cop, came a black Mercedes, sleek as night.

He couldn’t stop now; Jackie would kill both him and the officer. He gunned the engine and arced away from the curb as the Mercedes revved, accelerating with its much more powerful engine.

The Mercedes caught up with the police cruiser and Jackie poured gunfire. He still couldn’t see well and the spray mercifully hit tires instead of flesh. The police car screeched to a stop. The officer fumbled for a weapon, got out, and aimed at the Mercedes.

I’m not sure I can outrace him,
Ben thought, and he slammed hard into a left turn. Jackie stayed close. Ben thought of all the car chases he’d ever seen in movies. Always on highways, or in urban cores, with lots of options to turn and nip and evade, the cars dancing with the cameras to delight the audience. But this terrain was gently rolling prairie shaped into newborn suburbia. He had no place to hide. There were new houses and half-built houses and empty lots. He was going to die on these newly minted streets.

The road curved, dead ending, and Ben took the turn hard enough that he felt the Explorer’s wheels lift and crash back to ground.

He faced a cul-de-sac of new houses, one finished, the other four in various stages of completion, one bricked, two more framed, the other just foundation waiting for wooden bones. Ben floored the car into the circle and didn’t stop.

The back window exploded, shot out. Glass peppered the back of his head, sharpened confetti, nipping at his neck and ears.

He couldn’t win on pavement. The Mercedes was too fast. Ben peeled past one of the houses being framed—a driveway had already been poured, circling back into a side-entry garage that was nothing but concrete and lumber. He drove off the driveway to flat dirt, veered hard past the skeletal house, tore into the empty, matted ground around the unfinished shells.

The Mercedes closed on him.

Ben leaned into a hard turn, pluming up dust and dirt, praying the tires wouldn’t puncture on a stray nail. A flat tire meant the end. He saw the Mercedes drop back, unable to handle the ridges of dirt at the same speed. Ben roared back onto the main road.

Beyond the edge of the road was flatland, cleared and fenced for future lots, rolling slightly downward to a dip that he guessed was a creek. But beyond that would be another road.

He could make the creek—maybe—but the Mercedes couldn’t.

Ben powered onto the flatland. The Explorer jostled and bounced.

In the rearview the Mercedes rocketed onto the cleared land.

What would Pilgrim do?
The thought nearly made him laugh past the nausea of loss of blood and pain. Then he knew:
He would think more than one step ahead.

The land began to slope down; there was no creek as he’d imagined but a fence of strung wire. He hit the fence at seventy miles an hour.

The Explorer tore through the wire, pulling posts from the earth, and one of them rammed against the passenger door like a fist. Wire scoured the paint off the hood. A post clobbered the front windshield into a web of shattered glass. The Explorer spun out, and he floored it again, trying to regain speed.

In the rearview the Mercedes glided through the gap in the fencing he’d made.

The land now rose in a gentle incline. Ahead of him he could see a large, heavily trafficked road, two lanes divided by a thick no-man’s-land of construction.

On the road, traffic hummed at a fifty-mile-per-hour clip. He laid on the horn, tried to time the cut across the highway. He swerved a bit to the right, trying to give a minivan room to get ahead of him and open a small break in the traffic.

He nearly made it.

The Explorer exploded across the two westbound lanes, aiming for the no-man’s-land, just ahead of a Lexus SUV. But Ben didn’t see the pickup truck powering past the Lexus on the outside lane, and as he made it across, the pickup clipped the Explorer’s back right bumper.

The Explorer spun; Ben fought for control to keep from spinning back out onto the highway, back into the path of traffic. He wrenched the wheel with both hands, his wounded arm lighting up in agony despite the adrenaline, and managed to right his track, barrel forward. His heart jammed in his mouth; he looked back, saw the pickup complete its own spin, traffic slowing, cars braking. The pickup driver was a fortyish guy and Ben could see his face, frightened but unhurt.

He glanced behind him again. Jackie’s Mercedes had dodged the traffic— well, most of it, he spotted a bad dent on the passenger rear side—and the German sedan tried to regain its speed.

The Explorer rattled like it was shaking apart as he hurtled past the construction markers and barriers. The land here lay rougher and not planed smooth. The rearview showed him the Mercedes wasn’t chasing him in a straight line; Jackie bulleted along the road’s shoulder, then cut across at an angle. Drawing closer, cutting off Ben’s options. Now Ben could only go to the right.

Half a mile shot by, then another mile. He wheeled past idle cranes and two men on a pickup truck bed, staring up from construction plans, at an interloper in their space. He saw a large mall to his right, on the other side of three lanes of traffic.

The construction zone was coming to an end, nothing but turned earth and huge concrete cylinders, machinery jammed into parking slots. Nowhere to run.

The mall was his last hope.

The Mercedes, moving like an express train now, surged toward him.

He veered out onto the road, narrowly missing an Escalade with a silver-haired lady driving—she shot him a diamond-studded finger. He straightened the car, could see the Mercedes swerving, looking for an opening, a few car lengths behind him. He punched the accelerator and the worn, beaten Explorer tried to respond, but the car began to grind and jerk, like a runner hobbling from injuries.

Now the entrance for the mall: a Nordstrom, a twenty-screen movie theater, a massive bookstore chain, a Macy’s, a Home Depot, a couple of other department stores—all the features of the comfortable marketplace of suburbia. Ben shoved his way onto the shoulder, honking a clear path to the right, seeing the Mercedes trying to cut over to nail him, two cars behind the Mercedes colliding and sliding into each other.