Black Flagged (The Black Flagged Technothriller Series) (19 page)

He considered firing the remaining rounds into the back seat, but decided to keep some ammunition in the pistols for immediate use. He had only seen one silhouette in the vehicle on his approach, which led him to believe they'd left the guy from the hotel courtyard behind in their haste to follow his car, but he might be wrong. Glancing around the parking lot, he didn't see any unwanted attention directed at the Suburban and didn't detect anyone lurking nearby. Deciding he was temporarily safe, he yanked open the rear passenger door of the running Suburban.

The interior of the truck resembled a slaughterhouse. A small armory of gear sat covered in blood and skull fragments on the rear passenger seat. He spotted a laptop computer protruding from the gear, which piqued his interest, so he closed the door and ran around to the other side. He was greeted by a thick red-speckled stain covering the door's window.

He opened the door and didn't waste any time helping himself to the contents of the truck. He tossed the two smoking pistols onto the floor and reached for the fully modified M-4 assault rifle leaned against the back of the seat. He swung the rifle over his shoulder, using the tactical sling to secure the rifle in place over his right shoulder. The rifle was slippery to the touch, covered in thick, fresh blood.

He started to grab the tactical vest, but decided against wearing the blood and brain showered black nylon contraption. He might need to travel on foot sooner than he expected, and the last thing he would need on the streets was more bloodstains to attract attention. He shoved the heavy vest to the middle of the long bench seat, uncovering the partially hidden laptop. He took this into his left hand and was pulling it out of the SUV when he quickly noticed that it was attached by a USB cable to a large digital camera that almost toppled out onto the parking lot pavement. He scooped the camera into his left hand, along with the laptop, and slammed the door shut.

He opened the front passenger door and stood up on the Suburban's side steps to look over the roof at the front of the grocery store. He saw two people in the parking lot near the exit, a woman pushing a cart away from the Suburban's aisle and a tall man carrying a single grocery bag headed in his direction. He also heard a car alarm chirp from somewhere behind the Suburban, which shouldn't be an issue, since anyone in that row wouldn't have an angle to see the truck's damage.

He ducked into the front passenger seat and sifted through the gear piled on the seat. He took the tactical vest first, checking for blood and only finding a small dime-sized splatter. He noticed that the vest contained ammunition magazines for the M-4 and for what he assumed to be a submachine gun. The magazines were too long and thick for a pistol. Daniel dug around in the front passenger foot well until he found the silenced MP-9 jammed up against the center console. He considered leaving the M-4 rifle for the smaller, more concealable submachine gun, but the heavy screeching of tires nearby put any thoughts of ditching the rifle on temporary hold.

Juggling the rifle and gear, he donned the vest and slung the MP-9 SMG over his left shoulder. He reached back into the truck and grabbed the police scanner, which squawked excitedly. It was about to get very busy in this parking lot. With all of the gear in place, he sprinted toward his car, which was located several parking spaces toward the store entrance. He could hear a power truck engine roaring somewhere near the back of the lot. A few cars down the aisle, he passed the tall man, who turned his attention from the bullet-riddled Suburban to Daniel and muttered a prayer before backing up against the hood of a white minivan. Daniel focused on getting to the car, which he had left unlocked, with the key partially inserted into the ignition. Another tire squeal reinforced the urgency of his situation, as he reached the driver's door and pulled it open.

He started to duck into the car, but caught rapid movement in his side vision. A figure filled the gap between the two cars parked directly ahead of Daniel's Dodge Charger, running toward him. He didn't fully assess the situation, but it wouldn't be necessary. His brain registered a pistol in one hand and that was all he needed to respond. The compact MP-9 submachine gun spit an extended burst through the driver's door window, instantly shattering the glass. Beyond the crackling cascade of glass particles on the pavement, the suppressor prevented any unwarranted attention. Even from as close as one car away, an untrained civilian would only hear an unrecognizable, staccato thumping that faintly resembled the deep bass of a serious car stereo.

The woman charging Daniel never heard a sound. The concentrated, close-range burst of 9mm steel completely stopped her momentum and slammed her unceremoniously to the pavement. She was dead before her upper back slapped the pavement with a sickening thud. Daniel heard a pistol clatter underneath one of the cars and caught a glimpse of a police badge gripped in a bloody hand jammed up against the front tire. He recognized the woman's gray business suit and froze for a second, staring at her lifeless body. He wished she had kept walking, but understood why she hadn't. Duty. Several approaching sirens jarred his thoughts, and a large black SUV entered the parking lot near the edge of the grocery store. He tossed all of the gear into the front passenger seat and started the car, drowning the sirens with the Charger's powerful engine.

Daniel pulled the car out into the aisle and accelerated toward the back of the parking lot, reaching the end as the black Suburban careened into the same aisle. Behind the Suburban, he could see large groups of people piling out of the store and jammed the accelerator as he turned toward Pershing Drive. The car lurched forward toward the quiet suburbs of Silver Spring, where Daniel hoped to reduce the odds even further in his favor. His plan was simple, he'd race ahead, opening some distance as they entered the twisting, crowded streets, where he'd pull the same trick he used in the grocery store.

The Suburban gained some ground as he sped past Cedar Street. Wind poured through the open window, and Daniel drove a few blocks before he realized that Pershing Drive was a one-way street. Approaching headlights confirmed this, as a car's high beams flashed. The car quickly swerved to the left, as Daniel's car approached rapidly with no intention of moving. He would need to get off this road before someone didn't react quickly enough to his approach. Another street passed his car before he could make a decision, and the GPS indicated that Springvale Road was no longer an option.

The next street was a one-way that emptied onto Pershing Drive, so he pushed the pedal to the floor and rocketed past it toward Mayfair Place. He took the right onto Mayfair at an incredible speed and squealed the tires through the turn, hoping the sound would warn any pedestrians out for a walk. This neighborhood was about to turn into a war zone.

He reached the end of Mayfair Place and saw the Suburban's headlights turn onto the street behind him as he screeched through a left turn onto Greenbrier Drive. He decelerated the car and turned into the first driveway, bringing the Charger to a stop next to a Toyota 4Runner. He killed the lights and jumped out of the car with the assault rifle, sprinting for a thick tree just to the right of the driveway entrance.

The street was oddly quiet for a moment, only broken by radio transmissions from the police scanner deep inside of Daniel's car. Distant sirens competed with the radio transmissions for a few seconds, until he heard the unmistakable drumming of the Suburban's engine, throttling at high speed down Mayfair toward the same turn Daniel had taken seconds ago. He hit the tree with his shoulder and checked the rifle's EOTech Holographic sight, as the intersection ahead of him filled with light.

The Suburban ploughed through the intersection, taking the turn fast. As soon as the truck started to straighten onto Greenbrier Drive, Daniel fired a sustained burst from his rifle, keeping the green holographic bull's-eye centered on the driver's side windshield. A dozen bullets simultaneously perforated the glass, instantly causing the truck to accelerate and swerve in Daniel's direction. As the Suburban barreled past, he raked the side exposed to him with automatic fire.

The disabled Suburban cut diagonally across the driveway and collided squarely with a solid maple tree in the middle of the front yard, causing an incredibly loud crunch. The truck's back end lifted a few feet off the grass and slammed back down. Daniel reloaded the rifle with a spare magazine from his vest and approached the back of the truck, crouching low to present a small silhouette to anyone still capable of a fight. The truck's engine continued to roar and whine, which surprised him, considering the speed of the vehicle upon impact. He could smell a mixture of gasoline and oil, and wondered how safe it was to be standing near the truck.

He heard a rhythmic thumping, every two seconds, on the far side of the truck and risked a peek around the back. The front passenger door moved a few centimeters every time he heard the weak thumping sound. The truck door opened several inches from the next hit, and Daniel saw a bloody fist pull back into the vehicle. Whoever had survived was using his fist to pound the door open, which probably meant that their legs were pinned inside the truck.

Daniel assessed the risk of approaching the target and decided it wasn't worth the gamble. He was most probably armed with a pistol or the same type of submachine gun he had found in the other truck, and he might not be the only survivor. He heard a few murmurs from further down the street and decided that he shouldn't stick around for a block party. Daniel saw the front door to the house across the street open.

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a face in the Suburban's side mirror, and a gun emerged from the gap in the front passenger door, firing an endless, fully automatic fusillade down the side of the truck. Daniel snapped his head back, first feeling the supersonic hiss of several near misses, before the deafening roar of thirty cartridge explosions reached his eardrums. Daniel knew the submachine gun's magazine had been expended by the driver's last-ditch effort to defend himself. Firing at a cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, the gun would expend an entire magazine in roughly two seconds. He didn't time the burst, but he knew from experience that the shooter had emptied the gun. He decided to take a chance.

He sprinted around the corner of the truck, staying low, and pointed the green holographic sighting image at the open crack of the door. The engine continued to scream from the driver's foot jammed on the accelerator. He could see frantic movement inside the truck and edged a little further until a head came into view.

"Stop reloading the weapon. If I sense any movement inside the vehicle, you're dead!" he yelled.

The movement stopped.

"Just tell me who sent you, and I'll leave. Otherwise, you get to join the rest. I just want to know who sent you out into the field on a suicide mission. Who do you work for?"

"You murdered my friends," the man spat.

"Nothing personal, I guarantee you. Someone fucked you over big time today. You need to talk to
them
about why your friends are dead. You look like contract military types. Who do you work for?"

Daniel listened to the approaching sirens for a few seconds. "Last chance. Trust me, it would be pointless for you to die in that seat. I guarantee that your operation is illegal and under the table. If you die here, you'll be swept under the rug like dust. Who sent you?"

"We work for Brown River Security. I wasn't told who pulled the trigger on this, just that you were an immediate threat to national security. Black flagged," the man said.

"You were specifically told I was black flagged?" Daniel asked.

"Yes."

Use of the term "black flagged" meant one thing: CIA. And if the CIA was involved, then someone other than General Sanderson had stumbled onto his secret.

"Throw me your laptop," Daniel said.

"I can't turn around to reach it," the voice coughed, "my legs are pinned."

Daniel rushed forward and opened the rear door. A blood-soaked body tumbled halfway out of the truck, stopped by the waist restraint of the seatbelt. He saw the laptop at the dead man's feet on the floor and snatched it, taking off for his car as the sirens grew louder. Daniel stopped a few feet from the Charger, amazed to see a dark-haired, middle-aged woman standing at the top of the driveway with a butcher knife.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" she yelled.

"To get a grocery bag for your head," he said, staring at her until she dropped the knife to the driveway.

Leaving the woman in shock, he hopped in his rental car and backed it onto Greenbrier. He decided to risk exposing the car to the surviving Brown River contractor and gunned the engine, sending the car north on the road. He planned to work his way back to the downtown area, avoiding the closest point of approach from Natural Foods. Any police officers in the vicinity of Natural Foods would have heard the distant rattle of automatic weapons fire, which would have been immediately followed by several calls from this neighborhood. Half of the Silver Spring police force was probably en route to this address. He just hoped they hadn't found the dead detective yet. Once word went out that he was a cop killer, every available unit in the entire Montgomery County police force would descend on Silver Spring. He didn't have much time to get to a Metro Station before his only hope of escaping would involve more dead police.

He took a quick left onto Woodside Parkway and drove at a reasonable pace to Colesville Road, where he took another left and cruised out of the tree-lined streets into the crowded, concrete downtown area. From the chatter on the police scanner, he could tell that they had not discovered the detective, but he didn't expect the calm to last much longer.

He could see the blue and red reflections of flashing police strobes as he approached Fenton Street, but didn't directly see any police cars. He kept the car on Colesville Road until he saw signs for the Metro station, which led him to a massive public parking garage. He took the handicapped placard off the dashboard and hooked it onto the rearview mirror, easily finding an open spot close to the walkway leading to the Metro. He tossed the gear he had collected from the Suburbans over the front seat and quickly got out of the car to move into the rear driver's side passenger seat. He needed to clean up and get out of here immediately.