Parallax View (15 page)

She would have to
think of something. If worse came to worst she would pull her weapon on the
officer and force her way in, and worry about the repercussions later. She
slowed to a stop next to the cruiser. The cop was nowhere in sight. She
suddenly got a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She lifted herself
up as high as she could in the driver’s seat and craned her neck, looking out
the passenger side window into the cruiser. That was when she saw the officer.
He was sprawled across the front seat, unmoving, blood staining his uniform shirt.

Shit.
Tracie
put the gearshift into neutral and yanked on the emergency brake, then leapt
out of the car and hurried to the cruiser. She pulled open the door and knelt,
placed two fingers gently on the side of the cop’s neck. Felt for a pulse.
Found none.

He was dead. Shot
multiple times at close range.

The KGB was
already here.

Dammit.

The cop’s body was
still warm, so they hadn’t been here long. Tracie considered calling an
ambulance and rejected the idea. The officer was dead and the wasted time might
cost more lives.

She cursed again
and sprinted back to the Datsun. She slammed the door and gunned the car toward
the control tower, racing along the decrepit access road, driving much too
fast. The car bounced and jolted, slamming down into potholes so deep she was
half afraid an axle might snap. She kept going.

The car sped
around a corner, and a couple of hundred yards away Tracie could see the
control tower and FAA base building. She slowed slightly, trying to come up
with some kind of action plan, when a side window in the base building
shattered. The glass exploded outward as a metal folding chair flew through the
window, followed a heartbeat later by a tumbling body. It looked like Shane
Rowley.

He dived through
the window and landed on top of the chair, then rolled onto his back and looked
up at the window. A second man appeared. The man was older, and as he tried to
climb out, his body began to stutter as bullets ripped into him from behind,
and then he slumped across the frame.

Shane scrambled to
his feet and ran along the narrow alleyway between the base building and the
control tower. He burst into the parking lot and ran straight into a man
holding a silenced handgun. The man was facing away from Tracie, but she could
see him raise the gun and shove the barrel into Shane’s forehead.

And she didn’t
hesitate.

She drove her foot
to the floor and aimed the Datsun straight at the pair. The gunman didn’t seem
to have heard the sound of the little car’s engine, or perhaps didn’t comprehend
the significance. Shane was facing the vehicle and Tracie hoped he would
understand her intent.

The car leapt
forward and the two men grew steadily larger in the windshield. The gunman
seemed to be talking, asking Shane a question or maybe threatening him. Nothing
in Shane’s demeanor gave away the fact that a speeding car was hurtling toward
them. At the last moment Shane dived to the side, just as it seemed to occur to
the man in the suit that something was wrong.

Shane hit the
pavement and rolled. He disappeared from sight as the Datsun plowed into the
man with the gun, catching him in the side with a sickening thud. His body flew
up and over the hood. He crashed into the windshield and then tumbled over the
roof in an ungainly somersault.

Tracie watched in
the rearview mirror as the man dropped onto the pavement and lay still. She
slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop just shy of a big vehicle with U.S.
Government plates. Then she jammed the car into reverse and began backing up,
one eye on the gunman, still crumpled in an unmoving heap in the middle of the
parking lot, one eye searching for Shane.

She spotted him
crouched between two parked  cars just as the base building’s front door
crashed open and two more men exited the building at a dead run. The men wore
suits similar to the downed gunman and each was holding a gun. They turned
right and ran toward Tracie and their injured conspirator.

And Shane.

Tracie leaned
across the front seat and shoved the passenger door open. “Get in here, now!”
she screamed. She reached down and unsnapped her gun. The men were closing
fast, shouting something unidentifiable.

She leaned out the
smashed window and twisted, pointing the gun in the general direction of the
pursuers. She aimed above their heads and squeezed off two quick rounds. The
two men hit the deck, flopping face-first to the pavement.

Shane dived
through the open passenger door, a sprawl of arms and legs, landing on the
floor-mounted gear shift and unintentionally pushing the Datsun into neutral.
By now the two men had risen from the pavement and were almost on top of them.
Tracie jammed the car into first gear and popped the clutch and the little
vehicle spun its wheels and then took off.

One of the men had
reached the driver’s side door and held doggedly to the door frame as he ran
along beside, screaming at Tracie, trying to aim his gun. She jerked the wheel
from side to side, zigzagging out of the parking lot, trying to break his grip.
Finally the man tumbled away from the vehicle. He rolled into a grassy field
next to the roadway.

Shane was
screaming, “What the hell’s going on here? What the hell’s going on here?”

“We’ll talk about
it later,” Tracie answered, realizing she too was screaming. Her hands were
shaking as adrenaline flooded her system. She lowered her voice and tried to
calm down, to think clearly. “Right now,” she continued, “we have to get the
hell out of here. We’ve got barely any head start and those guys know what
vehicle we’re in. They’ll be right on our tail. If they have any kind of decent
wheels at all, they’ll catch us in no time.”

The Datsun
screamed past the dead officer’s police cruiser, Tracie keeping the gas pedal
pinned to the floor. There was nothing anyone could do for the cop, and slowing
down for another look might just get them killed. They rocketed toward the
phalanx of news vans and curious onlookers, the surprised faces growing rapidly
larger in the cracked windshield.

She glanced right
and saw Shane making a visible effort to get himself under control. He had
lifted into a sitting position and now buckled his seat belt—a smart move,
under the circumstances. Tracie saw blood sprinkled across his face and
clothing. He didn’t seem to notice. He took a deep breath and ran his bloody
hands through his hair.

Tracie blasted
into the intersection of the airport access road and the cross street, barely
slowing, somehow managing not to T-bone a passing car and kill them all. She
turned right, toward Bangor proper and Interstate 95, risking a glance in the
rearview mirror, certain the two men in the suits would be right on their tail,
but they were alone. For now.

When Shane spoke
again, his voice had modulated, although it was shaking and he was panting as
if he had just completed the Boston Marathon. “First off,” he said, “thank you
for saving my life. I think I was down to my last couple of seconds on earth
when you ran that guy down. That was some quick thinking and some unbelievable
driving on your part.”

She shook her head
and started to answer, but he interrupted. “Second,” he said, “what the hell
have you gotten me into?”

26

May 31, 1987

9:25 a.m.

Interstate 95, north of Bangor,
Maine

I-95 buzzed beneath the tires of
the Datsun, evergreen trees flashing past outside the windows, the empty
terrain of northern Maine beautiful but monotonous. After leaving the airport
and their attackers behind, Tracie had driven straight to the interstate, but
rather than turning south, as Shane had expected her to, she had instead driven
past that access ramp and headed north.

“Where are we
going?” he asked, confused.

“Those goons know
I have to get to D.C. as soon as possible. They’ll assume we high-tailed it in
that direction. Once they get their act together and come after us, that’s the
way they’ll go. If we’d gone south before changing vehicles, they’d have been
on us before we knew what hit us. We’d be dead before we made it ten miles.”

“But they didn’t
even follow us out of the airport.”

“Yes, they did.
Trust me. The only reason they didn’t run us down before we even got off
airport property is because they had to go back and toss the guy I ran over
into the back of their car. They can’t afford to leave him there, and he’s
injured, so that slowed them down. Once they hustled him into their car,
though—and I guarantee it didn’t take very long—they started out after us.
Going north instead of south will buy us a little time, give us a chance to
catch our breath, acquire a new vehicle, and formulate some kind of plan.”

Shane raised his
eyebrows. “
Acquire
a new vehicle? Don’t you mean
steal?
”

“Acquire, steal.
Tomato, tomahto.”

He shook his head.
“‘Acquire a vehicle’? ‘Formulate a plan’? Who the hell
are
you? And what
kind of trouble are you in? Because that was a goddamned bloodbath back at the
airport. There are dead people lying all over the inside of the tower base
building. I’m almost certain I’m the only one who
wasn’t
killed.”

When she didn’t
answer, Shane pressed the issue. “Come on, Tracie, I know I owe you for saving
my life, but the way I see it, my life wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t
hauled your ass out of that burning airplane last night, so I think you owe me,
too. How about some answers?”

She chewed her lip
as she drove, clearly conflicted about what—or how much—to share. He kept
quiet, letting her fight her inner battle. Finally she spoke, but it wasn’t to
shed any light on the situation. “You can’t go home until this is over,” she
said reluctantly. “Thanks to the news media, those guys know your name, which
means they can find out where you live. They probably already have. They want
to use you to find me. They may well be searching your apartment right now if
they have the manpower.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” she
said. “You’ve gotten mixed up in something big, something that I don’t even
understand completely, and you won’t be truly safe until it’s over.”

“All the more
reason, then, to answer my questions.”

Tracie nodded. “I
know,” she said. “But let’s find a new car first and get something to eat. Once
we get started southbound we’re going to have a long drive ahead of us and I’ll
try to fill you in on as much as I can, then.” An exit ramp was approaching
rapidly and she flicked the turn signal and exited the highway.

“Fair enough,”
Shane said. “So let’s do it. What are we looking for?”

“An All-American
strip mall.

***

May 31, 1987

9:45 a.m.

Old Town, Maine

They found one within a
quarter-mile of leaving the interstate, a long, low, L-shaped cluster of
concrete-block buildings that could have been stamped out of a cookie-cutter
mold and dropped into any city, town or suburb in the United States. Probably a
couple of decades old, the businesses looked tired, not quite defeated but
struggling to survive. There was a Laundromat, a mom and pop convenience store,
a drugstore, a Chinese restaurant, and a half-dozen other businesses, with two
or three empty storefronts scattered among them.

“Perfect,” Tracie
muttered after looking it over for a few seconds. She drove into the complex
and parked the Datsun roughly in the center of the lot, alongside a group of
cars clustered in front of the Laundromat.

“I thought we were
going to get some food,” Shane said. “The Chinese joint is all the way down at
the other end of the mall.”

“That’s true, and
we are,” Tracie said. “But once we’re done eating, we’re going to ‘acquire’ a
car, remember? Too many customers do take-out at your typical Chinese joint. We
wouldn’t want to be in the middle of hot-wiring Suzy Homemaker’s station wagon
and have Suzy walk out of China Lucky with her Kung Pao special, catching us
right in the act, would we?”

“Us?”

“Okay, me. But
you’d go to jail, too. The point is we’re less likely to be caught in the act
by someone who’s fluffing and folding inside the Laundromat than by someone
picking up their takeout order.”

“What if they
throw their laundry in the washer and then go out for a drive, or to get a cup
of coffee or something?”

Tracie shrugged.
“Then I guess we’re screwed. There are no guarantees in life, right? But it’s
clouding up out here and there’s a cold breeze. Hopefully most people would
want to stay inside the warmth of the Laundromat, rather than go out and freeze
their butts off.”

“Hopefully.”

“Yep. Anyway,
that’s my theory, so unless you have a better one, let’s hike across the lot and
share a meal, shall we? And speaking of freezing, you probably noticed that
driving at highway speeds in Bangor, Maine in a car with a smashed window makes
you a lot colder than you might have imagined, even in late May. It’ll feel
good to warm up a little.”

Shane hesitated.
“Uh, well, I hate to seem unchivalrous, especially since you just ran over a
guy holding a gun to my head, but I’ve only got a few bucks in my pocket. I’m
not sure I can afford a meal, and it might be kind of hard to keep a low profile
with an angry Oriental restaurant owner chasing us into the parking lot.”

Tracie smiled. “I’ve
got enough cash to last for a while, and I can get more. Come on, it’s my
treat.”

They shared a
combination platter, Tracie skillfully and consistently deflecting any
questions about her background and about why she had been aboard the doomed
B-52 and why men with guns were chasing her around Maine. “You promised you’d
answer my questions,” Shane reminded her, surprised but pleased to be eating
Teriyaki Steak at this time of the morning, only now realizing how hungry he
was.