The Riptide Ultra-Glide (26 page)

“So what?” said Coleman. “Just means that those guys we've been following picked up the wrong suitcase.”

“Which means someone's got the right suitcase.”

“Any idea?”

Serge held the card to his friend's face.

Coleman read it and looked up. “Who the hell are the McDougalls?”

One Mile Away

A
rented Impala raced south on U.S. 1.

“What are we going to do?” asked Pat.

“Get the rest of our stuff out of the room as fast as we can and clear out of town.”

“And go where?”

“Who cares?” Pat ran a red light. “We'll just drive until money and gas run out. Wherever we end up will be better than this.”

A ringing sound.

Pat jumped.

“It's our cell phone,” said Bar. “Aren't you going to answer it?”

“It's probably that guy.”

Bar checked the numeric display. “I don't think it is.”

“I'm not answering it.”

“But what if it's the police?” She opened it and held it to her husband's head.

He shot her a glance, then grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Patrick McDougall?”

Pat covered the phone and turned to his wife. “You're right, it's a different voice.” Then back into the phone. “Yes, this is Pat.”

“Patrick McDougall from Madison, Wisconsin?”

“Who's this?”

“My sincere apologies. It's all my fault,” said the voice on the other end. “I believe I picked up one of your suitcases by accident at the airport a few minutes ago.”

“But we have all our suitcases.”

“I know,” said the voice. “One of them is mine.”

“Hold on just a minute.” Pat covered the phone again. “Honey, do we know if we have all the right bags?”

“Of course, I—” She stopped and remembered. “Actually, the driver of the beeping cart grabbed them off the carousel and put them in our trunk. I never got a good look.”

Pat nodded and uncovered the phone. “We might have it, but we'll have to check.”

“Really appreciate it. And again my apologies.”

“It's nothing,” said Pat. “If we've got it, I'll call you back and leave it in our motel office.”

“I'd rather meet in person and give you a reward, a little something for your trouble,” said the voice. “What room are you staying in?”

“We're really in a rush,” said Pat.

“So am I. Let me come by your room.”

“I don't want to,” said Pat.

“It's very important to me.”

A beeping tone on the phone. “Excuse me,” said Pat. “I have another incoming call.”

“Don't put me on hold—”

Click
. Pat put him on hold. “Hello? . . .”

“Give me my fucking cocaine!”

Pat hung up and switched back to the first call. “Sorry about that . . .”

“Give me my fucking suitcase!”

Pat threw the phone out the window.

Chapter Twenty-eight

PARADISE INTERRUPTED

A
rented Impala raced through another red light on U.S. 1.

“Maybe you should slow down,” said Bar.

“I ain't slowing down until we're out of that motel and hit the Georgia line.”

Bar kept checking the mirrors. “Why don't we just call the police? That's what any local person would do.”

“Call the police? You heard them in the motel room during the interview: They might charge us later if it leads to bigger fish. So, like, I just get back in contact and ask them to protect us from someone who wants his cocaine back? They'll book us for sure. I'm not pressing my luck by calling any cops around here.”

“Let's just get on the interstate.”

“I wouldn't go back to the room if we didn't absolutely have to.” Pat checked his own mirrors with a newly developed twitch. “But our ATM's tapped out, our credit card's turned off, and the only money we have for gas is some emergency cash I hid in a side pocket of one of our suitcases.”

“But what about those guys on the phone?” Bar twisted all the way around in her seat like a radar dish. “One of them mentioned the people from the Oasis Inn. They could be waiting back there right now to ambush us.”

“Then they wouldn't have called. They would have just jumped us when we got back to the room.” Pat leaned over the wheel as the speedometer hit sixty. “The fact that they called means they don't know where we're staying—yet.”

“What do you mean ‘yet'?”

Pat pointed. “There's the Casablanca now.”

“Let's be quick,” said Bar.

“Don't worry,” said Pat. “It's almost over. A few more minutes and we'll be home free.”

The Impala jumped the curb in front of the motel and skidded diagonally up to room 17. Pat grabbed the door handle. “I'll be back in a second.”

He ran inside, and true to his word, he was out in a flash. He started getting in the car, then stopped. “Uh, honey?”

Bar looked up. “Oh my God!”

A gun was pressed to the back of her husband's head.
“Where's my fucking cocaine!”

“I don't have it! You got the wrong person!”

“I'll blow your fucking head off!”

The finger on the trigger was connected to a meth-thin ex-con with a teardrop tattoo next to one eye. Teeth so bad it looked like he was wearing novelty teeth. He swung his sunken eyes, and then the gun, toward Barbara's head. “What about your wife? Ready to talk now?”

“Don't point that gun at her!”

“So I found your soft spot?”

Pat grabbed the pistol. But not to wrestle it away; he took the barrel and pressed it back against his own head. “Leave her out of it. There's been a mix-up, but maybe I can help you figure it out.”

“Here's the mix-up,” said the coke dealer. “You got my shit hidden in your room. But I spent an hour in there and couldn't find it. So you're going to come in and help me.
Both
of you.” He stepped back and motioned at Bar with the gun. “Now out of the car!”

Bar complied and stood together with her husband.

The gunman thought of something. Where hadn't he looked? He eyed the Impala's trunk. “Toss me the keys!”

Pat did. The gunman kept his eyes on them as he popped the rear hood. “Don't move! I'm throwing this luggage in the room in case you stashed it in one of those bags.”

The last suitcase flew through the open door. Another wave of the gun. “Now get in there!”

A block away, a screech of tires as another vehicle whipped around the corner.

The gunman turned to see a black Jeep Cherokee with a rack of fog lights. “Shit!” He yanked Pat out of the room. “Back in the car! I'm driving!”

Pat quickly crowded toward his wife in the front seat as the man jumped behind the wheel.

“What's going on?” asked Pat.

No answer. The assailant threw the Impala in gear and hit the gas.

A shot rang out. Just missed the back end of the rental and shattered the window of room 23. The Impala scraped over the curb and bottomed out with sparks. The driver cut the wheel hard and took off south on U.S. 1.

Pat and Bar clung to each other, eyes locked on the man behind the wheel. Time slowed down, volume dropped out; details grew large. The beads of sweat rolling down their driver's cheek magnified his pores in sharp focus.

There was a quiet
pock
sound, like someone accidentally dropping an egg on a tile floor. It went unnoticed, but not the tiny hole in the windshield surrounded by a circle of cracks.

The driver fell forward on the steering wheel. The horn blared, blood squirting from his head, keeping beat with his fading heart.

Then time swung the other way, fast motion. The driver's limp head rotated the steering wheel left, and the Impala swerved over the centerline. Oncoming cars swerved and honked, until a Nissan clipped the front bumper. Both cars spun out and the McDougalls were thrown against the passenger door in a mad teacup ride. Other drivers scattered and slammed brakes. Some found safe spots to crash; others found other cars.

There was a brief intermission of stillness while everyone tried to recalibrate their brains.

They didn't get to finish.

More information followed: The driver's window of the Impala exploded from automatic-weapon fire. All cars emptied, everyone diving into shops, behind trees, under bus benches. Except Pat and Bar, who spilled out their door and froze on the pavement, bullets riddling fenders on the opposite side.

Everyone stayed crouched wherever they landed. People peeked out store windows like extras in a western gunfight. The Impala remained alone, sideways in the middle of U.S. 1 with all the windows blown out. The broad, open, six-lane highway around it bathed in sunlight, a death zone, easy pickings for the ammunition continuing to rake the road and kick up chunks of pavement that pinged against cars and street signs. A shotgun blast blew open the trunk.

Pat and Bar held each other tight, eyes closed, leaning against the rear tire.

Something made their eyes open. The tire wasn't wide enough. It got hit and went flat. Other bullets began skipping under the car. One tore through Pat's left pants pocket. Then he felt a moist pool of fluid spreading around him. Pat checked himself for blood. Then realized it was seeping out from under the car. He recognized the rainbow in the liquid.

“Gasoline!”

A decision was needed. Fear made it for them.

The couple began scrambling on hands and knees down the center of U.S. 1 on the opposite side of the car from the gunfire. They'd barely made it twenty yards when a flash of heat seared up their backs and a concussion wave knocked them flat on the ground. The fireball from the Impala mushroomed into blackness above the coconuts and Canary Island date palms. More bullets now, but less accurate because of the obstructing flames and smoke. The shots came from the occupants of the Jeep Cherokee, which was forced to skid to a stop behind the crashed Nissan. Heavily armed men poured out in cowboy hats and plaid shirts. Stray rounds hit storefronts and newspaper boxes. Twenty witnesses on the phone to police.

Pat veered Bar right in the road—“Over that way! There are less bullets”—he wasn't correct. New gunfire came from a silver Ford Explorer and a Durango, both with Kentucky plates, that had cut through a Citgo station and landed over the curb at a drugstore. More armed men, this time blue jeans and rawhide boots. They took turns firing at the McDougalls and the gang from the Cherokee, who returned the gesture. Men from both sides took hits. A police helicopter swooped in, the spotter on the radio with a crackling voice and whapping rhythm in the background:

“Two civilians on Federal Highway at One Hundred and Fifteenth, taking fire . . .”

The first responding officer raced north up the center of the cleared-out highway, siren echoing off the concrete storefronts. His windshield cracked. Not gunfire. A dislodged chunk of road that flew up. Two innocent people appeared ahead in the middle of the street, through mirage waves coming off the hot pavement. They would be dead any second. The cruiser hit ninety. No time to think. Only option was to kick out the back tires in a combination of gas and brake, then steer into the skid. If everything went right, the patrol car would come to a stop just past the couple, shielding them in a kind of modern breastwork. If it went the other way, the cruiser would leave a big McDougall stain in the road and prop the officer up as an easy target behind his driver's window.

Pat and Bar looked down the road.

“It's the police!” said Pat.

“He's coming right at us.”

They closed their eyes and ducked.

A ripping screech as brakes locked up in the patrol car.

Pat and Bar felt the wind of the cruiser going by.

They opened their eyes. They were still alive.

Bullets immediately riddled the cruiser's door panels.

The couple looked back. A police officer knelt outside his car, holding the back door open and waving wildly for them to join his position. They didn't waste time.

“Get in!”
yelled the officer.

Bar reached the cruiser first and began climbing into the backseat. A well-aimed salvo from the Jeep blew out two of the patrol car's tires and most of the windows.

“Get out!”

The cop pulled her from the car, and he covered the couple on the ground.

“What do we do?” asked Bar.

The officer pointed at a copy shop. “We need to get around the corner and into that alley.”

“I feel safer here,” said Pat.

“We're dead here,” said the cop. “Some of those rounds are armor piercing.”

Bar's instinct said to move, but it couldn't get through to her body. “I can't do it.”

A bullet came through the door of the police car and hit the pavement near her head. Bar took off like a track star, bullets kicking up dust around her shoes. The men weren't far behind.