Now, heart pounding, he realized that Twenty-first was a one-way street and that the traffic headed in a southern direction just as he did, which meant that all the cars approached from behind him. Unless he looked over his shoulder, he had no way to tell if a vehicle would be veering toward him. But if he did look, he would reinforce his pursuer’s suspicion. Plural. Other urgent footsteps had joined the first.
“Goddamn it, Buchanan!” a different voice yelled.
The voice was directly behind him, close enough to attack.
With no other viable option, Buchanan whirled, seeing a well-built, short-haired man in his mid-twenties lurch to a sudden, defensive stop.
But not quickly enough. Buchanan struck the man’s chest with the palm of his right hand. The blow was hard but controlled, calculated to knock the man off balance but not to break his ribs.
The man was jolted backward. He exhaled forcefully, a practiced reaction that helped him absorb the impact. That reaction and the resistance the man’s solid chest provided told Buchanan that this wasn’t a civilian. The man was military: trim hips, broad shoulders for upper-body strength. While the man briefly lost his balance, Buchanan swung his right leg hard, twisting it so that his shinbone struck along the outside of the man’s left thigh. A major sensitive nerve ran down each leg in that area. If the nerve was traumatized, the victim suffered not only intense pain but temporary paralysis in the leg.
As Buchanan anticipated, before the man could retaliate from the blow to his chest, he grunted, grasped his leg, and toppled sharply. That left a second man rushing toward Buchanan, cursing, reaching beneath his windbreaker. Buchanan threw his travel bag toward him, forcing the man to zigzag while raising a hand to deflect the bag. Before the man could recover from this distraction and draw the handgun he was reaching for, Buchanan came in close, rammed the palm of his hand sharply against the bottom of the man’s nose, and felt cartilage snap. The man’s vision would blur. The pain would be intense. That gave Buchanan enough time to jab an elbow into the man’s solar plexus and yank his pistol away as he doubled over.
Immediately Buchanan whirled, grabbed the first man, who was struggling to stand, and walloped him against a lamppost. The man’s head made a whunking sound. Then Buchanan whirled yet again, back to the second man, who lay sprawled on the sidewalk, fighting to breathe through his broken nose, spewing blood.
If this had been combat, Buchanan would have killed them. As it was, he didn’t want to make the incident even more serious than it was. If he eliminated the colonel’s men, the next time their orders would be to do the same to him instead of to detain him. Or perhaps these men had been ordered to kill him. Otherwise, why would the second man have been drawing a weapon?
From where Buchanan had come, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Twenty-first Street, a well-dressed elderly man and woman gaped in Buchanan’s direction. The woman pointed a trembling arm, her outcry shrill.
Buchanan grabbed his travel bag and ran. His reaction wasn’t caused only by fear that a police car would soon arrive. What sent adrenaline surging through him in even greater quantity, with greater urgency, were the two men who’d scurried around the corner in response to the woman’s cry. Seeing Buchanan, they charged, and their chests were as muscled, their shoulders as broad as the men on the sidewalk.
Buchanan ran harder, the stitches in his knife wound threatening to tear open. He didn’t care. He had to keep straining. Because when the second two men had seen him and raced toward him, both had reached beneath windbreakers, pulling out handguns, and there was no question now. This wasn’t just a surveillance team. It was a hit team.
What had they done to Holly?
But he couldn’t let himself think about that. He had to concentrate on staying alive. The first priority was to get off this damned one-way street, where the direction of traffic left him vulnerable from behind. Approaching P Street, he risked wasting time to look behind him on his left, saw an opening between two approaching cars, and darted between them, hoping that the cars would shield him, having noticed that the men were raising their weapons. A horn blared. Brakes squealed. He scrambled onto the opposite sidewalk and skidded on a slippery puddle but kept his balance, then bolted around the corner as the cars stopped shielding him and two gunshots roared, bullets shattering a window across from him.
Tightening his grip on the pistol he’d taken from the man whose nose he’d broken, Buchanan raced in a greater frenzy. The misty rain seemed thicker, the night darker. There wasn’t any traffic. The rain discouraged pedestrians. Ahead, opposite, on the right, a murky street light revealed a lane that headed south, bisecting the block between Twenty-first and Twentieth. Buchanan lunged toward it, his travel bag slowing his momentum, but he couldn’t ditch the bag. He couldn’t give up the books and files that were in it.
Behind him, he heard curses, strident breathing, rapid footsteps. The sign for the lane read HOPKINS. Sprinting from P Street onto it, he flinched as bullets struck the corner he passed. At once, he whirled, crouched, and aimed one-handed with his elbow propped on his bent knee, controlling his trembling arm. Sweat merged with beads of mist on his brow. Leaning out from the corner, he wasn’t able to see clearly enough to line up the front and rear sights of the pistol. But if he couldn’t, his pursuers couldn’t aim clearly, either. Judging as best as he could, he squeezed the trigger rapidly, firing three times, the shots echoing in the narrow street, assaulting his eardrums.
Nonetheless, he heard the clink of ejected cartridges striking the pavement and a groan as if he’d hit one of the men, although he had no way of knowing if any of his bullets had connected because both men dove flat on the pavement and shot in his direction, their gun muzzles flashing. A bullet blew a chunk off the corner of the building, nearly hitting Buchanan’s eyes. He flinched and shot three more times toward the men, who now rolled in opposite directions, seeking cover behind parked cars.
Buchanan wasn’t about to get caught outnumbered in a stationary gun battle. The moment he lost sight of the men, he ducked backward, rose, and charged toward the end of the narrow street. The gunshots had caused lights to come on in upstairs apartments. People foolishly showed their silhouettes at windows. Buchanan kept racing. He heard a distant siren grow louder. He heard a window open. He heard a shout above him. But the rapid, echoing footsteps behind him were the only sounds he cared about.
Spinning, seeing the two men appear at the entrance to the narrow street, Buchanan fired twice more. The men separated and lunged into doorways.
Buchanan zigzagged, trying to confuse their aim. A bullet tugged at his left sleeve; another forced tickling air past his right ear. But this time, he didn’t hear gunshots, only eerie muffled sounds, as if hands were striking pillows. The men had put sound suppressors on their weapons, making the noise of Buchanan’s own weapon seem even more explosive when he spun again and fired. More lights came on in upper apartment windows. The siren sped closer, louder. Another joined it.
Buchanan sprinted from the narrow street, racing through the misty rain across O Street, charging to the left toward Twentieth Street. Relieved to be temporarily out of the line of fire, he suddenly tensed as headlights blazed behind him. In the middle of the street, not knowing which way to dive, he had to spin, and the headlights streaked directly toward him. Brakes squealed. But the car wouldn’t be able to stop soon enough. Buchanan had to leap forward, onto the hood of the car, sliding along it to absorb the impact, his face pressing against the windshield, stunned to see the unmistakable red hair of Holly McCoy behind the steering wheel.