“Drop your weapon!” one of them yelled. “Do it now! Drop your weapon!”
“U.S. Marshall,” Harvath replied. “You lower your weapons.”
“ID. Let’s see it,” the second cop said.
“I’m his ID,” Leascht stated, as he leaned from behind Harvath. “I’m Cameron Leascht.”
“The Supreme Court Justice?” the first cop asked.
“Yes.”
“They didn’t tell us that’s who they’re looking for,” the cop replied as he lowered his weapon. “DHS only put out a description.”
“That’s because they don’t want you to know,” Harvath replied lowering his weapon.
As he did, cop number two lowered his as well and asked, “What the hell is going on?”
Harvath played it as honestly as he could. “Somebody in the government has targeted Chief Justice Leascht for assassination. I have to get him out of here, but DHS is standing in our way. Can you help us?”
The cops looked at each other and the first one said, “None of it has felt right. People being forced onto trains to take them to God-knows-where? I haven’t liked any of this from the beginning. What do you want us to do?”
“Put out a call and draw them off. Someplace on the other side of the station.”
“I can do that,” said the cop.
“Thank you,” Harvath replied as he moved the judge past the officers. “Give us thirty seconds to reach the end of the train.”
The cop nodded and Harvath and Leascht picked up their pace. When they got to the final car, Harvath stopped for a moment to allow the judge to catch his breath.
“When we step off the train, just keep your head down and stick with me, okay?”
Leascht nodded and Harvath peered out one of the windows. The coast was as clear as it was going to be. They had caught a break with those two cops, but he didn’t expect to get that lucky again. Only a fool would think that Murphy didn’t ply his trade in D.C. as well.
“Let’s go,” Harvath said.
Stepping off the train, they saw two DHS officers running in the direction the Amtrak police had sent them. Leascht kept his head down as instructed and kept pace with Harvath as he moved.
Every time Harvath thought he had a clear path, though, he would catch sight of a DHS officer and be forced to change course. The last thing he wanted was an altercation, but it was beginning to look almost impossible to avoid. Then, they found an exit.
Facing Union Station Drive Northeast, and set into the stone arches of the building’s façade, was a wall of two-story panes of glass. Pulling his pistol, he aimed high and began firing.
The sounds of gunshots and the shattering of glass sent the throngs of people outside into a panic. The barricades collapsed and the crowd began running in all directions.
Harvath grabbed Leascht, and they ran out of the building and onto the sidewalk.
They raced across the street and leapt over the stone railing onto the sidewalk that ran downhill toward F Street and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Up ahead, he could see 2nd Street. That was where Chase Palmer would be waiting. He couldn’t tell if the judge was going to make it. He was breathing heavily and appeared pained.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “Keep going.”
Harvath slowed his pace.
“I told you,” the judge repeated. “I’m fine.”
“It’s a long block.”
“All the more reason to move faster,” Leascht said, picking up the pace.
At 2nd Street they turned left and found Palmer exactly where he had said he would be, parked in the alley on the opposite side. They could hear sirens nearby. Palmer waved for them to hurry up.
They were less than fifteen yards away, moving down the middle of the street, when Palmer sprang from his truck with his rifle and seated the stock against his shoulder.
Harvath didn’t need to look at what the man was going to shoot. He could hear the siren right behind him and see the reflection of the vehicle’s blue strobes bouncing off the glass SEC building to their left.
“Move, move, move!” Harvath shouted, guiding Justice Leascht out of the street and up onto the sidewalk.
As soon as they were clear, Palmer began to press his trigger. The rounds pounded into the engine block and left front tire of the DHS Crown Victoria. Immediately, the officer threw the vehicle in reverse and backed up as fast as he could.
It had bought them some time, but not much. “Let’s go!” Palmer shouted.
Harvath and the judge ran the rest of the way to Palmer and jumped in his SUV.
Palmer slammed his SUV into reverse and screamed down the alley. In a small parking area, he spun the vehicle around so he could continue forward and then headed for 3rd Street.
Exploding from the alley, he clipped two parked cars as he pulled a hard right turn and went south.
They blew through the intersection at E Street, headed toward D.
“Where are you going?” Harvath asked.
“They had to move to the alternate extraction point. Someone stumbled upon them.”
Murphy, Harvath thought to himself. “We’re going to need to get off this street then. It becomes one way, coming at us after D.”
“Roger that,” Palmer replied, pressing on the accelerator even harder.
At D, he slammed on his brakes and skidded into the intersection, pulling hard on the wheel to avoid a collision.
“I hear sirens, but I can’t see where any of them are,” he continued as he weaved through the traffic.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Harvath as they passed the Heritage Foundation and Massachusetts Avenue. “I’ll watch for cops, you watch the road. Louisiana Avenue is coming up on your left. Take it.”
Palmer did as Harvath instructed. When they crossed 1st Street NW, Harvath saw several blue light bars racing up Constitution Avenue in an attempt to cut them off.
“Now I see them,” he said. “Eight o’clock.”
“This is going to be close.”
They hit Constitution and turned right with such speed that Palmer drifted into oncoming traffic and sideswiped three cars. DHS was now right on their tail.
“Make a left,” Harvath ordered at the next intersection and Palmer swung onto 3rd Street.
They had barely made it a block before the traffic in both directions ground to a halt.
“Right turn! Right turn!” Harvath shouted. “Use the mall.”
The National Mall was a park that stretched just under two miles from the Capitol steps to the Lincoln Memorial. With 3rd Street in their rearview mirror, there were five more thoroughfares that cut across the park in different places. Palmer didn’t slow down for any of them.
They missed getting T-boned three times and left multiple accidents in their wake, dramatically slowing down the pursuit of DHS.
Harvath glanced at Palmer’s speedometer as he reached for his radio. They were doing almost ninety miles an hour.
“We’re coming in hot,” Harvath relayed.
“Roger that,” Sloane replied. “We’re ready.”
Blasting across 15th Street and then 17th, they passed the Washington Monument and the National World War II Memorial, and were now even with the Reflecting Pool. Up ahead, he could see the Lincoln Memorial. They were almost home free.
Palmer hung a hard left after the Reflecting Pool and headed for the Potomac.
Waiting under the Arlington Memorial Bridge was the high-speed, extreme weather Naval Special Warfare Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat, or RIB for short, that General McCollum had arranged. McCollum was one of the only people Reed Carlton fully trusted.
The RIB was powered by dual turbocharged, aftercooled Caterpillar diesels and crewed by three Special Warfare Combatant-Craft, or SWCC, crewmen.