He kept one hand on the steering wheel and crawled into the cramped backseat. "It's all yours."
"Get a grip," Jackie said. She quickly slid over the console and into the driver's seat. "This is going to be tricky with all this traffic."
Scott reached for his 9mm Sig Sauer P226. Carrying both FBI and CIA "smart-card" identification supplied to them by Hartwell Prost, Scott and Jackie could carry a weapon on board any domestic airliner.
Alternately glancing in the mirror and checking the road ahead, Jackie was becoming more concerned about being able to escape their pursuers. "We're getting pinned in by traffic in front of us."
"You have to do something."
"I'm doing the best I can."
"Okay, stay with it," Scott said, bracing his six-foot frame. He aimed his Sig Sauer and then lowered it. There were too many vehicles and too many innocent people in the line of fire. "Hang on — they're going to ram us!"
Jackie checked the rearview mirror. "They're crazy!"
With a high closure rate, the Mazda pulled out to the left, then sharply swerved into the left rear of the Mustang. With reckless abandon, the driver of the Mazda kept the throttle to the floor as Jackie mashed her accelerator to shoot out in front and correct the slide.
The kinetic energy generated from the desperate maneuver caused the Mustang to brush the rear bumper of a Nissan Sentra. The driver of the Nissan ran off the road and frantically locked her brakes, sliding sideways to a safe stop.
Recovering from the jarring impact, Scott fired three rounds at the Mazda's right front tire. Jackie braked hard and slammed the Mustang into the right side of the Mazda, forcing the car into oncoming traffic.
The passenger in the Mazda leaned out the window and fired a handgun as the driver swerved to the left to avoid a head-on collision with a Volvo station wagon.
Two rounds punctured the side of the Mustang near Jackie's left knee. Scott returned fire as the Mazda ran off the opposite side of the road and spun out of control, then almost sideswiped an Astro passenger van.
"Pull over," Scott shouted.
Jackie braked hard and swung to the right side of the road. "We need to stop these maniacs!" Scott said.
"They're headed straight at us!"
Jackie swung the driver's door open and started to get out. "Get in the car!" Scott said.
The Mazda was accelerating across the road toward them when Jackie dived into the front passenger seat.
Scott raised the Sig Sauer and held his fire until he saw an arm extend from the passenger's window.
"Okay, we'll play hardball," Scott said to himself. He methodically fired three rounds at the windshield and then ducked and waited for the impact. At fifty-five miles an hour and still gaining speed, the Mazda sideswiped the left side of the Mustang, tearing the open driver's door completely off its hinges.
In stunned silence, Jackie and Scott watched as the heavily damaged Mazda bounced off another car and raced out of sight near East Pensacola Heights. A few seconds later, the angry driver of the Nissan Sentra honked her horn and gave Scott and Jackie the middle-finger-salute as she drove past the Mustang.
"Welcome back to paradise," Scott deadpanned, following Jackie through the gaping hole where the driver's door had been.
"Are you still in one piece?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine." He headed for the crushed door. "Let's get this off the road before someone gets hurt."
"Look." Jackie pointed to a handgun lying in the road thirty yards in front of the Mustang.
They placed the driver's door in the backseat of the car and hurried toward the 9mm Beretta.
"Jackie, look at this," he said, pointing to the fresh splatters of blood on the road. "The shooter is going to need some medical attention."
"You nailed him." Jackie turned to get her satellite phone out of the car. "I'd better call nine-one-one and get this scene secured."
Both of them involuntarily had a flashback to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The image of the hijacked airliners plunging through the twin towers of the World Trade Center would never fade from memory.
"Ah, that won't be necessary." Scott walked to the edge of the highway to flag down an approaching patrol car from the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.
As the car slowed to a stop, Jackie turned to Scott. "What are we going to tell the friendly folks at Hertz?"
Scott shrugged. "We're sorry we broke your car, but we need another Mustang, preferably one with two doors and no bullet holes."
Jackie shook her head. "I can just picture the smiles on their faces."
"Oh, yeah."
Before the sheriff's deputy stepped out of her car, Scott turned to Jackie. "Did you get a look at the shooter?"
"No. I was — how should I say this? — a bit preoccupied at the time. How about you?"
"I got a good enough look to know he's Oriental."
After their statements were taken and the paperwork was completed at the sheriff's office, a deputy contacted the Hertz manager to inform him that the damage to the rented Mustang had been reported to the authorities. Jackie and Scott drove the battered Mustang back to the airport.
The Hertz manager, who observed the driver's door in the back-seat of the car, politely suggested that Jackie and Scott see a competitor for their transportation needs.
Thirty minutes later, they were again on their way to the Pensacola Naval Air Station. However, this time they were in a shiny new Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible from Alamo.
The damaged Mazda, which had been stolen from long-term parking at the Pensacola Regional Airport, was found abandoned near McGuire's Irish Pub and Brewery on East Gregory Street.
Inside the car, detectives found a state-of-the-art walkie-talkie with blood on it and on the seat. A trail of blood splatters ended about nine feet from the Mazda, leading police to believe the men had an accomplice in a getaway car.
Checks of area hospitals and health-care centers were negative for gunshot wounds. The Beretta was registered to a Chicago Laundromat owner who had reported the weapon missing seventeen months before it had been dropped on Scenic Highway.
Scott completed his call to Prost and placed the phone down as he neared the entrance to the interstate. "Hartwell was as shocked as we were. He doesn't have any idea why anyone would bushwhack us in Pensacola — in broad daylight, no less."
"Well, someone was desperate enough to attack us on a busy highway."
Scott accelerated as he smoothly entered traffic. "The question is why were we attacked, and who the hell are they?"
"Maybe it's something about your personal life, like the stuffyou haven't told me about."
Scott grinned. "Is it what we know about the downed Hornet, the mysterious bogey?"
"I don't know, but I want some answers from the Pentagon. Someone, somewhere, knows why we were attacked."
Scott shifted lanes. "Hartwell is going to see SecDef this evening and he'll get back to us as soon as he can."
Concerned about their attackers returning, Jackie took a quick look behind them. "Who do you think they were — any ideas?"
"I don't have a clue, but I think we're in the middle of something that's more than a bureaucratic cover-up by the guys at the Puzzle Palace."
"And?"
"The navy, more likely the Pentagon, is afraid of something. I can just feel it when these kinds of things happen."
"That makes sense, but the last time I checked, the navy and the Pentagon weren't into assassinating people."
"True, as far as we know," Scott said. "Which means we're missing a major piece of the hypothesis."
"Stellar observation, Sherlock."
Scott exited the freeway at Garden Street. "The Pentagon may be trying to sanitize something they can't explain, but the goons who customized our Mustang are clearly not affiliated with the Pentagon."