Adam reached into his jacket as if about to draw a gun. The other man retreated, worried. ‘Sorry, I don’t have time to exchange insurance details,’ Adam said as he applied power. The Mustang briefly resisted before jerking away from the pickup, leaving a chunk of its radiator grille embedded in the truck’s mangled bodywork. One of the headlights was broken.
He reversed until he reached a gap between the parked cars, then swung up on to the sidewalk to get around the obstacle. The man yelled impotent abuse after him.
A siren behind grew louder. Adam checked the mirror. One of the Suburbans made a slithering turn off Capitol, the blue lights in its grille blazing.
He shoved his foot down, snatching rapidly up through the gears as he powered along the sidewalk and swung back on to the road. The SUV followed, gaining rapidly. The Mustang had suffered mechanical damage — it was only subtle, but Adam could feel that it was less responsive than before.
Another intersection ahead. He threw the car to the right, heading north — realising too late that he was going the wrong way up a one-way street.
Headlights came at him.
He swung the Mustang to the left — then veered sharply back to the right as the other driver panicked and swerved across his path. The two cars missed by inches. He looked back, hoping that the Suburban’s route was blocked, but there was just enough room for the SUV to slip by.
Someone leaned from the side window. Fallon. Laser light stabbed from his MP5 as he aimed at the fleeing Mustang.
Adam jerked the wheel left as Fallon fired. Bullets seared past. Another burst as the soldier adjusted his aim, and the Mustang echoed with the hammering hailstone plunk-plunk-plunk of rounds tearing through sheet metal. Adam flinched, but the shots didn’t hit him.
He was not unhurt, though. His left eye suddenly stung. Blood from the cut on his forehead was running down his face. He wiped it away, but realised from the size of the stain on his hand that the flow was not going to stop.
Traffic ahead. He was approaching the intersection with M Street, cars crossing his path in both directions.
A dazzling red dot fluttered across the dashboard. Adam ducked as Fallon leaned further out and fired again. More sharp thumps of impact — and the right side of the windshield crazed as a hole was punched through it.
The Mustang reached the junction. Left or right?
Neither.
Adam braced himself and ploughed straight across, aiming for what he hoped would remain a gap.
Horns blared, brakes squealed — then the Mustang lurched as a car clipped its back end. A sharp yank at the wheel and he regained control, checking the mirror—
The car that had nicked him spun like a top as Fallon’s Suburban slammed into it. The SUV skidded round — then flipped on its side, crushing Fallon beneath it and smearing him over the road before rolling on to its roof. It smashed into a street lamp, practically folding in half around it.
Two down.
But there remained one to go. Baxter was still behind him, the last Suburban refusing to give up its prey.
The Mustang tore past a fire station, men already running out to help the crash victims. He looked ahead. The street ended at a T-junction. He slowed to turn west, feeling a shiver through the steering. The latest collision had added to his ride’s woes. Damage to the suspension, or one of the wheels; either way, he couldn’t keep going much longer.
But he didn’t have to. Only a couple more miles.
If he could survive them.
Chapter 49
End of the Road
Adam glimpsed a sign: I Street. His mental map of the city warned him that he was in a minor maze of residential roads, with few direct connections to the major arteries he needed to reach. Heading north would only take him deeper into the tangled grid. But if he turned south at the western end of I Street, he would emerge on Maine Avenue. From there, he could follow the road north-west past the Washington Monument directly to 17th Street — and then it was a straight run north to the Eisenhower Building.
Where Sternberg was waiting.
The thought galvanised him. He wiped more blood from his eye and accelerated, weaving past trundling traffic. The junction was just ahead.
And Baxter was behind.
Like the Mustang, the last Suburban had lost a headlight. The cyclopean glare in the mirror was briefly lost to view as he made the turn south, then returned, closing in.
Adam swung right and poured on the power to make a sweeping entry on to Maine Avenue. He forced his way into the traffic, leaving a trail of swerving and skidding cars in his wake.
Reed navigated them all, the SUV’s siren howling a warning for other drivers to clear the way. Baxter brought up his MP5 again. The laser’s dot darted over the surrounding vehicles as Adam wove the Mustang through the shoal.
The speedometer rose — sixty, seventy. But the Suburban was keeping pace — and the shudder through the steering column was getting worse, the Mustang twitching and wavering.
Laser flare in the mirror as the SUV found a gap in the traffic and swung in behind the speeding Ford. There was a car to Adam’s left, forcing him to go right to evade — directly across Baxter’s line of fire.
The red glare was overpowered by stuttering muzzle flash. More shots struck the Mustang — then the entire windshield imploded, crystalline fragments flying back into Adam’s face in the eighty-mile-per-hour slipstream.
He instinctively shut his eyes to protect them from the hard-edged cascade, then forced them open again. He had to squint into the slashing wind — and the first thing he saw was a set of tail lights rushing at him.
He swerved — finding another car already there.
The two vehicles caromed off each other with a crunch of metal, the second car bounding up over the central reservation. Adam hauled the wheel again to slot into its space, missing the slower vehicle ahead by a hair.
The road dropped into a tunnel beneath the Southwest Freeway. He pulled back into the rightmost lane, putting the car he had just passed between the Mustang and the Suburban. That gave him a few seconds’ respite.
He would need it. There was a tight turn coming up.
The Mustang emerged from the underpass — and immediately shot through a red light. Adam spun the wheel, bringing the car screaming through the traffic crossing the intersection and down the exit to the left, tearing alongside the monolithic block of the Federal Communications Commission. The road rapidly merged back on to another section of Maine Avenue… one leading to 17th Street.
Only a mile to go.
The Suburban reappeared behind him, barging a car aside. Baxter was getting increasingly desperate to stop him, putting civilians at risk. Harper’s part of Adam’s psyche tried to defend the collateral damage: the ends justify the means. Adam didn’t accept that, but in this case he had no choice but to do whatever was necessary to reach Sternberg.
The road passed under two bridges. Another red light ahead, cars slowing in all three lanes—
Despite knowing the damage it could cause, Adam swerved up on to the central divider to get past them. The Mustang’s suspension protested with a loud bang — then there was another crack of metal as the car hit a street sign, shearing its pole off at the base. He flinched as the sign flew at him, flipping up over the shattered windshield and clanging off the roof.
He veered right to avoid a street light and crashed back on to Maine Avenue. Baxter’s SUV followed. The illuminated spire of the Washington Monument pierced the night sky above the trees ahead.
The vibration grew worse. One of the Mustang’s wheels was definitely damaged. But he had to keep going. Back up to sixty, weaving through the traffic.