“What’s your business, Dr. Mercer?” The man’s voice was flat and lifeless.
“I’m a urologist,” Mercer replied, and stifled a small yawn. “I need to check for renal damage due to extended dehydration.”
The guard waved him through without a second thought. The ID that Mercer flashed had in fact been issued by GWU hospital, but it merely signified that he was a recipient of the hospital’s health coverage. Anything more than a cursory examination would have gotten him a quick trip to the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
So much for the vigilance of the FBI.
Mercer looked over his shoulder and saw one of the guards bury his face in a near-empty bag of corn chips and pour the remainder in his mouth. Since Tish was in possible trouble, there was no way that he would let these two idiots look out for her.
Tish was sitting up in bed, a magazine resting on her bent knees. Though she looked fatigued from her ordeal she was a beautiful woman on the easy side of thirty with short-cropped dark hair, arresting red lips, and high cheekbones. Her skin was burned dark by the sun but did not appear permanently damaged. She looked up at him with her father’s eyes, impossibly clear blue and impish.
“Miss Talbot, I’m Philip Mercer. I’m a friend of your father’s. In fact I owe him my life — maybe he told you the story?”
Her smile was warm and open. “I’ve heard that story about a million times, Dr. Mercer, and I must say it’s good to have a friend here.”
“Better than you know,” Mercer said under his breath. “How do you feel?”
“Tired and sore but okay. I really don’t know why I’m being kept here.” There was annoyance in her voice.
“Believe it or not, you’re a pretty hot item right now. Do you know that you’re under guard?”
“I wasn’t aware of that. What the hell for?” She was plain speaking, just like her father.
“I was hoping you could tell me. I received a telegram about an hour ago from your father in Jakarta. He asked me to look after you.”
Tish stared at him.
“He felt that the Ocean Seeker was intentionally destroyed, and if that’s true, I don’t think that you’re safe here. I was in South Africa when all of this happened, so I don’t know any details, but for now I’ll trust your father and assume that your life may be in danger.”
Tish continued to regard him blankly.
“Does any of this make sense to you? Do you remember something or did you see something that could cause this stir?”
“In the first place, Dr. Mercer…” Before she could continue a man opened the door. A lab coat covered his suit.
“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Alfred Rosenburg, your urologist.” His smile was crooked and his teeth stained tobacco yellow.
Mercer took one look at the man’s shoes and reacted instantly. The punch was powered with a full twist of his body. The instant before his fist smashed into the man’s face, Mercer bent his arm, and his elbow connected solidly with Rosenburg’s cheek. Tish muffled a scream in her hands as the doctor’s head whipped around and he slammed into the wall.
Mercer turned to her. “Get dressed now, I’m getting you out of here.”
Rosenburg was already regaining his feet, a six-inch stiletto in his hand. Mercer bent at the knees and torqued his body around, extending one leg in a sweep. The man fell back, his body shaking the wall when he hit. Mercer planted a foot squarely in his stomach, then kicked up into his face as he doubled over. Rosenburg’s head snapped back and crashed into the wall. He slumped over, unconscious.
Mercer looked at Tish, who was still in bed. “He won’t be alone. Now get dressed.”
She flew from the bed and was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt within moments, though not before Mercer stole a glimpse of exquisitely long legs and a white silkpantied backside.
Mercer opened the door slowly and looked toward the guard station. The pool of blood under the desk told him that both FBI agents were dead.
“Oh, Jesus,” Tish moaned as Mercer led her past the desk. Pausing for an instant, he found an automatic pistol and a spare clip inside one of the dead men’s jackets. He held the weapon discreetly under his own coat and slipped the clip into a pocket.
Mercer took Tish’s hand as they went down the stairs to the lobby. A quick scan of the faces there confirmed that the killer upstairs was indeed not alone. Three men stood just outside the automatic door while another trio peered at a glass-covered bulletin board, their eyes watching the room in its reflection.
The fugitives turned away from the lobby. Mercer led Tish through a set of doors marked NO ADMITTANCE and out onto a loading dock. The man standing on the dock looked at Tish just a bit too critically, so Mercer smashed his knee into the man’s groin. If he was an innocent by-stander, where better to get treated for his injuries, and if he was an assistant to the assassin upstairs, screw him. Mercer and Tish ran to his car.
The Jaguar V12 burst into life instantly. Mercer had hoped to get away without being seen, but two men were already running toward them from the loading dock. Mercer jammed the gearbox into drive and smoked the Pirelli tires pulling out onto the street. A few cars pounded their horns in anger and a pair of nurses jumped back to the sidewalk for safety. Three identical BMWs were already in pursuit as Mercer turned onto 23rd Street heading toward Washington Circle.
Mercer took the car around the circle twice, trying to snarl his pursuers in traffic before tearing off down K Street. The maneuver gained him only a second or two.
Mercer put the borrowed pistol, a Heckler and Koch VP-70, on his lap as he jinked around a Metrobus. The deadly 9mm German-made gun had eighteen rounds inside its wide grip.
He clicked off the safety, then pressed the button that lowered his window. The sounds of the city whipped into the car. Mercer wished that he had taken the top down to give him better visibility, but there was nothing that he could do about that now.
The first chase car was pulling up on Mercer’s left. The driver was intent on the road ahead, but the passenger had his eyes glued on Mercer. He threw a sardonic wave and pulled a Beretta model 12 into view. The little Italian submachine gun could fire a blanket of 9mm bullets at a rate of 550 a minute. Just as the man brought his weapon to bear, Mercer lifted his pistol over the windowsill and let loose.
He fired as fast as he could. The first five rounds tore up the body of the gunman; his torso and head jumped at every impact. As he slumped over, the next five rounds pulverized the head of the driver. The BMW slowed and began to veer off the road. It careened off one of the huge trees that lined K Street and shot back into traffic. In the rearview mirror, Mercer saw the BMW fly into the other lane and slam into the front of a parked garbage truck. The windshield exploded outward as the two bodies smashed through it.
Tish had turned almost white and kept biting her lower lip. Mercer took one hand off the wheel to grasp her reassuringly on the shoulder. He wished he could do more, but there were still two cars chasing them.
Mercer ignored a red light as K Street turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and so did the pursuers. They had just passed the World Bank Building when the first bullets smashed into the Jaguar. Tish slid to the floor and Mercer began weaving the car, but the bullets continued to find their mark.
Traffic was getting thicker. Once Mercer was forced to stop completely but luckily the two BMWs were stuck several cars back. As they approached the busy intersection at 17th Street, with the Jag doing about forty mph, the light turned yellow. Mercer jammed the transmission into second ignoring the tachometer needle as it arced across the gauge, and mashed the gas pedal to the black-carpeted floorboards. The engine revs peaked with an earsplitting whine before Mercer eased the car back into drive. They passed the point of no return as the light changed to red and the mass of cars started down 17th Street like a steel avalanche.