The driver took that as their only chance and peeled off to the right. He took an exit that was so fortuitous that Gideon wondered if they were meant to take it.
That question was answered once the Ford peeled out onto the surface street. The two pickups still shadowed them, and a third turned off of a side street ahead of them and reversed toward them in their lane. The Ford had to swerve around the truck to avoid a collision, and that effectively cut off their exit down the side street.
All three pickups were on them in no time. The Ford couldn't outrun them. The driver was on the radio yelling for backup, help, anything. He yelled the names of cross streets into the radio, and then a truck was slamming into the passenger side of the car.
The driver grabbed his gun off of the seat and Gideon ducked his head. The space inside the Ford seemed to shake with the sound of the automatic going off. The smell was rank before the driver let off a third shot.
The only response was a shudder from another impact. Gideon heard twisting metal and breaking glass, and risked a look up. The Ford was sandwiched between two of the pickup trucks, doors buckling inward, and the screeching protest of the Ford's engine cut through the air as their driver tried to gun the accelerator.
Gideon smelled burning rubber, oil, and hot metal. The Ford was slowing whether it wanted to or not.
He turned to look behind them and heard the sound of strain from the rear window. He ducked his head just before the stress on the frame shattered it. It popped right next to him like another gunshot.
Ruth was shaking under him. She was screaming something incomprehensible.
He looked up in time to see the trailing headlights drift to the right to pass them. Then the whole mass of traveling metal pulled to a stop at an intersection. Gideon could see a stoplight swinging above the front of the cars.
Their driver still tried to accelerate, gunning the engine. The Ford responded with a short jerk and the smell of burned rubber. They'd stopped moving.
"Come on," he yelled at Ruth. "Move, now."
He pulled her up, and after about half a second of paralysis, she saw what he was doing. He pushed her through the remains of the rear window and quickly followed, cutting his hands and knees on cubes of safety glass.
His one hope was that there might be some cover near them that they could run for before the guys in the pickups got their act together.
No such luck.
One side of the road was a parking lot, the other a used car dealership. Both were floodlit even at this time of night. Ruth headed to the dealership, it was closer.
Gideon followed, limping on his game leg. Ruth was already three quarters of the way to the dealership, where the cars offered some cover. Gideon stumbled, barely away from the rear of the car. He heard gunfire behind them and saw her turn to look at him.
He waved at her: get moving!
Instead she backed up to grab his arm and help him toward the dealership. That hesitation was too long. They were both on the sidewalk, a dozen yards from the first car in the dealer's lot, and cover, when the sidewalk erupted in orange sparks and the smell of superheated concrete.
They stopped where they were, even before an accented voice told them to freeze.
Gideon stood still, waiting for the bullets to cut them down. They didn't. Instead, a pair of men, one of whom Gideon recognized from Greenwich Village, approached them from either side. The voice from behind them, the one with the heavy Eastern European accent, said, "No sudden moves, or you will be shot."
The admonition wasn't necessary. One of the men in front of them put away his weapon and grabbed Gideon's hands, pulled them behind him, and slipped a nylon restraint around his wrists, tightening it. He did the same to Ruth. While he was binding their hands, the other man roughly patted them down.
The speaker cautiously circled around, covering them with his weapon. When his face came into view, he saw, without too much surprise, the man who had shot Morris Kendal.
The men roughly turned them around and led them to the lead pickup truck. It had a quad cab, with a back seat, and their new captors unceremoniously shoved them into it, belting them in tightly. It hurt when he sat on his wrists, and he was effectively immobilized.
Gideon had a chance to see the Ford. It wasn't a pleasant sight. He couldn't see much through a windshield starred with bullet holes, but a dark shadow was visible through the glass, on the driver's side.
He heard Ruth whisper, "My God."
He turned toward her, and saw her staring past him, at the Ford. She looked at him and said,
"They're going to kill us, aren't they?"
Gideon shook his head, even though he was unsure himself. But, if they wanted them dead, they wouldn't have dragged them to the car. "Try to be strong," Gideon whispered, wishing he had a hand free to comfort her.
As he spoke, the door behind Ruth opened up and one of the men grabbed her from behind, pulling a black hood over her face. She gasped when it happened, as if expecting a garrote. Afterward, Gideon could see her shaking.
"Are you all right?" He asked.
"N-No."
Then Gideon heard the door behind him open, and before he could turn around, a black hood descended over his own head.
3.02 Thur. Mar. 25 2009
IT was almost noon, during a brief pause in a flurry of meetings, when the door slammed open in Emmit D'Arcy's office. Colonel Gregory Mecham stood in the doorway, looking as if he'd had no sleep in the last forty-eight hours. D'Arcy looked up from his desk and said quietly, "Colonel, I thought you were still in New York."
Mecham stepped into the office and let the door close behind him. "What the hell have you done, D'Arcy?"
D'Arcy sat up and straightened his glasses. "I don't appreciate that tone, Colonel. You sound as if you're trying to accuse me of something."
"It's as if you went out of your way to lose them, and one of our men got killed in the process. Christ, where was your security? What were you thinking? A civilian flight out of JFK? You were asking for this to happen."
"That's quite enough, Colonel." D'Arcy stood. "You know we're dealing with a security problem. The extraction was engineered to be small and anonymous. I hand-picked those men, and supervised it personally. Do you think I wanted to be shot at? We chose a civilian flight so that there would be no other government personnel aware of our movement."
"They still caught up with you—"
D'Arcy nodded. His expression was grave. "That means something more ominous than a breach in our communications security."
"What?"
"We have a mole, Colonel. Zimmerman has someone helping her from the inside." D'Arcy walked around the table. "Look at the facts, Colonel. The IUF's people have been aware of every move we've made. From the CIA's botched Daedalus sting onward . . ." He patted Mecham's shoulder. "It's a good thing you came in, Colonel."
"What are you talking about? A mole?"
"Look at the timing of this." D'Arcy turned and leaned on his desk, facing away from Mecham. He looked out the window toward the Washington Monument. "Why did they strike when they did? Unless they wanted your people in the NSA to debrief Malcolm and Zimmerman's sister. While you had them, they didn't move. The moment there's a threat that someone else might question them, they made the grab." D'Arcy's hand moved to a small console set in his desk. He pressed a button.
Mecham was backing up. "Are you saying that someone at the NSA is in on all this?"
D'Arcy nodded. "And we're dealing with some carefully engineered disinformation. They didn't shoot our two prisoners, they took them. Why? Unless those two were working with Zimmerman and the IUF?"