Empire

drawer. They were only a split second too slow. They both fired simultaneously and their bullets knocked DeeNee halfway across the room.

Immediately two doors opened and men with weapons came into the office. One of the agents shoved Cole backward and down as they began shooting at the intruders.

But Cole was not going to leave without two things: the PDA and the car keys. So he lunged for Rube’s body and got both of them out of his pockets. In the midst of doing it, in the midst of all the noise of gunfire, he heard one of the bad guys say, “PDA.”

The agents were good at what they did. Neither of them was hit as they scooted out of the room through the still-open door. Cole didn’t follow the route they had just taken to get there; his own normal route got them out of the corridor sooner. Because the bad guys weren’t wasting any time in following him. Whether they cared about Cole was moot. They wanted the PDA.

As he and the agents raced down the stairs, one of them said, “They’ll have somebody in the parking lot watching your car.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I would,” said the agent.

Nobody was shooting now—the gunfire that had already taken place had alerted the security guards, and they would instantly call for support. Soon enough the chasers would be chased.

Unless the security guards were in on it.

They weren’t. But they weren’t helpful, either. They saw the drawn guns of the Secret Service agents and had their own weapons out.

“We’re Secret Service assigned to protect Captain Cole. We’re being pursued by assassins. They’ve already hit one of our men.”

But while this explanation was still registering, the bad guys got into the hall and now the shooting began again. They hit one of the guards and one of the agents. The other agent and the other guards returned fire.

Between shots, the remaining agent hissed at Cole. “Get out of here while we keep them busy.”

He was right. There was no reason for an OK Corral showdown, if Cole could simply get away. He broke for the door and headed for the car.

If there was somebody watching the car, they didn’t shoot at him. Maybe they were waiting for Rube to come out.

As he started the engine and pulled out of the parking place, Cole noticed Rube’s cellphone sitting in the cup holder. All the numbers he had called last night would be in its memory. Thank heaven Rube left it here. Thank heaven Cole hadn’t thought of the cellphone back in the office and wasted time trying to find it along with the keys and the PDA.

As he drove—at a normal pace, because there was no obvious pursuit—he tried to make sense of it. DeeNee. Did they bribe her? Blackmail her? No. Her hand didn’t even shake as she aimed the weapon. And she knew where to shoot to make a.22 lethal without fail. She had been trained.

She was a civilian employee. She never chose the military the way soldiers did. Maybe her nastiness to soldiers was because she hated the Army. Maybe she originally took the job because she needed the money. Or maybe she was a true believer who planned all along to bide her time until she could cause real damage to the evil U.S. Army.

Trust. Who else could have drawn a weapon on Reuben Malich without triggering an instant response. If his hands hadn’t been full with the box she gave him, if he hadn’t simply assumed that Dee-Nee meant no harm, she would never have gotten that shot off.

Oh, God! Rube is dead! He found himself gasping with the shock of it.

Then he heard the screel of tires behind him. Once again he went with the adrenalin and set aside his feelings. Survival first. Mission second. Grief next week, next month, but not now.

A van and a sports car—one pursuer with mass and the other with speed. He wasn’t going to get away easily, not in a PT Cruiser.

His only hope for the moment was to get into traffic, where they’d find it harder to catch him.

Monday morning traffic. But still early. Barely 0530. Not enough cars.

So he made turns. Enough turns that he ended up on the bridge heading into DC.

But he didn’t want to go there. His only help would be Rube’s jeesh.They were planning to gather in Tyson’s Corner.

He couldn’t just turn around. These guys wouldn’t hesitate to ram him if they saw him coming the other way. Besides, Cessy had complained yesterday about the PT Cruiser’s lousy turning radius. If he tried, he’d just run into the concrete wall of the bridge.

He didn’t want E Street or Constitution Ave. He took the exit leading toward the Rock Creek Parkway.

All the cars were coming the other way, into town. There was no park traffic at this time of day—nobody went to the zoo this early.

But as he got up into the park, there were joggers everywhere. A lot of them kept out of the way of traffic. But a lot of them thought that they had as much right to Cole’s lane as he had.

I’m so clever, thought Cole. I’m taking a PT Cruiser uphill in order to evade pursuers.

Very quickly they were right behind him. They weren’t shooting yet. But as the sports car slowed down to let the van pass, Cole could see the plan easily enough. A few bumps from that van, and the PT Cruiser would be in the creek, against the cliff, or wrapped around a tree.

He picked up the cellphone and pressed send. Nothing happened. It wasn’t on. So he struggled to find the power button, and when there wasn’t one, he pressed everything, one at a time, and held it down until finally one of them worked and the screen lighted up. Then he pushed send.

Meanwhile, he was trying to drive around oncoming cars—there were rather a lot of them, this was a major commuting route into the city—and joggers. He couldn’t steer the winding road, hold the cellphone, and lay on the horn at the same time.

Where were the cops when you wanted to be arrested?

No. He didn’t want cops involved. They’d gone to too much trouble yesterday trying to save the lives of cops for him to want any of them to die today.

Rube was dead.

Don’t think about that. He pressed the cellphone to his ear with his shoulder and steered while pressing on the horn. The van came up behind him. He tried to swerve and nearly hit a runner. He hoped the guy was still on his feet and flipping him off instead of flat on his face torn up by asphalt.

It was Drew, the American University professor, who answered.

“Rube’s dead,” said Cole. “DeeNee shot him in his office. I’m alone, in his car. I’ve got his PDA. I know his password. I’m in Rock Canyon with two vehicles in pursuit, trying to ram me, and I don’t know where the hell I’m going.”

“I know the park,” said Drew. “Stay on Beach Road. Way up the canyon you come to a place where Wise Road is a very, very sharp left. Take that turn. It gets you up to Oregon Avenue. Take that to Western Ave. There’ll be traffic. You want traffic, right?”

“I want my mommy,” said Cole. But it wasn’t really a joke even though he meant it to be. “Rube’s dead. I’m sorry. It came out of nowhere. We were holding file boxes.”

“Shut up. I’ll call you back in a minute. I’m calling the other guys. We’ll try to get you some help.”

Cole pocketed the phone in time to swerve sharply. There were weapons in the car. He hadn’t thought to grab any when he got in. He reached behind him, fumbling to find something.

He was hit from behind. It nearly knocked him into a jogger, a woman, who screamed at him as he swerved and fishtailed. An oncoming car ran off the road. Sorry sorry sorry. Not my fault. He got control of the car. He also got his hand on a pistol. That was something. He felt better.

He opened all the windows in the car. No reason to deal with flying glass shards if he needed to shoot.

There was an intersection ahead, with a light. He laid on the horn, jabbing at it to warn people he was coming through. He could see the van behind him lay back, trusting him to have his own wreck.

Instead Cole braked sharply and swerved off the road to the right. The car stopped abruptly and the airbag would have smacked him except he already had the door open and was leaning far to the left. He released the seatbelt and rolled out of the car.