out, glanced around, then pulled his head back inside. “No helicopters. Where are we going? The safe house?”
“Yeah. For now. After that, I think maybe we need to take a nice long trip somewhere out of the country.”
“All of us?”
“No reason for you to go,” Bobby said. “Nobody knows who you are. We’ll give you a nice bonus, you can get back to your life.”
Fuzzed as his brain was, Tad didn’t think that was a very good idea, but he didn’t say anything. Bobby knew what he was doing. Bobby always knew what he was doing.
“Fine by me,” Adam said. He turned around to watch the road in front of them again.
Bobby said, “Loud noise, Tad.”
Tad didn’t have time to think about that when two bombs went
“Fuck!” Tad screamed. The car slewed onto the shoulder, hit a couple of rocks, and jounced hard. He fought the wheel, managed to get it back on the asphalt.
Tad looked into the mirror, saw Bobby just leaning back into the seat, that black gun in his hand. He glanced over at Adam. There was a bloody splotch on his chest and more blood oozing from a hole right over his heart. His left eye and part of his nose was also gone, shredded, gore running down his face. He was slack, only the seat-belt keeping him upright.
It took a second for Tad to get it.
Bobby had just shot Adam. Twice. In the back and in the back of the head. One of the bullets had gone right through him and through the windshield, which was now whistling with the breeze coming through it — what he could hear with his ears ringing from the noise.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Bobby!”
“He was a liability,” Bobby said. “He knew where the safe house was. He knew you personally. We have to make a clean break here, no loose ends.”
Tad nodded. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”
“What was that?” Jay said. “Sounded like some kind fire-cracker — look at the car!”
Howard eased up on the gas pedal and the rental car slowed dramatically. The little four-cylinder gas-alkie engine with battery backup was barely able to move them uphill.
The Dodge ran off the road, hit something and bounced, then scraped and skidded back onto the tarmac.
“Gunshots,” Howard said. “Two of them. Pistol caliber.”
“They shooting at us?”
Michaels said, “No, not us. Somebody in the car.”
“Why?”
Michaels looked at Jay over the back of the seat. “Did I get here before you? What can I see that you can’t? I don’t know.”
The three men stared at the car, which rounded another curve in the wavy road and disappeared.
Howard shoved the accelerator pedal down. The little car moaned, and not much else. Their speed picked up slowly. He pounded the steering wheel. “Piece of Japanese crap! Go!”
Michaels reached for the in-dash GPS, thought better of it, and pulled his virgil. Its GPS would be more accurate. Better find out where they were. Maybe they could get a helicopter from somewhere.
Los Angeles DEA had those, didn’t they? All the drug raids they went out on, they’d have to have air cover.
Could he risk calling the DEA in?
Well, why not? Lee wasn’t the guy who shot at Howard, he had witnesses saying he was elsewhere. And he didn’t have to call Lee back in D.C., just the local HQ.
He didn’t want to do it. But what was more important here? Letting the DEA get the credit? Or maybe losing the drug dealer altogether?
Crap—
The decision was interrupted by his virgil beeping. Michaels pulled it from his belt. The ID showed it was the director. He tapped the link-on, and the vid control, held the virgil up so the cam could see his face.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“My SAC tells me that the drug dealer was not in the house they raided, nor was the other man. What is the situation there, Commander?”
“Three men managed to escape by car just as the raid went down, ma’am. The agents didn’t see them. General Howard, Jay Gridley, and I are in pursuit. We are heading east over the mountains at the moment. We have been unable to contact SAC Delorme’s team.”
“I’ll have them spot on your GPS signal,” she said.
“I was thinking we might call in the DEA,” he said. “They’ll have air support.”
“Already done, Commander. They should have a helicopter in the air by now, and they are also tracking your virgil’s GPS, have been all along.”
Howard nodded. “I see.”
“We have to let them in, Commander. There is no choice in the matter, you understand?”
He understood, all right. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Try to maintain your surveillance. I expect you’ll be seeing the DEA forces show up soon. Call me when you have something to report.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Michaels discommed. Howard glanced over at him.
“You heard the director. Try to stay with them. DEA is in the air.”
But that wasn’t quite true, Michaels realized a few seconds later. The DEA had a helicopter, all right, he saw it not more than a block ahead as they rounded the next curve.
The copter was parked across the middle of the road.
36
Drayne saw the helicopter blocking the road a good two seconds before Tad’s drugged reaction time finally kicked in and he slammed on the brakes. The big Dodge’s wheels locked and the car skidded to a rubber-burning stop.
Adam’s body twisted out of the seat belt’s shoulder strap and he thudded against the dashboard, then slid sideways into the door, smearing blood all over the window and door post.
“Shit!” Tad said.
“Turn around, turn around!”
But as he said it, Drayne looked over his shoulder in time to see a car a hundred feet behind slew to a stop and turn so it blocked the road.
Tad saw it, too. He hit the brakes again.
To their left was a rocky slope, the wall of the mountain. To the right, a fairly steep drop down the hillside into a valley of rock, dried brown bushes, and eucalyptus.
A half-dozen men with guns were crouched around the copter, pointing their weapons at the Dodge. Drayne looked back in time to see three men pile out of the other side of the car behind them. They came up behind the hood and trunk, and pointed weapons, too.
Well, shit.
“Fuck! What do we do?”
Drayne thought fast. There was a dead body in the front seat of their car. Tad had enough drugs to stone a parade, not even counting the scores of Hammer caps. This was bad.
Drayne leaned forward and gave Tad the pistol he had. “Here, take this.”
