“We’ll get slaughtered,” Tad said.
Drayne reached around the seat and took Adam’s pistol from the dead man’s holster. “Maybe not, I’ve got an idea. Stick the gun out the window and shoot it into the air.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Tad did, the sound loud in the quiet afternoon.
The men behind the copter ducked, but they didn’t return fire.
Drayne almost smiled. Good, that was good. They wanted him alive. Alive, he was valuable. Dead, he was worthless.
And now Tad, bless him, had powder residue on his hand showing he had fired a gun.
“Okay, okay, let’s think about this. We got their attention, but we’re boxed, so we’re gonna have to do this with lawyers. We have money, and we have power. The pharmaceutical companies want what I have. So we get out with our hands up, and surrender.”
“You sure?”
“Trust me, I know what I’m doing. One phone call, we’ll have some very heavyweight people lined up to help us.”
“Okay, man.”
Of course, Tad would have to take the fall for killing Adam. And since Tad would get shot resisting arrest or trying to escape, he wouldn’t say otherwise. Drayne could pull that off. If he yelled, “Hey, don’t shoot, Tad! Put the gun down!” at the right moment, the feds would hose Tad. DEA rules of engagement wouldn’t be that different from the FBI rules when facing an armed perp. Too bad, but Tad had one foot in the grave anyhow. He liked him, but his death might as well count for something. No point in Tad being dead and Drayne being in jail, was there?
Drayne climbed over the seat.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to be right behind you when we get out, we don’t want them to think you’re reaching for something when you move the seat to let me out.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Tuck that gun into your belt and keep your hands in the air when you get out.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s do it. Just stay cool. We’ll walk away from this, believe me. Once we’re out on bail, we can take off and stay gone forever.” Not that they would get bail with a corpse in the front seat of their car. Judges frowned on that.
Tad nodded. “Okay.”
Howard had braked and turned the car to block the road, and the three of them jumped out on the driver’s side, away from the stopped Dodge.
“Get those tasers out, for all the good they’ll do,” Howard said. He pulled his gun from under his jacket, crouched behind the front wheel, and pointed the gun over the hood. “See if you can get the DEA there on your virgil’s emergency band and tell them not to shoot us.”
Michaels nodded. He was the commander of Net Force, but he was willing to defer to the general in this kind of situation. He wasn’t going to to let his ego get them killed.
He hit the emergency call button, got the Net Force operator, and told him to patch them through to the DEA team. The FBI Director should have their number.
Crouched behind the trunk, his taser clutched in both hands and pointed at the Dodge, Jay nervously said, “I think… I think I’m gonna throw up. And I gotta pee, real bad.”
“It’s okay,” Howard said, “we all feel like that.”
Oddly enough, Michaels didn’t. He felt relatively calm, almost as if he were watching and not participating. His mouth was awful dry, though.
Behind them, a car approached. Howard turned and waved at it frantically. “Stop!”
The car, a dark minivan, did stop. The passenger door opened and a man jumped out and ran toward them.
He had a gun in his hand.
Howard swung his revolver around and almost shot the guy — then they all recognized him.
Brett Lee, of the DEA
Lee crouched into a duckwalk the last few steps. “What’s the situation?” he asked.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Michaels responded.
“I was following you,” Lee said.
They all stared at him.
He said, “Look, okay, I screwed up on the bust at the movie star’s house, okay? My job is going away, at the least. I need to help catch this guy so I don’t leave in total disgrace. I need a little victory.”
That made sense. Before anybody could speak, Michael’s virgil started its musical sting. No ID sig. That damned thing was practically useless. He thumbed the connect button. His camera was still on, but the incoming screen was blank, no visual transmission.
“Commander Michaels? Riley Clark, DEA. Is that you in the car behind the suspects?”
“Yes. And I have Brett Lee here with me.”
“Hold your positions, and please don’t shoot unless you are fired upon—”
As if his words were a signal, a gun went off. Michaels ducked instinctively.
From the virgil, Clark’s excited voice came: “Negative, negative, do not return fire, the gun was pointed into the air, repeat, hold your fire!”
Michaels raised from his squat and looked. The driver’s side door opened, and two men stepped out, their hands in the air. The zombie and the surfer. What an odd-looking pair they were together.
“Which one is the chemist?” Lee asked.
Jay said, “Gotta be the surfer.”
Drayne felt tight, knowing all those guns were pointed at him, but he also knew he was the golden goose, and while the DEA field guys might want to burn his ass, the higher-ups would know which way the political winds blew. Sure, he might have to do some time at one of those country-club honor farms somewhere, working on his tan and Ping-Pong game, but in the end, he was going to cut a deal, and he was going to walk away rich. Guys worth tens of millions of dollars didn’t go to jail very often, almost never, and he’d be very cooperative. The feds would bargain with him, because he had something everybody wanted. He could turn people into superhumans. Hell, the Army would be first in line, if the Navy and Marines didn’t beat them to it.
He was smarter than the guys they sent against him, always had been, always would be. He could think circles around them. This was a temporary setback, that was all. He was a genius, and he’d show them just how smart he was.
He smiled. “Don’t shoot!” Drayne yelled. “We give up!”
Something was wrong, Howard felt, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Lee was right here next to him; Howard didn’t trust him, and if Lee raised that pistol, he was going to bat it down, but that wasn’t it, it was something else.
Then he knew. It hit him like a lightning bolt.
He twisted around, looked at the van, said, “Shit!”
The driver’s door was open, and a man was behind it, a rifle resting on the windowsill, but not aimed at Howard or Michaels or Jay or Lee.
Howard swung his revolver around.
The rifle went off.
Tad was looking right at him when Bobby’s head exploded. The skull deformed in front, like it was plastic, and
