The door of that elevator opened. Vice Admiral Tyler Henry stepped out. Automatically the commander straightened.
“Good afternoon. Ad—“
The look on Henry’s face stopped him.
“You!” the admiral roared. He turned to the civilian who had accompanied him on the elevator as he pointed a rigid finger at Judy. “That’s him! That’s the fucking traitori”
Judy turned and banged open the door to the stairs. With his last glimpse over his shoulder he saw the civilian reaching under his Jacket for something on his belt.
He went down the staircase like a rabbit descending a hole, taking them three at a time.
“Stop! NIS!” The shout came from above, a hollow sound, rever- berating in the stairwell.
Your luck’s running true to form. Smoke.
He groped into the gym bag as he ran. The pistol was under the gym clothes.
Seventh floor. Sixth. Noises from above. They were after him. Fourth.
He kept going down.
Second floor. As he rounded the landing Vice Admiral Henry came through the fireproof door on the first floor. He rode the damn elevator!
Smoke shot at the man behind Henry through the door opening and threw his weight against the door, slamming it shut. In this enclosed space the report deafened him. The admiral grabbed for him, so he chopped at his head with the gun barrel.
Tyler Henry went to his knees. Smoke reversed the gun in his hand and hit him in the head with the butt, using all his strength. The admiral collapsed.
With ears ringing, he wiped his forehead, trying to think. If he could get into the parking garages under the building quickly enough, he might have a chance. He could hear running feet above- Galvanized. he leaped over the admiral’s body and charged down- ward.
Level G1. Smoke went out the door and looked wildly around as he ran for the nearest row of cars. No one in sight. He had beaten them down here, but he had mere seconds.
He ran along looking for keys dangling in the ignition, frustra- tion and panic welling in him.
Hang tough, Smoke. You’ve been in tight spots before and you’ve always gotten yourself out in one piece.
He loped down the row, searching desperately.
Ah, there ahead, some guy was unlocking his door. A civilian. Smoke went for him on a dead run.
The man heard Judy coming at the last moment and looked back over his shoulder, just in time to see the gun barrel chopping down.
Smoke picked up the keys from the concrete and tossed his gym bag through the open driver’s door. He pulled the man out of the way and got behind the wheel. As he started the car he could see men pouring out of the elevator and stairwell. They were search- ing, spreading out, hunting for him.
The engine caught. Smoke backed out carefully, snicked the transmission into drive and headed for the exit. Someone was com- ing this way, shouting.
A shot!
He stepped on the gas.
He went around the last pillar with tires squalling and shot up the exit ramp.
The street at the top of the ramp was one-way, from right to left. Smoke looked right. One car coming. He swerved that way and jammed the accelerator down. The driver of that sedan swerved to avoid him, then decided to try to ram. Too latel
Down the street a half block to the intersection, then left through a hole in traffic, almost grazing an oncoming truck, which skidded to avoid him with its horn roaring.
Right again, then left. He ran a red light and swung right onto the bus-only ramp, which led up onto the freeway. Merged with traffic and scanning the rearview mirror, only then did Smoke Judy begin to try to sort out what had happened.
“He’s dead.” The ambulance attendant covered the body of Vice Admiral Tyler Henry with a sheet. “You people give us some room.”
Jake Grafton walked out into the elevator lobby, dazed. A half dozen FBI agents were talking on their hand- held radios and lis- tening to the words coming back. There was still a bloody spot on the floor where one agent had gone down with a bullet in his shoulder. Who would have believed… Smoke Judy?
Toad Tarkington blocked his path.
“Judy. He’s the guy who sold the E-PROM data, wasn’t he?”
Jake nodded.
Toad turned and walked away.
‘Tarkington! Tarkington!”
Jake caught up with the lieutenant in the plaza. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Tarkington didn’t look at him. “For a few lousy bucks that bas- tard damn near killed my wife. She’ll never fully recover. She’ll carry the scars all her life,”
“The FBI’ll get him. They’re the pros at this.”
“They’d better,” Toad muttered. “If I get to the cocksucker before they do, they can quit looking.”
Tarkington walked away and Jake stood and watched him go. What the hell, he needs some time off anyway- He’ll never find Judy. The FBI will scoop him up in a day or two. And maybe the time off will do Toad some good.
Back inside he ran into an agent he recognized, Lloyd Dreyfus. “What the hell happened, Dreyfus?”
“Well, Captain, it seems that the National Security Agency was monitoring the terminals, and when Judy got into the Athena file, they called Vice Admiral Henry right after they called us. Henry beat us here by about a minute.”
Jake started to speak and Dreyfus held up a hand. “I know, I know. They shouldn’t have done that. And now some poor schnook will probably lose his job. But Tyler Henry was Tyler Henry. Very few people ever managed to say no to him and make it stick.”
“That’s true,” Jake acknowledged. “Who was the civilian up- stairs with Henry?”
“Guy from the Naval Investigative Service. We got all this from him.”
“Where’s Luis Camacho?”
“Working.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“No. You tell him he’ll talk with me or I’m going to raise holy hell. When somebody kills a vice admiral in a navy building, the lid is gonna get ripped off pretty damned quick. Right now I know a lot more than my boss, and I don’t know much. When I start answering his questions he is not going to be a happy camper. He’s a vice admiral too, by the way. I will answer his questions. He’s another one of those guys who doesn’t take no for an answer. George Ludlow, the Secretary of the Navy, he hasn’t even heard the word since he got out of diapers. And CNO…” Jake snorted.
“Camacho—“
“He won’t be able to wave his badge over on the E-Ring and stuff this shit back into the goose… You tell him!”
As Commander Smoke Judy drove across the George Mason Me- morial Bridge into Washington, he stripped off his white uniform shirt with the black shoulder boards and threw it onto the floor of the backseat. He was still wearing a white T-shirt, but that would attract less attention than the uniform. His cover was gone, lost somewhere back in the stairwell.
He needed a change of clothes, he needed to get rid of this car and he needed a place to hide.
He took the Fourteenth Street exit on the east side of the bridge and went north, rolling slowly with the traffic between tour buses and out-of-state cars iaden with tourists. A motel? No — they would be checking motels and hotels and bus stations and…
He crossed Constitution Avenue and continued north into the business district.
Three blocks north of New York Avenue he was stopped in traffic inching through a single-lane construction
