The Escape

by David Baldacci

  Puller sat there glancing in the rearview mirror from time to time to check the man’s movements. Then he gazed around to see if others were back there. There were many cars parked along the street. It could be any one of them. And then he saw a flash of light in a black Mercedes three cars back and on the other side of the road.

  A camera flash. Someone had just snapped a photo of him and his truck.

  He slipped his phone out and thumbed in a coded text to his brother. It was short but packed with information. He needed John Puller’s help. And he needed it now.

  He looked across the street to the restaurant.

  Aust was no longer at the table, but Reynolds was still there. She was on her phone. She nodded several times, spoke into the phone, and then put it away. She swept a hand through her hair and in doing so glanced outside. The tactic was done well, and if Puller hadn’t discovered that he was being watched, he would probably have associated nothing unusual with it.

  But as she looked out the window, her gaze had flickered across him. Just a flicker, but it was enough. How they could have gotten on to him was inexplicable. Even his own brother had not recognized him.

  The headlamps of the big Mercedes burst to life as the engine was started.

  Puller glanced in the rearview again and saw the man who’d been watching him climb into a coal-black SUV. It too started up.

  Puller looked ahead of him. There was a stoplight at the next intersection. At this late hour traffic was light, which was both good and bad for him. His hand slipped to his ignition key right as his phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen.

  His brother had texted him back.

  Like the cavalry, John Puller was on his way. But it might not be in time. However, Robert had an idea. His fingers flew over his phone. He was sending a downloaded program together with some additional data to his brother, all linked together. He hoped it worked. Otherwise, he was dead.

  Finished with that, Robert Puller counted to three, watching the light up ahead, and then turned the ignition key. The truck started up. He shifted into gear.

  The Mercedes shot out of its parking spot, but he gunned the truck engine and laid down some tread, beating the German-made car to the open lane. He raced ahead, glancing to his right as he did.

  Reynolds was still in her seat and staring dead at him as he sped by.

  And then she was gone as the truck blew through the intersection. The light turned red, just as he had planned. Only the Mercedes made it through, simply because it didn’t stop. The SUV was blocked by traffic coming from both the left and right. But the driver used his vehicle like a battering ram and broke through the obstruction.

  Now the chase was on.

  CHAPTER

  59

  JOHN PULLER KEPT his regular phone in his right front pocket and his burn phone in the left pocket. He was sitting at Knox’s bedside when the burn phone started to vibrate.

  He slid it out and looked at the message. It was short enough that he decoded it quickly. He was on his feet before he had finished reading it.

  Knox looked up at him.

  “What is it?”

  “Gotta go.” He was at the door.

  “Puller?”

  “You can have my fries.”

  Then he was gone.

  Knox stared after him for a few seconds and then pulled off the line running to her arm, leapt out of bed, rushed to the closet, grabbed the bag with her bloody clothes in it, and started to get dressed as the monitor alarm began to wail.

  Puller was on a dead run to his car. He jumped in, started the engine, and slammed the Malibu into drive. He fishtailed going out of the hospital parking lot and hit the surface road.

  His brother had given him his last position, but it would still take a miracle to find him. And by then it could well be too late. No, that wasn’t an option. He hadn’t been there for Knox. But he was going to be there for his brother.

  His phone buzzed again. He held it up in front of him as he drove. He gaped at the screen. There was a map on there with a dot. A moving dot. Somehow his brother had sent him a real-time tracking link through the burn phone. He quickly saw where the dot was located, hit a right and then a left, accelerated up the entrance ramp to the interstate, and gunned it. He flew past traffic, heading due east. He raced over the Roosevelt Bridge and into D.C.

  He had three choices of direction coming up. As he sped along he eyed the map. Bobby was heading west, which meant he was coming Puller’s way. But he was also heading north, which meant he was also moving away. Puller looked ahead. There was a cop car in the far left lane and Puller was blowing way past the speed limit. Road work was backing up traffic in the center heading onto Constitution Avenue. Puller veered all the way to the right, getting waves of honks from other cars, and fought his way to the exit lane leading to Independence Avenue.

  He blew through the next several intersections as his eye continued to follow the dot. Then an idea occurred to him. He thumbed in a two-word text.

  Go south.

  A few seconds later he saw the dot turn. He watched its progress as he raced through intersection after intersection, running lights and blasting past cars with inches to spare. If a cop took up the chase, so much the better. But he didn’t see a single patrol car.

  He made a quick calculation and next thumbed in East.

  The dot turned yet again. Puller matched the turn, but went right to his brother’s left.

  He edged over two more streets and checked the dot.

  He thumbed in another text.

  Next left.

  The dot moved in that direction. Puller looked up ahead as the pickup truck, tires smoking, catapulted onto the street and headed toward him. Puller put the phone down and looked behind his brother’s vehicle. Message time was over. It was now execution time.

  There were two bogey cars. His brother had described them in the first text.

  Black Mercedes S550 and a black Escalade. The Escalade’s front end was battered. He didn’t know from what. The Mercedes was right on the truck’s bumper and looking for an opening to come up alongside. There was no way on a straightaway that the truck could hold it off.

  Puller was racing right at this tight group, barely seconds away.

  He thumbed in one more text.

  Gun it.

  The truck leapt ahead, providing a small gap between it and the Benz.

  Puller checked his seat belt, noted the air bag sign on the dash, took a deep breath, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. He hoped the Army had enough insurance on this sucker. And he knew he would spend the rest of his life filling out forms. But better that than attending his brother’s funeral.

  He passed Bobby on his left and cut the wheel hard into the gap. His tires screeching, the g-forces ramming him against the side of the car, he flashed directly behind the S550. His left front fender clipped the left rear fender of the other car. He had timed it perfectly, and the Mercedes did a three-sixty As Puller sped past he could see the shocked faces of the men in the S550. The Mercedes came out of the spin completely out of control, went airborne, and sailed into a sturdy tree on the sidewalk.

  The metal gave, the wood did not, and the S550 was down for the count.

  The Escalade avoided this melee by falling back. Now it shot forward like a shark after a seal.

  Puller had gone up on the opposite sidewalk and clipped a parked car. He cut his wheel to the left and shot through a gap in the line of parked cars, slamming back onto the street. His brother was up ahead and getting farther out of sight. But the Escalade was now right behind Puller and closing fast.

  The driver of the SUV gunned his ride and the bumper of the Escalade rammed into the rear of the Malibu, crumpling it.

  Puller fishtailed briefly and then regained control. He looked up ahead. His brother was slowing down. Puller cursed, flicked his headlights, and honked his horn in a precise manner.

  The truck sped up again.

  Good old Morse code, Pulle
r thought. He had just spelled out G-O.

  His positive feeling was short-lived as the SUV hit him again and then pulled up beside his car.

  He knew what was coming next.

  The windows of the SUV slid down. Gun muzzles appeared at the openings.

  He already had his M11 out. He hit the window switch for the passenger side. As it came down he fired directly at the driver’s window. The window glass didn’t break.

  Polycarbonate. Great.

  Unfortunately, his windows were not bulletproof.

  An instant before they fired he slammed on the brakes, smoking his wheels, and the SUV flew past him. The guns roared and a line of parked cars was suddenly full of bullet holes, hissing radiators, flattening tires, and the sounds of car alarms screaming.

  Puller looked around for a cop but again saw not a single one. He expected to hear sirens in the air, but all he heard was his heart hammering in his ears. What, were they all on a break? Was the president out and about in his motorcade and the cops were clearing the streets for the man?

  Cars in the lanes ahead had seen what was coming and had pulled off the road, horns blaring.

  He cut the wheel to the right and slid in behind the SUV.

  They couldn’t fire through the glass in the rear of the SUV, but they might fire out through the side windows. He gauged the height of his hood and that of the SUV’s bumper. Well, he was about to find out if his math was good or not.

  He rammed down the gas and the Malibu surged ahead, hit the SUV’s bumper, and stuck there. He kept his foot on the gas and the hood of the Malibu crumpled and then slid downward and under the SUV’s bumper. He kept the gas flat to the floor.

  The gun muzzles reappeared at the side windows pointing backward. Puller dropped sideways in his seat as his windshield exploded, covering him with shards of glass. But because the two vehicles were now coupled, he didn’t really need to see to drive. The SUV was steering for him. He was just providing the horsepower.

  He waited for their fire to subside and then popped back up and hit the gas harder. The Malibu slid farther under the rear bumper.

  One inch, two inches. His hood was crumpling badly; his front bumper was but a memory back in the road.

  But now what he had wanted to happen did. The Malibu’s engine chassis, far stronger than the car’s hide, started to bear the weight of the SUV’s rear.

  And then the back wheels of the SUV began to rise slightly. He didn’t need them to be completely off the road, just not hugging it.

  Then the SUV’s rear window started to open. That could only mean one thing. They were getting ready to fire again and the driver was making sure they would get a direct sightline this time.

  Well, we can’t have that, thought Puller.

  He whipped the wheel of the Malibu back and forth and had to grin when the two unbuckled gunmen, who were trying to take aim at him through the rear opening, collided with each other like pinballs. He cut the wheel twice more and their heads thunked together. One of them fell over. The other dropped his weapon and clutched his head, cursing.

  The driver of the SUV undoubtedly could sense what Puller was doing, because he heard the SUV’s engine slow and he felt the truck decelerate. The only problem with that was that Puller was running the show now, not the other vehicle. He kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor mat, and the SUV was propelled along by the Malibu’s motion.

  Puller eyed what was coming up and gauged the trajectory.

  He counted off the seconds in his head, hoping that his brother had long since turned off this road and was gone for good. He couldn’t see around the SUV to check.

  He stopped counting at ten, said a silent prayer, and then ripped the wheel to the right.

  The Malibu’s front broke free from the SUV’s rear. The truck’s nose went hard to the left. When its back wheels fully touched down they caught right in the middle of the cut. Neither the driver nor the truck was apparently ready for this wild mix of gravitational and centrifugal forces. The SUV corkscrewed, hit the curb, then a parked car, and then a steel bench anchored to the pavement.

  And finally, for an exclamation point, it flipped.

  It landed on its top, which caved in, and then it rolled, which crushed the driver’s side. It came to a stop on its side after colliding with the corner of a brick-and-masonry town house.

  Puller kept rolling and never looked back. He turned left up ahead, then right, and then checked his dot. His brother was up ahead, two streets over and going fast.

  Eschewing any more texts, Puller called him.

  “You okay?” his brother said anxiously.

  “Both bogeys gone and I’m in one piece, although my car’s trashed. You?”

  “They made me somehow, John. I have no idea how. I was watching Reynolds eating dinner and then I was suddenly surrounded.”

  “Kansas plates?”

  “Couldn’t be. I switched them out.”

  “They couldn’t have recognized you.”

  “No. When I went to her house Reynolds never saw me.”

  Then it hit Puller.

  “Her house! Bobby, she has a pretty intricate security system. You think she has exterior video cameras?”

  “Shit. That must be it. I didn’t see any, but I didn’t check that closely either. She could have seen the images and known what I look like now. I didn’t put my ski mask on until I got to the front door. And I took it off when I left.”

  “And a surveillance camera could have picked up your truck on her street. That’s how they might have spotted it tonight.”

  “That was a big screwup on my part.”

  “The lady’s good, we have to give her that.”

  He took a deep breath. “It seems I’m not very good on the ground with this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

  “They haven’t caught you yet. And it was pretty nifty how you sent me a real-time map of where you were.”

  “Simple, actually. It’s just software.”

  “Still, I never would have found you without it.”

  “I saw what you did back there. I’d be dead tonight if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “Then we’re only even. Did you see anything helpful tonight?”

  Robert told him about the dinner between Reynolds and Malcolm Aust.

  “So a big cheese in the WMD world?” said Puller.

  “One of the biggest. I just don’t how it all fits in. I can’t believe Aust is part of any conspiracy.”

  “Who the hell knows, Bobby? The only person I know I can trust is you.”

  “So what now?”

  “Find a new place to stay and text me with it. Get rid of the truck.”

  “I need transportation.”

  “I’ll try to find you something. Only after I turn this wreck in the Army might never let me check out another vehicle. I’ll circle back to you as soon as I can.”

  “They almost got us tonight,” said Robert. “And don’t say some shit like ‘close only counts in horseshoes.’”

  “I won’t, because this ain’t horseshoes. It’s combat only without a declaration of war.”

  “We need to go on the offensive instead of just reacting.”

  “When you think of a way to do that, be sure to let me know, big brother.”

  “Yeah,” said Robert glumly. “Will do, Junior.”

  CHAPTER