FaceOff

by Lee Child

  “Yeah.” She took out the phone, looked at it, saw that it was her dad. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her to call him before now, but she was so scared, she wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Well,” Kristoff said, “you better answer it.”

  She did. “Dad! A man stole the truck! I’m in the truck!”

  Glen said, “I know, sweetheart. I’m with a . . . I’m with a policeman. We’re following you. Are you okay? Has he hurt you?”

  Kelly glanced at the man. “He hit my arm when I tried to take out the key. But it doesn’t hurt that much.”

  “Honey, everything’s going to be okay. We just have to figure out how—”

  “Give me the phone,” Kristoff said to Kelly. When she hesitated, his eyes narrowed and his voice dropped an octave. “Now.”

  Kelly handed it over. Kristoff put it to his ear and said, “You’re the kid’s dad?”

  “No,” said Reilly. “It was. Now it’s me.”

  Kristoff smiled. “That’s you in that little wagon behind me, isn’t it? The Vega? Those things didn’t run when they were new forty years ago. Unless it’s got a rocket launcher on it, I think you’re screwed.”

  “Let the kid go, Faustus. Keep the truck but let the kid out.”

  Kristoff chuckled. “I think when I hit you in the head you suffered some kind of brain damage.”

  “You pull over, and I’ll pull over at the same time. There’ll be half a mile between us. Let the kid out. I’ll drop her dad off. Then it’ll just be you and me. We don’t need a whole lot of collateral damage here.”

  That prompted a second chuckle from Kristoff. “Seriously? The collateral damage I had in mind amounts to a lot more than one little girl.” He leaned harder on the accelerator. “You’re getting smaller in my rearview. You’re gonna have to pedal harder.”

  The Ford edged up toward eighty-five. The truck cleared a stand of trees, and parked there, tucked in behind them, was a state police car.

  Kelly whipped her head around to see the car as they sped past it, then said to the man, “I think he had radar. You’re gonna get a ticket,” with a hint of satisfaction, like he was really in trouble now.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kristoff said, tossing the phone into a tray in the console. He glanced in his mirror. The police car was shooting out of its hiding spot and hitting the highway, back tires drifting.

  Siren on, lights flashing.

  IN THE VEGA, REILLY SAID, “Son of a bitch.”

  “What?” Garber said. “He’s got the cops after him. Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Reilly said nothing.

  “LOOKS LIKE WE’RE GOING TO have some fun,” Kristoff said.

  The cruiser was one of those souped-up Crown Vics, an Interceptor. Kristoff knew he could outrun Reilly’s commandeered Vega, but the cruiser was another matter.

  It was gaining on him. Gaining on him fast.

  He couldn’t outrun it, and he couldn’t outhandle it. But one thing this Ford had over the Crown Vic was bulk.

  Maybe Kristoff could run it off the road. But he’d have to let it catch him first.

  Kelly was twisted around in her seat, watching the cruiser close the distance.

  “You better pull over,” she told him. “You’re gonna get a huge ticket. And he’s going to put you in jail for stealing my dad’s truck.”

  “Shut up.”

  The cruiser was coming up in the passing lane, siren continuing to wail. When it was only a car length behind, the officer behind the wheel was pointing to the shoulder, ordering Kristoff to pull over.

  Kristoff hit the brakes. Once, hard.

  The Interceptor was suddenly alongside.

  Which was when Kristoff cranked the wheel suddenly to the left, ramming the pickup truck’s front fender into the cruiser.

  The Interceptor swerved over to the left shoulder, the left wheels rolling over the rounded edge. At that point, the driver couldn’t right it, couldn’t regain control and get the car back onto the pavement.

  The cruiser barreled into the grassy median, spun around twice before coming to a halt in a spray of dirt and dust and grass.

  Kristoff was looking in the driver’s door mirror, smiling. “I think your dad’s gonna be pissed about his fender,” he said, and glanced over at Kelly.

  He didn’t like what he saw.

  Kelly was holding the cylinder. While Kristoff had been occupied with the cruiser, she’d reached over the console and grabbed it.

  Now she was clutching it in her right hand, holding it up by the open window.

  “Let me out,” Kelly said. “And give my dad back his truck.”

  “CHRIST!”

  Half a mile back, Glen Garber’s heart imploded as he watched the police cruiser’s high-speed tussle with his pickup truck. He watched helplessly, his fingers squeezing the armrest until all the blood had rushed out of them, as the cars collided—then he breathed out as the cruiser spun off to the side and disappeared in a cloud of dust in the median.

  He glanced left at Reilly, who was also fixated on the drama up ahead. “You need to call your people and get them to back off. You can’t put Kelly at risk with another face-off like that. This guy—what was it you called him, Faustus?—he’s not gonna give up lightly, is he?”

  “I didn’t expect him to.”

  Glen pointed angrily at the phone. “Then call your people. They need to steer clear of him. We’ve got a phone link into him, we can speak to him. Negotiate. I don’t know, just—no more of this Fast and Furious bullshit. My kid’s in that truck.”

  Reilly peeled his eyes off the receding pickup truck long enough to take in Garber’s scowling face, then stared ahead again and nodded.

  “I’ll send out an alert. Make sure no one engages him. But we can’t just let him ride off into the sunset. Even if he does let your daughter go. We need to make both things happen. We need to get her back, but we also need to grab him.”

  “Why?” Garber shot back. “Kelly’s the only thing that matters here. Even if he gets away, you’ll find him again. You guys always do.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is for me. We get Kelly back. Priority one, remember? Then you use your drones and your keyword surveillance and facial recognition software and all the other tricks you guys have these days and you go in and grab him. After I have my daughter back.”

  Reilly grimaced. He hated moments like this. He wanted to say something to get this man to understand the seriousness of the matter, the utterly unthinkable consequences that might well occur if his quarry were to get away. But he couldn’t tell him everything. Not when it was that classified. Not when security protocols dictated who could know the truth and who couldn’t.

  Garber seemed to read his hesitation, as he pressed on. “Who is this guy? And what kind of a name is Faustus? I mean, Christ, it sounds like something Stan Lee dreamed up.”

  “I wish it was,” Reilly said.

  “So who is he?”

  Reilly weighed his words carefully. “He’s a guy with a grudge. A really big grudge. And right now, he’s got the means to get himself some serious payback.”

  Garber went quiet for a second, then said, “A grudge? Against who?”

  Reilly slid a glance across at him. “Everyone.”

  UP AHEAD, KRISTOFF HAD TO fight to yank his eyes off the canister in the girl’s hands and make sure he kept the truck on the road. That damn girl—after everything he’d been through, after everything he’d done to get to where he was now, even if it was in the middle of nowhere, far from the nearest big city where he could unleash the demon he’d risked everything to get his hands on—she had it in her power to ruin it all.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  “Give me that canister, Kelly,” he rasped. “Give it back, right now.”

  “No,” she fired back angrily.

  What the hell kind of a kid is this? he fumed inwardly. A stab of admiration cut through the rage he felt. She was a t
ough kid, and he liked that. Better than some sniveling, pathetic crybaby, he thought. A kid with some gusto in her. Good for her.

  Still, it wouldn’t distract him from doing whatever it took to get the canister back. Even if that meant snapping her neck with his bare hands.

  He couldn’t just reach out and grab it. She was holding it right by the open window. He couldn’t risk her throwing it out of the car, which is what she was threatening to do.

  The canister was supposed to be strong, able to withstand a considerable impact. But flying out of a car at eighty miles per hour, hitting the pavement, maybe getting run over by a car behind them—

  No, that would not be good.

  There would come a time when he’d be happy for the contents of that canister to hit the atmosphere, but not just yet.

  Kristoff wouldn’t mind a little time to get away first. Didn’t want to be downwind and all that.

  So he needed to persuade this kid, who was starting to get very annoying, to be very respectful of that canister.

  “Kelly,” he said, mustering as much calmness into his tone as he could, “you need to give it back to me. You want to know why?”

  She scowled at him, a fierce determination radiating out of her face—but some uncertainty broke through, and after a moment, she said, “Why?”

  “Well, right now, the reason I need you, the reason you’re still alive, is because of that canister. You’re kind of my safety net. My way of making sure the cops stay off my back and let me get to where I’m going. But if I don’t have that canister you’re holding in your hand, well then I don’t need to go there anymore. Which means I don’t need you anymore.”

  She thought about it for a second. “Which means you can let me go?”

  “No,” he replied in a measured, calm tone. “It means I can kill you.” He kept his gaze on her, able to let it linger on her now that the road ahead was relatively straight and flat. “Do you understand? If you want to stay alive—if you want to give me a reason to keep you alive—you need to give it back to me.”

  Kelly stared at him, confusion clouding her expression.

  “Do you want to die, Kelly?” he asked, his voice taking on a sharper edge. “Do you? Is that what you really want?”

  He saw her lower lip quiver as the horrible realization settled into the little girl’s mind. But she didn’t say anything.

  “Do you want to die, Kelly?” he asked again, putting more pressure on the accelerator as the interstate began a long, steady hill climb.

  The flutter of her lip quickened. Then she dropped her eyes, and shook her head, slowly, from side to side. “No,” she muttered. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Then give it back to me,” he said. “Give it back to me and everything will be all right.”

  She raised her head to meet his gaze. He nodded to her, gently, and reached out with his right hand open, tilting his head expectantly.

  He saw defeat and acceptance flush through her expression, felt the tension ease out of his shoulders and neck as she brought the canister back into the car and rested it on her lap.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  A sudden thud from behind shook the truck and shoved him off the back of his seat.

  “What the—?” He glanced into his rearview mirror, his jaw dropped, then he flung his head around to look out the rear window in disbelief.

  It was the police cruiser again, ramming his truck from behind.

  Only, this time, it wasn’t carrying any cops.

  Reilly was at the wheel, with the kid’s dad sitting next to him.

  And he was charging forward again.

  “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR mind?” Garber asked when Reilly rammed the back of his pickup with the police cruiser. Because the truck sat high in relation to the car, Reilly was hitting the bumper with the top of the cruiser’s grill.

  “Need to get his attention,” Reilly said, keeping his eyes straight ahead, his jaw set firmly.

  “And get Kelly killed at the same time!” Garber said. “You run him off the road, that truck rolls, whaddya think’s going to happen to her? She’ll get tossed out the window.”

  Reilly, eyes still forward, nodded. “She’s got her seat belt on.”

  Taking the police car had struck Garber as a pretty good idea. There was no way the Vega was going to catch his truck. When the cruiser went spinning into the median, and Reilly hit the brakes and jumped out, at first Glen thought the FBI agent was checking to see if the cop was okay.

  Glen figured the cop could look after himself. It was Kelly that Reilly should be focused on.

  But Garber quickly saw that Reilly’s intentions were more pragmatic than compassionate. Reilly was flashing his FBI credentials as he was opening the car door. The cop was awake and reasonably coherent, but his vision was impaired by the blood draining from a gash in his forehead.

  “Need your vehicle!” Reilly barked.

  The cop said, “What?”

  “Is the car operational?” Reilly said. The engine was still running, but the way the car went off the road the steering could be shot to hell.

  The cop wiped blood from his eyes to get a look at Reilly’s ID. “I’m not giving up my car to some dumbass fed who—”

  Reilly reached into the car and grabbed the man by the shirt and hauled him out of the vehicle, tossing him into the weeds. The cop was going for the weapon at his belt as he fell onto his back in the brush.

  “You do not want to shoot a federal officer, pal,” Reilly said, getting behind the wheel as Garber ran around to the other side. “The keys are in the Vega.”

  Reilly dropped the transmission lever down into drive and hit the gas. The car moved, grass and stones brushing the undercarriage as he steered it back onto the interstate, tires squealing as they gripped pavement.

  Once he had the car lined up he put his foot to the floor and the car moved. Garber looked up for a handle to grab on to as the car accelerated.

  “He’s up there, but this’ll catch him,” Reilly said.

  “Who is this guy?” Garber asked. “What the hell do you want him for? What’s he done?” Hoping, maybe, that his daughter hadn’t been kidnapped by a serial killer, but some notorious, but nonviolent, embezzler. That might have made him feel, on a panic scale that went from one to ten, only fifteen instead of twenty.

  Even if Reilly had believed the father deserved the truth, there was no way he would have given it to him.

  Telling someone his daughter was trapped in a car with a man who had the capability to wipe out thousands upon thousands of lives; a man who’d had access to a government germ warfare research project that Washington didn’t even acknowledge existed; a man who believed the best way to get attention for his cause was to start sending messages to the government, under the name “Faustus,” threatening a biological Armageddon—well, telling Glen Garber his daughter was caught up with someone like that was just going to make him a tad anxious, wasn’t it?

  So Reilly basically repeated what he’d told the man earlier. “He’s a security threat.”

  To which Garber said, “No shit?”

  The pickup was looming larger in their windshield. Garber could just make out the top of his daughter’s head through the back window.

  Both the truck and the cruiser were pushing a little harder as the highway continued its slow climb.

  “So once we catch up, then what?” Garber asked.

  Reilly reached into his pocket for Garber’s cell phone, put it to his ear, then glanced at the contractor. “We’re still connected. I can hear background noise. Hey! Faustus! You there?”

  He kept the phone pressed to his ear. Listened.

  “What?” Garber asked.

  “They’re talking about the canister.”

  “What canister?”

  Reilly shot him a look. “Shh!”

  The FBI agent listened a few more seconds. “Shit,” he muttered, and tossed the phone back to Garber.

  He put it to his ear, shoute
d his daughter’s name, as Reilly nudged the car up past a hundred.

  The truck was right in front of them.

  And then Reilly drove right into it.

  Which was when Garber asked him if he was out of his mind.

  Without a doubt, Reilly thought. Without a doubt.

  WHEN THE COP CAR RAMMED them from behind, Kelly screamed as her head was snapped back into the headrest. Before she had a chance to turn around and see what had hit them, they were hit a second time.

  The canister fell from her lap, hit the floor in front of her, and rolled around on the floor mat.

  Now she twisted around in her seat to see what exactly had happened. The cruiser had dropped back a car length, and there, in the passenger seat, was her dad.

  “Dad!” she screamed, even though there was no way he could hear her. But she was sure he saw her mouthing the word.

  Kelly waved. Her dad waved back.

  “Give me that!” Kristoff shouted, pointing to the canister. “Right now!”

  He had an idea how he could get Reilly to back off. He’d threaten Reilly the way the kid had been threatening him. With the canister. He’d dangle it out his window, make like he was going to drop it.

  Reilly wouldn’t want that to happen.

  “I can’t reach it,” Kelly said, straining to bend over, the shoulder strap restricting her mobility.

  “Undo the damn belt!”

  “My dad says I’m never supposed to take off my seat belt.”

  Kristoff gave her a look that said, “Are you kidding me?” Kelly got the message and hit the button to retract the belt, and slid off the end of the seat to reach down for the cylinder.

  And as she did this, she thought.

  She thought very, very quickly.

  Kelly was not like the other kids. Kelly was only ten, but she’d seen and been through some bad things in her short life. The kinds of things that girls her age shouldn’t have to go through.

  The big one, of course, was losing her mother. No little girl should lose her mom. And no little girl should lose her mom the way Kelly lost hers.

  But that was just the beginning.

  Not long after that, someone took a shot at her house. Blew out her bedroom window when she was in the room.