The Hunted

by Alan Jacobson

  Scott Haviland was driving his Bureau-issued blue Chevrolet Caprice along Pennsylvania Avenue headed toward Interstate 395. Waller, sitting in the back seat with Payne, was leaning against the door facing his passenger. None of them had spoken since leaving the lobby of headquarters. Payne was not interested in making small talk; he wanted answers, but he had to be careful. He did not know to what extent Waller and Haviland were involved, if at all. Regardless, he was not about to tip his hand and tell them what he knew unless it was to his advantage.

  Finally, realizing it was to his benefit to initiate the conversation, he turned to Waller. “So what did you want to talk about?”

  “You missed your day of classes today.”

  “Something was wrong with the laptop. Couldn’t get online.”

  “Where were you all day?”

  “Trying to figure out what was wrong with the computer.”

  Waller looked away for a moment, staring out the front windshield. “Something’s up, Harp. We want to know what it is.”

  Payne grunted. “You want to know what’s up.”

  Waller turned back to him. “That’s right.”

  “I’m conducting an investigation.”

  “On what?”

  “It’s ongoing, I can’t discuss it just yet. You’ll know when I’m done.”

  “Not good enough. You know standard Bureau procedure.”

  “Yeah, I do. And no one seems to be following it.”

  Payne looked hard at Waller, locking eyes with him. He needed to show strength without giving any indication that he knew what was going on. Of course, in reality, he only had theories and assumptions. He had no facts.

  “Knox is concerned.”

  Payne nodded. “I can understand that. I’m very important to him.”

  Waller turned his attention back to the front windshield. “You’re going to have to be more specific with the director. He won’t tolerate evasive answers.”

  “Or what? What’s he going to do? He needs me. I’m his case. Without me, Scarponi goes free.” Which might be exactly what he wants, Payne felt like saying.

  Waller sighed, then extended his hand. “I need your firearm, Harp.”

  Payne looked at him. “My firearm?”

  “You’re behaving irrationally, and given the opportunity to explain, you’ve failed to provide support for your actions. I don’t know if it’s all part of that blow to the head or what, but if you give Knox a good explanation, it’ll be returned.”

  Payne casually reached into his jacket, removed his Glock from its holster, and pointed the barrel at Waller’s head. “Sorry, partner. Can’t go that route, not yet.” Glancing over at Haviland, Payne said, “Keep both hands on the wheel where I can see them, Scott.” He turned back to Waller and held out his left hand. “Give me your wallet.”

  “Harper, this isn’t the way to go.”

  “My life, my concern. Hand it over, now.”

  Waller’s gaze seemed to focus on the gun, which was two inches away from his eyes. Payne knew that Waller had assessed the situation, and given a choice between being severely reprimanded by Knox for allowing this to happen—or facing the prospect of a bullet ripping through this brain—he would take the lesser of the two risks.

  “Come on, Jon,” Payne said. “Remember what you said to me a few days back? If I ever needed anything?”

  “The offer still stands. But I can’t help you break the law.”

  Payne grunted. “Exactly what law am I breaking, Jon?”

  “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. It’s how we swore to conduct ourselves, Harper. It’s not just a catchy phrase on the Bureau seal.”

  “I think I’m being pretty damned brave holding a gun to your head. As for fidelity and integrity, first you have to prove yours to me before I commit to them myself.” Payne wiggled the fingers of his free hand. “Your wallet.”

  Waller clenched his jaw, then reached beneath his jacket.

  “Slowly, Jon. Keep it clean.”

  He produced the wallet and handed it to Payne, who shoved it into his pocket.

  “Now slowly remove your weapon with two fingertips and hand it to me.”

  Waller complied, and Payne took it with his left hand. Pointing the Glock in his right hand at the back of Haviland’s head, he now had both of them at gunpoint. “Same thing, Scott. Two fingers, remove your weapon.”

  With his right hand, Haviland complied.

  “Now point the gun toward the windshield and release the magazine onto the floor.”

  Haviland held the firearm out and pressed the small release. The metal receptacle containing fifteen bullets dropped and clunked to the carpet.

  “Good. Now toss the gun down.”

  The weapon thumped somewhere on the passenger side.

  Payne pressed the release on Waller’s Glock and placed the magazine in his pocket. He unchambered the remaining round still inside the gun and tossed the weapon to the floor in the front of the car.

  “Okay, gentlemen. See you around. When I’ve completed my investigation, maybe we’ll enjoy a beer and laugh about this.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Waller said.

  “No, I guess not.” Payne turned to Haviland. “Stop the car, Scott.”

  Haviland stayed silent, his eyes focused on the road.

  “I said, stop the car.”

  “He’s not going to let you off, Harper. You can shoot us if you want, but I don’t think that’s what you’re about.”

  “That’s part of the problem, Jon. I don’t remember what the fuck I’m about. Now stop the goddamned car!”

  “You can go ahead and shoot us,” Haviland said, “but I’m not stopping this car.”

  The sudden acceleration was obvious. Payne glanced at the speedometer and saw the needle gliding past thirty-five miles per hour. As he looked down to grab for the door handle, Haviland suddenly slammed on the brakes.

  Payne’s head and right shoulder smashed into the front seat. He felt a hand on his arm as Haviland floored the accelerator. He fell backward, fighting to maintain a grip on his handgun with his right hand while trying to find the door handle with his left. The door popped open—and the frigid wind hit him in the face, momentarily vacuuming away his breath.

  He closed his eyes and—despite Waller’s hand gripping his suit jacket from behind—he leaned forward.

  And leaped from the moving vehicle.

  47

  The initial impact was absorbed by his shoulder. But as Payne tumbled and rolled along the pavement, the only thoughts spinning through his mind related to protecting his head. Another concussion was something he definitely did not need.

  A few more rolls amidst the blaring of an approaching horn and he was scrambling to his feet. He dodged an oncoming van and zigzagged across the avenue. As he landed on the curb with his left leg in full stride, he felt a ripping sensation in his thigh. He knew the stitches had torn open, at least partially. But the adrenaline was pumping, and if there was any pain, he was not feeling it.

  He half-hobbled and half-ran down the street, in the opposite direction Haviland had been driving, looking for a restaurant, somewhere he could hide. But this was Washington, and this part of the city had no night life to speak of. It consisted mostly of government buildings that had long since closed. He needed a side street, a bar or hotel, somewhere to get off the main drag.

  Twenty yards away, he saw something better.

  Haviland slammed on the brakes, the tires screeching to a halt. “You see him?”

  “Where’s my fucking gun?” Waller was on the floor in the backseat, his hands skimming the carpet, fingers getting nicked by the sharp edges of the seat track. “Turn the goddamned light on!”

  Haviland hit the switch on the overhead dome light and located the two Glocks.

  “He took my mag,” Waller said. “Give me the one from the glove box.”

  “What are you going to do, shoot him?”

  “Whatever I have to do to stop him. Take
out his other leg if I have to. Son of a bitch.”

  Haviland handed him the spare magazine and grabbed the radio handset.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Backup—”

  “You fucking out of your mind? Knox will have our badges if we broadcast Payne’s escape across the radio.”

  “And if we don’t find him?”

  “We will,” Waller said, slapping the magazine into the handle of his Glock. “He’s a gimp, he won’t get very far.”

  “So we go it alone?”

  “Alone.”

  Leaving the car in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, Waller opened the door and dodged a couple of oncoming cars as his eyes suddenly locked on a moving figure a couple of blocks away.

  Haviland was running alongside Waller, forty caliber in hand. “There, by Seventh—”

  “I see him.”

  “He’s headed for the Mall.”

  “Then we’ve got him.”

  Payne was winded. His lungs were burning from the cold air, and he was now beginning to feel pain in his leg. But going back to the Academy and continuing on as Knox’s puppet—or worse—did not appeal to him. He needed to find out what the bigger picture was... and despite his suspicions, he needed facts.

  And then there was Lauren.

  He turned right off Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed through a wooded planter, which provided dense cover from the silhouetting headlights of the oncoming traffic. He emerged in a cobblestone plaza, which was part of the side entrance to the National Gallery of Art’s West Building. He shuffled alongside the structure, moving parallel to Fourth Street. Forty feet ahead was the Mall, the 146-acre elm-tree-lined park that stretched from the Capitol at the east end to the Lincoln Memorial at the far west end.

  Payne turned right, following the footprint of the Gallery, now moving parallel to the Mall. Unfortunately, because the art museum was such an exceptionally long building—more than two blocks in length—it left him exposed, unable to escape should Waller or Haviland locate him.

  He glanced to his left, and in the shadows of the dim streetlight, he noticed a man walking toward him. He threw his back against the darkness of the building’s cold marble facing. Payne squinted, trying to make out the gait and size of the person. Could it be Haviland or Waller? As he stared, he could see the silhouetted form of a leashed dog at the man’s side.

  He gulped down a few bitingly cold breaths of air before rolling off the building’s side and continuing on, scampering along the base of the steps of the entrance, in the direction of the west end of the Mall. Built in Washington’s time-honored multi-columned facade-and-canted-roof motif, the entrance was designed to be grand—and the illumination, with bright orange mercury spotlights, certainly helped accomplish this goal.

  But the foot of the steps was comparatively dark. After making his way across the stairs, he stayed close to the bushes that lined the entire front of the building. If he could make it to the edge of the Gallery before Waller or Haviland saw him, he would greatly increase his chances of success. He hoped that they were off searching another part of the District by now, since he figured that from their perspective he could literally be anywhere. If a cab had been passing as he was fleeing Haviland’s car, he could be on the other side of the Potomac by now, headed for the airport. Or back the other way, headed toward Union Station and a rail system that could take him anywhere in the District, or, for that matter, anywhere in the country.

  He realized the ability to be instantly somewhere far away from here was not only appealing, but his best hope for a successful escape while he regrouped and tried to determine his next course of action. But he had a bad feeling that Waller and Haviland were not far off—and if he was not careful, he would end up running right into them.

  He tried to picture the map of the District he had studied late one night at the Academy. If he recalled correctly, about three blocks away his closest means of escape awaited him... the entrance to Washington’s subway, the Metro.

  “I saw him, over by the Gallery. West Building,” Waller said in between breaths.

  “I don’t... see anything,” Haviland puffed. After having recently recovered from a broken ankle, he was still out of shape—and the chase had left him deeply winded, his throat burning with each gulp of air.

  “He was there.”

  “Where’s he... headed?”

  Waller pondered the question as they continued their pursuit at a slow jog. “If I were him, there’s only one place I’d go.”

  “Don’t keep it... a secret, Jon. Where?”

  “Metro.”

  “Which station? Archives or Smithsonian?”

  “My bet, Archives. Closer.”

  “Let’s cut him off,” Haviland said, heaving large clouds of vapor into the air in front of him.

  “And if we’re wrong?”

  Haviland nodded. “So we split up. You go Metro... I’ll go Mall.”

  “This is insane,” Waller said. “Should’ve called for backup.”

  Haviland stopped and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees as Waller continued on. “You know, Jon,” he said, calling after his partner, “sometimes... you’re such an asshole.”

  Payne shuffled alongside the building, approaching the west end of the National Gallery of Art.

  But out of the corner of his eye he caught the shadow of a figure advancing on him. Although it was too dark to make out the man’s face, the tall build and stealthy, catlike movement told him it was Waller.

  Payne cut right on Seventh Street and glanced back over his shoulder, but was unable to locate the form he had just seen. In the darkness and the cover of so many trees, he couldn’t be sure that Waller wasn’t only a few feet behind him. Although the thigh wound was still painful, it was tolerable and permitted him to move fairly well as long as he was not running at full stride.

  He jogged across Constitution Avenue and headed toward Pennsylvania, a short block away. To his left was the stately National Archives building, to his right the more staid Federal Trade Commission. He didn’t dare look over his shoulder, as he was in a rhythm now, moving quickly toward his goal: the brightly lit Metro entrance that was now partially visible up ahead of him.

  As he approached, he could make out the vertical sign with the large M at the top, which read ARCHIVES—NAVY MEMORIAL STATION.

  Payne crossed Seventh and ran past the Metro elevator, headed for the Navy Memorial plaza, where three escalators descended underground to the mouth of the subway entrance. A Metro guard was talking with a woman, giving her directions. Payne put his head down, stepped onto the moving staircase, and took his first look into the darkness and shadows from where he had just come. He did not see any movement.

  Once he hit the bottom of the escalator, he ran past the automated fare-card machines to his right and approached the turnstile at nearly full speed. He glanced at the station manager’s booth to his left, which was empty—and he lunged forward, throwing his torso across the flat surface of the low-lying turnstile. He pulled himself over it and landed on his right leg. He continued on, down the stairs and toward the tracks.

  As he moved, he caught sight of security cameras, mounted high on the ceiling, beaming his image into the empty station manager’s booth—and who knew where else. He hoped it would be a moot point: by the time anyone recognized the person on the screen as him, he would be long gone.

  In the subway tube, the distant pinpoint of light told him a train was a couple hundred feet away, approaching the station. The muted, greenish, recessed lighting accentuated the cement, honeycomb walls, which arched high above him. Yet the beauty of the architecture failed to elicit a memory of having been here before.

  Wait. What was that? Hard footsteps, dress shoes. Running toward him from above.

  “Harper!”

  Payne pulled his Glock and aimed it up at the voice, which immediately became associated with a silhouetted figure looming above him, on the main floor of the station.


  “Stay back, Jon,” Payne called out. The handful of people on the platform scattered, moving for any cover they could find: a bench, a trash can, the side of the escalator.

  Payne glanced down the track, the train’s two distant headlights enlarging as they approached. Waller’s left hand was extended out in front of him. “Just put the gun down and we can talk.”

  “Where’s Scott?” Payne asked, turning around and craning his neck to check all possible routes of entry into this section of the station.

  “Put the gun down, Harper. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “Everyone’s taken cover, Jon. People do that—they see guns, they tend to hide. But keep talking, it’s your job. You know, buddy up to me, get me to drop the gun so you can take me in without incident.” Payne glanced at the tracks again. The building, rumbling echo in the tunnel indicated the train would be here in a matter of seconds—a fact he knew Waller was aware of as well. “I can’t go with you, Jon, at least not now.”

  “Don’t do this. We can still work something out.”

  The train pulled to a stop and the doors whooshed open.

  Payne glanced at the train, then back up at Waller, who had just stepped onto the escalator.

  “That wasn’t smart, Jon,” Payne yelled.

  “You’re not gonna shoot me. You’d lose everything—your career, your life. You’d never see Lauren again.”

  Just then, a tone sounded and the Metro’s doors began sliding closed. Payne stepped into the train. As the doors clunked shut, he turned to check on Waller—but he was gone.

  “Shit.” Payne quickly moved toward the back of the car. A few people, a man in a business suit and a couple of teenagers in jeans, eyed him with fear as he hobbled along, the gun still clutched in his hand. Payne noticed their gazes, slid his firearm into its holster, and removed his credentials. “FBI,” he said in explanation, holding up the open case as he shuffled through the car. Once again, he craned his neck to see through the windows, trying to locate Waller. But there wasn’t any sign of him.

  Payne walked through the two doors and into the next, nearly vacant, car. He sat down heavily and buried his tired head in his hands.