It was now shortly after that. She hoped she wasn’t already too late.
Tracie knew the KGB had operatives working in many major U.S. cities. Assuming Boston was one of those cities, or even New York, the KGB’s agents could have driven up Interstate 95 overnight. They could be here right now. They could have seen, or learned about, the news report detailing Shane’s actions last night as well as the NTSB’s intention to interview him today.
They likely would even have learned where and when the interview was to take place. The KGB was not known for their subtlety. Shane would be a sitting duck.
The entrance to Bangor International Airport loomed ahead on the left. Tracie wheeled the Datsun onto the access road, cutting across two lanes of oncoming traffic, serenaded by squealing brakes and honking horns. She ignored them and accelerated toward the control tower.
Two-thirds of the way along the access road she could see a police cruiser slewed across the road, hazard lights flashing, no doubt to prevent the media and curious onlookers from gaining access to the control tower complex. Tracie suddenly realized she had no idea what she was going to say to the cop to avoid being turned away, especially considering she was driving a car with a smashed-out window.
She toyed with the idea of simply blowing past the cruiser, but the Datsun was so underpowered the idea was laughable. She would be stopped before she ever got close to the facility.
She would have to think of something. If worse came to worst she would pull her weapon on the officer and force her way in, and worry about the repercussions later.
She slowed to a stop next to the cruiser. The cop was nowhere in sight. She suddenly got a very sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Tracie lifted herself up as high as she could in the driver’s seat and craned her neck, looking out the passenger side window into the cruiser. That was when she saw the officer. He was sprawled across the front seat, unmoving, blood staining his uniform shirt.
Shit. Tracie put the gearshift in neutral and yanked on the emergency brake, then leapt out of the car and hurried to the cruiser. She pulled open the door and knelt, placed two fingers gently on the side of the cop’s neck. Felt for a pulse. Found none.
He was dead. Shot multiple times at close range. The KGB was already here.
Dammit.
The cop’s body was still warm, so they hadn’t been here long. Tracie considered finding a phone and calling an ambulance and then immediately rejected the idea. The officer was dead and the wasted time might cost more lives.
She cursed again and sprinted back to the Datsun. She slammed the door and gunned the car toward the control tower, racing along the decrepit access road, driving much too fast. The vehicle bounced and jolted, slamming down into potholes so deep she was half afraid an axle might snap. She kept going.
The car sped around a corner, and a couple of hundred yards away Tracie could see the control tower and FAA base building. She slowed slightly, trying to come up with some kind of action plan, when a side window in the base building shattered. The glass exploded outward as a metal folding chair flew through the window, followed a heartbeat later by a tumbling body. It looked like Shane Rowley.
He dived through the window and landed on top of the chair, then rolled onto his back and looked up at the window. A second man appeared. The man was older, and slower, and as he tried to climb out, his body began to stutter as bullets ripped into him from behind, and then he fell and slumped across the frame.
Shane scrambled to his feet and ran along the narrow alleyway between the base building and the control tower. He burst into the parking lot and was met by a man holding a silenced handgun. The man was facing away from Tracie, but she could see him raise the gun and shove the barrel into Shane’s forehead.
And she didn’t hesitate.
She drove her foot to the floor and aimed the Datsun straight at the pair. The gunman didn’t seem to have heard the sound of the little car’s engine, or perhaps didn’t comprehend the significance. Shane was facing the vehicle and Tracie hoped he would understand her intent.
The car screamed toward the parking lot and the two men grew steadily larger in the windshield. The gunman seemed to be talking, asking Shane a question or maybe threatening him. Nothing in Shane’s demeanor gave away the fact that a speeding car was hurtling toward them.
At the last moment Shane dived to the side, just as it seemed to occur to the man in the suit that something was wrong.
Shane hit the pavement and rolled. He disappeared from sight as the Datsun plowed into the man with the gun, catching him in the side with a sickening thud. His body flew up and over the hood. He crashed into the windshield and then tumbled over the roof in an ungainly somersault.
Tracie watched in the rearview mirror as the man dropped onto the pavement and lay still. She slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop just shy of a big vehicle with U.S. Government plates. Then she jammed the car into reverse and began backing up, one eye on the gunman, still crumpled in an unmoving heap in the middle of the parking lot, one eye searching for Shane.
She spotted him crouched between two parked cars just as the base building’s front door crashed open and two more men exited the building at a dead run. The men wore suits similar to the downed gunman and each was holding a gun. They turned right and ran toward Tracie and their injured conspirator.
And Shane.
Tracie leaned across the front seat and shoved the passenger door open. “Get in here, now!” she screamed. She reached down and unsnapped her gun. The men were closing fast, shouting something unidentifiable.
She leaned out the smashed window and twisted, pointing the gun in the general direction of the pursuers. She squeezed off two quick rounds and the men hit the deck, flopping face-first to the pavement.
Shane dived through the opened passenger door, a sprawl of arms and legs, landing on the floor-mounted gearshift and unintentionally pushing the Datsun into neutral. By now the two men had risen from the pavement and were almost on top of them. Tracie jammed the car into first gear and popped the clutch and the little vehicle spun its wheels and then took off.
One of the men had reached the driver’s side door and held doggedly to the doorframe as he ran along beside, screaming at Tracie, trying to aim his gun.
She jerked the wheel from side to side, zigzagging out of the parking lot, trying to break his grip. Finally the man tumbled away from the vehicle. He rolled into a grassy field next to the roadway.
Shane was screaming, “What the hell’s going on here? What the hell’s going on here?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Tracie answered, realizing she too was screaming. Her hands were shaking as adrenaline flooded her system. She lowered her voice and tried to calm down, to think clearly.
“Right now,” she continued, “we have to get out of here. We’ve got barely any head start and those guys know what vehicle we’re in. They’ll be right on our tail. If they have any kind of decent wheels at all, they’ll catch us in no time.”
The Datsun screamed past the dead officer’s cruiser, Tracie keeping the gas pedal pinned to the floor. She briefly considered switching cars with the cruiser but didn’t dare take the time to stop. They rocketed toward the phalanx of news vans and curious onlookers, the surprised faces growing rapidly larger in the now-cracked windshield.
She glanced right and saw Shane making a visible effort to get himself under control. He had lifted himself into a sitting position and now buckled his seat belt—a smart move under the circumstances. Tracie saw blood sprinkled across his face and clothing. He didn’t seem to notice. He took a deep breath and ran his bloody hands through his hair.
Tracie blasted into the intersection of the airport access road and cross street, barely slowing, somehow managing not to T-bone a passing car and kill them all. She turned right, toward Bangor proper and Interstate 95, risking a glance in the rearview mirror, certain the two men in the suits would be right on their tail, but they were alone.
For now.
When Shane spoke again his voice had modulated, although it was shaking and he was panting. “First off,” he said, “thank you for saving my life. I think I was down to my last couple of seconds on earth when you ran that guy down. That was some quick thinking and some unbelievable driving on your part.”
She shook her head and started to answer, but he interrupted.
“Second,” he said. “What the hell have you gotten me into?”
26
May 31, 1987
9:25 a.m.
Interstate 95, north of Bangor, Maine
I-95 buzzed beneath the tires of the Datsun as the wind whistled through the little car and buffeted the occupants. Outside, evergreens flashed past, the northern Maine terrain beautiful but monotonous.
After leaving the airport and their attackers behind, Tracie had driven straight to the interstate, but rather than turning south as Shane had expected her to, she had instead driven past that off-ramp and headed north.
“Where are we going?” he asked, confused.
“Those goons know I have to get to D.C. as soon as possible. They’ll assume we high-tailed it in that direction. Once they get their act together and come after us, that’s the way they’ll go. If we’d gone south before changing vehicles, they’d have been on us before we knew what hit us. We’d be dead before we made it ten miles.”
“But they didn’t even follow us out of the airport.”
“Yes, they did. Trust me. The only reason they didn’t run us down before we even got off airport property is because they had to go back and toss the guy I ran over into the back of their car. They couldn’t afford to leave him there, and he’s injured, so that slowed them down. Once they hustled him into their car, though—and I guarantee it didn’t take very long—they started out after us. Going north instead of south will buy us a little time, give us a chance to catch our breath, acquire a new vehicle, and formulate some sort of plan.”
Shane raised his eyebrows. “Acquire a new vehicle? Don’t you mean steal?”
“Acquire, steal. Tomato, tomahto.”
He shook his head. “’Acquire a vehicle?’ ‘Formulate a plan’? Who the hell are you? And what kind of trouble are you in? Because that was a goddamned bloodbath back at the airport. There are dead people lying all over the inside of the tower base building, some of them my friends.”
When she didn’t answer, Shane pressed the issue. “Come on, Tracie, I know I owe you for saving my life, but the way I see it, my life wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t hauled your ass out of that burning airplane last night. So I think you owe me, too. How about some answers?”
She chewed her lip as she drove, clearly conflicted about what—or how much—to share.
He kept quiet, letting her fight her inner battle.
Finally she spoke, but it wasn’t to shed any light on the situation. “You can’t go home until this is over,” she said reluctantly. “Thanks to the news media, those guys know your name, which means they can find out where you live. They probably already have. They want to use you to find me. They may well be tossing your apartment right now if they have the manpower.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve gotten mixed up in something big, something I don’t even understand completely, and you won’t be truly safe until it’s over.”
“All the more reason, then, to answer my questions.”
Tracie nodded. “I know. But let’s find a new car first and get something to eat. Once we get started southbound we’re going to have a long drive ahead of us and I’ll try to fill you in on as much as I can, then.” An exit ramp was approaching rapidly and she flicked the turn signal and exited the highway.
“Fair enough,” Shane said. “So let’s do it. What are we looking for?”
“An All-American strip mall.”
***
May 31, 1987
9:45 a.m.
Old Town, Maine
They found one within a quarter-mile of leaving the interstate, a long, low, L-shaped cluster of concrete-block buildings that could have been stamped out of a cookie-cutter mold and dropped into any city, town or suburb in the United States. Probably a couple of decades old, the businesses looked tired, not quite defeated but struggling mightily.
There was a Laundromat, a mom and pop convenience store, a drugstore, a Chinese restaurant, and a half-dozen other businesses, with two or three empty storefronts scattered among them.
“Perfect,” Tracie muttered after looking it over for a few seconds. She drove into the complex and parked the Datsun roughly in the center of the lot, alongside a group of cars clustered in front of the Laundromat.
“I thought we were going to get some food,” Shane said. “The Chinese joint is all the way down at the other end of the mall.”
“That’s true, and we are,” Tracie said. “But once we’re done eating, we’re going to ‘acquire’ a car, remember? Too many customers do take-out at your typical Chinese restaurant. We wouldn’t want to be in the middle of hot-wiring Suzy Homemaker’s station wagon and have Suzy walk out of China Lucky with her Kung Pao special, catching us right in the act, would we?”
“Us?”
“Okay, me. But you’d go to jail, too. The point is we’re less likely to be caught in the act by someone who’s fluffing and folding inside the Laundromat than by someone picking up their takeout order.”
“What if they throw their laundry in the washer and then go out for a drive, or to get a cup of coffee or something?”
Tracie shrugged. “Then I guess we’re screwed. There are no guarantees in life, right? But it’s clouding up out here and there’s a cold breeze. Hopefully most people would want to stay inside the warmth of the Laundromat than go out and freeze their butts off.”
“Hopefully.”
“Yep. Anyway, that’s my theory, so unless you have a better one, let’s hike across the lot and share a meal, shall we? And speaking of freezing, you probably noticed that driving at highway speeds in Maine in a car with a smashed window makes you a lot colder than you might have expected, even in late May. It’ll feel good to warm up a little.”
Shane hesitated. “Uh, well, I hate to seem un-chivalrous, especially since you just ran over a guy holding a gun to my head, but I’ve only got a few bucks in my pocket. I’m not sure I can afford a meal, and it might be kind of hard to keep a low profile with an angry restaurant owner chasing us into the parking lot.”
“I’ve got enough cash for now and I can get more. Come on, it’s my treat.”
They shared a combination platter, Tracie skillfully and consistently deflecting any questions about her background and about what she had been doing aboard the doomed B-52 and why men with guns were chasing her around Maine.
“You promised you’d answer my questions,” Shane reminded her, surprised but pleased to be eating Teriyaki Steak at this time of the morning, only now realizing how hungry he was.
Tracie nodded. “I can’t tell you everything. I just can’t. But I’ll fill you in on what I can, I promise. Not here, though. We’ll have that conversation in the car, away from potentially prying ears.”
Shane looked around the dining room. It was dark and mostly empty. “Who’s going to hear us in here?”
Tracie shook her head. “Later,” she said, and that was that.
***
May 31, 1987
10:30 a.m.
She paid the check and they strolled back into the parking lot. The clouds had continued to gather and there was a chilly bite to the air, more like early March than late May. Shane watched as Tracie’s sharp eyes scanned the parking lot. She was obviously looking for any sign of trouble.
“I thought you said those guys would go south,” he said.
“I’m sure they did,” she answered. “But if they hauled ass for ten or twelve miles, pushing hard, and didn’t catch up with us, I think it’s a least a possibility that they would have doubled back and maybe started prow
ling the areas surrounding the Bangor exits, looking for the Datsun.”
“That’s reassuring,” he said as they walked back toward the knot of cars parked outside the Laundromat.
She shook her head. “Everything looks fine. I don’t see anything unusual, do you?”
He glanced around. “Nope. So what do we do now?”
“Now we try to pass for a normal young couple as we look for a car with unlocked doors. I really don’t want to drive around in this Arctic air again with another broken window.”
She took his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. They wandered across the parking lot, keeping several rows of cars between themselves and the Laundromat windows.
“What if everyone’s cars are locked?” Shane asked.
“Yeah, right,” Tracie said, grinning. “Sooner or later we’ll find an unlocked vehicle, and I’m betting on sooner. When we do, we’ll ‘acquire’ it.”
She was right. The words had barely left Tracie’s mouth when Shane spotted a white Ford Granada, unlocked and empty.
Tracie took a casual look around, and when she found no one paying them the slightest attention, said, “Okay, let’s go.”
She hurried to the driver’s side door. She slid into the car and pried the plastic cowling away from the lower portion of the steering column almost before her body had even stopped moving.
Shane watched in amazement as she pulled a pair of wires free and then touched the bare ends together. There was a spark and the Granada started up, running roughly for a second or two and then settling into a contented purr.
“I always wondered how they did that,” he said.
Tracie turned to him with a dazzling smile. “I’ve picked up a few skills,” she said. “But it’s time to go.” She wheeled the Ford toward the exit and freedom.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 12