31
Fort McCartney
Chesapeake Point, Maryland
Something was wrong.
Carruth couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt . . . off, somehow.
He had the information Lewis had given him, codes, orders, specific and detailed directions, same as always. The gate-check had gone smooth as silk. The sun was shining, felt almost like spring was in the air, getting close to shirt-sleeve weather.
Lewis hadn’t screwed up yet—the time that things had gone south was something nobody could have figured, some GI who wasn’t supposed to be where he was, an X-factor for which it was impossible to calculate, and certainly not Lewis’s fault.
This would be easier, it involved stealth, and nobody would think twice about seeing him until he grabbed up the target. And even then, all he had to do was show the colonel the gun and keep it hidden, they’d be two guys walking to his car, nothing to see here, move along.
Once he drove onto the base, there was a roadwork sign blocking the main drag a couple hundred meters in, and the detour wasn’t on her plans, but that could have started this morning and even so, it shouldn’t matter. He ought to be golden.
But something was not right here. This place was so new the paint wasn’t dry. Why wouldn’t the road be in good repair?
Could be anything. Laying electrical lines, water or sewage pipes. Or maybe they just hadn’t finished paving yet. It was the Army—they didn’t do things like everybody else.
Could be anything.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like somebody he couldn’t see was out there, he could feel their gaze on him, tracking him. Stalking him . . .
Nothing reasonable about it, this feeling, nothing whatsoever to confirm it, but it was as if there was an invisible cloud of doom hanging over him, gathering itself to hit him with a monster lightning bolt that would blow him out of his shoes.
He’d had this sensation a couple times before. Once, it hadn’t been anything he could ever tell. The feeling came, he looked around, didn’t see anything, and eventually it passed.
The second time, he had been walking outside a camp in Iraq and he felt a panicked urge to stop right where he was. In that instance, he had halted, cold. Looked around, didn’t see anybody outside the camp within rifle range who might pot him. Then he’d looked down.
Another step, and he would have put his foot smack on the trigger of a terrorist-rigged mine planted by some local scumbag, what turned out to be an old artillery shell with a spring-loaded striker that would have no doubt blown off a foot at the least and probably killed him. IED, they called ’em. Improvised Explosive Device.
How had he known that? What sense had been tripped?
It wasn’t dependable, this feeling—he hadn’t felt squat when the two cops had braced him, nor when the shooting had started in Kentucky. But he felt it now.
If he kept going, he was going to die. He knew it right to the marrow in his bones.
He pulled the car into a hard U-turn, breaking the back end loose, laying rubber and noise over the road. As soon as the car’s wheels regained traction, he tapped the gas.
Two things happened: Three men in field gear with M-16s at the ready came into view to his left, running in his direction.
A car started up behind him, a flashing light bar lit, and a siren screamed.
The M-16s opened up, their sounds reached him about the same time as the first rounds hit the car—clunk-clunk-clunk! —and punched through the metal just behind him. Part of a shattered bullet spanged around inside the car and blew out a back window—
“Shit—!”
He ducked instinctively and stomped the gas pedal.
The rental car wasn’t a Formula One racer, but it did surge a little. He turned the steering wheel sharply to the right, zig, then back to the left, zag. Soldiers kept shooting, but he couldn’t worry about that. They’d either hit him or they wouldn’t.
He saw a camo’d Hummer heading toward the gate, angling to cut him off.
The only weapon he had was a SIG side arm, a f*cking nine, but he pulled it, aimed through the closed passenger window, and cooked off three fast shots, aiming at the other vehicle.
The first shot shattered the window, and it and the other two were damned loud in the car, but there was no help for that.
The Hummer’s driver hit his brakes. Too much to hope for that he’d hit the guy, but at least he’d slowed him down—
He saw sparks from the road in front of him. They were trying for his tires. He wouldn’t make much speed running on the rims.
He swerved the car again, slewing back and forth.
The gate was ahead, and a counterweighted pole was the only thing blocking the exit, though the guy in the kiosk had triggered the rolling gate and it began to close—
The pedal was floored, he wasn’t going to make the car go any faster, but it looked as if he might make it—
The guy in the kiosk ducked as Carruth pointed the SIG and let one go in his direction—
Why weren’t they closing on him? It was like they were hanging back on purpose—
The car threaded the gap, though the gate scraped the back passenger panel with a steel-fingernail-on-a-chalkboard noise. He had to be doing fifty, and in a few seconds, that went up to seventy.
Off the base!
Nobody was out here waiting for him—why the hell not?
Carruth uttered a steady stream of curses as he drove, watching the rearview mirror for pursuit. Another half a block into the base, he’d have never gotten out, even if he’d turned around and tried. His instinct had saved his ass—at least temporarily.
But—what the hell had happened? How had they gotten on to him?
Worry about that later, too. Right now, he had to drive like his life depended on it. Because it sure as shit did.