The Persona Protocol

40


Leap of Faith


Bianca peered nervously over the edge of the roof. Traffic cruised along the street, a long way below. She looked back at Adam. ‘You must be joking!’ she said as he pushed a button to snap open the very flimsy-looking umbrella.

‘Trust me, it’ll work,’ he replied. ‘I’ve used one before. I jumped off a four-storey building.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ she protested. ‘But this has got more than four floors. And there are two of us, and we’re carrying a lot of heavy cases! There’s no way that’ll get us down to the ground in one piece.’

‘We’re not going to the ground. You see that tree?’ He pointed at one of the lindens lining the sidewalk, this one somewhat younger and shorter than its neighbours. Even so, it was still a good thirty feet high.

‘What about it?’

‘That’s what we’re aiming for. It’ll break our fall.’

‘It’ll probably break a lot more than that!’

Adam put down the open umbrella, taking the medical case from Bianca and squeezing it into his bag. ‘We can’t drop straight to the sidewalk,’ he said, as he slung the holdall over one shoulder. ‘The Mary Poppins won’t slow us down enough from this height.’

‘The what? Oh, never mind, I get it. But you can’t seriously—’

‘The guys with guns will be here any time now.’ Holding the umbrella in one hand, he hefted the heavier of the two PERSONA cases in the other. ‘And they’ve been told they can shoot us. You want to wait for them?’ Her expression made her opinion clear. ‘Then grab the other case and hang on to me as tight as you can.’ He hunched down a little, gesturing for her to move in front of him.

Bianca put both arms over his shoulders, gripping the case’s handle as hard as she could. The forced intimacy of being nose-to-nose with Adam was the least uncomfortable thing about her situation. ‘Are you ready?’ he said.

She licked her suddenly dry lips, trying to cover her rising fear. ‘It’s a bit late to back out now, isn’t it?’

A crash of metal. The access door had been kicked open. Uniformed men, their clothing darkened by water, burst out on to the roof. ‘Over there!’ one shouted, seeing the fugitives. His gun came up. ‘Freeze!’

Adam looked into Bianca’s eyes, giving her unspoken reassurance – then he swept her with him over the edge.

Gravity caught them. Bianca screamed as they plunged. The umbrella’s carbon-fibre spokes creaked alarmingly, the tough nylon straining as wind resistance tried to rip it free.

The floors of the STS building flashed past. Even with the umbrella’s air-braking effect, it wasn’t slowing them enough . . .

‘Close your eyes!’ Adam shouted.

An order, not fatalism—

Bianca did as she was told – as they hit the top of the tree with a huge crackle of snapping twigs. Leaves burst around them like confetti, broken wood clawing at their clothes and skin.

They kept falling, the topmost branches too slender to resist their weight. The fabric and spokes were ripped from the umbrella’s shaft. Bianca felt a slashing pain in her thigh as a wooden shard tore through her trouser leg. She cried out – then the breath was knocked from her as she slammed down on a more solid bough.

She lost her grip on Adam. The case was jarred from her hands, bouncing through the foliage. She tumbled, hitting another branch side-on. It cleaved from the trunk with an earsplitting snap. More leaves lashed at her hair and face as she dropped—

A hard impact, this time on something cool and flat and solid. She was on the ground.

Head spinning, pain messages from different parts of her body competing for attention, she blearily opened her eyes . . .

And saw a car coming straight for her.

She screamed—

The sound was drowned out by the screech of tyres. The car juddered to a halt, the front wheel less than a foot from Bianca’s head.

A thump nearby told her that Adam had landed. He pulled her up. The bag was still slung from his shoulder, and he had somehow kept hold of the case. Its twin lay on the sidewalk, leaves dropping around it like green snowflakes. ‘Get the PERSONA!’

She limped to pick it up. Adam ran around the car, an ageing Hyundai Elantra station wagon, and yanked open the door. ‘Out!’ he roared, pulling the startled driver from her vehicle. ‘Bianca, come on!’

Bianca collected the case and hobbled to the passenger door. ‘Sorry,’ she called to the driver as she climbed in. Adam had already tossed his case on to the back seat, putting the car in drive. The Hyundai peeled away with as much power as it could muster, leaving shocked onlookers in its wake.

‘Take this,’ said Adam, passing the bag to her.

With the case in her lap, she had to perch the extra baggage on top of it – making it all but impossible for her to fasten her seat belt. She struggled to brace her legs in the footwell as Adam took a corner at speed, the station wagon’s roll making her slither sideways in her seat. ‘Where are we going?’

‘We need to get underground.’

‘Why?’

‘To block the tracker. If we stay in the open, they’ll box us in.’

‘But – if we go into an underground car park or whatever, they’ll still know where we are. It won’t take them long to find us.’

‘That’s why you’ll have to work fast.’

‘At what?’

He glanced at the bag. ‘There’s an emergency surgical kit in there. I need you to cut me open and disable the tracker.’

She gawped at him. ‘You couldn’t have told me all this before we jumped off the roof?’

‘Would it have changed your mind about helping me?’

‘It might! I’m a neurochemist, not a surgeon!’

‘I’ll tell you what to do.’ He swerved the car on to the wrong side of the road to overtake some slow-moving traffic, then skidded through an intersection, eyes scanning the street ahead.

‘Everything’s back online,’ Levon reported, checking a system diagnostic on one of his monitors. The video wall lit up again, showing the views from various STS security cameras.

The images were well behind the action, however. ‘They did what?’ Morgan barked, listening to a call on his cell phone.

‘They jumped off the roof!’ reported the leader of the security team. ‘They used one of those trick umbrellas to land in a tree, then took some woman’s car.’

‘Did you get the licence plate?’

‘We couldn’t see it from up here. Some sort of station wagon, light blue, fairly old.’ He paused as someone spoke to him. ‘Thomson thinks it’s a Hyundai. They went south down 20th, then turned east.’

‘Hook us into the DC traffic cameras,’ Morgan barked to Levon. ‘We’re looking for a light blue station wagon, heading east.’ He turned to Baxter, who had just arrived and received a rapid briefing from Tony. ‘John, get your team and go after him. The Admiral wants you to handle this personally. I’ll link you in with DC police.’

‘On it,’ said Baxter. He took out his own phone as he hurried to an exit. ‘Spence! Get the guys geared up and down to the parking garage – we’re moving out!’

‘You’re sending our tac team after him?’ asked Tony. Holly Jo also looked concerned.

‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ said Kiddrick, face tight with anger, ‘he attacked me and stole classified information! Then he wrecked half the building while resisting arrest!’

Tony ignored him. ‘You are going to try to capture them, right?’ he said to Morgan. ‘Not shoot them on sight? We need to find out why Adam’s done this.’

‘That’s what I’m going to ask him, right now,’ Morgan replied as he donned a headset. ‘Holly Jo, patch me through to Adam.’

She entered commands. ‘You’re on, sir.’

‘Adam! Whatever it is you’re doing, I want you to—’

Holly Jo shook her head. ‘Sorry, sir. He’s turned off the earwig.’

‘Damn it,’ Morgan muttered. He went to her workstation. ‘Use the alert bleeper, see if that gets his attention.’ She pushed the button, but there was no response.

‘Do we have the tracker?’ Tony asked.

‘Yes,’ Holly Jo told him. Another flurry of commands. ‘Putting it on the wall.’

A block of screens switched to a map of Washington. A green square appeared on the street grid, heading across the city. It was already several blocks from the STS building.

‘I’m tied in with Metro,’ Levon announced, pudgy fingers rattling across his keyboard. More markings appeared on the map. ‘We’ve got live LoJack trackers of all the MPD patrol cars in the city.’

‘The nearest one’s four blocks from him,’ said Kyle.

‘Holly Jo, link in with the police and give them Adam’s position,’ Morgan ordered. ‘But tell them just to corral them, not arrest them – I want our people to make the capture. Maybe we can find out what the hell’s going on.’

Kiddrick stared at the green square as it turned north at an intersection. ‘Where’s he going? Is he trying to get out of the city?’

‘No, he’s trying to find cover,’ said Tony. ‘He knows we can track him – so he’ll be looking for somewhere to block the signal so he can disable it.’

‘How can he do that?’ Kiddrick demanded. ‘The tracker’s implanted in his body!’

There was a brief silence as the answer came to everyone simultaneously. ‘Ew, gross,’ said Holly Jo, wrinkling her nose. ‘I hope he’s got some Band-Aids.’

Morgan crossed to Kyle’s workstation. ‘Have we got a drone available?’

‘Yeah, one of the new ones,’ the younger man told him.

‘Get it in the air. When Adam goes to ground, I want us to have eyes on every possible exit from his location. We can’t let him get away.’

While Morgan was talking, Tony went to Holly Jo and leaned over her shoulder. ‘Do you trust Adam?’ he whispered.

‘Of course I do,’ she answered, surprised. ‘Tony . . . do you know what he’s doing?’

‘No – but I trust him too. Do what you can to help him. I’ll try to get Levon and Kyle on board.’ He moved away, leaving her staring after him in surprise before she returned her attention to the screens . . . with a surreptitious glance at Morgan to see if he was watching her.

He wasn’t, instead finishing giving instructions to Kyle. The UAV pilot hopped from his seat and headed across the Bullpen – to be intercepted by Tony. ‘Kyle, hold on.’

‘What is it?’ Kyle asked.

Now it was Tony’s turn to check that Morgan wasn’t eavesdropping. ‘You trust Adam, don’t you?’ he said quietly.

‘Course I do. The dude saved my life!’ It took a moment for him to realise that the question had a subtext. ‘Whoa, hold on, brah. You asking what I think you’re asking?’

‘There’s more going on here than we think. Adam and Bianca are the only ones who know what that is. Try to help them if you can.’ Another sidelong glance, and he saw that Morgan was glaring impatiently at them. ‘Use the computer’s auto-tracking to tag all the MPD vehicles,’ he said, more loudly. ‘Their trackers aren’t as accurate as ours – we need to know the exact positions of everyone involved in the pursuit.’

‘Huh? Oh, yeah – sure, brah,’ Kyle said, finally getting it. He hurried from the room.

Tony went back to Morgan, just as the director’s phone rang. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Baxter,’ came the reply. ‘We’re just leaving STS. Where is he now?’

‘I’ll tie you in,’ Morgan told him. ‘Levon! Relay all our tracker data to the mobile units – and put their positions on the screen.’

Levon nodded, then turned back to his computer. A couple of seconds later, new symbols appeared on the map: three green triangles. They moved east, then quickly turned north, heading after Adam.

But another symbol was much closer. One of the DC police cars was now less than two blocks from the Hyundai’s position, racing to intercept it.

‘I can hear a siren,’ Bianca warned.

‘I’m surprised it took this long,’ Adam said, grim-faced. He looked ahead. There was a red light at the approaching intersection. The street they were on was one-way, all four lanes filled with stationary vehicles. ‘Hold on!’

He pressed one hand on the horn and swung the station wagon up on to the sidewalk. The well-worn shock absorbers compressed with a bang as they mounted the kerb, the steering wheel jerking in his hands.

He kept control and straightened out. The sidewalk was only narrow, a tree at its edge forcing him to smash through some small bushes beside a building to avoid it. Another yank on the wheel to dodge a fire hydrant, and the station wagon pounded back on to the road. Bianca shrieked.

‘You should put your seat belt on,’ he told her.

‘I would if I could!’ she protested, still trying to keep hold of the luggage on her lap.

He brought the Hyundai back on to the northbound street. There was another set of traffic lights not far ahead, but these had just turned green. Only two lanes were occupied. A twist of the wheel took the Elantra into an empty one. He accelerated.

The siren was getting closer. On the left—

They shot through the intersection at over sixty. The other traffic had just pulled away from the lights – only to stop abruptly as a police car, strobes pulsing, tore through the red in front of them and made a screeching, skidding turn to pursue the station wagon.

Bianca looked back in dismay. ‘I don’t think we’ll outrun them in this thing!’

Adam pushed the accelerator down harder, but he knew she was right. He could hardly have chosen a less suitable getaway car. The Hyundai had been far from over-powered even when brand new, and the general poor condition of the elderly vehicle implied that maintenance and tuning had not been high on its owner’s agenda. The engine was already straining to reach seventy.

Another intersection at the end of the block. The lights were green. Only one of the lanes was empty. He wove round a slower car to get into it, feeling the Elantra wallow on its suspension. A glance in the mirror. The MPD Crown Victoria grew larger even in the brief flick of his gaze.

This was going to be a very short chase.

He shot through the intersection – and realised in a split second that something was wrong. Even though the lights were green on the northbound street, the cars heading east and west were also moving . . .

Bianca gasped as an SUV pulled out of the side road on a collision course, halting abruptly as the speeding Hyundai cut in front of it. ‘Oh my God!’

Adam looked in the mirror. More vehicles were crossing the junction behind him, stopping sharply in panicked confusion as their drivers realised that traffic was still coming the other way. The police car skidded under hard braking and slammed into the side of a van.

‘What the hell happened?’ Bianca cried.

He turned his eyes back to the road ahead. ‘I think someone’s giving us some help.’