5. Bottled

Katz reacted instantly, accelerating back into traffic ahead of the SUV.

The radio chirruped, and the dispatcher spoke urgently, now. “Agent Katz, have a plate match from Virginia. Owner is a suspected domestic terrorist and frequent protest agitator. Prior arrests for common and aggravated assault. Licensed gun owner with extensive collection. Name—Lem Barston, Culpepper construction company director. Recommend caution, Agent Katz. Would you like PD assistance?”

“Um.” Katz glanced up at her mirror. Her grip was tight on the wheel. “Um. Yes. Please request a vehicle stop. It’s a black Ford Expedition. Do you have my location?”

“We have you.” The dispatcher booped off.

We entered a commercial zone, the parade of fast-food outlets giving way to a truck repair, a big box shop, a cross-street filled with warehouses. Katz slipped from lane to lane, putting first a van, then a box truck between her car and the SUV.

The radio chirruped again. “Responders at your projected location in about five minutes, Agent Katz.”

“Shit,” she said, under her breath.

Where were the cops when you needed them? Then it came to me. The George Floyd protests had sucked them all into the city center. And why was this “frequent protest agitator” out here in the burbs instead of in his element, rumbling with imagined antifas?

“Leaving this channel open for you,” continued the dispatcher. “I recommend vehicle cams.”

“Oh, yes,” Katz muttered. She clicked a button on the dash.

If this was a car chase—with us fleeing and the black SUV in pursuit—it was in slow-motion by movie standards. Katz probably didn’t reach the speed limit, but she cut back on courtesy. She squeezed into holes and earned some angry honks. She evidently had excellent spacial awareness.

Now the road was down to two traffic lanes each way, with no left-turn lane. That’s when some idiot stopped to turn left. We had to stop behind him. I heard the roar of the SUV’s engine as the driver gunned it. As he brushed past on our right, I glanced through his open window, met his eyes.

But it was the thing poking up at his side that made my skin flush cold. In clear silhouette were the barrel and handguard of a semi-automatic rifle.

“He has a gun,” I said to Katz, trying to channel the dispatcher’s chill.

The SUV stopped abreast of the van. Together, the van and SUV had blocked both southbound traffic lanes, and other cars were already backing up behind. We were boxed in.

“Central, we see a gun,” said Katz. “Repeat, the other driver has a gun.” I could hear the stress in her voice.

“Copy that—suspect is armed,” said the dispatcher.

The SUV driver’s baseball-capped head poked out of his window to peer back at us. Then the head pulled in. Then the door swung open.

“He’s getting out,” I said. Maybe I yelled it.

Katz glanced left, then floored the accelerator, swinging around the van into the oncoming traffic lane. Cars bore down on us, horns blaring. The engine noise climbing the scale to redline as the acceleration pressed me into my seat. Katz whipped back into the southbound lane.

I looked back in time to see the SUV’s door slam. I couldn’t hear its engine rev over the din of horns, but saw smoke climb as the driver burned rubber. There was something hanging out of his window.

The view abruptly spider-webbed into a thousand facets. Triple-flash. Bang! There was no order to it, only that slow re-ordering by the brain. Reordered, it was muzzle-flash, a small hole in an upper corner of our rear windscreen, the drum of the car’s roof panel when a bullet struck it from below.

“Shit!” said Katz and I together.

The block ahead was clear because of the brief traffic jam. We gained some distance, but it wouldn’t last. There was traffic ahead.

“Active shooter!” shouted Katz. “Repeat, we have an active shooter in pursuit.”

“Copy active shooter,” said the dispatcher, with a detached calm you could grow to hate.

The road had a central left-turn lane again—that made seven lanes altogether, including two parking lanes. More room to maneuver. But it had lights on every block. We were lucky with the first, but would inevitably get bottled up. Katz fumbled at the dash, clicking this and that. A flashing blue light glinted off the road ahead. If the car had a siren, she didn’t find it.

We were getting into traffic, and well over the speed limit, now. Katz looped hard around a slow-moving car, then back into the left lane. I grabbed at the dash to hang on. She herself sat bolt upright, back hardly touching her seat, knuckles white on the wheel. For sure, this wasn’t the sort of experience a desk job in Washington gave you.

The black SUV was half a block behind, but closing.

And me? I was baggage. What could I—the glove compartment. In a movie, there’d be a gun in the glove compartment. I beat down the urge to check. There was no damn way.

Then it came to me, like muzzle flash in the mind. “Agent Katz—give me your laser.”

She jerked her head toward me, then back. Her eyes were very wide. “Huh?”

“Your laser measurer, right inner pocket of your jacket. I can use it.”

It took a second. “Oh, yeah, good idea.” She tore her left hand from the wheel, yanked out the gadget, and flipped it to me.

The dispatcher: “Agent Katz, PD tactical en route, ETA … fifteen twenty minutes. PD chopper en route, ETA unknown. Bureau backup en route, um, twenty-five minutes.” Even Mr. Cool sounded disappointed.

“Copy that,” said Katz.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. I thought I heard sirens in the distance. The regular cops.

More traffic ahead. Katz eased off the gas. The SUV was barreling up the right lane like a huge black bull. I could see the rifle resting against the door, held in the crook of that beefy, tattooed arm. Could he hit us? The odds were lower than in the movies, but I hated them anyway. He’d certainly hit something.

Fuck. Head blown off from front or back—no difference. I rolled down my window, craned my head out, aimed the laser toward the SUV. It was coming up fast. For a second, I saw nothing. Then the red dot skittered across the hood. I jiggled the beam in what I hoped was the direction of the driver’s face, pale through the un-tinted part of his windscreen.

What would a gun enthusiast think of first when he saw that red flash? An aiming laser.

Nothing.

The SUV slowed with a screech of rubber and half dipped into the lane behind us as the driver looked for cover. Then it popped out again, with only part of the driver’s face showing above the console. It would sure be hard to drive and shoot like that.

Katz saw an opportunity: no vehicles in the parking lane for a few hundred yards. She braked while cutting in front of the SUV, missing its front bumper by inches, and swept into the parking lane, maybe doing fifty at that point. As we drew side-on, she slammed our car into the SUVs flank.

Surprised the hell out of me. The jolt knocked the laser from my hand.

The heavy SUV wasn’t much perturbed, but Katz wasn’t trying to push the bigger car around—she wanted to startle the driver. And that worked. The SUV swayed violently, braked hard, drifted into the parking lane, and nearly plowed into the first parked car after the clear part. The driver jerked the SUV back into the traffic lane just in time.

But to regain control, he’d needed both hands. As Katz looped around the SUV’s tail, we saw flashes through the SUV’s windows.

I looked back as we swept ahead, then turned to Katz. “He shot holes in his own windscreen.”

The muscles of her face were painfully taut, but she managed a crooked smile.

We weren’t out of trouble. The lights were red at the intersection ahead, cars waiting in all southbound lanes. For the same reason, the northbound lanes were clear. Katz braked and spun the wheel, managing a squealing U-turn that took us across the central and northbound lanes. She floored it again, now heading north.

The police sirens were louder. Colored lights flashed ahead.

Into my view came the black SUV, charging across the center turn lane. Our car flew past its nose. We’d pass the cop cars before the SUV could catch up. We were home free.

Only we weren’t.

A huge semi trailer-truck was turning out of the cross-street in front of us, taking up the parking lane, both traffic lanes, and the center lane. There was traffic in the southbound lanes.

Katz did the only thing she could—turn into the same street the truck was leaving. It was a one-way lane, but with the sidewalk, there was just space to squeeze past the trailer. Once we’d cleared it, we saw to our left a broad concrete apron and a row of rolling doors—a trailer warehouse.

And directly in front, the nose of a second semi angled across the lane, blocking our way. The semi’s driver stared down at us from his vantage, hand raised to pound the horn.

Katz drove onto the apron, screeched to a stop, then turned to look back. Her face was a mask of stress and concentration. We had few options. The apron was wide enough to turn on, but …

Behind came a bang and clatter. Through our cracked rear window, I saw that black beast bounce across the sidewalk, shoving an overturned dumpster ahead of it. It roared up the short stretch of lane.

I spun my head. No way out. My heart was hammering fit to burst an artery.

Katz was panting, probably terrified. She slammed the gear into reverse and hit the gas, perhaps meaning to ram the other car. Too late. The SUV roared up at an angle to our flank. When we’d jerked to a stop, we were broadside-on to it. We couldn’t reverse without tangling with its bumper or hitting a wall. We couldn’t go forward without hitting the semi’s cab. The Hawaiian shirt guy had bottled us in.

My window was down. His window was down. From five feet away, he glared at me, lips curled back, a lot of teeth showing. It was a face of raw hate, like it was something personal between him and me. Yet I’d never met the guy in my life.