Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“Why not?”

“Trust me on this. You’ll thank me later.”

“What are we doing, Abby? This doesn’t make sense.”

“All will become clear, Grasshopper.”

The Chevy turned obediently into the parking lot and joined a short line of drivers waiting to pay their money and take a ride through the car wash. Abby pulled in behind Andrea’s car. She checked her rearview.

The only possible hitch in her otherwise flawless plan would be if one of the surveillance vehicles decided to join the line also. She was betting that none would; following Andrea into the car wash would be too conspicuous.

Since no one pulled in behind Abby, it seemed her gamble had paid off. She inched forward as the line advanced. Ahead, she saw Andrea roll down her window and pay. Her car was guided forward onto the rails and towed into the tunnel, veiled by a mist of spray.

Abby paid next, then put her car in neutral as the towline engaged. She eased along the rails, the Chevy a blurred white shape two yards ahead.

She spoke into the cell phone again. “Okay, take off your wig and leave it on the seat. Get out and switch cars with me.”

“Switch cars?”

“That’s the plan. Ingenious in its simplicity, don’t you think?”

“We’ll get soaked.”

“Small price to pay for freedom. Let’s go. And hold on to your phone.”

Abby didn’t wait for an answer. She threw open her car door and stepped out. The car continued to crawl forward through the artificial downpour.

For a moment, in the windowless darkness, battered by rain, she flashed back to the Rain Man case-the storm drains under the city, where she and Tess had nearly drowned. But the memory was gone almost before it registered.

She ran toward the Chevy and met Andrea halfway. “Aren’t you glad we didn’t get the hot wax?” Abby shouted over the roar. She hoped she saw Andrea smile, but in the gloom she couldn’t be sure.

Ahead, large foaming brushes were descending to wipe the Chevy. Abby ducked into the driver’s seat and slammed the door before the nearest brush could swab her.

In the few seconds she had spent in the spray, she’d been thoroughly drenched. She cranked up the Chevy’s heater to full blast.

Looking back, she saw the dim outline of her Mazda. Movement in the front seat. Andrea was behind the wheel.

“When you leave the car wash, Abby said into her phone, “head east on the surface streets. I’ll tell you where to meet me once I shake off my pursuit.”

“You sure this’ll work?” Andrea asked.

“Abso-tively. These FBI people aren’t as smart as they like to pretend.”

She hoped this was true.

As the Chevy advanced into the hot air blowers, Abby stuck the blond wig on her head and patted it down. Water from her sopping hair dribbled out from under the wig and tickled her neck.

There was really no reason why the plan should fail. The interior of the car wash was dark and misty and obscured by moving equipment. No one would have a clear view of the inside from any likely vantage point, nor would the feds be looking inside anyway. They would be waiting until the Chevy emerged. When it did, driven by a woman in a blond wig, they would take up the chase again. They would never even notice the red Mazda.

The blowers receded into the background, the towline uncoupled, and Abby shifted the Chevy into drive and started forward, not hurrying. She waited at the curb for a break in the traffic, then turned right and blended with the stream of vehicles on Glenoaks.

By now the trigger-the surveillance operative with the best view of the car wash-would have radioed the rest of his squad, who would be executing a follow. Standard procedure in FBI vehicular surveillance was a floating box formation, a constantly shifting arrangement of vehicles arrayed behind, in front of, and parallel to the target.

Only one vehicle at a time, known as the command vehicle, would maintain direct visual contact. The others would assume command periodically as the target executed turns. If Abby made a left turn, an outrider vehicle somewhere on her left would follow and take point in the pursuit. If she turned right, a right-side outrider would do the same. Should she flip a U, one of the vehicles behind her would turn onto a side street, make a quick K-urn, and fall in behind her as she passed by. Take a side street, and her surveillance would pace her on parallel streets.

The idea was for the feds to keep the target contained without giving themselves away. Five or six cars would be sufficient to pull it off, though there could be ten or more.

It wasn’t easy to break containment, but it could be done. What was required was a series of maneuvers that would shake off her pursuers one or two at a time, carried out quickly enough that they had no time to regroup.

The assignment would have been easier at night, with darkness as cover, but on these long summer days the sun didn’t sent before eight p.m.. She would have to make the best of it.

She took a few moments to adjust to the Chevy’s handling. Every car had its own feel. This one rode pretty solid, with no rattles or squeaks. Tight suspension, decent traction, smooth steering.

When she was comfortable behind the wheel, she decided to make her move.

She cut right on Tuxford Street and took the on-ramp to the Golden State Freeway westbound, easing into the fast lane. The chase cars were behind her, she had no doubt. She sped west for two miles, gradually upping her speed, then abruptly cut across multiple lanes and shot down an off-ramp onto Osbourne Street. A slick maneuver, which might have lost the command vehicle, at least.

But she had to assume that other surveillance cars had managed to follow her or had been paralleling the freeway on surface streets. She hooked southeast onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, and accelerated, weaving through traffic and running yellow lights. As she flashed through the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Saticoy, she spun the steering wheel and whirled around in a screaming skid, then slammed on the emergency brake and floored the gas. The car nearly flipped over from centrifugal force but somehow stayed upright, now facing north. She popped the emergency brake, and the Chevy tore forward, racing north while outraged drivers blasted their horns.

She didn’t know what they were so upset about. It was a standard bootleg turn. Moonshiners did it all the time.

The tactic must have shaken off a few more of the pursuit vehicles. Any cars ahead of her would never be able to turn around fast enough to catch up. Any cars following too closely behind her would have been all the way through the intersection before they could react. By the time they found a way to turn around, she would be far gone.

The only danger was that one or two cars might have been farther behind her. If so, they could have been warned in time to stay on her tail. It was doubtful, but she was taking no chances.

She sped north for a half mile, then cut onto a side street lined with bungalows and slammed the Chevy left at the first intersection, then right, right again, left, cutting down street after street in the gridwork of residential blocks, until even she didn’t know where she was.

Finally she pulled into an alley walled in by a double row of houses and parked behind a Dumpster, where the car wouldn’t easily be seen from the street. She let her head fall back on the headrest.

No way the feds could have followed her this far. Even if one of the chase cars had stayed with her after the bootleg turn, her subsequent maneuvers would have shaken it off.

Though she was out of pocket for the moment, she wasn’t home free. Already the surveillance team would be initiating a lost command drill, retreating to the perimeter of the area where she was last seen in an effort to pick her up again when she started moving. But that was okay, because it was the Chevy Malibu they were looking for, and the Chevy wasn’t going anywhere.