Jeff Abbott - Panic

This wasn’t what he’d expected. He hurried her into the truck he’d stolen from Bandera. Sirens rose.

Trust me, she had said. He nearly said, I can’t leave Shadey. But if he told her about Shadey, and she was leading him into a trap, then Shadey would be caught in Bricklayer’s net. He shut his mouth, hoped that Shadey had escaped in the melee.

He eased her over into the passenger seat, looking around frantically for Jargo and Dezz.

She collapsed, blood smearing the seat.

‘Bricklayer and I are CIA, Evan,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you but you need to know.’ She gritted her teeth against the pain.

CIA. Like Gabriel. The people Jargo said had killed his mother.

He didn’t believe Jargo.

‘There they are,’ she said as he climbed into the pickup. ‘The Land Rover. Silver.’ Jargo and Dezz, trying to wend past the New Orleans police cars that had responded. Evan didn’t see Shadey anywhere in the mass of people milling in the lot. An ambulance stood, lights flashing, but paramedics weren’t loading Shadey, or anyone else.

‘Hold on.’ Evan floored the pickup across the lot, then over the expanse of lawn. Headed toward Magazine, the frontage street for the zoo that separated it from Audubon Park.

‘Jargo’s seen us,’ she said. ‘You’re not trained for evasive driving, Evan.’

‘I’m a Houston driver,’ he said, drunk with fear and energy, and he barreled across Magazine, laying on the pickup’s horn, bouncing over the curb into the greater expanse of Audubon Park. Think. Think of what they’ll try next and be prepared for that. Because you can’t make a mistake.

In the rearview he saw the Rover narrowly miss hitting another car, then follow him across the grassy yard between the parking lot and Magazine, Jargo laying on the horn.

Midmorning joggers crossing the swale of parkland stared at Evan as he revved the pickup truck along the grass, dodging the oaks. The northern edge of Audubon Park faced out onto busy St. Charles Avenue, and the neighboring Loyola and Tulane universities stood on the other side of the avenue. He had forgotten that along St. Charles everyone parallel-parked along the streets, and this morning cars filled every inch of curb bordering the park. Large concrete cylinders blocked the park’s main gate from the street.

No way out.

He veered the car to the left, spotting an opening at St. Charles and Walnut, the park’s far corner. It was a noparking zone across from an old estate reborn as a hotel. The pickup lumbered as he spun out onto Walnut and hooked an immediate right onto St. Charles.

He started to panic. St. Charles was hardly a raceway. Stoplights stood every few blocks; the wide median held two streetcar tracks, with their green tubes lumbering up and down the rails, tourists leaning out to snap photos of the grand homes or of leftover, faded beads still dangling from the street signs from a passed Mardi Gras. If there wasn’t a light, a crossover spanned the median, and cars making turns backed onto the avenue.

But at 10:20 in the morning, traffic wasn’t a thick nest. He heard a boom, a thud. The Rover exited Audubon Park behind him, navigating an opening on the opposite corner of the park from where he had exited. Shots hit the bumper; the Rover powered up close to the back of the pickup.

‘He’s shooting for the tires.’ Carrie shivered, in shock and dripping wet, blood flowering through her blouse.

A light ahead, red. Cars stopping.

Evan swerved the truck into the streetcar median. He nicked a line of crape myrtles and put the truck on the rail tracks to avoid the metal poles that supplied the cars with electricity. He jammed the accelerator to the floor.

From his right, gunfire, a bullet smashing into the rear window. Shards of glass nipped the back of his head.

Carrie said, ‘Drive steady, please.’

‘Sure!’ he yelled back. He zoomed past – no one in the median turn – the intersection with the light, and in his rearview the Rover bounded onto the median with him. Accelerated fast.

Ahead, a minivan loitered in the median, waiting for traffic to open up. Two children in the minivan’s windows stared as the pickup truck rocketed toward them, a boy pointing in surprise.

Evan spun back onto St. Charles, narrowly missing the minivan, clipping a parked car. Jolt and shatter. He could not head farther right – parked cars lined the length of St. Charles, and the front yards of many of the homes were fenced or walled in. No clear room to navigate. It was the street or the median. Bad choice versus worse.

Another shot hit the rear of the pickup truck. A line of heavier shrubs lined this stretch of the median. Evan plowed back through them, deciding he was putting fewer lives at risk there than on the street, after he went through another intersection where a car waited in the median to turn onto the westbound side of St. Charles.

Then he saw the streetcar coming toward him, occupying the left-side track, and he laid on his horn.

The streetcar driver grabbed at a radio mike and yelled into it. Evan screeched to the left, the streetcar passing between him and Jargo.

Ahead he saw two police cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring.

Evan rumbled right, aiming for the center of the median; another streetcar was approaching and he overshot, revving off the tracks and back onto St. Charles. An open intersection. He took a hard right, more to keep from crashing than from strategy, then the next left, and drove down a residential street of neat homes, cars parked on the street. Then another right.

‘Turn here, here!’ Carrie said.

She pointed at a corner lot, a bright yellow building, antiques in the window, a neon OPEN sign. He saw her idea. The parking and exits were behind the building. He spun into the lot and stopped the car.

Waited.

The Rover, its side badly dented, shot past on the street. Evan counted to ten, then twenty. The Rover didn’t return.

‘What now?’ Evan didn’t recognize his own voice. His mouth tasted of the fake-swamp water and his hands shook.

‘Police will be all over St. Charles,’ she said. ‘Take a side road that runs parallel. Get us down to Lee Circle, we can get to the interstate there. Get to the airport.’

‘You need a hospital.’

‘No hospital. Our pictures will be on the police wire soon,’ she said through gritted teeth.

He gently peeled her blouse away from her shoulder. He saw the small but vicious wound, touched the stickiness of the blood.

‘You need a doctor.’

‘Bricklayer will get me help.’ She closed her eyes, closed her hand over his. ‘You don’t have any reason to trust me. But we just saved each other. That means something, doesn’t it?’

He didn’t know what to say.

She opened her eyes. ‘A government plane there can take us to a place we can be safe. Where we can work on getting your dad back.’

‘What will the CIA do to get my dad back? He’s not one of them. He’s an enemy to them if he’s worked for Jargo.’

‘Your father could be our best friend. With his help, your help, we can break Jargo.’ She leaned against the door. In pain. ‘Certain people in the CIA and Jargo… have an arrangement. Jargo’s selling information to every country, every intelligence service, every extremist group that he can. We’re trying to find his contacts inside the CIA. Get rid of the traitors. They’re selling our national secrets to Jargo. I was undercover for the Agency, working for Jargo for the past year.’

‘Year,’ he whispered.

‘We’ve never been able to identify any of his operatives other than Dezz. He has a whole network. Your parents… worked for him.’

Evan swallowed past the rock in his throat. ‘I can’t keep pretending they are completely innocent in all this, can I?’