Greg Rucka: Patriot acts

So maybe it was a fault in the console someplace, a short in the warning light or a skewed sensor in the tank.

I was willing to believe that, until I saw the headlights in the rearview mirror.

They were distant, maybe a hundred feet back, but riding high enough to throw reflected glare into the Civic. As I watched, the lights came closer, then held steady. Maybe fifty feet off. A good covering distance. Not so far away as to lose the target; not so close as to risk unnecessary exposure if the target did something unexpected, hit the brakes, for instance, or threw a U-turn.

I told myself that it didn't mean anything, that it was a public damn road, and that other vehicles would thus be using it. I told myself that, yes, while it was half past four in the morning and only assassins and their students and the people who protected them would be awake and up and about in the sleepy little Putnam County town of Cold Spring, that was no reason to become alarmed.

The Glock was on the seat beside me, wedged beneath the go-bag, and I reached over for it, moved it into my lap. The Civic was an automatic, and I took both hands off the wheel long enough to rack the slide, to make the pistol ready. Then I slid the barrel beneath my right thigh, on the outside, so my weight would keep it from bouncing around should I do anything to anger the Laws of Physics, but so I could grab it in a hurry if the need arose.

I had a very strong feeling that the need would arise very shortly.

The lights behind me were steady, still keeping their distance. The sky was playing in shades of black and blue, and I couldn't tell the make of the vehicle. From the height of the headlights, I guessed it was a pickup of some sort, or maybe an SUV.

That damn reserve light was still on, still warning me that I was low on fuel.

I felt my pulse begin to race.

If the tank had been tapped, punctured, or drained just enough to get me going but not enough to get me where I wanted to go, there was no telling what else had been done to the vehicle. No telling if a bug had been planted, if an explosive had been placed. That the car hadn't blown up when I'd started it was small consolation; it's easy enough to rig a charge in two phases, to prime when the engine starts, to detonate when it stops.

I didn't much like thinking that, because it meant that when the car died, I would, too.

There was a turn coming up, onto County Route 10, and I made the right, and when I did the lights behind me seemed to move closer, just a bit, as if whoever was handling the vehicle behind me wanted to keep me in sight.

We'd passed a Citgo station on the way to the safe house, in the direction I was currently heading. It couldn't be more than half a mile from where I was now. I'd noted it because there'd been nothing else around, just the pumps and a garage and a lot and the encroaching woods.

That was what threw the switch for me, and I saw it all so clearly then, saw it as if I had planned it myself. I was about to be ambushed; I was already being herded into the kill zone.

Whoever had planned this hadn't wanted to hit me at the safe house, and that made sense; there had been a lot of guns at the safe house, and it would have made taking me out difficult. So they'd let me get mobile, to isolate me, but they'd done so with an eye to controlling how far I could go, and where. With the reserve light on, of course I would stop at the first gas station I could find.

There would be two teams, then: one in the follow vehicle, to monitor my progress, to act as the stopper if I tried to reverse and double back to the safe house. The second team would be in position already, waiting at the gas station, but in contact with the first, in the follow vehicle. Maybe on radio, maybe on cell phones, it didn't matter. The point was, they would know I was coming, and they would be ready for it when I arrived.

Then I would turn into the station and roll up to the pumps, and before I could even get out of the Civic, the follow car would pull alongside and the team that had been waiting would emerge from their cover. They'd shoot into the vehicle from each of their directions, forming two cones of fire, and trapped in the Civic, I'd find myself unable to do anything but die.

I could see it as clearly as if I had planned it myself.

I could see, too, that there was no way to avoid it. I was already in the mouth. Passing the station by wouldn't free me from the teeth. The follow vehicle would simply keep me in sight, and the second team would catch up, and they'd either wait for the Civic to choke to a halt, or they'd force me off the road, then take me there. There were plenty of places they could do it, plenty of stretches with nothing but trees and darkness and nothing else. Worse, continuing on would only take me further from the safe house. I had to get back there, had to make certain that I was the only target.

The gas station came into view maybe a quarter of a mile ahead of me, to the left of the road. Sodium lamps shining orange through the trees, bathing the pumps beneath, turning the edges of the asphalt lot blue. I could see the darkened office, and beside it the darkened garage. The illuminated Citgo sign rose above the branches atop its pole, a shining marker for my designated grave.

In the rearview, the lights from the follow vehicle had grown brighter. The driver was closing the gap.

I slowed, signaled, and turned into the ambush.

The second team had come in a Ford sedan. The sedan waited at the opposite end of the lot from where I entered, positioned almost directly between the two rows of pumps. My headlights splashed across it as I turned into the gas station, and I could see the car parked facing towards me. Its front doors were already open, and two men were standing behind them, wearing bulky winter coats and facing each other, as if conversing over the roof of the car. In the moment of illumination as my lights found them, I marked them both as Caucasian, each standing with his hands out of sight, hidden behind their respective doors. The one at the driver's side door wore a watch cap, the other was bald.

There were two rows of pumps, three pumps apiece, and spaced to allow for four lines of cars to refuel simultaneously. I oriented the Civic towards the right-hand row on the inside, continuing to tap my brakes, as if bleeding off speed in preparation for a stop. With my left, I reached out to unlock my door, then rolled down the window. A gust of cold autumn air, smelling faintly of gasoline and motor oil, filled the car.

The follow vehicle turned into the station behind me, and I saw that it was a Jeep Cherokee, either green or black; it was hard to tell with the sodium lights. If it was coming to ram or pin the Civic, I was done, and for a half-second of pure terror, I thought that was exactly what it intended to do. But it pulled the turn tighter than I had, and I realized why; he didn't want to risk getting hit by the cone of fire that would come from the Ford. Instead, the Jeep's driver was going to come parallel, past the pumps on my right. I glanced over, saw only one occupant, the driver behind the wheel, also Caucasian, his hair dark. He didn't look my way.

I put more pressure on the brakes, brought the Civic to a stop, turning the wheel slightly to the left, leaving the engine running. There couldn't be much gas left in the tank, but the Civic wouldn't need much to do what I wanted it to do. I had the Glock in my right, ready. At the Ford, the two men were still pretending to speak to one another, not looking my way. It was a big tell. At almost five in the morning in a deserted gas station, when a new car pulls in, shining its lights at you, you look at it. If you don't, you're hiding something.