Brad Thor - The Lions Of Lucerne

As he turned to his right, he decided not to give the van a second thought. It wasn’t out of place, he was. This whole morning had been out of place. Life in D.C. was not magically changing because of his experiences; the real danger for him lay in seeing threats where there weren’t any. Paranoia was not going to do anything to improve his current situation.

The flip side of Scot’s reassuring self-talk was that paranoia might be annoying, but a healthy dose of it served to keep you alive. No one ever got killed by being too vigilant.

Quickly, Scot made his way down the street, using the reflective storefront windows he passed to see what was happening across the street and behind him. The noise of the carpet van began to slowly fade, but it was replaced by something that sounded like a heartbeat: boom, boom, boom. It was faint at first, but began to increase in volume. Harvath didn’t hear it so much as feel it in the middle of his chest: boom, boom, boom. He realized that the sound was growing louder because it was coming closer: boom, boom, boom.

It was the heavy bass from a pumped-up car stereo system. Without even turning to look at the vehicle, Harvath knew exactly what it would be. His colleagues at the Secret Service called them ghettomobiles. Cars with windows tinted in flagrant violation of city ordinances, the chassis lowered, and tires sticking out far beyond the wheel wells. The drivers of these cars didn’t care that bass matured over distance and got louder and deeper as the sound waves traveled outward. All they knew was that it sounded cool. Harvath hated ghettomobiles and the hey, look at me machismo attitude of their drivers and occupants.

The noise was almost on top of him now, and as he listened to it approach, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought the car had slowed down. He glanced ahead, but there wasn’t any traffic that would have caused the car to reduce its speed. Probably not on their way to the bank, he thought. Drawing alongside another storefront, Harvath looked in the window just in time to see the reflection of tinted windows sliding down on the ghettomobile and a Tec 9 automatic being thrust through.

Reflexively, Harvath hit the sidewalk and rolled. Bullets tore up the concrete where he had stood. The window he’d used to covertly survey the vehicle shattered in a thousand pieces, spraying him with shards of razor-sharp glass. All the while, the stereo kept thumping its staccato beat: boom, boom, boom.

Harvath jammed his hand inside his trench coat and groped for his waistband. It settled on the rubberized grip of his silenced nine millimeter Glock pistol. He thought he heard one of the car doors opening, and the sudden increase in the music’s volume confirmed it. From where he lay next to a parked car, the curb was too high for him to see anything in the street. With the window of the store to his left shattered, he had no idea which way the person, or persons, who had exited the car were coming.

Needing a diversion, Harvath aimed the Glock and took two well-placed shots through the rear window of the car parked in front of him. The silent spits broke the glass and sent it showering into the street. He heard one of his assailants yell, “Gun!” Harvath sprang to his feet and rolled along the trunk of the parked car that had been his cover.

A powerfully built man in black fatigues and a balaclava stood swinging his Tec 9 from side to side trying to figure out where the shots had come from. Harvath didn’t waste any time. He fired twice into the man’s torso because the head was snapping around too wildly to get a clean between-the-eyes kill.

The man was ripped right off his feet and thrown to the ground by the force of Harvath’s weapon. As Harvath turned to fire at the occupants of the gray Nissan Maxima with the thumping stereo and polished alloy wheels, the man he’d just put down shook his head as if he had been in a daze and turned his weapon on Harvath. Scot dove out of the line of fire as bullets ripped up the side of the parked car, flattening both tires and blowing out all of the vehicle’s glass.

There was no way the man could have survived two direct hits, unless he was wearing body armor.

To any witnesses dumb enough to still be standing on the street, this looked like one vicious drive-by, but Scot knew better. Somehow, whoever had been responsible for the attack on him at Union Station had been able to track him to his bank. While this group might look like gang bangers in commando outfits, there was no fooling Harvath; they were professional hit men. The man yelling, “Gun,” had proved it.

That sealed it. Scot had absolutely no plans to turn himself in to Director Jameson until he was able to get some answers. For all he knew, by turning himself in he could be handing himself over to the very people who were trying to kill him. It was obvious Shaw was behind the deaths of Natalie Sperando and André Martin. He could be behind this as well. And if Shaw was involved, who else might be working with him? There was no telling. It could be anyone.

There was no time to figure things out now. He needed to focus on staying alive.

Scot’s ears were too busy ringing from the explosion of gunfire to notice the silence that now enveloped him. The smell of cordite hung in the damp air, and he heard the telltale sound of boots crunching on broken glass. There was a clicking sound followed by metal scraping on metal. The shooter was reloading and coming toward him. This might be Scot’s only chance.

Not knowing how many other occupants were in the car and where they had their weapons trained, Harvath raised the Glock above the level of the trunk he was hiding behind and fired wildly toward where he thought the shooter and the lowered Maxima were. He heard a loud grunt and, without looking, made a desperate leap from between the parked cars onto the sidewalk. He broke off at a run back toward the bank, staying as low as he could.

He heard the squeal of tires and the rapid fire of automatic weapons as he ran. The bullets chewed apart every car he tried to use as cover, sending glass flying everywhere. Then, as quickly as it started, the commotion stopped with the sickening slam of an impact.

Harvath cautioned a look back and saw that a furniture truck, its driver not knowing what was happening, had turned left off a side street at exactly the same time his assailants were reversing wildly down the street toward him, and the two vehicles had collided. The sound of approaching police sirens could now be heard in the distance.

As Harvath turned back toward the bank, something whispered by his right ear and tore a huge piece of stone out of the building behind him. Someone else was shooting at him! And whoever this person was, he or she was somewhere in front of him using a silenced weapon.

He hit the ground and rolled again; just as another muffled shot narrowly missed his head. Using the still intact storefront window to his left, he could see a man with a mounted rifle in the back of the Ziretta Carpet Cleaning van. Scot was pinned down. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. He was trapped. Or was he?

Using the storefront image for guidance, Scot raised his pistol and fired two shots toward the red-and-white van. As soon as the shots were fired, he rolled into the street between two parked cars. What were the chances the men in the Nissan were hanging around after crashing into the furniture truck? Most likely, they had taken off in the car if it was drivable, or by foot if it wasn’t. The vehicle was undoubtedly stolen, and with the police on their way, the men would want to put as much distance between themselves and the crime scene as possible. Those who fight and run away live to fight another day, Scot thought to himself.

There hadn’t been any gunfire from behind him, nor any sound of someone pursuing him on foot. Chances were the men in the Maxima had fled. One group down.