Стюарт Вудс - Choppy Water

“Hang a left on Fifty-seventh Street!” Sykes yelled, and she did. “Turn right on Second Avenue!” They would go with the traffic. “Left on Thirty-fourth Street! Keep your speed up!”

Bess followed orders. “Where are we headed?” she asked.

“East Side Heliport.” He got out a phone and pressed a button. “Start your engine!” he said. “Request departure to the south!” He listened for a moment, then hung up. “With a little luck,” he said, “we’ll catch it just right.”

Now rounds were coming through the front wall of the projection booth, and Eugene was on the floor, firing back at a point lower on the wall. He got to one knee and cracked open the door so that he could see the fire exit, then he flung himself at it, got it open, and ran out onto the landing, in time to see the van reverse, ram a cop car, then turn down Lexington. He was on his own.

He started down the stairs, his boots ringing on the steel steps, then caught a full burst from somewhere; he would never know where. He fell the rest of the way down the stairs and lay on his back, bleeding into the gutter.

“Why aren’t there any police cars?” Bess asked.

“Because it didn’t go down the way they expected,” Sykes replied. “Turn in there. The gate is open. Drive onto the ramp!”

She did exactly as he told her. A helicopter was sitting on the tarmac directly ahead of her, its rear door open, and she turned to avoid the rotor, then stopped. Sykes had opened her door and was pushing her out. “Into the chopper!” he said, and she dove for the door. He was on top of her. “Go!” he yelled, climbing off Bess and into a seat, grabbing a headset. “You know the routing,” he said into the mic. “You know the routing!”

Bess pulled herself up onto the rear seat beside him and found another headset.

“Where are we going?” Bess asked.

“To Virginia,” he said, “by a devious route.” He got his phone out and began making calls.

When he was sure the firing had stopped, Stone popped the door and looked warily around. The fire door on the other side of the theater was open, and Tom Blake and a couple of others were standing there, looking down at the sidewalk.

“Where have you been?” a female voice asked.

He turned to find the ersatz Holly, a pistol in her hand, looking at him. “How did this go down?” he asked.

“There was a guy hidden in the bulletproof podium over there. At a signal from Tom, we started firing up there.” She pointed with the pistol.

The projection booth was riddled with bullet holes, many of them large. “What was he using?”

“A heavy rifle with a long magazine. There was somebody in the booth, firing back.”

“Who fired first?” Stone asked.

She paused, then said, “Impossible to say.”

Bess felt airsick after a few minutes of sharp turns. She found a bag in the seat pocket in front of her and threw up in it.

“How are you feeling, Bess?” Sykes asked after a moment.

“I don’t know,” she said, “how do I look?”

“Sick,” he said.

“I’m sick, but I’m getting better,” she replied, then threw up again into the bag. Now she felt better. She settled back into her seat and loosened the belt a little.

“Now you look better,” Sykes said.

“I’m better,” she replied.

Sykes looked at his watch. “We’re going to pick up a passenger in about an hour,” he said.

“Where?”

“D.C. Well, not exactly D.C. College Park, Maryland.”

Bess shook her head, leaned back, and closed her eyes. If he was going to shoot her, now would be a good time.

A half hour later she noticed they were much closer to the ground — perhaps no more than a hundred feet. She looked forward and saw a runway framed in the windshield. “College Park?” she asked.

“The world’s oldest continuously operated airport,” Sykes said. “Built for the Wright brothers in 1908.”

The chopper slowed rapidly, then set down gently on the grass next to the runway. A tall man who looked familiar stood waiting, dressed in a military-style jumpsuit. The copilot got out and stowed his luggage in a rear compartment, while the man climbed in and sat across from Bess.

“Les Hardy,” he said, offering his hand. “We’ve met before.”

“Yes, we have, Senator.”

The chopper lifted off, climbed a couple of hundred feet, and continued its journey.

Hardy found a headset. “What went wrong?” he asked, looking at Sykes.

“Just about everything,” Sykes said. “They were lying in wait for us. Everybody is dead but Bess and me.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Hardy replied.

“In the circumstances, no,” Sykes said. “Nobody left to interrogate. Nothing in their pockets, either; we traveled light.”

“What’s the plan now?” the senator asked.

“I’m going to pick up some things at the compound, burn some papers, then we’ll head to Roanoke and meet an airplane there. Very early tomorrow morning we’ll land in Caracas. Nobody can touch us there, even if they know where we are.”

“Well, goodbye to the Senate,” Hardy said.

“Les, we both know you weren’t going to be reelected. It’s hello to a new life. And when we feel like it, we can get back to work.”

“How does that sit with you, Bess?” Hardy asked.

“First I’ve heard of it. But, as Wade says, ‘in the circumstances,’ I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.”

“We’ll be comfortable,” Sykes said. “I bought a house there more than ten years ago, under a corporate name. It’s fully staffed and provisioned, which is good. Food is hard to come by in Venezuela these days. There are a couple of cars in the garage; all we’ll need are new cell phones.”

“We’ll just pop into the Apple Store, huh?” Bess asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What am I supposed to do there?”

“Write that novel or screenplay you’ve been dreaming of?”

“Not likely.”

“We can just drop you off at the compound, if you like, but before tomorrow, you’ll be chatting with the FBI.”

“If I choose that option, what would you like me to tell them?”

“Oh, you’ve been there since last weekend. You’ve no idea where I went or how long I plan to be gone.”

Stone sat in a different helicopter, one with big letters on the side, reading FBI. Tom Blake sat next to him, on a satphone, which he hung up.

“Where are they?” Stone asked.

“We lost them over Maryland,” Tom replied. “Senator Hardy is MIA from his office. Best guess is, he took the underground train to the House side and got a ride from somebody.”

“We know where they’ve gone, don’t we?” Stone asked. “They can’t be anywhere else.”

“Agreed, and we’re taking steps to be sure they don’t think we know.”

“So,” Stone said, “are we going to take the compound, just the two of us?”

“We’ll have backup on the ground, but I’m not sure we’ll need it. All of Sykes’s people we know about are dead.”

“I hope he doesn’t have more buddies than we know about. Any news of Elizabeth? Like, dead or alive?”

“She drove the van away, then got on the helicopter with him,” Tom replied, “so we’ll assume she’s alive.”

“Unless she involuntarily deplaned at altitude.”

“Don’t be a pessimist,” Tom said.

The sun was low in the sky when the pilot broke the silence. “Twenty miles out,” he said.

“Go silent,” Tom Blake said.

There was a change in something, Stone thought. He took off his headset. “Weird,” he said to Tom.

“Ain’t it? If they’re there, they’ll get a lot less notice of our arrival. Chet,” he said to the pilot, “get us down to a hundred feet off the deck, then circle the property from a mile out. Let’s see what we can see.”