David Hagberg - End Game

He slammed the Porsche in reverse and headed back to the park entrance, worried he’d read her wrong and she was capable of killing an agency security officer in cold blood. She could leave his body somewhere in the park, and by the time it was discovered in the morning, she would be long gone.

As he pulled into the park, he saw that the entry road paralleled the highway for a little ways before it passed the upriver exit road. He switched off his headlights and slowed down. In the distance a narrow blacktopped road turned right, while the main entry road continued to parallel the Parkway before crossing over to connect with the downriver-bound highway.

The park’s gate would be closed, but most of the park was heavily wooded, with hundreds of places to pull off and hide a body.

McGarvey took the road right into the park, slowing to a crawl. Less than one hundred yards in, he caught a glimpse of the Caddy ahead, and he got off the road. He jumped out of his car and ran through the woods, pistol in hand.

It was more than possible he had underestimated the woman and would be in time to see her gun down the security officer.

The road here was very narrow, trees close in, making it next to impossible for her to turn around. When McGarvey got to where the Caddy was stopped, the security officer was standing next to the car, his hands above his head, Alex ten feet away from him. McGarvey couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the officer shook his head, lowered his hands, and walked away down the road, deeper into the park toward the river.

Alex watched him until he was just about out of sight, and then she stuffed the pistol she’d been holding into the pocket of her coveralls.

McGarvey turned and raced as fast as he could to where he’d parked his Porsche, managed to get it turned around, and headed back to the access road, where he got lucky with a spot to pull through some brush and into a stand of trees.

Less than a minute later, Alex at the wheel, the Escalade passed and sped off to the upriver access to the Parkway, toward I-495, where she would either turn north up to I-270 into the Maryland countryside of small quaint towns, or south on I-495 and on to Dulles.

He got his car back up on the highway, headlights still out, and stayed well behind until he merged with the Parkway and spotted her taillights three-quarters of a mile away.

The highway crested a hill, and he lost her for a half a minute. He switched on his headlights and paced her, turning with her south onto I-495, where, within a couple of miles, traffic started to pick up and tailing her became much easier.

He called Otto. “She’s heading south on four ninety-five. Call Blankenship and tell him his officer is in Turkey Run Park, unharmed.”

“If she’s going to Dulles, we’ll have to get a team out there to look for her. I don’t know what ID she’d be traveling under.”

“How soon will you have a satellite in position?”

“Seven minutes. Do you want me to alert Dulles security?”

“If she knows we’re on her tail, she’ll break off and go deep. I want to know where she’s heading.”

Alex took the battery out of the security officer’s radio and tossed it out the window just before she reached the Dulles Access Road and continued straight. It was possible that the unit had a built-in GPS, though she hadn’t heard of that being the case, but she wanted to minimize her risks while it was still possible to do so.

She’d taken a lot of care with her tradecraft. Slowing down, speeding up, switching lanes so suddenly, the drivers she cut off blew their horns, all the while checking her rearview mirrors. But nothing stood out.

It was possible they thought she might still be on campus, though the officers on the main gate had to have seen the Caddy passing by. But unless they suspected trouble, there would have been no reason to report it. The only issue she could see was that McGarvey or someone had by now discovered that the officer and his car were missing. She’d left the radio on to make sure he wasn’t supposed to make regular radio checks, but there’d been no queries.

In fact, she was just slightly disappointed McGarvey wasn’t on her tail. She’d figured it was a strong possibility he’d come after her. But then Pete Boylan was in love with him, and maybe she was making it obvious to him this morning.

She got off at Tysons Corner a few minutes after four and drove in a very roundabout way to the self-storage unit, using the keypad to gain entry. Her small locker was at the rear of the big facility, well out of sight of Leesburg Pike.

The only noise back here was from the light traffic on the highway. Washington was like New York City in that it almost never completely shut down. And there always seemed to be traffic on the Beltway.

Her unit was filled with cardboard boxes, mostly of old clothes, dishes, pots and pans, curtains, sheets, blankets, and pillows.

Making certain no one was coming, she crawled up on top of the pile and, near the back, moved several cartons, finding a large one that contained several layers of old shoes. Near the bottom she pulled out an attaché case, under the leather cover and linings of which were hidden several passports — two of them Canadian, one British, and two American — plus credit cards, driver’s licenses, international permits, and other forms of ID to match each identity. All the passports were well used and well within their expiration dates.

The cover and linings were formed into patterns that allowed X-ray machines to see through to the inside, but because of the patterns, the existence of the passports and other documents did not show up; instead they blended in.

One separate envelope contained a thousand dollars in cash, most of it American. In addition, a half dozen contracts for travel magazine pieces were contained in a file folder. Several travel guides for Europe and the Middle East, along with a compact Nikon digital camera and several copies of the magazines Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler filled the case.

From another carton she took out a small roll-about suitcase that contained enough clothes and personal toiletries to last her for at least two weeks of travel. They were a little musty, though she changed the items every month or so.

She took the attaché case and roll-about to the Caddy, then came back and put the cartons in place in the pile so it would take someone searching the locker hours to discover something might be missing.

All that had taken less than twenty minutes before she was driving out the gate and back onto the Pike.

Traffic had picked up a little, a lot of it garbage trucks, delivery vans from bakeries, and fresh produce suppliers for restaurant prep chefs. By six or six thirty every road from the Beltway into the city would be jam-packed. White noise.

Again taking care with her tradecraft, she drove back to her apartment in an erratic route, again pretty sure she hadn’t picked up a tail, though every hour that passed, the likelihood that the security officer had managed to call in to report his situation grew exponentially.

No suspicious cars or vans were parked anywhere near, nor had the Impala she’d parked next door been disturbed so far as she could tell by merely driving by.

She made two more passes before she parked the Caddy on a side street a block away, and walked back to the Chevy, where she put the attaché case and roll-about into the trunk. Before she drove off, she quickly checked the trunk, under the seats, in the glove compartment, and under the dash for any bugs or homing devices. So far as she could tell, the car was clean.

Three blocks later she pulled into a service station and filled up the tank. The sign in front advertised that a mechanic was on duty twenty-four hours every day. One of the service doors was open, the bay empty.