Ghostman (16 page)

I wondered how long it would take her to figure me out in return. I knew it was only a matter of time before she’d check the surveillance cameras and see what I’d done. It was how she’d gotten this far that bothered me. Alexander Lakes told me everything he would do for me would stay private. Clearly, that wasn’t true. Somehow she’d figured out where I was staying, which meant Lakes had a very serious security problem.

I took out a phone and pounded in Lakes’s number. It rang. Three times. He finally picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” I could hear the sound of his bedsheets rustling. His voice was sleepy.

“You gave me a burned room,” I said.

“Who is this?”

“Who do you think it is? You gave me a burned room at the Chelsea. The FBI’s there right now tearing the walls down.”

“Ulysses.”

I got to the bottom of the stairs and found the exit into the basement, which was wired to trigger the fire alarm if opened from the inside. I sandwiched the phone between my cheek and shoulder, then
took my knife and slipped it between the contacts for the alarm. I gently eased the door open with my hip and kept the knife there until the door was closed again.

“It’s the middle of the night, sir,” he said. “How are you sure it’s a Fed?”

“I met her earlier. She said I interrupted her vacation.”

“A woman? What’s her name?”

“She’s a Fed. It doesn’t matter what her name is.”

At this time of night, the parking-garage lights were off and would only turn on if triggered by motion sensors. The only permanent light came from the dim floodlight at the base of the stairs. I crossed to the parking garage, took out the key Lakes had left me and started pressing the button that unlocks the doors. As I walked the lights started flicking on all around me. I got about halfway through the garage before I heard the unlocking sound and saw the car’s lights flashing. The black Suburban Lakes had promised me was parked near the exit. It was exactly the type of car I’d been looking for. Brand-new, midnight-black, three-quarters of a ton with three hundred horses and chrome hubcaps.

“Sir, I cannot apologize enough. I can get you another room at Caesars, this time as clean as you can imagine.”

“No.”

“I have contacts at a motel on the edge of town. I know a wonderful Indian guy there. I’m sure he’ll do anything you ask in complete confidence.”

“I’ll get my own rooms from now on.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do I sound confused to you?”

“No, sir. Is there anything I can do?”

“Meet me at the diner at Maryland and Arctic in twenty minutes. We need to talk.”

I got in the car. Looked left and right. Checked the mirrors. Took
a glance at the row of cars behind me to make sure I wouldn’t hit anything. Put my hand on the gearshift.

But suddenly I froze and hung up on Lakes without saying another word. I adjusted the rearview mirror again.

There was the other black Suburban, parked two cars down and a row back.

22

It was the same vehicle I’d seen before. Tinted windows, low suspension. The front bumper and the hubcaps were solid chrome. I blinked and tried to get a good look. Yes, certainly the same rig that had jumped me near the old airfield. No front plates.

Son of a bitch.

In the dim half light of the parking garage I could make out two people in the cabin. In the shadows they were nothing more than black silhouettes against an even blacker background. Only the pale white glow of the motion sensor lights above them suggested they were even there. They came into focus in parts—light reflecting off somebody’s hair, the dark mass of a torso, the shape of an arm. They blended in like they were made of smoke. Whoever they were, they must have been waiting there for hours. They must have found out where I was staying and parked here in the basement, listening to the sound of their engine tick and cool. Watching the exit. They weren’t listening to the radio or drinking coffee or bantering back and forth to each other. They were just sitting there in the stillness and waiting for me to show up.

My hand tightened around the wheel. How the hell did they find
me? I took precautions with these guys. I’d lost them on the highway. Switched cars. Spent a good portion of the night sniffing pine freshener in the passenger seat of Spencer’s Camaro. Even if they’d picked me up again when I went back to the hangar, I’d wandered around for blocks on foot before checking into the Chelsea. I’d dodged through crowded casinos and other hotels. There’s no chance they could have shadowed me. My jaw tightened up like I’d been punched.

Who the hell
were
these guys?

They were almost perfectly still for the better part of a minute, like hunters who’d spotted their prey. I stayed frozen in place with my eyes on the mirror. This time it would be a lot harder to lose them, that’s for sure. It would be much harder in a parking garage, in the middle of the night, with almost no other cars driving around. If there’s nobody else on the road, it takes an act of God to get away clean. Every move you make they can follow. They had me cornered, and they knew it. In such tight quarters they really didn’t have to do very much. They could just pull up in front of the exit and that would be that.

I kept still and watched. A drop of water fell from the pipes overhead and made a slow trail down the windshield.

A dozen different scenarios went through my head. I could turn the engine on, put the pedal to the floor and make a run for it. I could go back into the hotel and try to lose them on foot. I could drive out slowly like I hadn’t noticed them and then do my best on the road. Every scenario seemed wrong. I glanced down at my watch. I watched the second hand make a slow, jerking trip around the face.

Two a.m. Twenty-eight hours to go.

When I’d walked into the parking garage, the lights had come on. Wherever I walked, a few small floodlights lit up. Motion detectors. If these worked the way I thought they did, they’d turn off after a short period of inactivity. Without them, the parking garage would be nearly pitch-black. Only the glow of the Exit sign would give any illumination. That would give me a couple more seconds of lead time. I could start the
engine and put the car into gear before they could respond. Of course, once I moved more than about ten feet, the lights would snap back on and we’d be in half shadows again. But it might be enough.

I slowly reached forward, put my key in the ignition and turned it to the second position. The dashboard lit up for a moment and the computer screen on the console went from black to a pale blue glow. I flipped the switch that controlled the headlights. I turned everything off that could be turned off. The flashers, the daytime runners, the computer screen, everything. I looked back at my watch.

Any second now.

The first light I’d walked past in the far corner of the garage by the staircase started flickering and went out. Another one went out a second later, then two more. Then another two, then three. The whole process would take about twenty seconds, I guessed, because that’s how long it had taken me to walk over to the car. I counted it down on my watch.

Ten seconds. The whole garage was returning to nearly pitch black.

Five seconds.

Three.

Two.

The light over the SUV behind me emitted a loud click and flickered out.

One.

Darkness. My breath was slow and deep. I started the engine. The red warning lights on the back of my SUV must have looked like a signal flare going up.

I threw the car in Reverse and lay on the gas. The tires squealed as I did a kamikaze turn in Reverse, shifted back into Drive and slammed it. The motion-activated lights had a slow catch-up. I got nearly twenty feet out before they snapped back on. I sped up the ramp to the ground floor and cut two corners very close. Nobody was in the attendant’s booth, which was good because I had no intention of stopping. I went through the exit at thirty miles an hour.

Still, my plan didn’t get me the lead I was hoping for. The other guys
must have been ready. The warning lights were their starting pistol. Just as I fishtailed onto the street, I heard the other Suburban roar past the booth after me. There was no pretense anymore. They didn’t care about staying invisible. They wanted to run me down. Their brakes screeched as they sailed over the curb.

I was maybe fifty feet ahead.
Come on
.

I milked the accelerator for all it would give me. The gearbox shifted up, then up again as I spun through a red light on the corner of Pacific and Chelsea. It was a big dirty turn that threw me through three lanes of light traffic. The other Suburban corrected course and kept after me.

These guys were no cops, that’s for sure. They were gunning for me.

I followed the map in my head. Southbound on Pacific would get me westbound onto Providence. There was a parking lot that I could cut through there as a shortcut onto Atlantic. From Atlantic onto Albany. Albany to O’Donnell Park. A few more blocks, then the ramp to the freeway. There were over three hundred streets in the city and I’d memorized all of them.

Each of my senses was in overdrive now. I could hear the sound of the tires on the pavement. I could feel the treads gripping the small bumps in the road. I could smell the exhaust.

I skidded onto Atlantic and switched directions. Initially the light traffic had seemed like a problem, but now that this had become a flat-out chase it was beneficial. We got nearly ten blocks, blowing through every red light along the way.

I spun through a cloverleaf past a billboard for the Atlantic Regency and took the overpass onto the highway. The engine drowned out the horns of the cars I blew past at nearly twice the speed limit, which is insane in southern New Jersey. I swerved through traffic like it was standing still.

Still, the Suburban was gaining on me. They tapped my rear bumper and I felt the sickening tug of my wheels sliding uselessly on the pavement. I wobbled between two lanes for a moment, nearly hitting a car as we blitzed past.

I briefly thought of putting the car into the highest gear and trying to outrun them, but that idea faded just as quickly. The engines were evenly matched, and they were more familiar with the SUV’s handling than I was. They could run me down in a matter of minutes.

The Suburban came around until we were neck and neck, then the driver lay on the horn and swerved into my lane, trying to bash me. I ran over the rumble strip and nearly spun out in the emergency lane. The Suburban roared by, then slowed, the driver still blowing the horn. I could see the person in the passenger seat gesturing at me. He waved his hand toward the side of the road.
Pull over
. The next tap nearly launched me into the guardrail.

The next exit wasn’t for another five miles, and clearly these assholes weren’t interested in following me around. I didn’t really have any choice. Either I pulled over or they’d run me over. It was as simple as that.

I put my flashers on, reduced my speed and started to pull over. Their Suburban drifted behind me for maybe half a mile in the emergency lane. It reduced speed until it was twenty yards back. When my car came to a stop, so did theirs.

Silence.

Nothing happened for a moment. I sat there without turning off the engine or moving my foot away from the gas. They turned on their high beams, so I couldn’t see what they were doing in my mirrors. I listened to the quiet rush of the cars next to us, and the crickets in the pine forest to my right. It was a waiting game now.

I took my gun out of its holster and placed it under my thigh.

A few moments later, the driver’s door opened and a man got out. His boots made such crunching sounds on the gravel between us that he might as well have been wearing spurs. He came into focus after about ten feet. He was a short man with bleached-blond hair and skin the color of porcelain. He walked with a swagger, like he was coming up to tell me the air in my tires was low. I could make out the number 88 tattooed into his neck. Where I come from, eighty-eight was code. Eighty-eight
was the numerological equivalent of HH, because
H
is the eighth letter in the alphabet. HH was code itself. It was an abbreviation of a common phrase in prisons all over the country:
Heil Hitler
.

The blond rapped his knuckles on my window and motioned for me to roll down the glass.

“We’d like a word,” he said.

I didn’t say anything, just kept my hands on the wheel.

He pulled a small gun out of a little holster in his belt. It was a slick draw. In one quick motion he had reached for it, pulled it out and pointed right at me through the window. He had a bead on my head before I had time to even think about reaching for my heat.

“A word, please,” he said.

If I wanted to, I could’ve slammed down the accelerator and shot off like a rocket. I could have run over the blond’s big toe before his pea-brain reflexes could manage to squeeze the trigger. A Suburban has a pretty good pickup for a big car, and I was still in gear and my engine was all warmed up. By the time he knew what was happening, his bullets wouldn’t hit anything but air and glass. He’d maybe get three shots out at me, all wide, all unlikely to hit, before I’d be halfway off down the highway with enough of a head start to lose the tail. If I wanted to, I could drive off right now. But what would that get me?

I
still
had no idea who these guys were.

I rolled down the window and he gestured that I should get out. I slowly reached forward and took the key out of the ignition and opened the car door. I slid my revolver up my thigh and into my pocket at the same time. A smooth move, I thought. It must have been, because the blond didn’t say anything or frisk me or anything. He stayed about a yard back and kept his gun on me. Once I got out, he shut the door and waved the barrel of the gun behind us toward his Suburban. I could smell his breath. Garlic and menthol cigarettes. He marched me back, then opened the back door on the passenger side and nodded for me to get in.