The Homecoming (14 page)

“Roger that,” another voice cut in—female—sounded like Kris Lucas—the dog unit trooper—“I’m about a quarter mile back—”

“Went by me so fast I thought I was stopped—”

“So you got out to pee—”

In the background of the call Reed could hear the sound of her engine winding out, and the dog—his name was Conan—in the back going totally nuts.

“No way I’m staying with him—I’m maxed out at one-fifty, my ride’s
shaking like a paint mixer and he’s a black dot getting smaller every second—is Charlie Six out there?”

Reed was rolling slowly along the on-ramp, the heavy car rocking slightly from the race cam, keeping the crest of the curve high enough to shield him from that Viper—he wanted the element of
holy shit where’d this guy come from
when he appeared out of nowhere and started to climb up his ass—and mile marker 354 meant this Viper was about five miles away.

If he was doing what it would take to leave Kris Lucas’ dog unit in the ditch he’d cover that five miles in less than three minutes. Now Reed could hear the high-pitched whine of a race-tuned engine, a wailing scream coming faintly on the wind—sirens trailing far behind.

He keyed the handset.

“Dog Car, this is Charlie Six—I can hear him. I’m gonna take him at the three-six-six on-ramp—I’m gonna climb right up his butt—you fall back, Kris—I don’t want you to blow a tire—those units aren’t set up for this—let me have this—”

The engine whine got louder and now he could just make out a tiny patch of matte black streaking down a long decline a mile out. The black dot was carving a risky path through light traffic—shifting from lane to lane—weaving through the crowded sections.

Amazingly, all the civilian traffic was holding pretty steady, getting off the road as the chase swept by, staying in their lane if they couldn’t—using their mirrors
and
their brains, he figured. Maybe they’d seen enough episodes of
World’s Wildest Police Chases
to learn how to drive when they were in the middle of one.

And it had been his experience that American interstate drivers were, on the whole, a pretty competent lot. It was only around the cities that things got crazy.

He could see the faint flicker of police flashers a long way behind the Viper, their sirens barely audible. Reed felt his heart rate start to climb as he tightened his harness. He put the handset into the cradle and punched
SPEAKER
just as the Viper disappeared into the hollow of a road dip at a half mile away.

“Jimmy, I got him—he’ll be on me in seconds—I’m rolling—”

“Echo Five says he’s doing one-seventy easy—how much blacktop will this take?”

Reed visualized the next twenty to thirty miles of interstate that ran west from here—rolling hills, big slow curves, the sun going down, shining
right in his eyes—three interchanges—the Holland Creek overpass at four miles—then a long, empty stretch of about fifteen miles—the Side Road 440 ramp—two miles later the Super Gee Truck Stop and Gas Bar—four acres wide and lit up with arc lamps, semitrailers coming and going—had to get
that
blocked—and, thirty-eight miles from exactly here, a huge toll plaza that crossed all four lanes at the Pinchbeck Cut. And the toll plaza had spike rails that could be raised to shred the tires of any vehicle that tried to run it. What would happen right after that to any car moving at a hundred and eighty miles an hour was going to be deeply memorable.

Reed did the math—at one-eighty the car would cover three miles in sixty seconds—thirty-eight miles in—
Jesus
, he thought,
the next thirteen minutes are going to be really interesting—

“I’m gonna need all the snow gates dropped on every ramp between here and the Pinchbeck Cut—”

“Already done—”

“And get on to Rowdy at the Super Gee—get on the CB band, warn the truckers still in the chute, and tell Rowdy nobody leaves that lot until we have this guy in cuffs—”

And then a shattering engine blast as the Viper cleared the dip, low and fast, a panther-like bulge to its flanks, eating up the road, front end inches from the ground.

He got a brief glimpse of two white faces through the windshield—two white males, one with a beard—the car flashed past with a Doppler wail—and the Viper was
gone baby gone
.

“Jimmy, I’m moving—”

“Roger that—”

Reed flicked the sound down to a low rumble—from now on this was between the black Viper and his Ford Interceptor—he heard Marty Coors saying something about County Sheriff units getting into blocking positions—the chatter seemed to fade away and he was accelerating down the on-ramp, tires smoking, the engine winding up with a throaty roar, a weight driving him back into the seat, his body getting heavier and heavier, his arms rigid on the wheel, his right foot jamming the pedal down.

This must be what it’s like to ride the rocket down in Cape Kennedy. What a rush
.

The car skittered a bit as it thumped over the rumble strip, straightened up, and shot down the highway like a shoulder-fired missile—he
glimpsed a red minivan in his side mirror—a pretty blond woman with an open mouth and big eyes as he flew out in front of her—up ahead the Viper was a black dot—he fixed his eyes on that black dot as he felt his car come on the cam.

Christ, this thing could
fly
.

The HUD—the heads-up display—was projecting his speed onto the lower edge of his windshield—bright red numbers—65—71—78—now the Viper wasn’t getting smaller quite as fast—Reed had his light bar on and the siren wailing—the road curved and the sun moved right into his face, a blinding glare. He flipped the visor down.

The HUD numbers were rippling up—95—120—140—148—157—169—172—that crushing weight as the thrusters kicked in—the car felt like a cruise missile under his hands, hugging the terrain, slicing through the curves—he could feel the blacktop thrumming up through the wheel.

Up ahead the Viper was weaving a narrow black ribbon through the traffic. Christ, one dumb move by a civilian and there’d be car parts and body bits for a quarter mile. Reed felt his anger building as he watched the Viper thread a closing gap between two converging cars—red brake lights flared as the drivers slammed on the binders—blue smoke boiling up from their tires.

Son of a bitch
, he said to himself, as the red numbers flickered on his windshield—170—173—179—he jigged around an SUV that had come to a full stop right in the middle of the highway—heard a cry and saw a man waving at him as he flashed past.

The Viper was close now, maybe a hundred feet, and getting closer every second. The guy at the wheel had to be looking at what was filling up his rearview and thinking
holy shit who is this guy?

Reed picked out the sweet spot on the Viper’s lower left side where he was going to ram it with the bumper bars. One tap at this speed, and a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car turns into a spinning top. Yards … feet … inches … he saw the Viper’s tail squat down suddenly and the tires blur as the driver punched it harder, trying to get whatever the car had left. The Viper leapt ahead, like a spurred horse, and began to pull away again, fifty feet, sixty—shrinking.

Man
, thought Reed, putting the pedal to the floor and holding it there,
you had to love American engineering
.

That Viper is a thing of beauty
.

Reed was in the
zone
now, and everything around him became a seamless
river of color and sound flowing past, the radio chatter fading away, the howl of the engines growing faint, nothing in his head but the sound of his own breathing and the steady hammering of his heart.

There were only two points in this universe: the bulging hood of his car and the fat black ass of the Viper—he fixed his eye on the Kansas plate—
HARLEQUIN
—in navy blue letters on a pale blue background, the Kansas State Wildcats logo—a license frame made of chrome chain links—
LITTLE APPLE FINE CARS
—the details burned into him as he came closer and closer.

The world darkened for half a second and the sound of his own engine boomed back at him as he flashed under an overpass.

Reed saw the black letters of the sign on the side of the bridge—
SIDE ROAD 440
—and he realized they had covered twenty miles. Two miles to the Super Gee Truck Stop. Eighteen more miles until they reached the Pinchbeck Cut toll plaza.

At these speeds he had less than six minutes to take this car out. His eyes cut to the HUD numbers
—183—187—192—195—
the car felt light under him and there was a minor but worrying vibration in the steering wheel. He knew that at speeds like this a tiny twitch of the wheel, or something tumbling into the road, and he’d be airborne in a death spin that—

“Charlie Six, got a bulletin for you—”

Reed flipped the speaker volume up again.

Marty Coors was on the line, his voice tight.

“Go, boss—”

“Kentucky boys say they’ve got a white male shot dead in the washroom of a Shell station in Sapphire Springs—they ID’d him as Robert Lawrence Quinn—Kentucky has closed-circuit video of two white males leaving the Shell station in Quinn’s black Viper—face recog made them as Dwayne Bobby Shagreen and Douglas Loyal Shagreen—used to be strikers for the Nightriders—White Power mutts—both wanted by multiple agencies for rape, felony assault, armed robbery—consider armed and dangerous—Reed no matter what don’t you close with these guys until we can get backup—”

“I’m inches from his ass, boss!”

“Back off a bit, Reed. I mean it.”

“We got a window of five minutes before we hit the Pinchbeck toll—we gonna take them there?”

“Word is we let them through—”

“What? No goddam way.”

“Yes, goddam way. Plaza is full of civilian staff, full of civilian traffic, propane tanks for the shed heaters. If that Viper goes airborne, hits people, hits propane, there’ll be hell to pay—”

“Word from who, boss? That asshole governor?”

“This transmission is being taped, trooper.”

Reed got his temper reined in.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll back off a few feet. If I’m gonna stay on him, you gotta get me that chopper—you gotta clear the highway for fifty miles out—I’m gonna need eyes in the air—”

A short wait, voices off.

“Roger that—”

Reed was now less than fifteen inches off the tail end of the Viper—it looked like the Viper had nothing left—topped out at 201 miles an hour—he could see the tower sign for the Super Gee coming up on his right side—lit up like a beacon—there was something spread out along the side of the road—a long low mass of ragged color—he was going too fast to make out what it was—if Reed struck the Viper with his bumper bars at this speed it would be nothing less than an execution.

Maybe these two assholes were looking for it. Suicide By Cop after one last wild—there was something coming out of the passenger-side window—a hand, gloved, something in the glove—a heavy black pistol—the muzzle tracking around towards his windshield—muzzle flare and blue smoke and a big heavy bullet struck his windshield, starring it, a bull’s-eye of cratered shards—

“Gun! He’s got a gun—I’m taking fire—”

Nick looked up as the female marshal picked up her radio. She spoke once, a staccato bark, a silence, another bark, and then she hooked the handset back, turning around as she did so. At the same time they could all hear the chopper winding up and pulling ahead fast—Nick could see the machine banking to the northwest, rotors spinning—

“State needs the chopper, Nick—they’ve got a trooper in a pursuit car taking fire—”

“Call sign?”

Shaniqua looked puzzled.

“Didn’t get it.”

A burst of engine noise and the sudden wail of a siren—the State car passed them on the left, a slate gray blur accelerating away, and disappeared into the distance, strobe lights flaring red and blue, followed closely by the big black Suburban with the two FBI guys. In a moment, they were all alone on the thruway. Deitz was sitting up and taking an interest in his surroundings.

“We lost the Feds too?” Nick asked. Shaniqua nodded, her flat gray eyes wide.

“Yeah. Two guys in the car being chased, they’re wanted by the FBI.”

“Please get the call sign of the State car taking fire.”

Shaniqua blinked. She didn’t know that Nick had a brother-in-law running a chase car for State. She turned around, spoke into the handset, turned back.

“Call sign is Charlie Six. A Sergeant Reed Walker. You know him?”

“Yes. Is he hit?”

Another blink, and another brief exchange on the handset. Nick listened, wishing he was there instead of here, wishing he had his own radio with him. He didn’t even have a gun right now. Against the rules to sit inside the prisoner box while wearing an issue sidearm. His Colt Python was up front with the marshals, in a lockbox on the floor.

Shaniqua twisted around again—“Can’t make it out—sounds like he’s being shot at—the cross talk is—”

“Put it on the fucking speaker, lady,” said Bradley Heath, a low Tennessee drawl in a voice as deep and smooth as a cello.

Shaniqua huffed at his tone but she hit the
SPEAKER
tab and the van filled up with the electric crackle of police cross talk on the State channel. Nick recognized Reed’s voice, flat and steady, but tight as a plucked wire.

“—not backing off Jimmy he’ll just keep—”

“Repeat disengage Charlie Six disengage—”

“Negative Jimmy he’ll just keep shooting—”

A sharp cracking report, and under that a boom like thunder, and then another crack, all of it in the background of Reed’s transmission.

“I’m slowing but so’s he—I just got two more rounds in the windshield—he’s leaning out the passenger window—this is nuts—I’m not just gonna lay back here and let him light me up—I’m gonna move in and take him out—”

“Negative Charlie Six—”

Reed again, calm, steady, but adrenalized.

“I’m right by the Super Gee—the truckers are all standing there—they’re right on the side of the road—he could turn that piece on them any sec—oh jeez—brake lights brake lights—the guy’s jamming back on me—I’m on the binders—oh man here he comes—”