As her feet touched the ground floor, a cool, collected voice erupted in her ear. "Alpha, we do not have visual on the suspect." She busted through the emergency exit door and into the parking garage, gasping for breath. She hadn't run down three flights of stairs since high school, if ever. She'd never done it that fast.
"Alpha, respond." I think Alpha just had a close encounter of the fragmentary kind, asshole. She reached for the machine pistol in her purse and grasped nothing. It must have fallen off her shoulder. She tried to get enough air through choking sobs and made a frantic scan of the area. A black H2 sat idling twenty feet away, parked sideways. The man inside the massive vehicle looked out the opposite window, his machine gun aimed at the far door. He wore a headset identical to the one she had on. She saw him speak, and she heard his voice in her ear. Her sobs vanished.
"Bravo, Alpha isn't responding. Move in and prosecute." Sam stumbled toward the car and pointed the revolver at the back of the man's head.
"Get out of the car, asshole," she said. The man whipped his head in her direction and tried to bring the assault rifle to bear. The bulky weapon hit the roof of the cab, and it gave Sam all the time she needed. She fired.
One bullet flew off into the garage. The ricochet pinged off a concrete pillar in the distance. The other bullet penetrated the base of the man's neck. Eyes wide, he dropped the rifle. He tried to stem the flow of blood that erupted from the wound, but the sticky red liquid gushed out between his fingers. Jugular. Sam gritted her teeth in fury and approached the car.
She opened the door with her left arm, the adrenaline overwhelming the pain in her shoulder, the pistol still aimed at the dying man's face. "I said get out." The man's eyes lolled as he struggled to maintain consciousness. She hauled herself up and into the massive cab.
Sam reached across the dying man and pulled the handle on the driver's side door. It popped open, and he leaned out drunkenly. She shifted toward the driver's seat and forced him to the left with the bulk of her body. He fell out of the car, flailing his arms in a vain attempt to catch himself. His head hit the pavement with a wet crack. Sam pulled the rifle the rest of the way into the cab and slammed the door.
Blood dripped down on her as she put the Humvee in drive and gunned the gas. She drove out of the garage and hurtled down the street at eighty miles an hour.
Can't go to the hospital. Can't go to the cops. Got to get a hold of Gene. She looked down at the GPS navigation system and snarled. There was no way to tell if "off" was off enough. Got to ditch this deathtrap.
Now that she had calmed down a little, her shoulder hurt like hell, but it wasn't bleeding much. She had no idea where the duct tape or the washcloth went, probably in the hallway outside her apartment, with her purse.
She pulled into an alley and killed the engine. Tears burst from her eyes as sobs wracked her body. Get going, Sammy-girl. Get going.
Chapter 26
February 3rd, 4:24 AM PST; Skyline College; San Bruno, California.
Skyline College dominated a hill that overlooked the south end of Daly City. Paul Renner sat on the back of a stolen Yamaha FZ6 motorcycle and surveyed the modern campus with a pair of stolen binoculars. Military personnel swarmed everywhere, even at this hour. They walked in and out of every building on campus, using every available inch of space as a bivouac.
From this staging ground, they maintained roadblocks all along the southern edge of the greater San Francisco metropolitan area. Standing orders were to shoot anyone attempting to break the roadblocks as well as anyone out after curfew. Helicopters patrolled the mountains, their searchlights flashing up and down gullies and over ridges.
A large truck blocked both lanes of the main access road, flares ringing it on both sides. He counted six men on patrol, all with radios. They looked tired, but there were six of them and nowhere to hide. A group of white, heavily windowed buildings sat off a quarter of a mile on the right. San Bruno Mountain towered in the distance, while behind him the little town of Pacifica sparkled beside the ocean for which it was named. Patrols ran every few minutes, spread out like a spider web from Skyline College.
He swore under his breath. He couldn't get to Emile Frank if he couldn't get to D.C. He couldn't get to D.C. if he couldn't get off the peninsula, and he couldn't get off the peninsula without a military uniform. There was no way in hell he could steal one from the campus. It looked like someone had kicked an anthill full of men in gray camouflage. Even as he watched, a helicopter came in, landed, and disgorged eight soldiers.
He was stuck. If they saw him, he'd be dead. Nobody outruns a radio. He weighed his options and took the moment of reprieve to chew on a granola bar stolen from the nearby Hess station. He made a decision, then backpedaled the bike with his feet.