Collision(111)

“Very sorry, need the truck. You’ll get it back.” Pilgrim shoved Ben across to the passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s seat. He wheeled the truck hard in a circle, tore around the plane by driving on a grassy edge of the road, and roared away. Through the open window the damp breath of the neighborhood smelled of wet and decay. The sirens rose in their approach: fire truck, police, ambulance.

Above them circled the Homeland plane.

“Ben,” Pilgrim said, “I should have given you the choice to stay with her.”

“We said we’d stick together.” He thought he saw for a moment a flicker of relief on Pilgrim’s face. There, then gone. He must have imagined it.

“They’re gonna chase us hard. You ready?”

“Yes.”

Pilgrim tore along a road of houses of patchwork brick and wood, homes trying to arise from the drowned soil, stripped down and rebuilt.

“I can still hear that plane.” Ben leaned out the window. “He’s banking, trying to keep us in his sights.”

Pilgrim swerved the wheel hard, catching sight of a police car flashing sirens in the rearview, and he wrenched the pickup into a two-wheeling turn toward the thoroughfare of St. Claude Avenue and headed west.

A deputy’s car picked them up, followed, lights blazing.

Traffic was light and Pilgrim swerved and accelerated around cars, ducking onto side roads, and then back onto St. Claude. Ben braced himself for the impact that would surely come when Pilgrim miscalculated and rammed into a bumper or a barrier. Pilgrim nearly clipped a construction sign that marked where the street was being repaired, power-turned hard, drove across two yards, and veered down a side street. He was out of sight of the pursuing deputy’s car and he stood on the brakes, revved into a grassy parking lot full of cars and trucks, a banner announcing a Saturday night revival meeting, presumably connected to a church that sat back from the street, in redbrick grandeur. Slammed on brakes, nestled in between two large trucks in a loading area for the event. The jet went overhead.

They ducked down and Ben thought, This is how it ends, me arrested with an ex-spy in a church parking lot. The jet’s whine passed, the deputy’s sirens faded, and they eased out of the truck. Pilgrim started feeling along bumpers for key cases, Ben testing for unlocked doors.

More sirens sounded, patrols responding to calls about the downed plane. The energetic strains of modern worship music rose from the tent that stood pitched near the church. Then the sirens faded again. The buzz of a helicopter replaced the churning whine of the Homeland plane.

“I got a winner,” Pilgrim said, pulling loose a key box from a bumper. “Come on, before the helicopter spots us. They can fly lower and slower, stick to us like glue.”

They pulled away from the revival in a sedate blue Ford sedan.

“I hope this isn’t the preacher’s car,” Ben said. “We’re going to hell.”

“I’m the only one hell-bound. We’ll find you a place to lay low.” They could hear the helicopter widening its circles. Pilgrim wheeled the sedan back into traffic, at normal speed.

“Lay low. Forget it. He killed Emily. I’m not sitting on my ass.”

“Ben. Hector specifically took over the Cellar for this big job. That means I have to fight several people from the Cellar. It’ll be like fighting a whole gang of me. You did your part. You don’t have to take this on . . .”

“I know I’m not good at shooting and fighting, but I can help you.”

“Not now. I promise you, I will kill him for you. For everyone he’s hurt.” Pilgrim’s mouth became a thin slash. “For Teach, and for your wife. You won’t have a long wait.”

“Good Lord. You know where Hector and the Cellar are at.” Of course he knew, and he wasn’t going to tell Vochek or the authorities until he knew what kind of reception awaited him and Ben in New Orleans.

“I have an idea,” Pilgrim said.

“The Cellar had a safe house here.”

“Good guess.”

“If Hector has them believing you turned against Teach—same as Green and De La Pena did—they’ll kill you,” Ben said.

“Yes, they will. They don’t know me from any other jerk on the streets. Hector has all of Teach’s pass codes, bank information—he’ll seem very legit in their eyes. I will look like the enemy.”

“Then let me fight him from another angle. Barker called someone at the Hotel Marquis de Lafayette. Last person he called before he left that house, to betray you and Teach.”

“Yeah.”

“I want to know who that person is. We know Hector’s working for Vochek’s boss on security. But maybe he’s working for someone else, too.”