Freedom TM

wild with fear. He pointed at the garage, trying to speak. He finally croaked out, “Box on the wall …”
    The Major pistol-whipped him unconscious and then rolled him into the pool.
    Goddamnit! What if there’s surveillance video here, too?
    He’d been balancing risks. If he let the man live, the guy would call in the car as stolen, and The Major might get caught in a police standoff. And either way, he’d need to get rid of any witnesses.
    He ran to the garage and kicked in the door. He soon found the lights and saw three cars there, two under tarpaulins and one not—a silver ’69 Camaro with black racing stripes. There was a strongbox on the wall, and he felt the anger rising when he found it locked. He aimed the caretaker’s .38 revolver at it and fired first one, then two, then three shots. He finally got it open and located the Camaro keys.
    Meanwhile, outside there was pandemonium. It sounded like every razorback in the area had already gotten onto the estate and was scouring the place for him. The Major was becoming calmer with every second. He was easing into a familiar groove. Fieldwork had its rewards and adrenaline highs were one of them.
    He got into the Camaro and strapped himself into the racing harness. He started the car and it let up a satisfying roar. Suddenly Boston was playing on the stereo—“Don’t Look Back.” The Major turned it up, revved the engine again, and realized that he had sunglasses in his jacket pocket. He put them on. They might not completely protect him from laser light, but they’d help. He then tapped the garage door opener on the visor and roared out of the garage, tires squealing.
    He found three razorbacks waiting in the driveway outside the garage; he hit the first one and sent it skidding into the fountain. As laser lights focused on him, he spun a one-eighty and headed out through the rear lawn. There, he smashed aside another razorback that tried to throw itself under the car and brought the Camaro crashing through the rear fence. He’d made it out onto the beach.
    The Major could see a dozen powerful green lasers tracking the car’s movement as it skidded sideways, straightened out, and then started roaring down the beach toward the mainland. From the unevenness of the sand, he figured the motorcycles would lose any speed advantage—they might not even be able to steer. He cranked up the music as muzzle flashes appeared in the trees to his right. Bullets clanged into the car body and spidered the window glass.
Human operatives as well?
“Is that all you’ve got, you sons a bitches?”
    He kept the pedal down and sped on, watching the lights of beachfront homes race by.
    The Major kept going for nearly five miles, at times reaching a hundred and twenty miles an hour as he raced down the nighttime beach as close to the water as he dared. He was surprised not to see a single person. The wealthy certainly had an odd idea of what to do with a beach.
    But eventually he would run out of island—that much he knew. And there was only one causeway off of it, which would definitely be guarded. So he couldn’t go that way. The fact that no police had arrived told him that there was a major operation under way to get him. Something had leaked. He was starting to get mad just thinking about it. How had he been located?
    From what he remembered, there was another barrier island not far south, separated from this one by a narrow inlet. He kept going south, and soon found himself driving over shallow dunes. He slowed the car down and stayed close to the coastline.
    He was heading into utter blackness now. After he killed his headlights, there was only starlight to see by. The Major kept his eye on a luminescent dashboard compass the owner had installed. Due south.
    Soon enough he saw lights of distant houses ahead, and with very little warning, he almost drove into the narrow inlet thatseparated the low strip of sand he was on from the other island perhaps a hundred and seventy-five yards away.
    He put the car in neutral, turned off the dome light, then took off his shoes and got out. He removed his jacket and began wiping down the car and the guns for fingerprints. It was a bit late, since he was certain he’d left prints all over the place behind him, but it couldn’t hurt. He’d still need to get ahold of any surveillance video. He started thinking of the names of operators who could manage that.
    The Major found a toolbox in the Camaro’s trunk. He put the