Mortal Prey

“She’s taking out the tires, so we can’t chase her. She must be driving, we gotta block the road.”
    Derik scrambled back to the Suburban that they’d arrived in and screamed something Lucas didn’t understand to the red-haired agent, who was behind another vehicle. The red-haired man looked back wildly, shouted something, then dug in his pocket, found some keys, and threw them at Derik. Derik crawled into the Suburban, and Lucas, on hands and toes, scooted over to that vehicle. Derik was lying across the front seats, and when Lucas heard the engine turn over, he climbed through the back door and said, “What are we doing?”
    “Gonna back it up,” Derik grunted. “Can’t see shit. Hold on.”
    Lucas peeked over the top of the backseat. He couldn’t see any more muzzle flashes from Rinker, but the agents were still pouring fire into the dark. Derik, kneeling on the passenger seat, locked the steering wheel in place with one hand, and with the other shifted the truck into reverse, then reached down and pressed on the accelerator. They started backing, fast, wobbling, and Lucas risked another peek and said, “You’re doing fine, doing fine—faster, though, faster. Hold it straight….”
    They backed up a hundred feet, running on two flats, lurched twice into the curb, and then cut an angle with the building where they’d seen the muzzle flashes, and were out of her line of sight. Lucas shouted, “Whoa, stop!” and the Suburban lurched to a stop, and Derik shouted, “What?” but Lucas was already out of the truck. He jerked open the driver’s-side door and shouted, “Let me in.”
    Derik pulled back and Lucas gunned the truck in a circle, climbed the far curb, onto the grass, bounced around, cut back into the street and headed back toward the entrance boulevard, the flats slap-slap-slap-slap outside the open passenger door, then Derik managed to get up and he pulled the door shut and Lucas pushed the truck up to forty and they bounced down to the exit and Lucas cut across it.
     
    NOTHING HAPPENED .
    The gunfire was dwindling, and Lucas realized that he hadn’t heard the stuttering bursts from the automatic weapon.
    “She’s running,” he said. “Where is she? There must be another way out. You hang here, I’m gonna try to get back.”
    “Hang on a minute, they’ll freak out and shoot you if you just come running up,” Derik said. He slipped a radio from his pocket and got Sally. “Davenport’s coming back on the road—tell everybody he’s running up the road.” She acknowledged, and Derik nodded at him. “Go.”
    Lucas, gun in hand, ran back up the road toward the terminal, then to the left toward Executive Air. Nobody had touched the lights, and the whole place still looked like a soundstage. And more than that, they had music: Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was bleeding out into the night, through speakers in the open hangar, Lucas thought, as he ran toward the island of light.
    Most of the agents and the Dallaglios were still huddled behind the four vehicles of the original convoy. Three people were flat on the ground, and somebody had dragged Dallaglio’s body behind one of the Suburbans. Sally and the red-haired agent were both missing, and when Lucas came up, he shouted, “Where’s Sally?” and somebody shouted back, “They went after her,” and pointed into the dark.
    Lucas said, “Ah, man,” and ran that way. As he came up to the first building, he shouted, “Sally….”
    She called back, “This way, this way.”
    He went that way and found Sally and the red-haired agent, both armed with long guns, working their way between the buildings. “Anything?”
    “No. We think…I think…she ran.”
    “Not in a car,” Lucas said. “We had the road blocked, and we didn’t see anyone going out ahead of us. She must be on foot. She must have a car ditched outside somewhere.”
    “Dallaglio’s dead,” said the red-haired agent.
    “No shit,” Lucas said. “Anybody else?”
    “Two guys wounded, leg wounds. She was taking out tires.”
    “Goddamnit,” Lucas said.
    “Maybe…”
    “What?”
    The red-haired agent laughed ruefully and said, “I was gonna say, maybe we could get dogs.” He looked off into the dark and said, “Fuck me. Dogs.”
     
    SIRENS. AMBULANCES AND cop cars. They started back between the buildings toward the road, walking at first, then breaking into a trot. The two wounded agents were still on the ground, each with