Storm Front

intersection.
    “Gotta make a decision here,” he said, and at the T, he turned right, toward what the navigation map showed as a dead end. He saw headlights behind him, one set, then another set with flashers, then a third set, and then he was at the end of the street. He continued straight ahead, through some small trees and brush, over a few bumps, through a barbwire fence, which was flicked aside by the bull bars, and then they were on a highway exit ramp, or maybe a frontage road, and he accelerated again and said, “Let them suck on that.”
    A minute later, one set of headlights burst onto the frontage road, then the flashers. “Well, goddamnit,” he said. A bigger highway was coming up, and he recognized it as the one he’d just left, 169. They’d come in a circle.
    Zahavi said, “Left—right is toward the town.”
    There was some traffic, but he timed it right and sailed through the intersection, and turned north, heading out of town, throwing up a rooster tail of water from the wide tires. “Watch the nav system, watch the nav.”
    —
    W HEN B AUER TOOK OFF , Ma was right behind him. She tracked him around the first curve, saw the flashers coming up from the south, got her cell phone out, and called Virgil. “That you with the flashers?”
    “Pull off, Ma, pull off.”
    “Screw that,” she said. “They pointed a gun at me. I’m gonna put them in a ditch.”
    Virgil saw the T intersection coming up on his nav, and then Bauer turned right. “He’s headed for a dead end. He’s gotta have nav, I think he’s going through.”
    Jenkins: “I can’t take that.”
    “Turn around, go back. He’s headed out to 169.”
    “I’m out there now,” Shrake said.
    “Wait until we call you.”
    —
    V IRGIL SAW B AUER go right through the end of the street, followed by Ma in her pickup, and then he was there, banging through the ditch and onto the road.
    Virgil shouted, “We’re coming out,” and Shrake called back, “I’m coming up, I’m right there,” and then, “He’s out heading north, I’m right on his ass—he’s pulled away, though.”
    —
    Z AHAVI WAS turned on her seat, looking out the back, saw the flashers turn onto the highway, but well back, behind another truck; but the other truck was matching their speed. She said, “We have another follower.”
    Bauer let the Range Rover out, and the pursuing lights fell behind. Two minutes, three, four, and then Bauer said, ““Here’s what we want. Hang on.”
    A minute later, he took a left turn, and they were on gravel.
    —
    S HRAKE SAID into his radio, “He’s got a lot more speed than we have. I’m going with the light show.”
    “Be careful, for Christ’s sakes,” Virgil said. “There are houses out here.”
    —
    I N HIS TRUCK , Shrake dropped the window, took a blast of rain, got the M16 off the floor, stuck it one-handed out the window, propped the forestock on the wing mirror support, aimed low, and pulled the trigger. A dozen rounds went out, the tracers streaking downrange like supersonic fireflies, into the roadside ditch ahead of the fleeing Range Rover.
    —
    B AUER SAW the tracers flash by and shouted, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and yanked the truck to the side of the road.
    “What are you doing? What are you doing?” Zahavi screamed.
    “That was a machine gun,” Bauer shouted back. “Fuck this,” and he popped the door and was out with his hands over his head, the rain pounding down on his head.
    Two seconds later, the pursuing truck stopped down the road, and a man jumped out and in the oncoming lights of the truck with the flashers, Bauer could see the man’s silhouette with the long gun. He shouted, “We give up.”
    —
    V IRGIL STOPPED beside Shrake’s truck, and then Ma pulled up, and then Jenkins. Virgil and Jenkins pulled on rain jackets, and Ma pulled a plastic garbage bag over her head. Jenkins took the rifle from Shrake, and the three of them walked up to Bauer and Zahavi, who both had their hands over their heads. Shrake was a few steps behind, pulling on a jacket. Bauer and Zahavi looked like drowned rats.
    “Crazy motherfuckers,” Virgil said. “You’re both under arrest for everything. Shrake, read them their rights.”
    “I am a diplomat and I invoke immunity,” Zahavi said.
    “Immune this,” Ma, said, and she hit Zahavi in the eye with a balled fist, and the Israeli went down. One second later she was back up, ready to go, but Jenkins got her around the waist and said,