Back Blast

28

Court moved calmly through the deep darkness at two a.m., avoiding the glow of streetlamps and the lights shining from porch lights and the occasional passing car. The streets were quiet here, a mile and a half from where the action went down an hour and a half earlier. Though he still heard the thumping of helicopters patrolling to the south, they weren’t close enough to worry him, and he’d neither seen a police car nor heard a siren for the past thirty minutes.

He wore a different set of clothing now. An hour earlier he’d taken all the clothing he’d worn during the gunfight, every last stitch that had been visible to the shooters, the witnesses, and any security cameras, and he’d shoved them down a drainage culvert. Then he’d pulled a wad of clothing out of his backpack and dressed in a light gray parka, a gray thermal, a pair of black track pants, and a red baseball cap.

Now he was walking north on Rockville Pike, feeling good about his chances, but questioning just what the hell had happened back at Babbitt’s house. The man had been assassinated, that much was clear, but Court could only make uneducated guesses about who might have been involved.

From the first moment it happened he felt like it must have been a CIA hit. The Agency knew Court was here in town, they wanted to get rid of Babbitt for some reason, and the symbiosis of these two things resulted in a shooter on a rooftop near Babbitt’s house at the same time Court was ninja-crawling through the man’s backyard.

Court knew he’d be blamed for the hit. Hell, he would have been blamed even if he hadn’t been on the scene at the time, but the entire chaotic escapade with his exfiltration through the McDonald’s just played even more into the CIA’s plan to pin Babbitt’s assassination on him.

“This night sucks ass,” he mumbled to himself. He’d accomplished nothing this evening with the exception of getting a crystal clear understanding that the CIA was going to fight his fire with fire of their own, and the objectives of the CIA were even murkier than he’d imagined.

Why the hell did they kill Babbitt?

Just ahead was an overpass that ran over the Capital Beltway. On the other side was an apartment complex and, next to this, a bus stop where he could take a bus that ran all night. Court knew this bus followed a route that would drop him within a few blocks of his car, about a mile away. He’d passed this stop this afternoon on a bus that got him closer to Babbitt’s house, and noted this location as a secondary exfiltration route in case he wasn’t able to make it directly back to his car for some reason.

His plan for the rest of the evening was simple. Pick up his car, take it back to his storage room, lock it up, then go home to his basement apartment at the Mayberrys’.

But everything changed suddenly when he scanned to his right. There, parked in the darkness of a private driveway, sat a Metro D.C. police cruiser. The vehicle itself was a little odd, as this was Maryland, after all, but the fact that at least two men sat in the dark car was more suspicious to him.

D.C. cops usually ride alone in their patrol cars.

Court began crossing the street, heading away. Behind him he heard the doors of the police cruiser open.

Court looked to his left and right for a place to run, expecting that at any moment the cops were going to call out to him, or else they were right now radioing for backup and within minutes cruisers, tactical units, and helicopters would surround him.

He looked on either side of the road and saw rows of adjoining houses. Short of kicking in a door or a window, he had nowhere to run.

“And this night keeps getting better and better,” Court mumbled to himself.

Just fifty feet in front of him was the overpass; he knew he’d reach a decision point there. Either he’d turn and run into the neighborhood here, before he got stuck on the overpass; he’d try to run across the overpass and lose the cops on foot over there; or else he would slide down the embankment and into the traffic of the Beltway.

No option looked like a good one, but while he kept walking he couldn’t help but wonder why the two cops, just fifty feet behind him now, hadn’t challenged him yet.

The answer presented itself a moment later when two more Metro PD squad cars pulled onto the far end of the overpass and stopped. Car doors opened and four police officers poured out, fanned out away from the vehicles, and drew their pistols.

Time to run.

Court turned to his right and raced for the embankment. He had taken only a few steps in this endeavor — he was still twenty feet from the steep concrete slope to the Beltway below — when gunfire erupted in front of him.

What the fuck? Court thought. The cops were just gunning him down, not even giving him a chance to surrender.

Within the first five cracks of incoming fire, Court felt a sharp sting wide on his right rib cage. His gray parka ripped, and he doubled over while running. He stumbled almost all the way to the ground, to the point that his hands went flat on the street, but he kept moving, rose back up, and leapt over the railing of the overpass without taking time to look below.

Court dropped six feet through the air and landed on his right hip on a thirty-degree concrete incline. He rolled end over end several times, then righted himself and began skidding on his back, picking up speed towards the Beltway below. Above him the gunfire had stopped, but he had no doubt it would resume again as soon as this group of overzealous Washington cops got a bead on him from the overpass railing.

He made it to the bottom of the hill, staggered up onto the shoulder, and looked to the oncoming traffic.

An idea came to him quickly and he didn’t pause to second-guess it. He timed his move, then jumped in front of a speeding semitrailer. He raised his hands, shielding his eyes from its headlights.

He knew the vehicle would not be able to stop in time.

The semi driver slammed on his brakes, the air brakes squealed and the tires burned and skidded, and the semi’s load began to jackknife.

Court leapt out of the way, ran off the shoulder and several feet back up the concrete embankment. As he did so he felt blood on his stomach, soaking the elastic band of his warm-up pants.

As soon as the semi came to a complete stop Court drew his Smith and Wesson pistol, ran with the gun in his right hand and his left hand clutching his wounded rib cage, and reentered the Beltway under the cover of the overpass. Behind the semi trailer a maroon and white taxicab had slammed on his brakes to avoid a rear-end collision, and Court ran around to the driver-side window and banged on it with his pistol.

The cabbie opened the door and raised his hands. He screamed something in a foreign language. Court thought it might have been Swahili, but he wasn’t sure.

“Out!” Court yelled, and the man seemed to understand because he complied instantly.

Court climbed behind the wheel of the cab, and threw it into gear. He lurched forward onto the shoulder, did a quick and dirty three-point turn, and then bounced into the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes. He drove across to the westbound and entered the Beltway here, and he stomped on the gas, trying to get as much speed as possible before showing up below the far side of the overpass. He could only hope that the cops above him had not been able to see the carjacking or the maneuver, and that they would only find out about it as soon as they spoke with the furious cabbie.

His plan paid off, and within minutes he was miles to the west, clear of the area and hunting for a place to dump a stolen cab with blood all over the driver’s seat.