Back Blast

67

The 535i went airborne, careered nose-first down the decline, and then crashed into a copse of saplings, flipping it onto its right side. Brewer’s arms and head whipped in all directions, but Jordan Mayes, who was out of his seat, flew completely into the back of the sedan, his body hurtling from one side to the other like a rag doll as the BMW began tumbling. The air bags deployed like cannon fire, restraining Suzanne’s movement for a moment, but Mayes’s body slammed into the rear windshield, and then his head dropped straight to the left side of the car when it bounced hard once more, snapping his neck on impact.

The BMW finally lost all its momentum, finishing its long crash sequence with its wheels spinning in the air and the roof lying in a relatively flat portion of wet grass, 150 yards down the hill from the George Washington Parkway.

All was still for a moment other than the rain on the metal undercarriage of the sedan. Soon Suzanne Brewer’s bloody hand reached out, away from her body, pushing the deflated air bags out of her way so she could orient herself. She hung upside down, her bruised waist and her scraped shoulder and neck held secure by the seat belt.

In another second searing pain crept into her left ankle, and it seemed to amplify more and more with every single beat of her racing heart.

She drooled blood that flowed up into her nose.

Still dazed by the crash, she wiped her face, and then, finally, she opened her eyes.

Jordan Mayes lay in front of her sight line, dead in the dark, facedown in the mud fifteen feet from the BMW. Suzanne took this in without emotion, then her eyes were drawn up the hill. She saw three pinpricks of light above her, back in the direction of the George Washington Parkway. They moved like fireflies, dancing in the blackness, but growing larger, sometimes shooting out in wide arcs, then returning to their original shape.

It did not take her long to realize what she was looking at.

Three flashlights, each one carried by a man, no doubt a Saudi Arabian assassin. They closed steadily on her position 150 yards down the hill.

And she understood. They were coming down here to make sure their work was finished.

She did not reach for her seat belt release button. Her leg seemed to be stuck and her ankle was clearly broken — she’d never felt pain like this in her life. But even though she couldn’t get away if she tried, her original intention had never been to run away; it had been to make a deal.

With a pathetic sob and a boyish grunt of pain she looked in the other direction, back inside the shattered vehicle. She strained against her seat belt to reach out across the roof of the sedan below her. She opened the armrest storage compartment, pulled out the Faraday cage that held her phone.

It had been by her side all along, and not in the back like she had told Jordan Mayes.

She opened the case and dialed a number with a thumb that trembled almost too much for her to accomplish the simple task. Holding the ringing phone to her ear now, she looked back in the direction of the men negotiating the hill and trees, descending the rain-swept hillside to finish her off while she hung upside down like meat in a market.

Her ankle throbbed with sharp, murderous agony, but she forced the pain from her consciousness, because she had to give the performance of her lifetime now, and she could not allow for any distractions.

“Denny Carmichael.”

She coughed; the blood on her face splattered the phone. “Listen to me carefully, Denny.” Another cough. “Don’t make a mistake.”

A pause. “And what mistake would I be making, Ms. Brewer?”

“Don’t remove someone who’s on your side. Someone valuable to you, someone who can help you manage the fallout till the end of this crisis. Mayes is dead. I killed him, not your assets. You need to understand that you need me. Now, more than ever.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m very busy, as a matter of fact.”

The jittering orbs of light came closer. They were only seventy-five yards up the hill now; they bathed the broken trees and brush around them with a yellow glow as the men followed the route of the wreck through the foliage.

Brewer spoke more quickly. “Mayes told me everything. Everything, Denny. You might think that makes me a liability, but that’s not how I operate. I am an asset. Your best asset, at a time when I know you could use a friend at HQ. Let me help you solve your problem.”

Denny chuckled, the epitome of calm. “Solve my problem? It seems I am in the process of doing just that.”

“You couldn’t even kill Jordan Mayes without my help! What makes you think you can kill Violator without me?”

Denny did not reply.

The flashlights closed to within fifty yards. It looked like the men carrying them had picked up speed on the treacherous hill. “What is it they say in this town?” Suzanne asked. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Blood dripped from her lips, ran up her face and into her eyes. She listened for a response on the other end of the line, but nothing came. “You know what I bring to the table here. You need support. You need a witness in-house who saw Gentry kill Mayes. The other cars on the road are going to report multiple attackers. You can’t sell your story this time without help.”

Still nothing. She wondered if he’d hung up.

“You’ve come so close, Denny, but you are getting sloppy. Desperate. I can give you the backing you need to see this all the way through.”

The flashlights were only twenty-five yards away. She could already make out the silhouettes of the men behind the moving beams.

She thought of something else, one more Hail Mary. If this didn’t work, she’d be dead in seconds. Hanging here upside down, a bullet in her brain. “Morvay!”

Denny spoke now. “What’s that?”

“Kevin Morvay. He is a senior tech in SIGINT. He has the Dupont video. He’s seen it. He showed it to Mayes.” She sniffed tears and blood. “You see? I am helping you.”

All three flashlights centered on Jordan Mayes’s body.

Denny said, “And I appreciate your help. Good-bye.”

“I can get it from him! And get it off the system. I know how, do you? I can do so much more. I can… hello? Hello?” It sounded like Denny had either hung up the phone or set it down on a table. Suzanne Brewer started to cry openly. She shook hard against her seat belt, but she couldn’t get it off. She thought of screaming, begging, pleading into the phone, but she just bit her lip. No, it wouldn’t work, and she told herself she wouldn’t die like that.

The lights were on her now.

A man knelt down, peered into the vehicle, and the high-lumen light shined right in her face, unbearable, worse than her broken leg.

She shut her eyes and sobbed again. Her bloody nose almost gagged her.

Then, with a shocking suddenness, the light turned away.

She heard the wet slapping of feet on rain-soaked brush, the clap clap of boots trudging through mud. Suzanne opened her eyes and looked around. Through the stars in her eyes she saw them now, the dark silhouettes. They stood around the body of Jordan Mayes a brief time, then they began retrograding up the hill, back in the direction of the motorcycles parked along the road.

Denny Carmichael’s voice came back on the line. “Are you badly hurt?”

Suzanne wept openly into the phone. “Thank you, Denny. Thank you. You won’t regret this.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Suzanne,” he said. “You aren’t making sense. I think you must have hit your head. I’ll send help to the geo coordinates on your cell phone so we can get you to a hospital.”

And then he hung up.

Suzanne Brewer vomited upside down, covering the roof of the car below her with blood and bile.