Under Siege

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Harrison Ronald Ford drove McNally’s old Chrysler that evening. Pure luck, he later decided. He picked up the guard at a Seven-Eleven at nine o’clock that night and together they drove to the old Sanitary Bakery warehouse on Fourth Street NE, on the edge of the railyard. The guard didn’t say much — he never did. About twenty-five or so, he called himself Tooley.

The window openings in the lower two levels of the ancient bakery warehouse were blocked up with concrete blocks. The windows in the upper levels showed the ravages of rocks and wind. A high chain-link fence surrounded the property out to the Fourth Street NE sidewalk and the dirt street that ran along the north side. Inside the fence were about a dozen garbage trucks. Watching through the wire as Ford rumbled by were two Dobermans.

He pulled into the parking area on the south side of the building and walked toward the only door, which had steel bars welded over it, as Tooley trailed along. Two other cars sat in the empty lot.

Ford opened the door. Tooley never opened doors, preferring to let the driver do it. He was being paid to look tough and shoot, if necessary, and that was all he was going to do.

Ike Randolph was there supervising the cutting and packaging operation, as usual. McNally had used this warehouse for only three days now, and in a few more, anytime the whim struck him, he would change to another location. Not that Freeman was or had ever been within a mile of the building. That’s what he hired Ike and the others for. If the cops raided the place, the hired help could take the fall.

“Okay,” Ike said and spread out a large map of the city. “Here’s the route tonight and where to take the stuff. Pay attention.” He traced the route he wanted Harrison Ronald to follow as Tooley and one of the guys from the chase car watched over his shoulder. Two deliveries. When Ike finished, Harrison then traced the route, calling out streets and turns, proving that he knew it.

“You got it.”

The gunnies from the chase car said little. In their early twenties, wearing expensive, trendy clothes, they looked, Harrison thought, exactly like what they were, drug guys with more money than they knew how to spend. Which was precisely the impression they hoped to create. In the world of the inner city these young men had spent their lives in, the druggies had the bucks and the choice ass — they had the status. Tonight, as usual, these two young gunnies stood around looking tough and with it.

The little sweet piece was also there, and Harrison Ronald flirted with her to keep up appearances. She flirted right back as Tooley watched, looking bored.

“She’s a hooker, man,” he told Harrison as they walked through the empty lower floor of the warehouse toward the entrance. Harrison carried the stuff in a plain brown grocery bag. “Uses so much of that shit she’s cutting, Freeman charges her to work here.”

“So what’s your bitch, Tooley? She won’t go down on you?”

“Stick it in that, Z, and it’ll rot right off. You won’t have nothing left to piss through but some grotty ol’ pubic hair.”

The guard at the door handed Tooley and the chase car crew Browning 9-mm automatics. As Harrison watched, Tooley popped the clip out, inspected it, then slid it home. He cocked the weapon, pulled back the slide just enough to glimpse brass, then lowered the hammer and put the pistol in his coat pocket. The other two men did the same, their evening ritual.

Now the guard handed Tooley an Uzi. He inspected the clip to ensure it was fully loaded, then pulled the bolt back into the cocked and ready position and engaged the safety. Then he reached for the grocery sack the guard offered him and inserted the weapon in it. After checking their Uzis, the two gunmen put them under their coats and walked to their car as the guard watched through the one dirty window. Satisfied, he opened the door again and motioned to Tooley and Harrison Ronald.

Tooley got into the backseat of the Chrysler while Harrison Ronald slid behind the wheel and put the dope on the floor on the passenger’s side.

Two youngsters about ten years old were playing basketball on the street. The hoop was mounted on a backboard on a pole right by the edge of the pavement. They stood aside while Harrison eased the car past them and headed north, toward Rhode Island Avenue. The chase car, a dark Pontiac Trans-Am, followed four car lengths behind.

Ford glanced in the rearview mirror. Tooley had the Uzi out and was examining the safety.

“Put that fucking thing down where nobody can see it.”

“Just drive, mother.”

“And point it in some other direction.”

Tooley grinned. He didn’t have a nice grin. He kept the gun aimed in the center of Ford’s back. “I told you to drive, motherfuck.”

At Rhode Island the light was red. Waiting, Ford checked the rearview mirror. Tooley was just sitting back there, watching the back of Ford’s head, with his hand on the trigger and the gun pointed at Ford’s back.

“Turn right here,” he said.

“You heard Ike.”

“Little change of plan.” He prodded Harrison in the back of the neck with the barrel of the submachine gun.

The light turned green.

“Now! Turn right.”

Ford kept his feet on the brake and clutch and sat staring into the rearview mirror, trying to read what was in Tooley’s face.

“Do it, Z, or I’ll blow your fucking brains right out the front windshield.” Tooley jabbed him with the barrel, hard.

Ford cranked the wheel and turned right.

“Now what?”

“Just do like I tell you.”

“Freeman’ll kill you. Slow.”

“Who’s gonna tell him, man? You?”

“He’ll find out. He always does.”

“Your problem is your mouth. I’ve got a cure for that. Turn left up ahead on Thirteenth.” Tooley glanced behind to see if the Trans-Am was following. It was.

As they went around the corner, Tooley looked over his shoulder again to check the chase car. As he did so Harrison Ronald stiffened, rose, and half twisted in his seat. He used the bottom of his hand in a swinging backhand chopping motion that caught Tooley in the throat.

The gunman gagged, then choked. The Uzi fell to the floor as he clawed at his throat. Harrison applied the brakes moderately and brought the Chrysler to a swift halt. Then he turned and chopped again with all his strength at the hands around Tooley’s neck. His larynx crushed, the gunman collapsed.

The rear window and front windows both popped as a bullet punched a neat hole in them and left them crazed, with radiating and circular cracks.

Harrison Ronald Ford popped the clutch and slammed the accelerator down, both in one fluid motion.

The tires squawled and smoke poured from the rear wheel wells as the big engine revved and Ford tried to keep the steering wheel centered.

He cranked it over and slid around the first corner, braking hard, then jamming on the gas halfway through the turn. The engine snarled and responded with neck-snapping power.

The Trans-Am stayed with him. Several more shots. Another bullet punched glass. In the backseat Tooley was still struggling to breathe, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords, his feet kicking spasmodically.

Ford took another right, then shot across oncoming traffic in a sweeping left turn, still accelerating, onto Rhode Island northeast-bound.

The fat was in the fire now. The two men in the chase car had to kill him. If they didn’t, Freeman McNally would kill them, just as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow.

Fifty, sixty, seventy … he stayed on the gas and weaved around slower traffic. The engine was willing and the tires gripped well. The Pontiac was behind, still coming.

What to do? Think. Swerve to avoid a VW turning left, straight through a red light with horn blazing. Eighty … He backed off the gas, afraid to go faster.

Cops — where are the fucking traffic cops with their fucking speed guns and ticket books?

He was going to get the green light at South Dakota Avenue. Amen. At the last instant he slammed on the brakes and swerved right and went around the corner on two wheels.

Back on the gas. Around a truck, brakes on hard for a sedan just piddling, skidding some, then clear and in the right lane and back on the throttle.

They were still following. Flashes from the passenger side. Another bullet punched through the glass and he felt several more thump into the bodywork.

He was up to ninety approaching Bladensburg, crowding the centerline. Another green light. Hallelujah! Feathering the brake he dropped to about fifty and used the whole street to make the sweeping right onto Bladensburg southwest-bound.

Now he was heading into the heart of the city, toward the Capitol, which was still four miles or so ahead. The Capitol area would be crawling with tourists and cops. Right now Harrison Ronald wanted to see the flashing lights of a police cruiser more than he wanted anything else.

As he sawed at the wheel and tapped the brakes and swerved to avoid traffic, he realized he would never outrun the car behind. In spite of his car’s capabilities, the gunmen in the Trans-Am had the telling advantage. Harrison Ronald was trying to keep from killing pedestrians and motorists while the men behind didn’t care. They had bet their lives when they decided to rip off Freeman McNally. If some little old lady got run over, that was her tough luck.

Harrison Ronald held his horn down. He slammed the accelerator to the floor and went through a yellow light at the New York Avenue intersection at seventy-five.

The headlights of the dark Trans-Am were almost fifty yards back. In the rearview mirror he saw someone pull into the intersection in front of the speeding Pontiac and get lightly clipped. The left front fender of the Trans-Am disintegrated, the man at the wheel fought desperately to hold it on the road, and the black car kept coming.

With horn braying and the big hemi engine throbbing, Harrison Ronald straddled the painted centerline. He used his left foot to flash the low and high beams up and down.

His luck couldn’t hold. It didn’t. A yellow light ahead. It would be red when he got there.

He slowed. The Trans-Am grew larger in the rearview mirror.

More bullets spanged into the Chrysler. One buried itself in the dashboard.

He picked a gap between the cars crossing in front of him and aimed the Chrysler for the gap. Now — clutch out and on the throttle, skidding some, going through, pedal to the floor.

He checked the mirror. With luck the Trans-Am would hit somebody or stop to avoid a collision.

No luck. The Pontiac shot a gap and kept coming, but too far back to shoot.

Now he was on Maryland Avenue, a boulevard that went straight as an arrow toward the Capitol building. The lighted dome rose straight ahead above the trees.

The four lanes were crowded. Harrison Ronald straddled the median, which scraped the bottom side of the Chrysler, a ripping, grinding sound that sounded loud even above the engine noise. Something came off the car. The muffler and tailpipe. He ran over three traffic signs but had to swerve from the median to avoid the lightpoles.

Avoiding one lightpole his wheel clipped the curb and the Chrysler swapped ends and skidded backwards, straight into a delivery truck.

The engine was still running. He had trouble getting the shift lever into first but he made it, and with the wheel cranked over, did a wheel-spinning 180 and got under way as the Trans-Am came thundering down on him with the guy leaning out of the passenger window spraying lead.

Several cars crashed together getting out of the way. One car ran through a parking lot and buried itself in a plate-glass window.

Ahead was a park, one of those blocks from which the major avenues in the city radiated. Harrison Ronald went through it. If he didn’t the Trans-Am might gain more ground than he could afford to lose.

The front end parted with mother earth as it bucked the curb, but the rear wheels impacting the obstruction brought the nose down with a crash that jammed the front bumper into the concrete in a shower of sparks.

Luckily the park was deserted on a December night. He braked hard and slid around the statue in the center and jam accelerated. The dome of the Capitol was dead ahead.

The front wheels were vibrating badly now and he gripped the steering wheel tightly to hold on.

A skidding right turn, doing about sixty or seventy, onto Constitution Avenue westbound. Okay, goddammit, where are the cops?

Almost on cue he heard a siren over the unmuffled roar of the engine.

Yet the Trans-Am was gaining.

The Mall — he would go across the grass of the Mall. Everybody and their brother would see them. Even as he considered it another burst of bullets came through the car.

Something stung his ear.

He swung right, hard, the car skidding out of control. It used the whole road and then some, bouncing off parked vehicles, but he ended up headed north on First.

The damned Pontiac was still with him.

He swung left onto D Street. Aha! Ahead on the left was the Labor Department building and the ramp that went under it down onto I-395. If he could make that turn and get down onto the freeway …

A semitractor crept around the corner and filled the street. He slammed on the brakes. Skidding again. Off the brakes, just by the truck on the right, slamming over parking meters, then hard right, down a couple blocks, left, on the gas.

The Pontiac was gaining. Hadn’t they had enough? The siren — was it closer?

Ahead was the mall on the south side of the National Collection of Fine Arts. He went for it.

And a bus.

A huge bus, coming from right to left. He braked hard. Another bus following. He could make the gap. He shot through.

Behind him he heard tires squealing, then the sound of a crash.

Harrison Ronald applied the brakes firmly. He avoided some drunks and trash cans, then turned left on Ninth, joining with traffic.

In the rear seat Tooley looked very very dead. His lips and tongue were swollen, protruding, as were his eyes, which were focused on nothing at all.

Sometime during the chase one or more of the bags holding the cocaine had split, and the white powder was all over the passenger seat floor.

Harrison Ronald got out a hanky and wiped the stick shift knob, the light switch, the dashboard, the mirror, the steering wheel. Jesus, his prints were all over this car. Still …

He turned some corners and pulled into the first vacant spot by the curb he came to. He wiped the door lever and took a last wipe of the wheel. Then he switched the ignition off and got out. Pocketing the key, he took two seconds to rub the handkerchief over the outside door handle, then walked away. On the sidewalk he took the car key off the ring which also contained the key to his apartment. After wiping it with the cloth, he dropped the car key into the first trash barrel he came to.

Three blocks later he found a pay phone that still worked. He dialed 911 and reported the car stolen. When the dispatcher asked his name, he hung up.

The wailing of the sirens echoed from the buildings and seemed to come from every direction. There was blood on his cheek and his left ear was burning fiercely. His left arm was burning too. Blood there on his jacket.

The second number Harrison Ronald Ford dialed was the home phone of FBI Special Agent Thomas F. Hooper. “We have to talk. Now. A difficulty has arisen.”

Harrison Ronald Ford was sitting on the steps on the south side of the Lincoln Memorial when Hooper came around the corner and slowly climbed up toward him. The spot Ford had selected was in the shadow, out of the spotlights that illuminated the columns around him.

“You okay?”

“Fucking arm feels like it’s on fire.”

The undercover man had removed his undershirt in a subway restroom and torn it into strips. He had his shirt and jacket unbuttoned now and sat holding one of the folded cotton strips against the groove in his left tricep.

“How bad is it?”

“Just a crease. Hurts like hell, though,”

“Want to go to a doctor?”

“Nah. After a while I gotta go see Freeman and they’ll do the doctoring there.” Bullet wounds treated by a doctor had to be reported to police, so Ford didn’t want to try and explain to Freeman how he had gotten away with a stunt like that.

In the dim light Hooper inspected Ford’s face, then used one of the pieces of tee-shirt to swab the wound.

“You were lucky.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re gonna run out of luck.”

“Has to happen.”

“Why don’t you quit now. We’ll bust McNally, go with what we have.”

Harrison sat in silence, thinking about it. Fifty feet away a couple held each other close and sat looking at the lights of the city. From where they sat, off to the left, they could see the white obelisk of the Washington Monument against the black sky. “How many casualties?”

“Ten dead, apparently. Plus that guy you killed in the car.”

“He was going to kill me when we got to where he wanted to go.”

“I understand. It was justified.”

“I had to do it.”

“I understand! Christ, don’t sweat it. He was a shithead. He had it coming.”

Harrison removed the makeshift bandage from his arm and held it out where he could see it. Fresh blood. He was still bleeding. He refolded it and ran it back inside his shirt.

“I didn’t know what to do. There’re never any cops around when you

“All out on the freeway writing speeding tickets,” Hooper agreed. After a few moments, he asked, “Who’s the Chrysler registered to?”

“Some derelict. The address on the registration certificate is a vacant lot. Freeman McNally owns it but you’ll never prove it. And my prints are all over it.”

“Any of his prints on it?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Too bad.”

Yeah, it was all too bad. Eleven people dead! Holy shit!

“C’mon. You’ve done enough. Let me take you to the doctor. We’ll do a taped debrief tomorrow and I’ll have you on the plane to Evansville tomorrow evening.”

“Got a cigarette?”

“No.”

“Reach inside my coat here and get one and light it for me, will ya?”

Hooper did so.

“Y’know,” Harrison Ronald said after a bit, “I think this little deal is gonna get me in tight with Freeman. Somebody tried to rip him off. He’s gonna be curious as a cat about what I know and then he’s going after somebody.”

“What do you know?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Maybe we could dream up something for you to know.”

“Too dangerous, man. He’d check it out. If it doesn’t check out, I’m dead. Just like that. Lying to Freeman McNally is like playing Russian roulette. You tell one and stop breathing while you wait to see if your brains are flying out the side of your head.”

“There’s got to be a profit in this for us someplace,” Hooper said.

“A few more days. You’ll see. Just a few more days.” Harrison Ronald sighed. “C’mon, help me up. My ass is frozen and my legs are getting stiff. I gotta go see Freeman.”

“What if he decides that you might have been in it with the others and it just got fucked up?”

“There’s that,” Harrison Ronald said sourly. “But you didn’t have to say it, man.”

“There’s no telling,” Hooper insisted. “It could go down like that.”

“If it does, it’s been nice knowing you.”

“What about a wire? You could wear a wire. We could wait just a block away.”

“You gotta be shitting me!”

Hooper sat back down and watched Ford go down the steps and turn east to go around the front of the Memorial. It was too late for the subway so he had some walking to do. Maybe he would call Freeman from someplace.

Hooper felt cold. The steps were cold and the air was cold and he was cold. He pulled his coat tightly around him and sat looking at the lights of Arlington.