Man Down by John Douglas

Author:John Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

I stretched out in the rear of the limo and closed my eyes. I tried not to think about the consequences of this morning’s interview. Although it was Spider Urich who had let the AG’s secrets out for a national audience, I was the one who would get fried. As independent as the Broken Wings are, we still come under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department and serve only under the authority granted to us by the attorney general. I knew that authority had the same longevity as Gadget’s attention span, and after Armstrong was finished with us, I’d be lucky to land a job as security guard at the local Bag’n’Go.

Somewhere in the snarl of construction on I-95, I drifted off. A few minutes out of Fredericksburg, my cell phone woke me up.

“Jake, this is Vince Andrews. I got a name on that guy in the red shirt.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s William Bower. Current address is in Illinois, but he hasn’t reported to his parole officer in months. He’s a Desert Storm veteran with a Tim McVeigh profile. Heavy training in demolitions. And you were right about Leavenworth. Bower was convicted of transporting explosives in ’98, served two years of an eight-year sentence. He’s supposed to be an expert at wiring cars and is suspected in the bombing of a minister’s car in North Carolina last year. Apparently, that’s what he does. He blows up cars.”

It took a second to penetrate.

“You haven’t tried to start your car this morning, have you, Jake?”

“No, I took the train. I mean I’m in a limo. No, I’m not in my car.” My mind was sorting this out, faster than my mouth could keep up.

“Good. I wouldn’t try to start her before we’ve had the bomb squad take a look, understand?”

“My daughter has my car.”

There was a long silence on Andrews’s end. Then he said, “Call her now, Jake. I’ll call the police.”

“She’s in Fredericksburg.” I gave him the address.

“Got it.” He hung up.

I leaned forward and said to Henry, “I need you to go as fast as you’re comfortable driving, Henry. Can you do that?”

Henry smiled in the rearview. “All I needed was the word.” The limo nearly lifted off.

I put on my seat belt and tried my mother’s number. The phone was busy. I hit redial and got another busy signal. I told Henry where to exit and he flew down the ramp and took a hard left. The traffic was light and Henry threaded the limo through spaces so narrow I wouldn’t have tried it in the Aston Martin.

The Aston Martin. Bower knew my car. That’s what he was doing the day before, checking it out, and thanks to my starter he had had a good long look inside the engine compartment. And now Ali had the car.

I prayed I wasn’t too late. I prayed that Ali had slept in as she did almost every morning she wasn’t in school. I prayed that the sirens I heard in the distance weren’t meant for her.

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