“Let’s go now,” White said.
She and Capslock started walking swiftly toward the Ford, and behind them Lucas and Sherwood saw the move and Lucas said, “Run.”
They ran, Sherwood collided with a man who said “Hey,” and then shut up as he saw the revolver in Sherwood’s hand.
Capslock and White broke into a run as the Russian woman, in the smaller vehicle, put it into a tight U-turn and accelerated toward the corner. White said, “She’s…” She couldn’t finish the sentence because she was gasping for air.
But a car turned in front of Abramova at the corner and she stopped, glanced up to the rearview mirror out of a simple habit of awareness, and saw two people running toward her, and the woman seemed to have a gun in her hand.
“??????!” She pulled around the corner and too late realized she was in a three- or four-car traffic jam. There were oncoming cars, moving slowly, so she couldn’t pull around the cars in front of her.
Behind her, she saw the woman and the man coming on, running harder, and then, farther back, the tall dark-haired man, who she was seeing for the fourth time. It occurred to her, a quick flash, that Titov had betrayed them. She didn’t stop to consider that: she bailed out of the car and started running along the street, around another corner, heading back into the town, and into the crowd.
She heard the woman behind her shouting something, and glanced back: she was gaining ground, the pursuers falling back. She ran as hard as she could, the crowd getting thicker around her, swerved down another side street, hoping to lose the pursuit, but sixty yards down the street, glanced back and saw that they were still with her.
Up ahead, a slow-moving Jeep-like car was approaching a stop sign. She ran to the driver’s side window as the car rolled to a stop, saw the female driver was alone, pulled her gun from under herjacket and pushed the muzzle against the window glass and screamed, “Get out. Get out or I will kill you. Get out! Open the door!”
She was aware that people on the sidewalk were staring at her but she didn’t have time to care. The woman at the wheel was staring at her, and she screamed again, “Get out or I’ll kill you,” and the woman reached down and pulled the door handle and the door popped open and Abramova grabbed the woman by her coat collar and yanked her out of the vehicle, dumping her on the ground.
As the woman tumbled out, going to her hands and knees in the street, Abramova looked back at the man and the woman chasing her, only thirty or forty yards away now and she fired two shots at them and they both went down, flat on their stomachs. A third person farther back up the slight hill also fell, and the vehicle was rolling forward on its own and Abramova jumped in and accelerated away.
Capslock and White got to their feet and Capslock asked, “You okay?”
“I’m good, but someone isn’t,” White said, and they turned to see people in the crowd screaming and waving their hands, some of them running after or pointing at the fleeing Bronco.
Lucas and Sherwood turned the corner in time to hear the shots and see Capslock and White go down, and Sherwood had his revolver in his hand but Lucas grabbed his arm and shouted, “Background,” where dozens of people were standing.
The Bronco accelerated through the stop sign, narrowly missing a man and a woman who’d been walking across the street carrying skis, and then Capslock and White were scrambling to their feet, unhurt, looking up the slight slope toward town. Lucas said, “Somebody got hit.”
“We gotta get her,” Sherwood said, ignoring the crowd around thewounded person, whoever he or she was. He started running toward a man in a black Ford F-150 and the man saw the two of them coming and dropped his window and asked, “What’s up?”
“The Russian spy in the Bronco, the woman, just shot somebody up the hill. We’re with the U.S. Marshals Service…Show him your badge, Lucas…” Lucas and Sherwood held up their badges. “…and she’s running and we need to keep her in sight and we need a ride.”
“Well, shit-fire, get in here,” the man said.
Lucas ran around and got in the front passenger seat as Sherwood got in the back and Lucas said, “See those two people?” He pointed at White and Capslock. “The woman’s another marshal. Stop and roll your window down.”
They pulled up to Capslock and White and Lucas shouted, “Got somebody down. She hit somebody. We’re gonna chase her, you take care of whoever’s down, talk to the cops.”
“Del can do that,” White said. “I’m coming.”
She jumped in the back as Sherwood moved over, and as Capslock started running toward the wounded person, Lucas said, “Go. Go. We’re losing her.”
“We ain’t losing her,” the driver said. “I’m all over her commie ass.”
They turned the corner and it seemed that he was more right than wrong: they could still see the Bronco, probably a half mile ahead of them, turning left on what Lucas recognized as the state highway going south out of town. If she got far enough ahead, there were numerous side roads off the highway, and she could get lost.
“Don’t lose her,” Lucas said to the truck driver, as he got on his phone. He called 9-1-1 for the Sawyer County sheriff’s office, explained what was happening, and the operator told him that most of her assets were working the race, and a shooting in town, and she’d try toget a car out ahead of the Bronco if somebody could tell her where the Bronco was going, and that she’d talk to adjacent counties and ask for help.
“That’ll only happen if you know where she’s going, or where she is…call me,” the operator said. “I gotta go now, I got the shooting in town.”
“I’ll call when we need you again.” Lucas rang off, looked at the driver. “She’s running away from us.”
“She’s really moving,” the driver said. “I’m doing eighty-five, any faster I’ll kill somebody.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” White said from the back seat, and the man glanced at her in the rearview mirror and dropped the hammer and they all felt the pickup wobble in protest.
Music had been playing almost inaudibly since they got in the truck, and now the driver reached down and turned a volume knob and Queen came up with “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” and he said, “One of my favorites.”
