Lucas: “Just fuckin’ drive, drive.”
33
Abramova turned south on the highway and took off. She knew two things for sure: she couldn’t outrun the American law, in the Bronco, not with seventy thousand miles on the clock and a quarter tank of gas. If she stayed with the Bronco, they would find her, and after the murders in the Twin Cities, they would kill her. So the second thing: she had to get a new set of wheels that nobody would know she had.
If she could do that, she could talk to Kuznetsov, and exit through the southern border, as previously planned. The southern border, because she suspected Titov of treachery, and that Bernard was already in an American jail.
Well ahead, she saw a side road off the highway. The Bronco wouldn’t go any faster than it already was, but the side road was attractive: promised curves and driveways that would lead to another vehicle and perhaps a final escape. She blew past a tractor trailer intothe face of an oncoming car, and the other car braked hard and slipped toward the shoulder and she whipped in front of the big truck and went on toward the side road.
She had to talk to Kuznetsov and groped in her pocket and found…no phone. The image popped up in her mind: the phone lying on the front seat of the red Ford which she’d abandoned in town, and the gear bag, with all the other burners, was in the white van. All she had with her was one pistol and the clothes on her back. “Goddamn this place,” she groaned, aloud. “Goddamn this place and all its people.”
She tapped her brake to make the turn on the side road. When she glanced in the rearview mirror, she saw a pickup truck coming fast, but well back, the better part of a mile, like a black beetle scrabbling along the partially snow-packed highway.
She took the turn, got straight, and accelerated.
• • •
“We’re gonna loseher,” Lucas said. “We’re gonna lose her if we don’t get closer.”
“I’m trying,” the driver grunted.
Lucas: “What’s your name?”
“Doug. Penny.”
“You’re doing good, Doug. Don’t lose her.”
They saw her make the turn, and forty seconds later, made the same turn, and Penny almost lost it, but got it back. A sign that read “Rainbow Road” flashed by.
The Bronco was no longer in sight, over the top of a hill, but when they got to the top, they could still see it down a long straight section of road, as much as a mile ahead. Penny stayed on the gas, and Lucascalled 9-1-1 to explain the new situation and to ask if there were any law enforcement helicopters available. There weren’t.
“If you’re on Rainbow, you’re headed into Washburn County. I’ll contact the sheriff there and see what they have available,” the operator told him.
“Do that,” Lucas said, and he rang off. Up ahead, the Bronco disappeared around a curve.
“Okay, we’ve got a problem coming up,” Penny said. “I know this road pretty good, and there are a bunch of curves up ahead. One of them is a bitch, especially if there’s snow on it. If she makes it through there, there’s an intersection. She could go straight, or she could go right. I don’t know if we’ll get there in time to see her on either one…so what do we do if we can’t see her?”
“Try to get there faster,” Sherwood said. He took Lucas’s revolver out of his coat pocket and flipped the cylinder out, checked, slapped it back in place and put the gun back in his pocket.
White said to him, “Remember: only in the most extreme…”
“Yeah, I got it,” Sherwood said.
Lucas: “How do you get the nav up on this thing?”
Penny said, “Push a button.” He pushed a button and the nav came up. And he added, “Hold on to your asses, we’re getting to the curves, I gotta slow down or I’ll kill us.”
He slowed, and he was right. They went through a double curve that showed at least two sets of skid marks going into the roadside ditch, and snow-and-ice evidence of a tow truck dragging cars out of the ditch.
They went through another set of curves and could see an intersection ahead and they couldn’t see the Bronco and Penny said, “This is it. Turn right or go straight?”
White was kneeling on the back seat looking at the navigation screen and she said, “Straight, straight.”
Lucas: “Why straight?”
“Because if she’s looking at a navigation screen, she can see that if she turns right, there’s nothing ahead of her but long straight roads and if she goes straight, there’s lots of turns she can hide behind…”
Lucas: “Go straight.”
