I couldn't radio the command center. Mitchell had gutted the local comms, my federal throat mic was destroyed, and even if I found a working radio, calling it in meant speaking directly to Vance. The moment Vance heard my voice, he would immediately broadcast that a rogue, armed agent had compromised Echo-Four, granting the counter-assault teams full authorization to shoot me on sight.
There was no time to find a secure landline. There was no time to flag down local backup. The evidence resting in my bloody palm proved the system itself was the weapon.
I looked down the dark, empty avenue. The distant, pulsing glow of red and blue police outriders was just barely visible cresting the horizon. They were moving at seventy miles per hour, blind to the slaughter waiting in the concrete canyon ahead.
If I couldn't warn them through the radio, I had to warn them with physics.
Every Secret Service driver is drilled endlessly on the exact same emergency survival protocol. If an unauthorized, heavy vehicle breaches the security perimeter and charges the motorcade in a hostile, head-on trajectory, the trailing Counter Assault Team—the heavily armored black Suburbans packed with tactical operators—will immediately accelerate forward, opening fire through their reinforced windshields to neutralize the threat. Simultaneously, the driver of the President's limousine will execute a violent, high-speed J-turn, abandoning the route entirely and fleeing in the opposite direction.
To save the motorcade, I had to become the exact threat they were trained to run away from. I had to force the abort myself.
I dropped the satellite phone onto the passenger seat and climbed awkwardly behind the steering wheel of Mitchell's cruiser. I reached up with my left hand and slammed my palm against the master lightbar toggle. The roof of the squad car instantly erupted in a chaotic, blinding storm of spinning red and blue strobes. I reached down, grabbed the heavy transmission shifter, and yanked it brutally into drive.
I knew exactly what I was risking. The moment my headlights crossed the center median and accelerated toward the President, the tactical operators in those approaching Suburbans wouldn't hesitate. They wouldn't ask for my badge number. They would unleash a storm of armor-piercing rounds directly into the driver’s side of this vehicle. I was trading my life to force a steering wheel to turn.
I pressed my left boot entirely to the floorboard. The cruiser's heavy V8 engine roared, the rear tires spinning wildly against the wet asphalt before catching traction. The car launched violently forward, leaving Mitchell screaming into the pavement behind me, as I drove straight down the wrong side of the avenue, aiming the heavy steel grill directly at the approaching headlights of my own team.
CHAPTER 3: The Proof On The Asphalt
I kept my boot pinned entirely to the floorboard. The heavy V8 engine of the stolen police cruiser screamed in mechanical protest, the RPM needle burying itself into the redline as I rocketed down the wrong side of the empty, wet avenue. The roof-mounted lightbar was a chaotic, blinding storm of spinning red and blue strobes, violently washing the dark tree line and the concrete barriers in harsh, erratic flashes. The speedometer clicked past seventy. Through the cracked windshield, the amber glow of the distant streetlights was suddenly fractured by a tight, disciplined cluster of approaching headlights.
The motorcade.
They were moving fast, holding a perfect, staggered diamond formation at exactly seventy miles per hour, completely blind to the fact that they were less than ninety seconds away from entering a sealed concrete kill zone. Leading the formation were the twin local police outriders, followed immediately by the heavy, armored silhouette of the Secret Service lead car. Right behind it, a massive, unbroken block of black steel gliding over the pavement—Stagecoach. The President’s limousine. Flanking its rear bumper were the two counter-assault Suburbans, packed with heavily armed tactical operators whose entire job was to destroy anything that broke the perimeter.
I was the perimeter. And I was breaking it.
I aimed the heavy steel push-bumper of the cruiser directly at the center of the formation. I didn't swerve. I didn't tap the brakes. I became the exact nightmare scenario they had drilled for a thousand times at the federal training facility.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The twin police outriders violently split apart, diving toward the shoulders to avoid the head-on collision. The lead Secret Service vehicle slammed its brakes, the heavy tires screaming against the asphalt in a thick cloud of acrid white smoke. But it was the driver of Stagecoach who executed the maneuver flawlessly. At seventy miles per hour, the massive, armor-plated limousine locked its rear wheels, the tail end swinging violently out to the right in a massive, sweeping arc. The driver slammed the transmission into forward gear, completing a perfect, high-speed J-turn. The heavy engine roared, the tires caught traction, and Stagecoach rocketed back the way it had come, fleeing the active threat exactly as protocol demanded.
The trap at the viaduct was starved. The package was gone.
But my immediate problem was the two black Suburbans that hadn't retreated. They surged forward, their heavy front grilles angling aggressively to form a staggered, impenetrable blockade across the four lanes of traffic.
I slammed both feet onto the cruiser's brake pedal, throwing my entire body weight into the firewall. The squad car violently pitched forward, the rear tires locking and skidding wildly across the wet asphalt. The smell of burning rubber and overheated brake pads flooded the cabin. I fought the steering wheel with my good left hand, desperately trying to keep the vehicle from rolling. The cruiser slid sideways, the heavy steel wheels grinding against the pavement until it finally slammed to a violent, shuddering halt barely thirty feet from the front bumper of the lead Suburban.
Before the squad car had even fully settled on its suspension, the doors of the Suburbans flew open.