“They know the backpack is still inside,” Lael whispered. “They’re going in to find it. You can count on that.”
“Which gives us time to get out of here,” I said.
“You got that right.”
I noticed that the garage door opened with an electronic motor. Which could take forever. I saw Lael was considering that dilemma, too.
“We’ll pop the release to the motor,” he said, “and I’ll roll it up fast. Once I have the door headed up, start the motor and I’ll hop in. Cie—”
“I know. I’ll be ready.”
Cie and I crept over to the truck, and I quietly eased open the driver’s-side door.
“They’re about to make their move and go inside,” Lael reported from the window.
I settled in behind the wheel and she handed me the keys. I readied the ignition and noticed her rolling down the passenger-side window, leaving the door itself half open.
They’re inside, Lael mouthed, shifting from the window to the front of the truck and hopping up on the bumper, reaching for a rope that hung from the metal ceiling track on which the garage door ran. Every garage had a release lever that allowed the door to be manually opened and closed. If not, what would you do when the power went out?
Lael released the door from its track.
Then he climbed down and grabbed hold of a metal handle, glancing back my way.
His look said it all.
Ready?
I nodded, my fingers on the keys, foot on the accelerator.
He lifted the door upward.
It rose, exposing the light of day. I fired the engine and moved my right foot to the brake, shifting the automatic transmission into drive. Lael hopped into the cab and closed the door.
“Hit it, rookie.”
I revved the engine and we roared from the garage, heading for the drive out to the street. We passed the new vehicle and Lael pushed back in his seat, allowing Cie to aim her rifle across him, out the window. She fired three times, taking out two tires in the process.
That should slow them down considerably.
In the rearview mirror, through a plume of dust rising in our wake, I saw the two guys rush from the house. We found the highway and I turned left, heading west, away from Starke. A van appeared to our right, slowing at the drive. I cut it off by speeding ahead.
The van braked to a stop.
I increased speed.
Lael and Cie were staring out the rear windshield.
In my mirror I saw the two guys from the house run out into the highway and leap into the van.
“That’s not good,” I muttered.
“No. It’s not,” Lael said.
The van sped our way.
We had a half-mile head start, but that might not mean a thing. The gleaming blob in the rearview mirror kept growing in size as it approached.
“You ever done this before?” Lael asked.
“On my grandfather’s farm all the time.”
He shook his head. “Lot of good that’s going to do us.”
I drove with a sense of urgency, forcing attention on my hands and feet, my eyes flicking back and forth, watching the mirrors, then what was ahead.
The road ran straight as a ruler.
Where was a state trooper when you needed one.
“They’re coming,” Cie said.
At least we had the rifle.
The van sucked close to my bumper. I gave the engine more gas, but the van stayed near. Then it veered into the other lane and pulled abreast. I decided why outrun it and let off the gas, allowing our speed to slow, dropping us back behind the van.
“That’ll work,” Lael said.
The van veered back into our lane and its rear doors suddenly swung open.
We all saw the gun at the same time.
I swung the wheel hard left, into the oncoming lane. Away from the gun, but right into the path of a vehicle coming straight at us.
An eighteen-wheeler.
The van seemed to see the approaching truck, too, dropping speed and trying to hem us in in the wrong lane. I had no choice but to hit the brake and slow, so we could drop in behind the van, but the move was going to allow the eighteen-wheeler to close the gap between us even faster.
Timing was everything.
I popped the brake, slowed the truck, then veered right into the correct lane just as the eighteen-wheeler swished by, its horn blaring.
“Not bad,” Lael said.
We were now back behind the van with our original problem.
Men with guns ahead of us.
The rear doors swung open again.
But Lael was ready.
He hung his head and arms out of the passenger-side window with the rifle in hand, firing twice.
The van swerved into the opposite lane to disrupt our line of fire. No cars were coming from ahead. Trees and fields lined both sides of the rural highway.
“Can you take out one of the tires?” I asked.
The speedometer showed we were moving at 75 mph. The van had started weaving back and forth between the two lanes, the men inside probably readying for more shots of their own. Lael stuck his head and shoulders back out the window, along with the rifle, and tried two shots that missed. I decided I’d had enough and floored the accelerator, speeding us up so that when the van veered left into the opposite lane, I brought the truck parallel to it, then I jerked the steering wheel left, slamming the truck into the van.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, adding even more speed to the thrust.
The van vaulted the highway and plowed a path into a field, bumping and weaving before settling into soft earth.
Lael let out a yell.
We kept barreling down the highway.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I followed the directions Cie provided. We eventually found U.S. 301 and turned south, driving thirty miles to Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. Neither Lael nor Cie had much to say. Cie led us through town to the Greyhound bus station. I parked out front and we walked inside.
“This is where we leave you,” Lael said. “We’d planned on a different route. But that won’t work anymore.”
“I’ll say it again. You two are the only ones who can verify any of this.”
Lael unzipped his duffel bag, removed the files, and handed them over. “This is your problem, rookie. Not ours. We’re done.”
“You’re just going to let this all fade away,” I asked.
“Better than us dying,” Cie said. “You have no idea all the bad things COINTELPRO did. It was so much more than Martin Luther King. Tom Oliver wants all that to stay buried, and I agree. You need to take a lesson from us and let this lie. Give those damn files to whoever you have to give them to, then forget any of this ever happened.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can,” Lael taunted. “It’s real easy. Nobody is going to believe you anyway. They’ll just say those files were fabricated.”
“That’s where you two come in. It’s called corroboration.”
Lael wrapped an arm around my shoulder. A friendly gesture. “Listen to me. There’s nothing here. You can’t prove a thing. Let it go.”
The bus station was crowded, typical probably for a college town. I’d only ridden on a Greyhound once, years ago when my mother and I traveled from my grandfather’s farm in middle Georgia to Atlanta for the weekend. An adventure, she’d called it. I was eleven, my father gone by then. I remembered every minute of the entire weekend.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Better you don’t know,” Lael said. “But it’ll be somewhere that Tom Oliver, you, and the FBI will have a hard time finding.”
“Keep the truck,” Cie said. “You’re going to need it more than we do, since I don’t suspect you’re going to take our advice and give this up.”
“Valdez has Foster, his daughter, and his son-in-law. And Oliver is still out there. I’m the only one who can d
eal with that.”