Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

This time a voice answered almost immediately. "Sorry Dragon Lady, we thought it best to circle the block and look for any suspicious vehicles. If you are ready to leave, please give us your destination."

"I don't buy it," Pitt said, eyeing the distance between the two parked vans while gauging the passing traffic on the street. "One van should have remained in position while the other circled the block. You're an agent. Why am I tellin

g you?"

"Peter would not have hired irresponsible people," Julia said firmly. "He doesn't work that way."

"Don't answer just yet!" said Pitt harshly. Danger, like a red warning sign, began to flash in Pitt's brain. "We've been sold out. A dime will get you a dollar those are not the same men Harper hired."

For the first time Julia's eyes reflected a growing apprehension. "If you're right, what do I tell them?"

If Pitt thought their lives were in deadly peril, he didn't show it. His face was cool, his mind focused. "Say we're going to my place at the Washington National Airport."

"You live in an airport?" Julia asked, baffled.

"For almost twenty years. Actually, I live on the perimeter."

Julia shrugged in bewilderment and gave the instructions to the men in the vans as Pitt reached under the seat and produced a cellular phone. "Now get a hold of Harper. Explain the situation and say we're on our way toward the Lincoln Memorial. Tell him I'll try to stall off our arrival until he can arrange an intercept."

Julia dialed a number and waited for the party on the other end to answer. After giving her identification, she was put through to Peter Harper, who was at home relaxing with his family. After she gave him Pitt's message, she sat and listened in silence before punching off the phone. She looked at Pitt expressionless. "Help is on the way. Peter also said to tell you that considering what happened at your hangar earlier this evening, he regrets not being more alert to possible problems."

"Is he sending law-enforcement teams to the Memorial for the intercept?"

"He's contacting them now."

"You never told me what happened at your hangar."

"Not now."

Julia began to say something, thought better of it and said simply, "Shouldn't we have waited right here for help?"

Pitt studied the vans parked quietly and ominously at the curb. "I can't sit here any longer looking like I'm waiting for the traffic to ease or our friends will begin to think we're onto them. Once we reach Massachusetts Avenue and merge into the main stream of traffic, we'll be reasonably safe. They won't risk exposure by attacking us in front of a hundred witnesses."

"You could call nine-one-one on your cell phone and ask them to respond with a patrol car cruising the area."

"If you were a dispatcher, would you buy some bizarre story and take responsibility for ordering a fleet of patrol cars to charge to the Lincoln Memorial and look for an orange and brown nineteen-twenty-nine Duesenberg that is being pursued by killers?"

"I suppose not," Julia admitted.

"Better we left it to Harper to call out the posse."

He slipped the big stick shift on the floor into first gear and accelerated out into the street, turning to the left so the vans would lose time swinging a U-turn to follow him. He gained almost a hundred yards before he caught the lights of the lead van coming up on his rear bumper. Two blocks later he whipped the heavy Duesenberg onto Massachusetts Avenue and began snaking in and out of the nighttime traffic.

Julia tensed as she looked through the steering wheel and saw the needle creep up and waver at seventy miles an hour. "This car doesn't have seat belts."

"They didn't believe in them in nineteen twenty-nine."

"You're going awfully fast."

"I can't think of a better way to attract attention than by exceeding the speed limit in a seventy-year-old car that weighs almost four tons."

"I hope she has good brakes." Julia resigned herself to the chase, uncertainty still in her mind.

"They're not as sensitive as modern power brakes, but if I stomp on them they do the job just fine."

Julia gripped the Colt automatic but made no effort to remove the safety or aim it. She balked at accepting Pitt's assertion that their lives were in jeopardy. That their bodyguards had turned on them seemed too incredible to believe.

"Why me?" Pitt moaned as he careened the monster around Mount Vernon Square, the big tires howling in protest, heads turning on the sidewalks, people staring incredulously. "Would you believe this is the second time in a year a pretty girl and I had to escape sharks who chased us over the streets of Washington?"