Page 73

CHAPTER 71

BAO HAD NARROWLY avoided hitting the dog when her scream collided with a loud, jarring crash that threw Joe sideways against his seat belt and Bao’s shoulder.

The car was rocking from the impact, and Joe was dazed. What is happening? Bao was yelling his name, asking if he was okay. He saw that she had undone her seat belt and was holding a gun.

Joe tried to get his bearings. Their vehicle had stopped rocking, but he remembered the crash. A car had come from nowhere at full speed and T-boned the passenger’s side rear compartment of the SUV.

Bao shouted again, “Joe, are you hurt?”

He couldn’t answer. First one bullet, then another, came through the Honda SUV’s rear window and lodged in Bao’s seat back.

Using the seat back as a shield, Bao fired through the shattered window behind Joe. Joe heard the gun firing again, the sound of more glass shattering, and a man’s yelp of pain.

“Joe. Get down on the floor. Grab your gun,” Bao instructed him.

Before he got into the footwell, Joe turned his head and saw men carrying automatic rifles scramble out of the car that had crashed into them. Joe unlatched his seat belt and spoke toward the radio, “This is Molinari. We’re under fire.”

Surely Dougherty and Ruiz had already figured that out from the sounds, but Joe wanted to be explicit.

He spun in his seat and slid into the footwell below the dashboard. It was impossibly tight, but he was able to work his gun arm. He got to his knees and aimed his gun toward the shattered rear compartment window. Both his and Bao’s shots landed. Men staggered backward and fell, screaming. Two stood up again. Joe aimed again, this time a few degrees to the right, through the rear window. In broken Spanish, he yelled, “Hands on the trunk. The police are coming.”

One of the men broke away from the crash car and the men lying on the street. Bao crouched lower on the driver’s side seat, leaning toward the rear passenger area. In a quick move, one of the guys from the crash car started running forward.

Joe saw enough of him to observe that he was young and muscular and fast enough. He was coming up on the driver’s side of the Honda. And then he passed it.

Bao said, “Joe, hold on. Hold on!”

She had turned forward again. And then she stepped on the gas.

There was a wrenching sound as the SUV broke free from the crash car. Bao sped past the running man, and when the speed and the distance were just right, she opened her door hard and kicked it. In that same second, she stepped on the brakes.

The runner slammed into the door, a full body blow at twenty miles an hour, then he fell back onto the dirt road, moaning, rolling from side to side.

Dougherty pulled up in the black Mercedes. Joe saw both Ruiz and Dougherty exit the car with guns in hand. And heard police sirens coming toward them from behind.

Bao stepped out onto the road, pulled her handcuffs off her belt, and cuffed the runner. Joe looked at Bao, at the runner rolling on the road. He said, “Bao, that was amazing. I wish I had filmed that for you.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks, Joe. Next time.”

“I mean it. That was really something.”