Chapter 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 into the 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 lose her,” 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 Lucas called 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.”
They went past a sign that read “County Road E,” and Penny said, “I hope you’re right.”
“We gotta be,” Sherwood said.
Lucas: “When she gets far enough ahead, she’ll turn down a driveway, kill anyone in the house at the end of it, hide the Bronco in the garage, and take whatever vehicle they have.
Then she’ll drive that to another farm somewhere else, someplace that she can see is isolated, while we’re looking around here, and kill those people and go on in another vehicle.
She can get on her phone and maybe arrange a pickup by those Russian assholes in the Cities. ”
Penny glanced at him and said, “You’re a real Mr. Cheerful. I mean, kill them all?”
“That’s what she does for a living,” Sherwood said.
· · ·
Abramova wasn’t thinking about much except to get away.
As she drove, fractional pieces of plans began trickling through her brain: find a place to turn off, to hide.
If she could hide for an hour, she could make it out of this freezing landscape, even if she had to walk.
There was hardly any snow on the roads, and with only a sliver of moon, she should be almost invisible after nightfall.
And she dismissed that idea. Walking out was absurd.
At the same time, she couldn’t keep the Bronco.
She needed a different car, a problem this mission had been cursed with from the start.
The way to get a new car would be to pick out an inhabited house—pick one out before the alarm went out, so she had to find one soon—eliminate the people inside the house, take their car and cell phones and run for the Twin Cities.
Once she had a phone in her hand, she could call Kuznetsov and get picked up. She could see a patch of hard snow covering the road up ahead, and she slowed to take the turn, and as she did, glanced up to the rearview mirror.
The pickup was still there and seemed to be moving fast.
“Fuck these people,” she muttered, and got back on the gas.
She needed a road coming off the highway on a curve.
She’d been poking at dashboard buttons since making it out of town and had finally brought up the navigation screen.
The road she was on had plenty of curves for a couple of miles, and then the highway ran west, straight as an arrow.
But just as it began the long straightaway, a narrow little road came off it.
If she could stretch the distance between herself and the pickup, they would not see her leave the highway.
Had to take some risks.
She slalomed a series of turns and spotted the intersection coming up.
She was breathing hard, as if she were running; and sweating.
She ran fast right to the corner, slowed for the messy intersection, and once across it, accelerated up a hill, the Bronco rattling and bouncing up the loose gravel and ice.
Three hundred yards up the hill, she braked into a hard turn to the left and, as she went around, looked into the mirror.
There was no sign of the pickup truck behind her.
Had she lost them? Was it even chasing her? She didn’t have time to worry about it. She had to find a place to hide.
· · ·
Lucas was on the phone to the 9-1-1 operator. “We were on Rainbow Road but now we’re on a different one, I don’t what it is…”
“County Road E,” Penny said.
“We’re on County Road E, headed south right now and she’s well up ahead of us, but we’re afraid she’s going to get off…”
“We’ve got two Washburn County sheriff’s cars headed your way so keep talking to us, where you’re at, the Washburn boys will know all those roads.”
“How about a helicopter, we could use a chopper…”
“Not a chance. The state patrol has one, if you want to wait a couple hours,” the operator said. They went through a series of long curves and White was kneeling on the back seat pointing at the nav screen and she said, “There’s a spot she might get off, whatever it is…”
“If she doesn’t, we should be able to see her,” Doug said. “E is straight as a string past there. But there’s a house right there at the turn, with a bunch of outbuildings, if you think she might jump somebody…She could be out of sight in fifteen seconds, behind that farmhouse.”
“I dunno,” Lucas said.
On the satellite radio, Foreigner came up with “I Want to Know What Love is,” and Penny turned the volume a little higher. “Great song.”
“Go to high school in the eighties, Doug?” White asked.
“I did.”
“Drive faster,” Lucas said.
They came around a turn and saw a new sharp right-hand turn up ahead.
They could look across open fields to the highway going west, but couldn’t see the Bronco.
The side road came off the highway straight ahead, almost like an extension.
There was no sign of the truck on the side road, nor could they see anything moving in any direction.
Penny: “What do you wanna do? Straight, right, look at the farmyard? Gotta tell me, quick.”
Sherwood said, “I don’t think she’d go to that farm, it’s too open.
If she went in there, she’d be setting herself up for a standoff, which she’d lose.
She’s gotta keep running to a place where she might get a car, and someplace where she’s broken away from us.
No good if we see the new car. I think she went straight. ”
White: “Straight. She has to get off this highway.”
Lucas: “Okay, straight.”