The change in air pressure in the room awakened me. Someone had opened a door, and Archer was still sleeping soundly a few inches away. I looked at the clock. 3:15, so it probably wasn’t the housekeeper. The skyline of Virginia blazed away in the distance like a nightlight, making the bedroom a lousy place to be caught by someone with bad intentions.
I rolled silently out of bed, eased the bedroom door closed and turned the deadbolt. I pulled on a pair of cargo shorts and screwed the suppressor into the Sig then knelt and put my hand over Archer’s mouth. She came instantly awake, and I took my hand away and touched my finger to my lips. She nodded. I led her by the hand onto the balcony through the sliding glass door. The night had gotten cooler, and she shivered. I went back inside, took the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.
The balconies of the Watergate curve with the building and are continuous, except for small dividing walls between rooms and units. We were on the opposite side of our living room, so I motioned for her to climb over the next three walls and hide on that balcony. I didn’t know the layout next door, but that would hopefully put at least one full condo and a hundred feet or so between us and provide as much safety as I could manage on short notice. Without batting an eye, she took off the blanket and held it under her arm so it wouldn’t interfere with the obstacle course she was about to run. Even though I had things to do, I couldn’t help but admire her in the moonlight. I hoped it would have the same effect on anybody who might awaken and see her.
I went over the wall in the other direction which put me on the balcony outside our living room. I silently thanked Archer for insisting that the draperies remain open. The six feet or so of gathered material gave me cover and minimized my silhouette inside.
I lay down on the AstroTurf and inched my head around the drapes. There was a man with a gun standing just inside the foyer. Then I heard the whump of a door being kicked open and something hit the glass in the bedroom. Then twice more. Not loud. About like somebody throwing marbles. I leaned back and saw that my landlord had security concerns of his own or was worried about wayward pigeons, because the glass in the condo was shatterproof. I’d heard no firearm reports, so whoever was inside was suppressed too, but there was no mistaking the three deformed slugs lodged in the centers of three glass webs.
Voices came through the open door, and it was only a matter of time before someone checked the bedroom balcony. I got to my feet, bolted past the living room window and vaulted onto the balcony on the other side. The bedroom door in the adjacent condo was open, and I eased inside and stood in the dark, trying to keep the sound of my breathing to a minimum.
The king-sized bed across the room was occupied by a heavyset man on his back, snoring. His wife, however, was sitting straight up, staring at me. She saw the gun, and I thought she might scream, so I put my hands up to show her I wasn’t there to harm them, and she lay back and watched.
I could hear men talking softly on the balcony next door. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I had to assume the lookout had seen me run past the window, and now they were deciding what to do next. When I heard them go back in, I stepped outside.
There were three of them, and they were standing in my living room, arguing. From a crouch I had a clear shot at the left knee of the biggest guy, and as soon as the Sig spit, the man cried out and went down. I leaned back out of sight, and at least a dozen bullets smacked into the wall of glass and stuck there. A few came through the now-open door and kicked up chunks of cement.
I gave myself a 10-count, then reached out and fired through the door again. Two shots, without looking. I heard something crash, then the front door open. I moved to where I could see, and one man was helping his partner out the front door. The third intruder lay in the foyer, not moving.
In the bedroom, I grabbed a shirt, jacket and my wallet and slipped into my topsiders. The bed was riddled with holes, confirming there wouldn’t have been a Q&A. I dropped an extra clip of ammunition into my pocket.
As I ran through the foyer, I saw some blood and pieces of bone on the slate floor of the foyer. The dead man’s knees were intact, so somebody out there was in a lot of pain. I opened the door. The hallway was clear. I skipped the elevator and took the stairs.
The reception desk was empty, so Pradeep was either lying behind it waiting for the coroner, or he’d gotten out. Either way, I probably didn’t have a lot of time before the place would be crawling with cops. The smart move would to have been to go back upstairs, collect Archer and get out of Dodge. But I was roaring mad, and I wanted those other two.
I held the gun under my jacket and stepped outside. If somebody was waiting to shoot me, the bright lights on the Watergate portico would have made it easy, but nothing happened. I looked in both directions but saw nothing. Then, a block away, I heard a car start and tires squeal as it spun into a U-turn.
A black Yukon Denali with two men in front headed up New Hampshire and into the city at breakneck speed. As they passed the Watergate, the driver reached out and put a red flashing light on his roof.
A lone taxi hunkered in the dark just beyond the portico. It was a lime green Crown Victoria, and the driver, a burly black man, was sitting in his backseat, asleep, with the door open. I slammed his door shut and jumped behind the wheel. The guy came awake in a heartbeat, but I had the Ford started and was after the Yukon before he could react. I looked at the license clipped to the dash. Jengo Mutumbo.
“Jengo, I’m sorry, but I can’t lose that car.”
“Mon, I the best damn driver in DC.” The accent was African. Nigerian, I thought.
“No argument here. So once I see where these guys go, you can take over.”
That seemed to satisfy him, and he sat back. By the time we blew past the White House, I was on the Yukon’s tail and could see that it had no plates. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t already attracted a cop.
Then from the backseat. “That embassy car you chasin, mon.”
“How do you know?”
“Red light. All security guys got dem. Not sposed to, but the cops don mind. Make it easy. No stop.”
I’d caught a break. The police would just think we were a procession. Then, a bullet hit the windshield, shattered it, and all vision disappeared. I jumped on the brakes and was all over the street, trying to steer while looking out the window. With my free hand, I brought up the Sig and shot the windshield from the inside. It exploded out, and we could see again.
“I think you crazy, mon.”
“I think you’re right.”
When we hit Wisconsin Avenue, all I had to do was hang back a couple of blocks and watch which embassy my quarry turned into. Unfortunately, the driver of the Yukon had a different plan. Banging along at 60mph, he suddenly threw the big SUV into a reverse-180, using the wall-to-wall parked cars like bumpers.
When I saw him accelerating back toward me, I knew it wasn’t a scare tactic. These guys had been sent to kill me, and they must have decided that if they had to die in the process, it was better than reporting home as failures.
There was no place to go, so I did the only thing I could. I threw the taxi into its own skid so that we took the crash from the rear. It was an incredible jolt, but nothing like what it would have been head-on. And I was already pulling away before the whiplash ended.
The Yukon didn’t fall back, however. Denied a semi-honorable end, the driver stayed against my bumper, literally pushing me faster than I was accelerating.
I jammed both feet on the brake pedal, but the Crown Vic’s brakes weren’t up to the task. They burned out after a block, and the Yukon kept pushing, while we sent up smoke and sparks and a squeal that woke dogs in Philadelphia. Then they started shooting.
Jengo was lying on the backseat, but seemed remarkably cool. “Jus like downtown Kinshasa.”
So he was Congolese.
We were saved by a garbage truck. It was stopped in the middle of the street while a couple of sanitation guys were rolling a dumpster out to it. It wasn’t going to move, and we couldn’t stop, so the inevitable happened. Fortunately, the dumpster the scow was airlifting on its front forks absorbed most of the shock, and the Crown Vic’s airbags hadn’t been ripped off by a crackhead. Jengo ended up on the floor in the back, but undamaged.
Almost before the airbag deflated, I had changed clips in the Sig and was out of the cab, firing. The Yukon’s driver jammed it in reverse and backed away, but not before I got several rounds into his windshield. I saw blood splatter on the passenger side just as the SUV got turned around.
The driver looked out his open window, and we locked eyes. 
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