The Red Cell by André Gallo (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) 📕

Feeling a growing sense of paranoia, Steve transferred his gun from the glove compartment to the map slot in the driver’s door. Having narrowly escaped from Iran a year before, carrying that country’s top-secret plans for a devastating cyber attack on the United States, Steve immediately assumed the bikers to be an Iranian hit team, unless of course they were peaceful commuters on their way home.

He turned right on Constitution and then made an immediate half-right onto Virginia Avenue, before a red light forced him to stop. The motorcycle pulled up next to him on the passenger side, just as the light turned green. Steve thought he heard a metallic clunk, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the bike’s roaring takeoff. He managed to keep close enough behind to see them turn right at the end of Virginia onto the Rock Creek Parkway, before he pulled into the gas station just beyond the Watergate West condominium tower.

As he rounded the car toward the gas pumps, he discovered the source of the sound he had heard a few minutes before. It was a round black box attached to his passenger door. He recognized it instantly as a limpet mine, an IED used by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the MEK, to assassinate their targets, most recently Iranian nuclear scientists. His first thought was to pull it off and hurl it across the street into a vacant lot. But just then a utility truck pulled up to the other side of the pump. Steve raced toward the vehicle and pulled the emerging driver, a ruddy-faced, forty-something man in white overalls, to the pavement, yelling, “Get down, get down!”

Although Steve’s heart was pounding and the adrenaline was flowing, his mind was on automatic; his instincts were in charge.

Before Steve could finish his warning, the device exploded.

The sound was deafening, but fortunately the mine was small enough its force projected mostly sideways into his car and did not ignite the gas pumps—though the interior was engulfed in flames, and the passenger door looked like it had been penetrated by a rocket-propelled grenade.

His ears ringing, Steve took a breath and checked that his new friend was okay. He quickly stood up and ran to the driver’s side of his car to retrieve the Glock. He managed to yank the door open and retrieve the gun before the fire could ignite its ammunition. Then, surrounded by stunned onlookers, he ran back to the other driver, who was now sitting up and shaking his head.

“I need to borrow your truck,” Steve said in a rush. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

He opened the door, which was labeled “Hansen Glass,” and jumped in. “Tell the police I’m going after those guys,” he called out, starting the engine and roaring away from his still-burning vehicle, just as the first sounds of sirens could be heard.

Steve had to think fast. He had seen the motorcycle heading up the parkway, but where to? Were they trying to get to the Pakistan Embassy on Connecticut Avenue? The Pakistanis handled Iranian affairs in the United States. Possibly, but the longer they stayed on the streets of the capital, the more likely they’d be picked up by surveillance video. The police would know where they were trying to hide.

No, he decided. They had probably looped up the ramp to the elevated Whitehurst Freeway and were going to try to thread the rush-hour traffic on Key Bridge to the George Washington Parkway, on the Virginia side of the Potomac. From there, they could reach the Beltway and make their escape on one of its many exits around the city—or even roll out of town completely, maybe seeking to end up at the Iranian Legation in New York.

He had another problem: His would-be assassins could snake through the rush-hour traffic on a two-wheeled motorcycle, while he was driving, he discovered, a truck carrying a six-by-nine-foot pane of glass, which was still in one piece, perhaps because it was on the side away from the explosion.

In a flash he cancelled his first plan of pursuing the bike by taking the ramp to the Whitehurst. Instead, he suddenly veered across the parkway onto the narrow ramp to K Street under the freeway. As he did, the truck’s GPS monotone voice warned, “You have made an incorrect turn. You have made an incorrect turn.” Steve grinned, shutting off the device and pushing the truck toward Wisconsin Avenue, turning right up the hill into the heart of Georgetown.

When he and Kella had been trying to reach the Iranian Gulf while on the run from Iranian security, he was the rabbit. Now, he was the hunter, but he didn’t equate his action—stealing Iranian plans to attack the United States—with this attempt on his life. He laid on his horn, doing his own bit of clumsy threading, trying to get down M Street to the point where the freeway ended and the men on the bike would be circling around the feeder lane to Key Bridge.

He was almost there, having resorted to confronting oncoming traffic, narrowly missing pedestrians, and at one point swerving onto the sidewalk, when … there they were! By the barest stroke of luck, the combination of crawling traffic and their misjudgment that they had nailed Steve had kept them within reach.

Not for long, however. They must have guessed it was Steve doing the daredevil maneuvers in the truck, because as soon as the rear rider spotted him, he whacked the driver on the helmet; they took off across the bridge and zipped down the ramp to the G.W. Parkway.

By now, Steve’s adrenaline was pumping full bore. He risked some hairbreadth misses, as he floored the truck down the middle of the bridge, nearly sideswiping two cars on the far side, slicing across lanes to get to the parkway entrance.

Another thought: Would they try to shake him