They lurched north on 11th Street, with Favreau pulling Jake along on legs still shaky from the 50,000-volt blast he had taken. They hadn't quite made it to the end of the block when Jake heard the crack of a gunshot behind them. He knew that exact sound, having heard it tens of thousands of times on the firing range during his five months at Quantico: a .40-caliber, 180-grain jacketed hollow point, the FBI's standard duty load. Then he heard another shot. Then another. Someone was shooting at them with Jake's gun.
People around them were screaming and scrambling out of the way. A few with less street smarts, who didn't know the sound of gunfire, stood looking around, waiting to catch a stray bullet. Favreau yanked Jake around the corner onto F Street. Using a passing city bus for cover, they dashed across the street, ran halfway down the block, and ducked into the cover of an alcove in the façade of a building. Jake peeked back the way they had come. None of the men in the dark suits had rounded the corner.
"We have to keep moving," Favreau said.
Jake turned on him. "No, we don't." Then he noticed the pistol in the Frenchman's hand, which Jake's brain automatically catalogued as a Beretta 92F, the standard-issue handgun of the U.S. military. The way Favreau held the pistol, the muzzle was angled down at forty-five degrees, not quite pointed at Jake, but not quite pointed at the ground either. Instinctively, Jake's hand twitched toward his holster until he remembered it was empty and that his FBI service pistol was now in the hands of one of the men who had attacked him in the street. Jake felt his face flush with shame.
"They're going to keep coming," Favreau said.
"Who?" Jake demanded, keeping one eye on the pistol in Favreau's hand. "Who's going to keep coming? Who are they?"
Favreau glanced back down the street. "I'll explain everything later. Right now we have to go."
"Explain now," Jake said. "Explain everything now." Then he heard another pop from the direction of 11th Street and a glass door thirty feet past the alcove shattered. The well-dressed woman stepping out the door screamed and dropped her shopping bag as she scurried back inside the store.
Favreau grabbed Jake's arm and yanked him down the sidewalk. Jake caught a glimpse of two of the suits, the one Jake had head-butted and the one who had played Metro cop, running toward them from 11th Street.
Near the next corner was a Chinese laundry. Favreau pulled Jake through the door. They charged around the counter, past startled customers holding bright blue nylon bags stuffed with dirty clothes. The man behind the counter screeched at them in some dialect of Chinese. Favreau kept running, towing Jake along behind him. They pushed through a curtained doorway and into a warehouse-like space filled with dry-cleaning machines and dozens of wheeled racks of clothes. Everyone stopped work and stared. No one screamed. No one ran. They just stared.
Favreau and Jake burst out the back door of the laundry into an alley, where Jake finally got his feet under him enough to drag Favreau to a stop beside an overflowing Dumpster. Jake shoved the Frenchman against the grimy wall beside the garbage bin. "Give me that," he said and twisted the pistol out of Favreau's hand. Jake took a step back and pulled the Beretta's slide open a quarter-inch, seeing the brass shell of a cartridge resting in the firing chamber. Police sirens wailed all around them. "Tell me what the hell is going on."
"I already told you," Favreau said, "but you weren't listening."
A small Chinese man stuck his head through the door. Jake pointed a finger at him. "FBI. Get back inside." The man disappeared. Jake turned to Favreau. "Who are those men, and why are they shooting at us?"
Favreau took a deep breath. "They work for your government."
"You expect me to believe that government agents tried to kidnap us and are shooting at us in downtown Washington, D.C.?"
Favreau pointed into the air, as if at the sound waves of the approaching sirens. "Do you hear that? They're coming for us. We have to go. Now."
"We're not going anywhere," Jake said. "Not until I say. I'm an FBI agent," he poked the Frenchman in the chest, "and you're under arrest."
"They'll never let you take me in alive."
"Who?" Jake shouted, his frustration boiling over. "Who exactly is it that won't let me take you in?"
The back door to the laundry banged open. The two suits piled out with guns in their hands. Jake's brain shifted into overdrive and his body responded as the hundreds of hours of firearms training kicked in, and he opened fire just a fraction of a second faster than the two suits.
There was no time for the sights. Just point shooting. Jake looking over the top of the gun, both eyes finding the targets fifteen feet away, finger working the trigger again and again as the 9mm shells kicked out, clattering and bouncing off the filthy concrete of the alley. The suits fired back. Jake got off six shots before the two suits tumbled back inside the door. The bad news was that Jake's bullets had chewed up the door and the wall but missed the two men. The good news was that their bullets had missed Jake and the Frenchman.
"Run!" Favreau said.
Jake's heart was about to burst through his chest. His breathing was fast and shallow. He thought about what he'd been taught at Quantico. Combat breathing. In deep, hold, let it out slow. In deep, hold, let it out slow. Favreau waved him on.
They ran.
Through the alley up to G Street. Jake flicked on the Beretta's safety and shoved the pistol into his jacket pocket. As soon as they stepped onto the sidewalk, two Metro police units blew past them, headed east. A third police car screeched to a stop not thirty feet from them. The people on the sidewalks were looking in the direction the other two patrol cars had gone. Favreau, playing the helpful bystander, waved at the police car that had just stopped and pointed east. Jake did the same. The third police car peeled out that way.
Jake followed Favreau in the opposite direction on G Street.
All around them cops were racing in circles.
When they crossed over 11th Street, Jake glanced back and saw the two suits half a block behind and tracking them. "They're still with us," he said.
"I know," Favreau said over his shoulder. "We'll lose them in the subway."
Another block, and they jumped on the long escalator down to the Metro Center station. When they reached the bottom, they found the red line train about to leave the station as the recorded announcement warned passengers to clear the doorways.
Jake saw the two suits halfway down the escalator. The train doors hissed and sprang closed. Jake jammed his arm into the nearest doorway and felt the edges of the twin doors bite into his forearm. The doors hissed again. A red warning light flashed as another recorded announcement, this one in a more urgent tone, warned that the doors were being obstructed. Passengers standing inside the car shouted at him.
"Little help," Jake said over his shoulder.
Favreau dug his fingers between the doors and pried them open. He and Jake squeezed through. The doors hissed a final time and snapped shut. Other passengers glared at them. Jake heard someone behind him say, "Impatient motherfuckers." The train rolled. Jake stared out the window at the two suits sprinting across the platform. He reached into his pocket and wrapped his hand around the grip of the Beretta. The two men were just ten feet from the doors when the tunnel swallowed the train car.
The hot stares of resentment from the other passengers had mostly faded by the time the train reached the next stop three minutes later. Everybody had better things to worry about, Jake figured, than a couple guys jumping on the train late.
As the train pulled out of the Chinatown station, Jake said, "We're getting off at the next stop."
"Where are we going?" Favreau asked.
"My office."
Favreau nodded.
Two minutes later, the speakers announced the next stop, Judiciary Square. Jake's hand was still in his pocket holding the pistol. "You get off first," he whispered to Favreau.
"As you wish."
The train ground to a stop. The doors hissed and sprang open. Jake followed Favreau out of the car and up the escalator to 4th Street. "Which way?" Favreau asked.
Jake pointed north. They walked along the sidewalk.
"I was telling you the truth," Favreau said. "I shot President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963."
"Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy."
"You're right," Favreau said. "Oswald did shoot him. But he didn't kill him. I fired the last shot, the fatal one. From behind a fence on top of a small hill."
"The grassy knoll," Jake said, his voice cutting in its sarcasm. "You shot President Kennedy from the grassy knoll."
"That's what they called it later, yes."
"You're talking about the head shot."
"Yes."
"Why did you do it?" Jake asked. He just had to keep this nutjob talking until he could walk him into the heavily secured, fortress-like FBI Washington Field Office, which spanned the entire next block of 4th Street, between F and G streets.
"I was working for the CIA."