and spun it around, giving his men the signal to move out. Swiftly and silently, they powered down the LRAD and covered it up before pulling away and heading out as innocuously as they’d arrived, shadowing the van from a safe distance and looking forward to finally going home.
Chapter 54
Bedford, Massachusetts
The man kept the gun pressed against Matt’s temple. “Easy.” His voice was flat, his arm stable. With his left hand, he reached down to Matt’s lap and pulled out his gun, which he stuffed under his belt. Matt cursed inwardly. He’d been so focused on watching the plane and Maddox that he hadn’t noticed the man sneaking up on them from the back. Another guy—same general appearance, dark suit, white shirt, no tie, granite-dark shades—appeared a few yards ahead, rounding the other side of the outbuilding, moving toward Jabba’s side of the car. He also had a gun out, and it was also leveled at Matt’s head. A big gun. A Para-Ordnance P14. It looked heavy. It looked like it could stop a charging rhino in its tracks. Which it could.
Matt’s mind rocketed into a manic good news/bad news sift-through. Maddox’s drones couldn’t really kill them there and then; the airport authorities had to have a record of their being there, there had to be some CCTV cameras scattered around that would have recorded their presence. It was altogether too messy for them, too risky, had to be. Which definitely went under the good news column. But they had plenty of other options. The key was getting him and Jabba off the airport grounds, quietly. They’d either lead them to their cars, or—the cleaner, more obvious option—one of the drones, or both of them more likely, would get into the Camry and lead him and Jabba, at gunpoint, to somewhere nice and quiet where they could pump a few bullets into them and leave their decomposing bodies for some hapless camper to discover. Which definitely went under the bad news column. Matt knew that if he let one or both of the drones into the car, he probably wouldn’t be running these good news/bad news exercises ever again. Which in itself wasn’t a bad thing, but he did feel like sticking around for other, less life-threatening, pursuits.
It was simple. He couldn’t let them into the car.
Which meant he probably had no more than a couple of seconds left to do something about it.
Matt’s hands and feet moved like lightning. His left hand shot up and grabbed the man’s right wrist—his gun hand—and slammed it forward, crushing it against the inside of the A-pillar. A shot erupted out of it—a deafeningly loud explosion inside the car, a mere eighteen inches from Matt’s face. He felt like he’d slammed face-first into a swimming pool. The shot’s sound wave hit him like a lead fist that pounded both ears and numbed them into a soundless, disconcerting stillness in the same split second that the .45 ACP round obliterated the rearview mirror and punched through the windshield, a clean, supersonic jab that didn’t shatter it but only spiderwebbed it around the bullet’s clean, oval-shaped hole of an exit point.
Matt thought he heard Jabba yell out, but he couldn’t be sure. He felt like he was still underwater, and besides, he wasn’t focusing on him. The other guy was more his concern. So in the same instant that he shoved the first shooter’s hand forward and jammed it against the windshield pillar, his right foot stamped on the gas pedal and his right hand twisted the wheel to the right. The car lunged forward and slewed right—straight at the second shooter. The guy to his left jerked backward, but Matt had his elbow locked and managed to keep the guy’s gun hand pinned against the pillar long enough for the car to cover the three yards to the second shooter and slam into him before he had the chance to loose a shot, crushing him against the low metal fence that jutted out from the side of the outbuilding. The shooter’s midsection was pulverized—his eyes popped wide and he let out a piercing yelp of agony before a gush of blood overwhelmed his vocal cords and came spewing out of his mouth and onto the Camry’s virgin-white hood.
Matt still had the first guy to deal with. For a second, the guy’s face went rigid with shock at seeing his coworker truncated, then he was all crunched up with renewed determination as he fought Matt’s