The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,150

or whatever, they’ll still know where we are. It won’t take them long to find us.’

‘That’s why you’ll have to work fast.’

‘At what?’

He glanced at the bag. ‘There’s an emergency surgical kit in there. I need you to cut me open and disable the tracker.’

She gawped at him. ‘You couldn’t have told me all this before we jumped off the roof?’

‘Would it have changed your mind about helping me?’

‘It might! I’m a neurochemist, not a surgeon!’

‘I’ll tell you what to do.’ He swerved the car on to the wrong side of the road to overtake some slow-moving traffic, then skidded through an intersection, eyes scanning the street ahead.

‘Everything’s back online,’ Levon reported, checking a system diagnostic on one of his monitors. The video wall lit up again, showing the views from various STS security cameras.

The images were well behind the action, however. ‘They did what?’ Morgan barked, listening to a call on his cell phone.

‘They jumped off the roof!’ reported the leader of the security team. ‘They used one of those trick umbrellas to land in a tree, then took some woman’s car.’

‘Did you get the licence plate?’

‘We couldn’t see it from up here. Some sort of station wagon, light blue, fairly old.’ He paused as someone spoke to him. ‘Thomson thinks it’s a Hyundai. They went south down 20th, then turned east.’

‘Hook us into the DC traffic cameras,’ Morgan barked to Levon. ‘We’re looking for a light blue station wagon, heading east.’ He turned to Baxter, who had just arrived and received a rapid briefing from Tony. ‘John, get your team and go after him. The Admiral wants you to handle this personally. I’ll link you in with DC police.’

‘On it,’ said Baxter. He took out his own phone as he hurried to an exit. ‘Spence! Get the guys geared up and down to the parking garage – we’re moving out!’

‘You’re sending our tac team after him?’ asked Tony. Holly Jo also looked concerned.

‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ said Kiddrick, face tight with anger, ‘he attacked me and stole classified information! Then he wrecked half the building while resisting arrest!’

Tony ignored him. ‘You are going to try to capture them, right?’ he said to Morgan. ‘Not shoot them on sight? We need to find out why Adam’s done this.’

‘That’s what I’m going to ask him, right now,’ Morgan replied as he donned a headset. ‘Holly Jo, patch me through to Adam.’

She entered commands. ‘You’re on, sir.’

‘Adam! Whatever it is you’re doing, I want you to—’

Holly Jo shook her head. ‘Sorry, sir. He’s turned off the earwig.’

‘Damn it,’ Morgan muttered. He went to her workstation. ‘Use the alert bleeper, see if that gets his attention.’ She pushed the button, but there was no response.

‘Do we have the tracker?’ Tony asked.

‘Yes,’ Holly Jo told him. Another flurry of commands. ‘Putting it on the wall.’

A block of screens switched to a map of Washington. A green square appeared on the street grid, heading across the city. It was already several blocks from the STS building.

‘I’m tied in with Metro,’ Levon announced, pudgy fingers rattling across his keyboard. More markings appeared on the map. ‘We’ve got live LoJack trackers of all the MPD patrol cars in the city.’

‘The nearest one’s four blocks from him,’ said Kyle.

‘Holly Jo, link in with the police and give them Adam’s position,’ Morgan ordered. ‘But tell them just to corral them, not arrest them – I want our people to make the capture. Maybe we can find out what the hell’s going on.’

Kiddrick stared at the green square as it turned north at an intersection. ‘Where’s he going? Is he trying to get out of the city?’

‘No, he’s trying to find cover,’ said Tony. ‘He knows we can track him – so he’ll be looking for somewhere to block the signal so he can disable it.’

‘How can he do that?’ Kiddrick demanded. ‘The tracker’s implanted in his body!’

There was a brief silence as the answer came to everyone simultaneously. ‘Ew, gross,’ said Holly Jo, wrinkling her nose. ‘I hope he’s got some Band-Aids.’

Morgan crossed to Kyle’s workstation. ‘Have we got a drone available?’

‘Yeah, one of the new ones,’ the younger man told him.

‘Get it in the air. When Adam goes to ground, I want us to have eyes on every possible exit from his location. We can’t let him get away.’

While Morgan was talking, Tony went to Holly Jo and leaned over her shoulder. ‘Do you trust Adam?’ he whispered.

‘Of course I do,’ she answered, surprised. ‘Tony . .