The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,153

of the corner. Bianca gasped, trying to hold herself in her seat as the Hyundai listed. No sign of the cops ahead, or in the mirror. He swung across to the left side of the road to overtake a couple of cars.

The sound in his ear became more frantic. The pattern had changed, now four beeps. Short, long, short, short . . .

Morse code!

Adam had already committed to turning right at the next crossroads as the realisation struck him, the lanes ahead full of traffic – but even as he made the move he knew it was a mistake. Morse code was obsolete, but he had still been trained in it, and some recess of his mind told him that the signal represented the letter L.

L for left.

‘Adam!’ cried Bianca, but he had already seen the danger. There was a police car dead ahead, running silent with strobes but no siren. It turned sideways to block their path. Parked cars lined both sides of the street, not enough space for him to get past.

Instead of braking, he accelerated—

Bianca screamed – but Adam was not planning to ram the obstruction. Instead he yanked the handbrake lever, simultaneously flicking the steering wheel to full right lock. The Hyundai’s tail end swung wide – and clipped the Crown Victoria’s front wing.

The impact threw Bianca against him. Metal crunched, the station wagon’s rear window bursting apart. But it was still driveable, smoke pouring from its front tyres as they scrabbled for grip. The Elantra’s mangled rear bumper was ripped from its body as it lurched away.

The police car started to follow – but didn’t get far.

Like a supermarket trolley with a bad castor, it suddenly veered off course and slammed into a stationary car. The Crown Victoria’s right front wheel bounced free and wobbled away down the street, the stub of the broken axle protruding from its hub.

Bianca recovered from her shock and looked back. ‘What – what happened? Why did they crash?’

‘I took out their front wheel,’ Adam told her.

‘You mean you deliberately hit them when you skidded?’ He nodded. ‘Where did you learn how to do that?’

‘I have no idea.’ The bleeper sounded in his ear again. Dot-dash-dot-dot: L. He turned the car back down the road along which they had come. ‘I’ll tell you what I do know, though – Holly Jo’s helping us.’

‘How?’

‘The beeper. She’s sending Morse code, telling me which way to go.’ Another message came through, this time three beeps. Dot-dash-dot: R. Right. He followed the instruction. Only normal traffic ahead.

‘You think Tony asked her?’

‘Yeah. And Levon, too – he must have hacked the lights at that intersection.’

‘So we’ll be able to get away from the cops?’

‘Not until we deactivate the tracker – and we need more of a lead to do that. But I think our chances just went up.’

‘From what baseline?’

‘You know when we jumped off the roof?’

She gave him a pained look. ‘How could I forget?’

‘The odds weren’t much better than if we’d jumped without the Mary Poppins.’

‘Oh. Now I see why you didn’t tell me any of this before we started.’

Another signal came through the bleeper, telling him to go left. Adam put the Hyundai through a tyre-torturing turn, listening for sirens. He heard one – but it was a few blocks away, fading with every moment.

Morgan glared up at the video wall. The map had turned into a bizarre version of Pac-Man, Washington’s streets representing the maze and the symbols of the pursuing vehicles the ghosts moving through it.

The green square was the avatar of the person playing the game. And at the moment, he was winning.

‘Damn it, he’s got past them!’ he growled, watching the square make another turn. The nearest MPD vehicle was now two blocks away from the fugitives, and heading in the wrong direction. ‘Tell the cops he’s heading north again! They’re reacting too slowly.’

‘They don’t have a live tracker feed,’ Tony reminded him.

‘It’s still not good enough.’ He glanced down the map. Unlike the police, the three STS vehicles did have real-time tracking of Adam’s position – and were closing on him remorselessly.

‘Take the next left,’ Baxter ordered from the passenger seat of the lead SUV. A map on his open laptop showed him exactly what those in the Bullpen were seeing. ‘He’s six blocks from us, going north. We should be able to intercept—’

He broke off as his phone rang. He had assigned a specific tone to this particular caller, and knew that no delay in answering