Ned’s iPad with my finger until I could see the parking lot and the buildings and the name of the property owner.
“If he’s wounded, he’s in there!” I said. “It’s an animal hospital!”
“That is where the second call came from,” Rawlins said over our headsets. “Kerry Large Animal Hospital.”
Less than two minutes later, we circled high and well wide of the Kerry Animal Hospital. The tan van was gone, but the burgundy Toyota Camry was still there. We got an angle and binoculars on the license plate. It was the missing security guard’s car.
“Land right in the parking lot,” Mahoney said.
“We lose the surprise factor,” one of the SWAT agents said.
I said, “There was a tan panel van here when we flew by. I saw it. We need to know who or what’s in it.”
Mahoney said into his mike, “Cap, can you call Virginia State Police or the local sheriff? Get them to cordon off this area and look for a tan panel van? Don’t have a license plate.”
“Done,” Carstensen said.
The SWAT team went first, storming the veterinary hospital from all four sides.
They threw flash-bang grenades the second they were all in position and then went in.
Thirty seconds after they entered, our radios crackled with urgency.
“We’ve got two alive,” the SWAT team leader barked. “Goldberg and the vet. Rest of the place is clear.”
The pilot began to speak, but I cut him off.
“Get us back in the air!” I shouted. “We’ve got to find that van!”
CHAPTER
89
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING , Kristina Varjan was traveling north on County Road 610 in a black Audi Q5. She lowered the driver-side window and picked up a black Glock pistol with an after-market sound suppressor.
There was forest on both sides of the lightly traveled road. She waited until she could see a long empty stretch in the other lane before sliding the pistol out the window, resting the barrel on the side mirror, and stomping on the gas. The Audi roared and closed the gap between it and the tan van ahead of her in seconds.
Varjan knew she had one good chance of this working. If she missed the opportunity, the equation changed, tilted against her.
She drove up behind the van and weaved slightly right, toward the shoulder of the road, giving her a good look at the van’s rear tires. Varjan shot them both out with hollow-point bullets.
She slammed on her brakes. The van swerved hard into the other lane, tires smoking as they disintegrated. The van’s back end swung around almost a hundred and eighty degrees.
Varjan saw the horrified look on the driver’s face before the van careered sideways off the far shoulder. It had smashed and rolled over twice before she brought the Audi to a screeching stop. The assassin jumped from her car and sprinted across the narrow road and down the short embankment.
There was tire smoke in the air, but no smell of spilling gas, so she went straight to the van, which had landed more or less upright. The roof and side door were partially caved in. Blood dripped down the driver’s face as he lifted his head to look at her.
“Help,” he said.
She shot him between the eyes.
Varjan moved down the side of the van and around the back, seeing one door shut and the other almost torn off. Gun up, she looked inside and saw the ruins of a full ambulance setup. A woman was sprawled on the floor by an overturned gurney. She was bleeding and struggling to move. Varjan shot her through the top of her head before checking behind the closed door.
No one.
She heard a soft thump and a twig snapping. She jerked back, then took two cautious steps toward the opposite side of the van, where the sounds had come from. When she took a quick peek, she saw nothing but burned brush and the edge of the woods.
She pivoted back the other way, but it was too late.
Quiet as a leopard, Cruz had slipped up behind her, and now he stuck the muzzle of his pistol against her forehead.
“You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you, Varjan?”
CHAPTER
90
ROUTE 17, SOUTHEAST toward the town of Brera and I-95, was my best guess of where the president’s assassin was headed. Mahoney thought so too.
But when we lifted off, we immediately saw a plume of black smoke rising above the forest canopy not far to the northeast. Give credit to Ned’s instincts. He told the pilot to check it out before we went