The Chemist

“Lights!” he told her in the same moment she saw them. Headlights coming up the road toward them, moving closer fast.

“Goggles off! New plan. Hit them. Hard. Roll right over them if you can. Brace yourself, don’t lose control of the car.”

She grabbed the dash with one hand, her seat with the other. Daniel shoved the goggles to his forehead and floored the gas pedal. She wished there was a way to secure the dogs. They were going to feel this.

The other car didn’t react to their charge until the last second, like maybe its occupants had been watching behind them rather than out front. Or maybe, with the headlights and running lights off and the matte-black paint, the Humvee was mostly invisible in the night.

It was a midsize SUV, white. Once he saw them, the driver veered off to Alex’s right. Daniel jerked the wheel right and the Humvee plowed into the passenger side of the SUV with a deafening shriek of tearing metal and the explosive pop of safety glass crumpling. The dogs flew forward; a shower of metallic clanks and jangles sounded while Khan’s body crashed heavily into the back of both the driver’s and the passenger’s seats. Alex’s head whipped forward but missed the dashboard by inches when the seat belt yanked her back. The SUV flew a few feet away, tottered on two wheels for a second, then smashed, driver-side-first, into the ground. The passenger-side headlight burst with another explosion of glass. Khan and Einstein whimpered, falling back to the floor.

“Again!” she yelled.

Daniel slammed the front of the Humvee into the undercarriage of the SUV. Metal protested and squealed. The SUV slid across the flat yard like it weighed no more than a cardboard box. She could see they weren’t going to be able to roll it. There was nothing to push it against, just the endless grass.

“Cover me.” She snagged the goggles off his head. “Use the nightscope on the rifle. Einstein, come!”

Alex didn’t wait for a response. She was out of the Humvee before it was totally stopped. Einstein’s toenails scrabbled against the back of her wet jeans as he hurried to join her. She had to move fast, before the men in the car could recover from the impact. Before they could get their automatic weapons back into play.

She ran straight for the windshield, Glock held tight in both hands. She was better with the SIG Sauer, but this was going to be extremely close up and she would probably want to ditch the gun afterward.

Everything was incredibly clear through the lenses, bright green with vibrant contrasts. The driver-side headlight was still on but buried in the ground so it emitted only a low hazy glow in the dust they’d churned up. The windshield frame was entirely empty, and she could see two men in the front seats, two deflated airbags from the initial impact hanging across the hood. The driver was a bloody mess, the top of his head pressing tight against the side-door frame, his thick neck bent at an impossible angle. She could see one eye open, staring sightlessly at her. He looked young, early twenties, with ruddy skin, light hair, and the kind of over-built anatomy that screamed steroids. He might have been an agent, except the rest of his look was wrong. His hair was about eight inches long and there was an ostentatious diamond stud in the one earlobe she could see. She would bet he was hired muscle. He didn’t look like he’d been a decision maker.

The passenger was moving, his head wobbling confusedly as if he were just coming around. He was older than the other, maybe midthirties, and swarthy, with a thick three-day growth on his cheeks, burly through the middle in the way that men who lifted the really heavy weights sometimes were. She’d bet he was a bull on his feet. He was wearing a well-fitting shiny suit that seemed inappropriate for this kind of operation but rang a few bells for her. Still strapped in his seat, he was right about at her eye level. She approached swiftly and jammed the barrel of her gun into his forehead, glancing down to see what his hands were doing. They were currently empty and limp.

“Are you in charge?” she demanded.

“Huh?” he moaned.

“Who is your boss?”

“Accident. We’ve been in an accident, Officer,” he told her, blinking into the dark. His eyes seemed to be moving just slightly out of sync with each other.

She modified her approach, pulling the gun back and softening her voice. “Help is coming. I need to know how many of you there are.”

“Uh, six…”

That meant there were four more, possibly heading out toward the sound of the crash right now. At least the dogs were beginning to congregate around her, all of them on silent mode thanks to Einstein’s presence. She wondered if they would have remembered her if she were alone.

“Sir?” she asked, trying to imagine how a cop would speak to someone in a car accident. “Where are the others?”

“Hitchhikers,” he said, his rolling eyes starting to move more purposefully. “The others are hitchhikers. We picked up four men and dropped them off here. Then there were dogs – crazy dogs attacking us. I thought they were going to chew through the tires.”

He was gaining more control, spinning the story carefully. He made a fist, then released it. She raised the gun again and kept her eyes on his hands.

“Were these… hitchhikers hurt in the attack?”

“I think so. I think maybe two of them. The others went in the house.”

So hopefully there were only two others. But was this the guy in charge? The age was right; however, she’d picked up a few things during her time in Chicago. In an orchestrated hit, usually the guys left in the car were lower on the totem pole. The driver was secondary. The star of the show would be the one the contract was made with. The one with the skills.