Prologue
A Death on Rock Creek
One
HE CHANGED IDENTITY LIKE MANY warriors do before battle. He called
himself Mercury on nights like these.
Dressed in black from his visor helmet to his steel-toe boots,
Mercury had his motorcycle backed up into a huge rhododendron
bush by the Rock Creek Parkway south of Calvert Street.
He sat astride the idling bike and cradled a U.S. Army surplus
light detection and ranging device. He trained the lidar
on every vehicle that went past him, checking its speed.
All sorts of people seemed obsessed by it. One try every
three nights, Mercury thought. But tonight, the odds were
even better than average.
Forty-five miles an hour, on the money. Forty-four. Fiftytwo.
Routine stuff. Safe numbers. Boring numbers.
Mercury was hoping to see a more exotic and inflated figure
on the screen. He had good reason to believe a bloated number
like that would appear before this night was over. He was certainly
in the right place for it.
Built in the 1920s, Rock Creek Parkway had been designed
to preserve the natural scenic beauty of the area. The winding
four-lane road ran from the Lincoln Memorial north through parks, gardens, and woods. It was 2.9 miles long and split in Northwest DC. Beach Drive, the right fork, headed northeast,
deeper into the park. The parkway itself continued on to the
left and curled back northwest to the intersection with Calvert
Street.
Forty-three miles an hour, according to the lidar display.
Forty-seven. Forty-five.
These numbers were not surprising. The parkway was on
the National Register of Historic Places and was maintained
by the National Park Service; it had a set speed limit of fortyfive
miles an hour.
But the parkway’s meandering route was about as close to a
Grand Prix circuit as you could find in or around the District
of Columbia. Elongated S curves, chicanes, a few altitude
changes, straightaways that ran down the creek bottom— they
were all there, and the road was almost twice the length of the
fabled Grand Prix course at Watkins Glen, New York.
That alone makes it a target, Mercury thought. That alone says someone will try. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the night after.
He’d read an article in the Washington Post that said that on
any given night, the odds were better than one in three that
some rich kid or an older prick sucking big-time off the federal
teat would bring out the new Porsche or the overhorsed
BMW and take a crack at Rock Creek. So might the suburban
kid who’d snuck out the old man’s Audi, or even a middle-aged
mom or two.
All sorts of people seemed obsessed by it. One try every
three nights, Mercury thought. But tonight, the odds were
even better than average.
A few days ago, a budget crisis had closed the U.S. government.
All funding for park law enforcement had been frozen. No salaries were being paid. Park rangers had been sent home for liability reasons. There was no one looking but him.
Hours went by. Traffic slowed to a trickle, and still Mercury
aimed the lidar gun and shot, read the verdict, and waited. He
was nodding off at a quarter to three that morning and thinking
that he should pack it in when he heard the growl of a big-bore
engine turning onto the parkway from Beach Drive.
On that sound alone, Mercury’s right hand shot out and
fired up the bike. His left hand aimed the lidar at the growl,
which became a whining, buzzing wail of fury coming right at
him.
Eighty miles per hour; ninety. The Maserati’s brake lights
flashed in front of him as the parkway came out of the big easterly
curve.
The instant he had headlights, he hit the trigger.
Seventy-two miles an hour.
He tossed the lidar into the rhododendrons. He’d return for
it later.
The Maserati blew by him.
Mercury twisted the accelerator and popped the clutch. He
blasted out of the rhododendrons, flew off the embankment,
and landed with a smoking squeal in the parkway not a hundred
yards behind the Italian sports car.
Two
THE MASERATI WAS BRAND-NEW, sleek, black; a Quattroporte, Mercury
thought, judging by the glimpse he had gotten of the car
as it roared past him, and probably an S Q5.
Mercury studied such exotic vehicles. A Maserati Quattroporte
S Q5 had a turbo-injected six-cylinder engine with a top
speed of 176 miles per hour, and it boasted brilliant transmission,
suspension, and steering systems.
Overall, the Maserati was a worthy opponent, suited to the
parkway’s challenges. The average man or woman might think
a car like that would be impossible to best on such a demanding
course, especially by a motorcycle.
The average person would be wrong.
Mercury’s bike was a flat-out runner of a beast that could
hit 190 miles an hour and remain nimble through curves,
corkscrews, and every other twist, turn, and terrain change a
road might throw at you. Especially if you knew how to drive a
high-speed motorcycle, and Mercury did. He had been driving fast bikes his entire life and felt uniquely suited to bring this
one up to speed.
Eighty miles per hour; ninety. The Maserati’s brake lights
flashed in front of him as the parkway came out of the big easterly
curve. But the driver of the Italian sports car was not set
up for the second turn of a lazy and backward S.
Mercury pounced on the rookie mistake; he crouched low,
gunned the bike, and came into the second curve on a high
line, smoking-fast and smooth. When he exited the second
curve, he was right on the Maserati’s back bumper and going
seventy-plus.
The parkway ran a fairly true course south for nearly a
mile there, and the Italian sports car tried to out-accelerate
Mercury on the straight. But the Maserati was no match for
Mercury’s custom ride.
He drafted right in behind the sports car, let go of the left
handlebar, and grabbed the Remington 1911 pistol Velcroed to
the gas tank.
Eighty-nine. Ninety.
Ahead, the parkway took a hard, long left turn. The
Maserati would have to brake. Mercury decelerated, dropped
back, and waited for it.
The second the brake lights of the Italian sports car flashed,
the motorcyclist hit the gas and made a lightning-quick jagging
move that brought him right up next to the Maserati’s
passenger-side window. No passenger.
Mercury got no more than a silhouette image of the driver
before he fired at him twice. The window shattered. The bullets
hit hard.
The Maserati swerved left, smacked the guardrail, and spun
back toward the inside lane just as Mercury’s bike shot ahead and out of harm’s way. He downshifted and braked, getting ready for the coming left turn.
In his side-view mirror, he watched the Maserati vault the
rail, hit trees, and explode into fire.
Mercury felt no mercy or pity for the driver.
The sonofabitch should have known that speed kills.
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