Hard Fall [antikvár]

CAM DAGGETT SHOOK his watch, questioning its accuracy, and glanced a quarter-mile ahead at the dirty, exhaust-encrusted sign that indicated the lane change for National Airport. Heat waves rose in fluid sheets from the pavement, distorting the distance, carrying gray exhaust into the canopy of smog. Given this traffic, they would never make it in time. News radio explained that the congestion was the result of a three-car pileup with injury. Daggett checked the rearview mirror, wondering if he could pull some stunt with the car. He feared that if he didn't, there might be a hell of a lot more injury to come. And it wouldn't be a few cars on a highway; it would be the burning hulk of an airliner spread over several acres. "What about a helicopter? We could call for a helicopter." The big man on the seat next to him mopped his forehead and said nothing. Daggett's anxiety threatened again. He felt boxed in. By the traffic. By this obese man sitting next to him. He could feel his hair turning gray. A yellow hamburger wrapper replete with golden arches fluttered like a bird with a broken wing and dove into traffic, adhering to the side of a Mercedes where it smeared catsup across the side panel doors like blood from an open wound. He felt wounded, too, if pride could be wounded. Marcel Bernard had escaped FBI surveillance six days earlier in Los Angeles. Now, through a fluke, a stroke of luck, they had the