It turned out I was right; they were coming after me.
I'd just thought they'd give me more time before they did it. Three minutes out from the safe house, following Foreman Road, the reserve light for the gas tank lit up on the Civic's console. There was no tone, no warning buzzer, but there didn't need to be. It was a hard light to miss.
My first thought was that, in his haste to acquire a car, Illya had forgotten to check how much gas was in the tank. Then I thought that there was no way in hell that Dan would have permitted that kind of mistake, no way in hell he would have supplied me with an escape vehicle that wouldn't be able to manage my escape.
So maybe it was a fault in the console someplace, a short in the warning light or a skewed sensor in the tank.
I was willing to believe that, until I saw the headlights in the rearview mirror.
They were distant, maybe a hundred feet back, but riding high enough to throw reflected glare into the Civic. As I watched, the lights came closer, then held steady. Maybe fifty feet off. A good covering distance. Not so far away as to lose the target; not so close as to risk unnecessary exposure if the target did something unexpected, hit the brakes, for instance, or threw a U-turn.
I told myself that it didn't mean anything, that it was a public damn road, and that other vehicles would thus be using it. I told myself that, yes, while it was half past four in the morning and only assassins and their students and the people who protected them would be awake and up and about in the sleepy little Putnam County town of Cold Spring, that was no reason to become alarmed.
The Glock was on the seat beside me, wedged beneath the go-bag, and I reached over for it, moved it into my lap. The Civic was an automatic, and I took both hands off the wheel long enough to rack the slide, to make the pistol ready. Then I slid the barrel beneath my right thigh, on the outside, so my weight would keep it from bouncing around should I do anything to anger the Laws of Physics, but so I could grab it in a hurry if the need arose.
I had a very strong feeling that the need would arise very shortly.
The lights behind me were steady, still keeping their distance. The sky was playing in shades of black and blue, and I couldn't tell the make of the vehicle. From the height of the headlights, I guessed it was a pickup of some sort, or maybe an SUV.
That damn reserve light was still on, still warning me that I was low on fuel.
I felt my pulse begin to race.
If the tank had been tapped, punctured, or drained just enough to get me going but not enough to get me where I wanted to go, there was no telling what else had been done to the vehicle. No telling if a bug had been planted, if an explosive had been placed. That the car hadn't blown up when I'd started it was small consolation; it's easy enough to rig a charge in two phases, to prime when the engine starts, to detonate when it stops.
I didn't much like thinking that, because it meant that when the car died, I would, too.
There was a turn coming up, onto County Route 10, and I made the right, and when I did the lights behind me seemed to move closer, just a bit, as if whoever was handling the vehicle behind me wanted to keep me in sight.
We'd passed a Citgo station on the way to the safe house, in the direction I was currently heading. It couldn't be more than half a mile from where I was now. I'd noted it because there'd been nothing else around, just the pumps and a garage and a lot and the encroaching woods.
That was what threw the switch for me, and I saw it all so clearly then, saw it as if I had planned it myself. I was about to be ambushed; I was already being herded into the kill zone.
Whoever had planned this hadn't wanted to hit me at the safe house, and that made sense; there had been a lot of guns at the safe house, and it would have made taking me out difficult. So they'd let me get mobile, to isolate me, but they'd done so with an eye to controlling how far I could go, and where. With the reserve light on, of course I would stop at the first gas station I could find.
There would be two teams, then: one in the follow vehicle, to monitor my progress, to act as the stopper if I tried to reverse and double back to the safe house. The second team would be in position already, waiting at the gas station, but in contact with the first, in the follow vehicle. Maybe on radio, maybe on cell phones, it didn't matter. The point was, they would know I was coming, and they would be ready for it when I arrived.
Then I would turn into the station and roll up to the pumps, and before I could even get out of the Civic, the follow car would pull alongside and the team that had been waiting would emerge from their cover. They'd shoot into the vehicle from each of their directions, forming two cones of fire, and trapped in the Civic, I'd find myself unable to do anything but die.
I could see it as clearly as if I had planned it myself.
I could see, too, that there was no way to avoid it. I was already in the mouth. Passing the station by wouldn't free me from the teeth. The follow vehicle would simply keep me in sight, and the second team would catch up, and they'd either wait for the Civic to choke to a halt, or they'd force me off the road, then take me there. There were plenty of places they could do it, plenty of stretches with nothing but trees and darkness and nothing else. Worse, continuing on would only take me further from the safe house. I had to get back there, had to make certain that I was the only target.
The gas station came into view maybe a quarter of a mile ahead of me, to the left of the road. Sodium lamps shining orange through the trees, bathing the pumps beneath, turning the edges of the asphalt lot blue. I could see the darkened office, and beside it the darkened garage. The illuminated Citgo sign rose above the branches atop its pole, a shining marker for my designated grave.
In the rearview, the lights from the follow vehicle had grown brighter. The driver was closing the gap.
I slowed, signaled, and turned into the ambush.