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There’s no time. Just do it.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Pendergast sprinted back to his car and laid a hundred yards of rubber getting back up to speed, leaving the state trooper sitting in a blue cloud.
    By four o’clock Pendergast was past Macon, arrowing due south. Cars, road signs, scenery passed by in brief smudges of color. Suddenly, coming around a bend, he saw a line of red brake lights ahead: two semis were driving abreast, crawling up a hill, the one on the left trying to pass the one on the right by inching ahead up the rise, slowing everyone behind—a despicable act on a two-lane freeway.
    Driving once again on and off the shoulder, flashing his lights, Pendergast passed the series of cars until he was directly behind the left-hand truck. It studiously ignored the blasts of his horn and the flashing of lights—if anything, it seemed to slow a little, out of spite.
    The freeway curved to the right, and—as often happened—the truck in the slow lane began to drift into the shoulder. Pendergast used this opportunity to move himself back into the left-hand shoulder. As he anticipated, the trucker in front of him moved left as well,to block his passage. This was his chance. He decelerated slightly, then—switching the transmission into manual mode—he yawed abruptly right into the gap created between the two trucks, using his paddle shifters to scream from fifty miles per hour to ninety in three seconds, darting past the trucks and shooting forward onto the empty freeway ahead. He was rewarded by twin angry blasts of air horns.
    He drove on without stopping, occasionally moving into the left or right shoulder to pass vehicles, honking and flashing his lights at the more recalcitrant drivers, sometimes terrifying them into changing lanes by coming up behind them at high speed and not braking until the last possible moment. By five thirty he was past Valdosta and crossing the border into Florida.
    He knew that the most direct route was problematic—heading as it did through Orlando and its tangle of clogged, tourist-filled interchanges—so instead he turned east on I-10, making for the Atlantic coast. It was a less-than-satisfactory alternative, but it was nevertheless the one with the greatest probability of success. At Jacksonville, he turned south again onto I-95.
    Outside Daytona Beach, he stopped for gas, flinging a hundred-dollar bill at the surprised attendant and screeching off without waiting for change.
    As the evening lengthened, the traffic on the freeway began to thin, and the long-haul trucks drove faster. Pendergast dodged between them—top down, the night wind helping to keep him awake—pushing the vehicle harder. Titusville, Palm Bay, and Jupiter shot past, mere blurs of light. As he came into Boca Raton, he activated the GPS system and punched in his destination.
    He had covered the distance at an average of one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour.
    Pettermars Executive General Airport was located ten miles west of Coral Springs, carved out of the eastern flanks of the Everglades. As he approached it through the sprawling Fort Lauderdale suburbs, Pendergast could make out a small tower, a set of wind socks, the twinkle of runway lights.
    Five minutes to nine. The airport runway came into view, beyond a ragged field of switchgrass. A single-engine, six-seater propeller plane was warming up outside the closest hangar.
    Pendergast pulled in front of the FBO with a squeal of brakes, sprang from the car, and ran as fast as his limp would allow into the low, yellow-painted building.
    “Where is that plane headed?” he asked the lone airport administrator behind the desk, pulling out his shield. “It’s an FBI emergency.”
    The man hesitated only a moment. “They filed a flight plan to Cancun.”
    Cancun. Probably a false destination. However, it indicated the plane was headed south, over the border.
    “Any other flights scheduled for this evening?”
    “A Lear, incoming from Biloxi in ninety