The getaway van was speeding along some country road Zinio couldn't say that he recognized, although he was the one at the wheel.  

Delaney cried into her handkerchief, and blew her nose, as Charles finished recounting the tale of what went on in the bank lobby. "You see what happens when you show a little love?" she said, directing her comment at Zinio. "Everything goes your way." 

Zinio heard police sirens.  

He looked out the side view mirror at the cops gaining on them. "Charles handles Harper's private parts in public-something I've been dying to do incidentally..." 

"Zinio!" Harper cried. 

"Not your private parts, honey, Delaney's." 

"Zini?" Harper interjected. 

"Yes, darling." 

"I have to pee." 

"Can you give me a minute, hon, to figure out how to possibly fit that request in-in the middle of a life and death chase?!" 

Delaney kicked his seat from behind. Zinio warmed himself in the chill air on the steam coming out of his ears. 

"Try and appreciate the little things," she said. "Like the reprieve we had up until now." 

"When we came out of the sewer lines dressed like Ma and Pa Kettle, they lost us, and had no reason to suspect we weren't still on the West coast."  

He noticed a wooden dining chair with a hole in the middle of the seat from rot by the roadside up ahead. It was part of the outdoor flea market cum junk yard into which the owner had turned his property. He brought the van to a stop, tires squealing. 

Stepping out of the van, Zinio plopped the chair down in the middle of the road, lit a cigarette. "Mason, can you take care of the rest for me?" he said, raising his voice to the rest of the van crew. 

"Sure Zini!" Mason eased his wife out of the van and onto the chair as Zinio walked down the middle of the street in the direction of the cops. 

* * *

From inside the New York City police precinct, Ms. Pierce eyed the giant floor-to-ceiling monitor she was standing in front of. Zinio, standing in the middle of the street, was visible through the video camera of the lead police chase car. "Unbelievable." 

"We got him now," Carter said. "There's no way he's outrunning those police cars in that van, assuming the guy isn't just surrendering. It's not like he's driving away." 

"He's not surrendering," Kerry said. 

"Even if he can get that van in gear in time, there aren't any side roads to duck down." Carter's voice had gone up an octave betraying his own lack of confidence in his assertions. "Just one long straightaway. Hell, even finding a decent outhouse in Hickville there do duck behind is a stretch." 

"Yeah, his goose is cooked," Sam said chiming in finally. 

They weren't getting anything off Ms. Pierce; she just stared rather noncommittally at the monitor. By now, the rest of the team had abandoned their stations and were all jockeying for a front seat view of the big screen. Some of the agents were standing on chairs to see over the heads of those in the front row.  

The betting and exchanging of money had already started on whether Zinio and Delaney would manage to extricate themselves from this one. Sam, the oldest one in the room, had been elected to hold the money, possibly because they all thought he harkened back to an age where people still had principles, and weren't complete sociopaths. He was struggling to keep track of the bets with his pencil and paper on the back of the manila envelope someone had handed him for holding the different denomination dollar bills. Carter jumped into help him with tracking the figures, not because he was good with numbers per se, but because he wanted to make sure he got his share of the winnings. "All right, guys," he said. "Easy, easy. I can only write so fast. First of all, anyone betting against this guy?" All he heard were groans. "Ooh, hope Ms. Pierce was able to take that on the chin," he mumbled. "Doesn't show much faith in her." Carter looked around the room. "Come on, guys. Someone's got to bet against him, or there's like zero odds." 

Kerry smiled. Let them have their fun. This was going to be one bitch of an investigation. And there wouldn't be many chances like this to let off steam. "I'll put a couple paychecks down against him." 

The chorus of whoops was almost deafening. She didn't think she was going to win. She just needed to give them a chance to win at something against her.  

* * * 

Zinio eyed the flat rural terrain for miles around, scarcely a building in sight; forget about side streets to duck down. Hell, he'd settle for a tree to climb at this point. Maybe Delaney does have a point about better planning, Zini. He picked up the spent motor oil along the roadway (more treasure from the junk yard), pouring it over the asphalt. He kept an eye on the chair behind him. 

Harper peed to sounds of relief. 

The speeding cops span out of control, whizzing around the van on either side into the dirt field. The ones that overcorrected their steering wheels ended up with their cars upturned. The ones managing to keep their cars upright were bogged in the mud, their tires spinning. 

Harper grabbed a hanki out of the cop's pocket as the latest car went spinning by her, turning three hundred sixty degrees with the driver's feet smashed against the brakes, and the driver's window down. The car missed embossing her on the door beside the Sheriff's logo by an inch, tops.  

She handed the hanki to Mason, who wiped her privates. Zinio was getting a sense of where Charles learned the routine from now. 

Mason hurried Harper back into the car. 

"What's all the noise about?" she asked. 

Mason surveyed the upturned cop cars to either side of the road, the rest of the cops closing in. "I'll explain later." 

The couple climbed back in the van. 

The cops with their cars immobilized and their doors stuck, whether upside down or right side up, found they could still shoot just fine from their windows. Lucky for Zinio, none of them had a good angle on the van. Luckier still, they were going for the easy target-the broad side panels of the van-and ignoring the tires; the sucker's bet. 

The getaway vehicle in motion again, Delaney said, "I can't believe those nice people back at the bank turned us in." 

"No, this is something else." Zinio continued to keep his eyes partly directed at the side view mirrors. "To keep such relentless close-order tabs on us you need access to citywide camera grids, satellite surveillance for these rural settings, teams of analysts who can quickly throw together pertinent information-like how much the weight of bank loot can affect the front suspension of a car..." 

"The FBI's most wanted?" Rita said, connecting the dots. 

"Zini!" Mason exclaimed. "That takes real talent. I knew you were good. I didn't realize you were that good." 

"Did we bring champagne?" Charles said, checking the bags. "We need to celebrate properly." 

"Seriously," Harper said. "We knew we were signing up for excitement. We just didn't know we'd struck the mother lode." Mason stroked his wife in back of her neck, happy she had bleeped back into reality again. 

Just not the reality I had in mind, Zinio thought, taking a deep breath. 

He still had a long stretch before any kind of turn off, and a bunch of cops gaining on him.  

"You picked the one road where you can see a getaway car for a hundred miles?" Delaney said. 

"Yeah, now's a good time to harangue me." Zinio's hands squeezed the steering wheel and he huffed. 

Delaney zipped it. 

"No, I mean it," Zinio said. "Now's a good time to pick on me because I'm out of ideas." 

"I won't lower myself to this idea that you can only think under pressure from me. My comments are part of a behavior modification program, not a behavior entrenchment program." 

Zinio let out a primal scream and banged the steering wheel. "That's it!" 

He got up and crawled his way to the back of the van, right over his passengers. 

"Don't look now, but no one's driving," Charles said. 

"Don't you dare stoop to the bait," Delaney said, ignoring the empty driver's seat. Zinio flung the backdoors of the van open and took advantage of the slowing van, which the cops weren't expecting, and threw one of Charles's wheel chairs-the one he must have had before he bought the motorized one-at the lead car. The driver overcorrected, flipping the car, and triggering a three car pileup. That still left three more cars. 

Zinio climbed back over the passengers, who winced at being treated like bags of potatoes, giving Delaney a peck on the cheek, as he passed her. "Thanks for that, hon. Just what the doctor ordered."  

Delaney kept her face like stone, and her arms crossed, more than a little pissed she was proving his point for him about the haranguing as opposed to the effects she had been seeking all along.  

Zinio crawled back into the driver's seat, stepping on the accelerator to get them back up to a respectable speed again. Now what to do about those last three police cars? He thought, checking his side view mirrors. They'd slowed long enough to check on their chums, but they'd clearly since been given the go-aheads to resume the chase, and were once again gaining fast.  

Adjusting his speed to give the lead driver coming up behind him a fighting chance at surviving, and to arrive at his target at the precisely calculated time, he started honking madly. Ten seconds later when he swerved out of the way at the last moment there wasn't much the cop behind him could do but crash headlong into the tractor still moving at five miles an hour. The two behind him caught the back of the first police car, and flipped end over end, both just missing the tractor. The farmer, at the side of the road looked pissed; but his old tractor didn't look the least bit damaged. He must have made the same assessment because he jumped back on the tractor and got back to his business at hand, driving off at the same five miles per hour. Zinio saw him raise his ten gallon hat to the cops as he passed them by. It was possible the old tractor was stuck in first gear and there wasn't much he could do until he reached his destination or ran out of gas, and the ignition was shot, and he wasn't going to mess with the handiwork of whoever had hotwired him. It was just as possible he didn't like cops, so couldn't be bothered to stop for them, being as this was Marlboro country.  

* * *

Kerry kept her smile even and neutral, if a bit forced, as the office exploded in whoops around her at the sight of the bank robbers making a clean break for it in the getaway van. "You gave them that, didn't you?" Sam said to her quietly off to the side, noticing she'd returned to her station ahead of the rest of them.  

"We all need a win once in a while, Sam. Good to see your detective radar is getting sharper. It's going to have to get a lot sharper still to help me catch this guy." 

"You sure he's all that? Could just be lucky." 

"Nobody's this lucky this often." 

"Hey, there are people who've won the big lotto not once, but twice." He held out two fingers. 

She smiled. "I don't need a win so soon, Sam. But I appreciate the gesture. Now, why don't you settle the others down and help them get back to work." 

"Me? I'm not FBI. Besides, you have Milos for that." 

"Don't look now, but around me they know respect is earned, it isn't given." 

"You think I'm better than all those guys? No, I don't think so. What's this really about? Oh wait, I get it. You think I'm better at getting inside your head than they are, so that means I might just be better at getting in the heads of the bank robbers than they are." 

"Like I said, Sam. You keep up the good work." 

"While do I feel like it's better to make the America's Most Wanted list than the America's Most Hated list around here?" 

"Trust those instincts, Sam," she said giggling. "They'll take you places." 

Sam straightened his shirt and turned to face the room. "All right, you sorry excuses for FBI agents. Get your asses back to work. We have two criminals to catch, and so far, we're doing a piss poor job of it." 

There was dead silence, a brief hesitation as everyone wondered if to take him seriously. That lasted all of two seconds, before everyone was scrambling for their stations.