Eighty miles an hour. Speeding down an empty highway at eighty miles an hour, 6:45 on a chilly morning, bouncing around in the back seat of a small French taxi, his body tired and aching from a seven-hour night flight from Washington, D.C., to Orly Field in Paris. Shit, thought John Bolt, that’s just the good, news. The bad news is that the taxi was in midair—it had just hit a bump in the road—and all four wheels were off the ground. My ass, thought Bolt. The fucking Frenchman’s driving like he’s the Red Baron. In the seconds left to him before the taxi slammed back down into the highway, Bolt shoved his legs straight out, pressing hard against the base of the seat in front of him. Both hands were tightly entwined with a strap near the window on his right, the best white-knuckle grip the narc could come up with on short notice. Bolt was wide awake now. Oh yeah. Wham! The taxi banged into the highway, swerved into another lane, miraculously empty at this hour of the morning, and tires squealing, straightened out and kept speeding toward Paris.
