Larry Bond - Vortex

” Ho, man, we’ve got some trouble up here.” The driver sounded suddenly tense.

“A verdomde riot starting, maybe. “

Rhythmic, shouted chants filtered in from the outside, building slowly in volume as they were repeated over and over again. Ian craned his neck out into the middle of the van’s passenger compartment, trying to see through the front windshield.

Traffic along Market Street was at a standstill. The cars and trucks in front of them were jammed in bumper to bumper-unable to go forward and unable to reverse. Farther ahead, thousands of angry demonstrators milled around in front of the police station. Dozens of colorful banners and posters waved over the crowd, rising and falling in time with their chanting.

“Shit.” Still holding the shotgun, the big policeman heaved himself to his feet and stood hunched over, staring through the windshield.

“We’ll never get through that blery mess. We’ll have to try the back-“

Ian saw his chance and took it.

He rocketed off the bench, trying to ram the top of his head under the policeman’s out thrust chin and up. He wanted to slam the Afrikaner’s own head squarely into the van’s metal ceiling. It was just the kind of crazy stunt he’d seen work in films. The only trouble was, making such a move work in real life would take perfect positioning and even more perfect timing. Too late, Ian realized that he didn’t have either.

The adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream seemed to slow time itself.

The policeman saw him lunging upward and yanked his head backward, twisting right and away from him. At the same time, he swung his shotgun around through a narrow arc. Not far. Just far enough so that Ian’s head grazed the shotgun’s steel barrel instead of his vulnerable chin.

Red-hot pain blossomed. Jesus. He stumbled back against the bench.

The guard kept spinning to his right, trying to slam the butt of his shotgun into Ian’s exposed stomach.

React! Counter! Trained reflexes took over when conscious thought seemed to crawl. Everything around him blurred to a halt-an image held frozen in time between the blink of an eye.

The big policeman’s left leg was now straight, bearing all his considerable weight as he pivoted right with the shotgun poised for a crippling blow.

Perfect.

In one strangely calm corner of his mind, Ian remembered a dry academic voice saying, “The human knee, Mr. Sheffield, is a marvelously fragile mechanism. Momentum and the proper application of mass can maim any man-no matter how big or strong he might be.”

Without thinking, he rocked back on his own left foot,

spinning sideways to the left. His right foot came up as though he were pedaling a bike. Now! He kicked out and down with vicious speed and force.

His right foot smashed home two finger widths’ above the policeman’s left knee and kept going. With a sickening, audible crack, the policeman’s leg snapped like a dried stick. The big man flopped forward against the bench and screamed in sudden agony.

Ian stumbled against the van’s rear door, thrown off-balance by his kick and by a painful, glancing blow from the shotgun butt. He could see the smaller, darker-haired policeman clawing for his pistol. No, damn it!

He tried to turn, already knowing he wouldn’t make it.

Emily exploded into action. She scooped up the injured policeman’s fallen shotgun, snapped the safety off, and had it aimed squarely at the driver’s face before he had his own weapon more than halfway out of the holster.

Time accelerated back to its normal speed.

“Don’t tempt me, meneer. ” Emily’s voice was calm, even cold.

“I will not hesitate.”

The driver paled, and he dropped the pistol as though it were scalding hot.

Ian winced at the pain pounding through his head and turned to the other guard. No problem there. The beefy South African lay where he’d first fallen, cradling his broken leg in both hands. And Matthew Sibena had his feet planted firmly on the man’s throat-ready to step down hard at the slightest sign of trouble.

Ian could feel his pulse starting to slow to something near normal. He grinned at Emily and took a shaky breath.

“Jeez. Remind me not to ever piss you off on a date!”

She glanced down at the shotgun gripped tightly in both her hands and looked up with a somewhat shamefaced grin of her own.

“My father insisted

I learn about firearms when I was a small girl. But I must admit that I never thought such knowledge would be useful.”

Ian started to laugh. He had the strangest feeling that Marius van der

Heijden wouldn’t be at all happy to learn how well his daughter had learned her lessons.

TOP STAR DRIVE-IN, JOHANNESBURG

The minivan was as isolated as any vehicle could possibly be in the middle of a vast, modern metropolis. More than one hundred meters of empty, oil-stained gravel stretched in all directions-empty except for row after row of splintered wooden posts holding detachable speakers. Giant, off-white movie screens and a high fence blocked any view from the houses and small office buildings around. Even more important, trains roaring along a railroad line to the south and trucks grinding their way along a motorway to the north should muffle any noises made by the two handcuffed policemen locked away in the van.

Ian slammed the van’s windowless rear door shut, pointedly ignoring the smaller policeman’s hate-filled glare. The other cop lay still, driven into unconsciousness by the pain from his broken leg.

“Got everything?”

Matthew Sibena nodded eagerly and held out the assortment of paper money, coins, and identification cards they’d filched from the two policemen.

Ian noticed that the young man’s hands were still shaking. Well, he thought wryly, so are mine.

“And their weapons?”

Sibena answered by silently pointing toward the rusting trash Dumpster backed against the drive-in theater’s small cinder-block concession stand.

“Good.” Ian had vetoed the idea of taking the pistols or shotgun along when it became clear that neither of the two police uniforms would fit him. They were going to be conspicuous enough as it was without walking around in civilian clothes while armed to the teeth.

“Ian! Come take a look at this!”

He followed Emily’s voice around to the front of the minivan. She stood motionless by the open passenger-side door, pointing to a piece of paper taped to the dashboard.

She shook her head in disbelief.

“My God! So that’s how they found us!”

“Huh?” Ian looked over her shoulder at the typewritten list crammed full of names and addresses.

“My father must have given this to them. It’s a compilation of all my closest friends.” She sounded troubled.

“Are they in trouble now?”

He shut the door and led her away from the van.

“More to the point, how do we avoid getting nabbed by your dad’s goons a second time?” He squinted, trying to see the numbers on his watch against the orange glow of the

Johannesburg skyline.

“They’re going to start looking for this van any minute now, and they’ll find it in a matter of hours … even if we’re lucky.”

Sibena joined them.

“All set. The doors are locked and—he grinned and dangled a set of keys from one finger” they stay that way for a time.”

Ian thumped him on the shoulder.

“Good going, Matt.” He paused and looked seriously at his two companions.

“So where to now, folks?”

Sibena smiled shyly.

“How about America?”

A joke. The young black man was telling jokes now! Ian shook his head in wonder. After only three months around people who treated him as a man instead of two-legged livestock, Siberia was turning into a someone who could make light of danger-instead of cowering in fear. He wished Sam