Nick Stone: The King of Swords

A bottle flew through the air and caught Penabaz on the side of the head. He went down, dropping his gun.

The crowds charged at them.

Mandel was struck in the back by a brick. He let go of the bag and went for his gun, but was brought down by a blow to the legs and then, almost immediately, people swarmed around him, kicking and punching him.

He blacked out.

Meanwhile, Penabaz, dazed, his head bleeding profusely, managed to slither away, unnoticed in the violence and confusion.

He stumbled up North East 2nd Avenue. At first he was lost, like he'd woken up from a deep sleep to find himself dumped back in a dream. Then, as the sheer terror of his situation sunk in, his senses overrode his pain and dizziness and he began to find his legs and run.

Missiles began to follow him. Then a tattoo of pursuing feet.

He ran faster. And faster.

He got onto 56th Street, praying he'd see police cars there, but it was empty of all traffic.

He carried on running. But he wasn't going fast enough, he knew, and sooner or later someone was going to catch up with him and take him down.

He began to pray as he ran.

'Don't let them kill me, God. Don't let them kill me. Please.'

And then a miracle.

A solitary yellow cab turned into the road and started heading his way.

He ran into the lane, towards the cab, waving his arms in the air. The cab slowed and then stopped.

'Thank you, God!' Penabaz looked up into the heavens as he went over to the vehicle.

'Get me outta here, man!' Penabaz said to the black driver, as he tried to open the passenger door. It was locked.

'Come on, man! They're gonna fucken' kill me. Open the fucken' door!'

The driver looked very calmly at the road up ahead and at the mob spilling out of North East 2nd Avenue and heading towards them.

'Come on! Please! '

When the driver looked back at Penabaz, the cop suddenly recognized him.

He reached for his holster, but remembered, mid-motion, that he'd dropped his gun in the street. The driver reached over slightly towards the door and Penabaz thought he was going to open it. But, instead, the driver lifted a sawn-off shotgun from the seat and blew the cop's face clean off to the bone.

Max and Joe were coming down 56th Street when they saw the cop get shot by the cab driver. The cab sped away before the cop's body hit the ground, screeching past them in a blur.

'Officer down! Officer down! North East 56th Street! North East 56th Street!' Max shouted into the radio as Joe hit the brakes and got out to check on the fallen cop.

'Please state your intentions,' the dispatcher's voice crackled back.

Max looked through the windshield. Joe shook his head. The cop was dead.

'In pursuit of suspect. Suspect is driving a yellow cab. Heading east on 56th. Request back-up.'

They chased the cab through Lemon City and watched as violence began to erupt all over the area like ripe, diseased sores.

On street after street, cars were being broken into, stores were being looted, windows smashed, people were being beaten up or fleeing for their lives, rocks, bottles and sticks were flying in volleys through the air.

Back-up was nowhere in sight. The radio crackled with emergency calls, requests for help, requests for ambulances, reports of cops being dragged out of their vehicles, reports of shots being fired.

Max had his pistol in one hand, his rifle in the other. Their Chevy was stoned or people ran alongside it and tried to smash the windows whenever they slowed down or stopped to avoid hitting pedestrians.

Petrol was siphoned out of cars and into bottles. First buildings went up in flames, then mounds of tyres, then the cars themselves. Thick acrid smoke began to fill the streets.

The cab got onto North East 3rd Avenue, which was comparatively clear, and started tearing up the road. Max and Joe were close on its tail. Max leant out of the window and tried to shoot out the tyres, but the driver was zigzagging left and right, so he couldn't get a clear aim.

Suddenly three prowlers and a riot truck came zooming towards them. The cab swerved and skidded into the opposite lane and then tore back up the road, passing the Chevy.

Joe reversed and spun the car around, in time to see the back of the cab disappearing down a side street.

They came out on North East 55th Terrace. The road was choked with people running away from a line of cars which had been rolled across the road and set ablaze.

They saw the cab. It was in the middle of the road, at an angle, all four doors wide open, being pushed by a group of people.

Max searched the crowd.

Then, on the right sidewalk, he saw a man standing quite calmly in the chaos, looking right at them. He was wearing jeans, a black sweatshirt, white sneakers and a black do-rag. He had a sawn-off shotgun in his hand.

'There! That's him!' Max pointed out Do-rag and opened the door.

Do-rag turned and started walking off down the road, quite calmly, once in a while looking over his shoulder back at them.

'WHERE YOU FUCKIN' GOIN'!' screamed Joe.

'We can't drive through this.'

Rifle in hand, Max got out and started running down the sidewalk.

When Do-rag saw him coming he broke from saunter to lightning sprint in a fraction of a second.

Joe stated his position to the dispatcher, requested back-up again and, cursing his partner's recklessness, got out of the car.

Max chased the man through crowds of panicked, angry people. Do-rag slipped around them like an expert skier negotiating a slalom course, moving with the agility of a gazelle on speed. Max-jacked up on adrenaline, but fresh out of hospital, weighed down by his bulletproof vest, 190 pounds of sluggish muscle, painkillers and blinded by the sweat streaming down his face-hit the crowd like a wrecking ball, crashing, pushing, toppling and stamping on whoever didn't get out of his way fast enough. People tried to get at him, the lone white face in that seething cauldron of black rage, fists and kicks were thrown, but he ducked, or sidestepped, or smashed his rifle butt into stomachs and faces, or fired shots above their heads. When a man came running up behind Max with a meat cleaver, Joe shot him in the shoulder without hesitation and moved on.

Do-rag zipped across the sidewalk like it was made of ice. He ran across the street, through a crowd carrying furniture out of a store. Max followed him, toppling an old man who was being carried high up above the chaos in an armchair.

Do-rag ran around a brown three-storey building. Max reached the corner in time to see him scooting up the fire escape, three steps at a time. When he reached the top floor, he went over to the window nearest the stairs, opened it from below and slipped inside.

He didn't close the window behind him.

Max was about to take the fire escape when he saw Joe coming.

'He's on the third floor. Second room on the right. He's left the window open,' Max said. 'Take the front.'

Joe nodded and headed for the building's entrance, while Max stole quietly and quickly up the stairs to the window.

He looked inside. He'd expected to see a small, cramped, low-rent apartment, but found himself staring into a long bare space with unvarnished wooden floors and whitewashed walls painted with yellow and black voodoo symbols-snakes coiled around candles, coffins marked with crosses, hands gripping a cracked skull. The opposite wall was covered in a mural of Baron Samedi walking through a village, collecting bones.

Do-rag was sitting on the floor with his back turned, and the shotgun by his side. He was facing a large black painted cross with a purple cloth draped around the beams.

He was alone.

Max gingerly crept into the room and tiptoed towards the man, his gun trained on his head.