Paul Christopher: Red Templar

“We have- ?como se dice? una cola -a tail?” Eddie said.

“We’re being followed?” Holliday answered, startled. He looked in the rearview mirror of the stodgy old Moskvich he’d rented in Istanbul. There was no traffic behind them on the narrow coast road running along the rocky cliffs that dropped down to the Black Sea. To the left of the deserted old highway there was nothing but scrub forest and wooded hills.

“Si.” Eddie nodded. “I have been watching.” He spoke softly. In the backseat a less flatulent Genrikhovich was asleep again. “Three of them. A red BMW, an old KrAZ truck with a. . thing on the front, and also there is something that looks like one of those old ZiL limousines El Comandante used to drive around in. Black and very big.” The tall Cuban shrugged. “ No estoy seguro. Maybe a Chaika.”

“I don’t see anything,” said Holliday, checking the mirror again. The highway was still empty. The very fact that Eddie had seen three vehicles of any kind was reason enough for suspicion.

“They keep back most of the time and they. . ?cambiar de posicion? ”

“Switch places?”

“ Si , that is what they do. Switch places to try to make it seem like they are not together. An old trick of the Seguridad del Estado in my country when they followed dissidents.” He laughed quietly. “Three men, three different hats. ?Muy estupido! ”

Holliday looked in the mirror again. This time he saw the BMW. He wasn’t much of a car buff, but it looked like one of the bigger models from the eighties or early nineties.

“Shit,” said Holliday. Eddie checked the side mirror.

“Si.” Eddie nodded. “Una mierda grande.”

Holliday dropped his foot down on the gas pedal. The Moskvich responded with a shudder and a grudging acceleration that took them up just barely past one hundred kilometers per hour. It wasn’t going to be the car chase from The French Connection ; that was for sure.

The big BMW accelerated until it was fifty yards from their rear bumper. The narrow highway began a sweeping series of easy S curves. On the left the wooded hills closed in, and on the right the ragged cliffs looked steeper. Holliday became acutely aware of the single 3-shaped guardrail bolted to wooden stumps that was the only thing between them and a long swan dive into the surf five hundred feet down.

There was a flicker of movement in the side mirror. The large black car Eddie had spotted was pulling out from behind the BMW and passing. It stayed in the other lane, surging forward, speeding past the Moskvich through the turn, ignoring the risk of oncoming traffic. It was a big, bullying ZiL, just as Eddie had thought. It pulled in front of them and took up a station fifty yards ahead, matching the BMW, which was still behind them. Holliday had seen two men in the car, both hard-faced men wearing black.

“It’s a squeeze,” he muttered, thinking about the third vehicle-the truck.

“?Que?” Eddie asked.

“They’ve got us boxed in,” said Holliday. “The truck will come up and push us off the road and over the goddamn cliff.”

“Goddamn,” said Eddie, looking to his left at the rusty old guardrail.

“Goddamn right,” said Holliday.

Right on cue a giant green truck appeared, rumbling up behind the red BMW on their tail. It was a monster, and the “thing on the front” Eddie had described was a double-bladed snowplow, one blade forward and the second blade angled to one side. The enormous vehicle sounded like a tank, big puffs of sooty exhaust bellowing out of the high stack that jutted over the cab.

“This is not good,” said Holliday, his heart pounding like a trapped animal in his chest.

“Dame la pistola,” said Eddie quickly, his voice urgent.

Behind them the truck downshifted and there was a bellowing roar as it pulled out into the left lane. “What?!”

“ ?Dame la pistola! Give me the gun, mi amigo! And roll down your window, por favor! ”

The noise and commotion woke up Genrikhovich in the backseat. He struggled sleepily into a sitting position. “Shtaw?” he mumbled, blinking. Holliday dug into his jacket, handed Eddie the gun, then rolled down the window. Eddie rolled down the window on the passenger side. The muscular Cuban put a meaty hand on the Russian’s head and pushed him back down.

“Lazeet salyetch!” Eddie ordered. Genrikhovich acted predictably, fighting against Eddie, who forced him down again.

“Chto za huy?!” screamed the Russian, trying to pull himself up again. “Chyort voz’mi!”

Eddie twisted around in his seat. “Lazeet salyetch, yob Tvoyu Mat!” He let go with a left cross that caught Genrikhovich on the point of his chin, dropping him to the floor of the car. The massive truck pulled up beside the Moskvich. Eddie gave Holliday an evil grin, eyes flashing. “ Yo disparo; lo lleve a . I shoot; you drive.” Eddie began humming “Auld Lang Syne,” the tune for his Young Pioneers farewell campfire song. He flipped off the safety and pulled back the hammer of the pistol to full cock. The Cuban was definitely pissed.

The high-wheeled truck began to make its move, the giant gleaming side of the plow sliding toward the side of the Moskvich like a massive ax blade as the KrAZ turned in toward them. Ahead of the Moskvich the ZiL slowed, boxing them in tightly, while the BMW moved even closer behind them. At the last second Holliday made his move as well.

“Hang on!” he yelled to Eddie. With the snowplow blade less than a foot away, raised at eye level, Holliday simultaneously jammed his foot down on the brake pedal, twisted the wheel toward the flimsy guardrail and dragged up on the handbrake between the two front seats.

It was a classic bootlegger’s turn, but done on a front-wheel-drive vehicle. The rear wheels locked, the back end slewed out and the front end ricocheted off the guardrail with a tearing clang as the front bumper tore away. Instead of doing a complete one-eighty turn, the Moskvich turned broadside to the BMW, offering Eddie a sight line through the car’s windshield. He raised the heavy little Korovin.25 and pumped half the clip at the car behind them. The windshield shattered and the BMW spun out, then hit the ditch on the far side of the road, flipping over twice, then flipping right-side up again, the roof crumpled between the doorposts.

“?Aprende a manejar, aweonao!” Eddie whooped happily.

The snowplow truck, taken by surprise, kept swinging into where the Moskvich had been a second before. Air brakes screaming, the driver tried to stop the sideways motion of the giant vehicle, but inertia had its way with the steel beast, and the side blade of the plow hooked the rear end of the ZiL, slammed into the guardrail and sliced through it like a knife through soft cheese.

The twenty-two-ton behemoth and the four-ton ZiL rocketed out over the cliff, seemed to hang against the bright blue sea and the sky for a split second, and then disappeared. An eternity later there was a muted, thundering crash and the sound of an explosion. The Moskvich screeched to a halt.

There was silence except for the distant pounding of the surf and the soft rustling of wind in the trees. It was almost peaceful. There was a twenty-foot gap in the guardrail and another ten feet on either side of the hole that sagged out over the cliff, the stumps torn out of the ground and the galvanized steel twisted into corkscrews.

“?Hala!” Eddie whispered, staring. “?Ay, cono!”

Holliday looked back over his shoulder. Genrikhovich was groaning on the floor. “Let’s check on the BMW.” He left the car engine running, pushed open the door and stepped out onto the road. Eddie followed.