Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

It might have been a mistake because a hundred yards ahead a car came screaming from a side street to the left and swung to face the pickup. Calvary realised it must have crossed at an earlier bridge, anticipating his flight across the river. He was going too fast not to hit it unless he braked, so instead he turned to the left, up the street from which the second car had emerged. It was a short street and ended in another T-junction.

Headlights came fast from behind and the new car came speeding on the wrong side of the road and overtaking him before swerving in ahead and slowing. It was an Audi, one he’d seen before. Calvary tapped the brake. The Hummer came round the corner and shoehorned its way in behind him.

They had him then, boxed and ready for shipping to wherever it was people like Calvary went when they died.

In the mirror Krupina could see Calvary’s silhouette through the windscreen, backlit by the headlights of the Hummer behind him. She couldn’t see Gaines. Calvary had probably shoved him down below the dashboard or in the back seat.

She said to Lev, ‘Slow down. Give us some space in front.’

‘He may choose to ram us.’

‘It gives us more room to manoeuvre if he tries to break out.’

Lev did as he was asked. The speedometer dial dropped to sixty kilometres per hour.

*

Behind the Hummer the cars were hanging well back, leaving the convoy of three — Hummer, pickup and Audi — isolated.

For the show of it Calvary tried nosing out to overtake, but immediately the Audi veered to block him. In the orange from the streetlights that strobed past he could see two heads in the Audi, the driver and a passenger. Through the Hummer’s tinted windows he could see nothing.

Calvary estimated he had peh the Humrhaps ten seconds to decide what to do, because it was about to turn into an execution. He assumed they were going to try to bring the speed down to minimise inconvenience and, sure enough, the brake lights flashed on the rear of the Audi. He nudged the brake pedal of the pickup.

Beside him Gaines was a dark, huddled shape, his eyes glinting in the intermittent light from outside. Calvary said, ‘Brace your feet against the dashboard. Keep yourself doubled over and press yourself back against the seat.’

He twisted and grunted in compliance. They were down to forty. In the Hummer the passenger in front was starting to lean out of the window, something dark in his hand.

Calvary lifted the SIG so that they could see it.

Then he hit the brake, extending his leg fully, grinding the pedal into the floor. The tyres screamed on the road surface and he watched the mirror where the Hummer was growing huge, the driver realising at the last minute and braking himself, but not quickly enough. Just before the impact Calvary twisted and loosed off a shot — again, so loud , even against the cacophony of rubber on tarmac — through the hole where the rear window had been. This time he was more accurate and the windscreen on the driver’s side spackled.

The Hummer rear-ended the pickup at a slight angle because Calvary’s braking had swung the back of the car to the left. He felt himself rammed back against the seat, managed to hold himself there enough that he wasn’t flung forward too far by the recoil. A car’s horn raged past at the same moment and Christ knew how it missed them; it swerved back onto the right side ahead of the Audi, which had shot forward and was only now braking.

The collision left the pickup stalled and at an angle across the road, blocking it in both directions. Beside Calvary, Gaines slumped with his head lolling back, but he rolled his neck to look at Calvary and although there was blood on his face he blinked and nodded. Calvary knew he was all right for the time being.

The temptation was to get out and run, but that was what they would be expecting. Instead Calvary fired the engine again and saw in the mirror that the passenger door of the Hummer had been flung open by the impact. A man was clambering out, his hand coming up with his gun in it. Calvary hit reverse and smashed straight through him as he pulled the trigger, the shot going off into the night. He went down below the field of view afforded by the mirror and Calvary felt the bump and flop of him beneath the wheels and saw him emerge on the road in front of the truck, bent and crushed.

Calvary kept the car in reverse gear, veering past the stalled Hummer. He saw that the road was clear for at least fifty yards behind him, a queue of frightened and bewildered drivers stacked up behind an imaginary barrier. He built up some speed before spinning the wheel and executing a J-turn which took them through 180 degrees. He found second gear and put his foot to the floor again so that he was heading towards the queue. A couple of cars had pulled over into the oncoming lane to see what was going on but they veered to one side when they saw he wasn’t going to stop. Behind him the Audi had turned, more quickly than he was expecting, and was in pursuit.

Calvary had to hope the police would take their time getting to the area. There were t. Tg lane wo reasons why this might be the case. Calvary and his pursuers were on the move constantly so it would be difficult for the police to co-ordinate themselves in the absence of a specific location. Also, they would be stretched thinly because of what had been happening elsewhere in the city. Nevertheless, somewhere, far off, perhaps on the other side of the hill, sirens were slicing the air.

The pickup hadn’t been badly damaged in the collision but there was a noise from the back, the flapping of metal torn loose. Calvary took it up to a hundred and ten kilometres per hour. A judder started up in the pickup’s chassis, not strong, but a warning growl of discontent. He pushed it harder. A hundred and twenty. Headlights stabbed by, seeming to be aiming straight at them before disappearing on the left. The Audi was gaining ground, and wasn’t even up to full speed yet.

There was a flash above and to the side of its headlights, the crash of the shot before glass splashed up from the rear of the pickup. Calvary swerved instinctively. They had hit one of the rear lights.

The pickup crested a hill and shot down a steep drop towards a built-up area, the wheels leaving the road surface for a second before crashing back down and jarring the entire body of the car. Calvary had to dab the brake because he wasn’t going to be able to sustain this speed and keep control of the car in terrain like this. The road curved to the right and he was thankful because it would make them a marginally more difficult target. The Audi was almost on them now, ten yards back. A surge in its acceleration would slam it into the back of the pickup.

Another shot sang past Calvary’s head, coming straight through the empty rear window and hitting the windscreen, cracking it into a ragged many-armed star. Because of the angle, the damage was on the passenger side and he could still see through, but visibility on the right was badly impaired. There was a sharp turn ahead to the right which Calvary spotted only because of the apparent end of the road in front of him. He craned his neck to see round the damaged windscreen, then slowed as little as he dared before taking the corner, not judging it as well as he was hoping and hitting a wooden front gate with the left rear end of the car, sending the gate shearing into the front garden beyond.

The Audi took the corner more carefully but at the expense of speed, so Calvary was a few seconds ahead when he straightened out again. Some sort of complicated junction was coming up ahead with lots of exits. Calvary did the counter-instinctual thing and chose one that bent off to the left and backwards like a hairpin. He hit the horn to keep the traffic off the junction before spinning the wheel and sending the rear of the car scudding across the tarmac so that the front was pointing about a hundred and thirty-five degrees left of where it had started. He took off down the new road. It put further distance between him and the Audi, and for the first time he thought he might lose them.