James Becker - Echo of the Reich

It took only a second or two for Bronson to figure the angles. If he went left, the other car would be out of the drive and blocking the road long before he could drive past the house. Going right was the only viable option.

As soon as the front wheels of the car reached the tarmac, he swung the steering wheel around to the right and accelerated as hard as he could.

Then he heard the unmistakable hammer of an automatic weapon from somewhere behind him, and realized that the men in the clearing hadn’t just been carrying Walthers or Glocks; at least one of them had a submachine gun or an assault rifle. Through the open window of the car, he heard the sound of bullets ripping through the undergrowth and thudding into the trunks of trees that he was driving past, and which now provided a sort of natural bulletproof shield on his right-hand side.

At short range, pistols worried him, but automatic weapons were in a different category and added another layer of danger to the situation. And it also concerned Bronson that the men from the house were apparently happy to fire such weapons despite the certainty that other residents in the area would hear the noise, and most likely immediately call the police.

But that was the least of his worries.

The Rothen road was narrow and, as Bronson already knew, full of twists and turns as it made its way back toward the main road down to the southwest, but that was the way he was going to have to go because of the car that, he could now see in his rearview mirrors, had left the driveway to the house, and was swinging around to the right to follow him.

He was driving a strange car, with the steering wheel on the wrong side, along a road he didn’t know, pursued by men who he guessed knew both the area and their vehicles intimately. The one single advantage he had was that he’d been trained as a Class 1 police driver, and that meant that he knew how to handle a car at almost any speed.

The first part of the road was virtually straight, with just a very gentle left-hand curve in it, and he kept the power on as he steered the BMW through it. The lights of the pursuing car were visible in his mirror, but he had been able to swing right as soon as he left the track, whereas the other vehicle had possibly stopped to block the road before beginning to chase him, so he had a very slim lead over it.

In a matter of seconds, Bronson saw the first of the bends, where the road swung left almost in a right angle around another property, looming up in front of him. He hit the brakes hard, hauling the speed down as he shifted the gear lever from fourth directly to second. Slow in, fast out-a basic rule of high-performance driving.

He clipped the apex of the corner and the moment he saw the clear road ahead he accelerated again, swinging the car into the following right-hand curve.

Another sharp left-hand bend appeared in front of him, Bronson trying to read the road as he concentrated on getting as much speed as he could out of the BMW. He was still in second gear, which was probably right, and again he hit the brakes hard before powering around the curve.

The main beams of the headlights showed him that the road was straight, at least for a couple of hundred yards, and he took full advantage of the fact. Another gentle curve to the left was followed by a sharp left-hand bend, and then another straight, this one much longer, and he managed to get the car traveling at well over seventy miles an hour before the next bend in the road. That bend swung through almost ninety degrees, and had a couple of junctions on it as well.

He’d been checking his rearview mirrors, and the lights of the pursuing car were still with him, but they didn’t seem to have gotten any closer. He estimated that it was still at least two hundred yards behind him, a slim enough margin. He accelerated around the bend and into another straight, and at the end of that he could see the signs indicating that it was a T-junction. This time, he knew he had no option about which way to go. He had to get away from the area of Spreenhagen as quickly as he could, and that meant a right turn, to head northwest.

He was hampered by the fact that he had neither a map nor a satnav in the car. Or, to be exact, he didn’t know if he had either, and he certainly didn’t have time right then to look. He was having to rely on his memory, what he recalled of the journey he’d done the previous day, and he just hoped that would be enough.

He knew that part of the Berliner Ring lay somewhere over to the west, and getting on that and simply driving as fast as he could was one option. A second choice would be to find a town or village somewhere on the road and lose the pursuing car in the streets, maybe by stopping in a car park or a side street and hoping that the pursuers drove on. The third option was the riskiest, and definitely the last resort: let them get close enough for Bronson to mount his own ambush on some quiet road.

He reached the T-junction, flicked off his headlights as he approached, so that he could detect the lights of any vehicles on the road he was about to join, saw nothing, turned the headlights back on, and braked hard again, changing down as he did so. Then he clicked the steering wheel to the right, simultaneously lifted his foot off the brake pedal and back onto the accelerator. The back end of the BMW slid out in a power slide with a squeal of tortured rubber, and the car fishtailed down the road as he straightened up.

Now he knew he had a good chance of losing the following car. The road was virtually straight and had curves rather than bends, the surface was better, and it was much wider than the Rothen road. He still had a good lead, at least three hundred yards now, he estimated, because of the speed he’d managed to achieve on the section before the T-junction. Then he realized he’d done better than expected, because the pursuing car’s headlights only appeared in his mirror as he reached the bridge across the river, and that meant a lead of over half a kilometer, more than five hundred yards.

There was a tiny village named Spreeau, little more than a hamlet, a short distance beyond the bridge, but he didn’t even attempt to slow down, just kept the BMW running as fast as he possibly could. He was doing an indicated one hundred and forty kilometers an hour-over eighty miles an hour-as he drove out of the northern end of the village, and knew immediately that he simply had to outrun the pursuit, because the road ahead was arrow straight as far as he could see, and that meant that if the men chasing him didn’t see his taillights, they would know that he’d stopped somewhere.

He simply had to rely on speed, and he just hoped that, whatever the pursuing car was, the BMW he’d stolen would be faster.

There was no other traffic on the road, in either direction, which was both a blessing and a curse. Other cars would have slowed him down, certainly, but at night, just as in the dark all cats look gray, all cars look alike, and he could have tried to lose himself in the traffic. He continued accelerating hard, the BMW easily traveling at well over one hundred miles an hour, his concentration absolute.

The headlights appeared behind him under a minute after he’d cleared the end of Spreeau, but it was immediately obvious that he’d managed to increase his lead even further. Either their car was slower than the BMW or he was simply outdriving them.

The sign for a roundabout appeared suddenly out of the dark, and Bronson started to slow down, looking out for the road sign that he knew would follow. He glanced quickly at it, saw that the Berliner Ring was indicated over to his left, and continued slowing down as the roundabout came into view. Again, he flicked off his headlights as he approached, checking for other traffic. No other lights were visible, and instead of going around the obstruction, Bronson simply eased the car over to the opposite side of the road and took the left-hand exit, saving a few precious seconds.