Andrew Britton - The Exile

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Oliphant sputtered. He tried to pull Kealey’s hands away, but he didn’t have the strength or leverage. “Get your hands off me! You have no right to-”

“Shut the fuck up! We have to get out of here. What don’t you understand about that?”

The aide twisted his head to the right, toward the sound of the sirens. “We don’t have to go anywhere,” he protested angrily. “The police are coming. We should stay here and-”

“The police did this! ” Kealey shouted, sweeping an arm to his right to indicate the surrounding devastation. He tried to remember that the man had been doing his best to keep his head down for the past ten minutes, but it was hard to excuse this level of ignorance.

Oliphant fell silent and gradually stopped struggling as he took in the scene, his mouth agape.

“Don’t you get it? It was the police who attacked us!” The African’s mouth worked silently, but he had nothing to say, and Kealey took advantage of the dead air, knowing it wouldn’t last for long. “Look, you were right about one thing,” he conceded quickly. “More are coming, but we can’t wait to see if they’re on our side or not, so stop arguing and get in the vehicle. We’re leaving. Now. ”

Kealey released his grasp on the man’s suit jacket, and this time Oliphant did as he was told. Without another word, he slid into the backseat next to his boss. Shutting the door after them, Kealey turned and sprinted the short distance back to Flores. The Honduran was still lying where he had fallen, blood streaming out from under his injured shoulder. At first, Kealey was afraid the man had lost consciousness. If he had, it would make his next task all but impossible. As he crossed the last few feet, though, he saw that Flores was still awake, if only just.

“Come on,” Kealey urged, crouching next to him.

The man’s eyes cracked open, but he didn’t respond.

“ Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.” Kealey slid his right arm under Flores’s left, then gripped the man’s limp left hand with his, lifting him into a sitting position. “Ready?”

The Honduran nodded weakly. The slight movement caused sweat to drip from his face to his long-sleeved shirt, which was already soaked in blood and perspiration.

“Okay,” Kealey said. “One, two…”

On three, he straightened his legs and heaved the man to his feet. It took all his strength; Flores had six inches and nearly 80 pounds on him. To complicate matters, the Honduran was already weak from shock incurred by blood loss. He made an effort to stumble forward without assistance, but even so, Kealey was forced to bear much of his weight for the short walk back to the Land Rover.

The rear cargo door was still in the elevated position. Turning to his left, Kealey did what he could to position the man’s right thigh with the rear bumper, then pushed back and up, shoving the injured man into the cluttered cargo area. He would have preferred to put him in the front passenger seat, but it would be difficult to maneuver the large man into the tighter space, and time was no longer a luxury. As Kealey slammed the cargo door shut and moved around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, he was confronted with this fact in the plainest possible terms. The closest police officer was clearly visible to the north, not more than 40 meters from where Kealey was standing, and two more were just a few steps behind. All three had their service weapons drawn. The lead officer was shouting a series of instructions in his direction, but Kealey couldn’t hear what he was saying over the blast of the sirens, not that he particularly cared.

Realizing they would reach the Land Rover before he could reverse back to the alley, Kealey reached into his right pocket and withdrew one of the CS grenades. Stepping over the body of the Special Task Force officer he had killed a few minutes earlier, he moved behind the driver’s side door. Crouching below the line of the window, he flipped off the grenade’s thumb-clip safety, then pulled out the main cotter pin. Taking a single step back, he heaved the grenade over the door, aiming for a spot approximately 10 feet in front of the approaching police officers. Without waiting to see where it landed, he slid behind the wheel and closed the door.

Once inside the vehicle, he didn’t waste any time. Oblivious to Flores’s groans of pain in the back, he checked the glove compartment quickly, searching for a street map. As he rifled through the paperwork, he listened with one ear to the Tait digital radio mounted between the seats, which was already set to the appropriate channel. The responding officers were relaying information back and forth in a rapid, convoluted blend of English and Afrikaans. Straining to pick some information out of the frantic four-way exchange, he caught a few key words, but more importantly, he picked up on the anger and frustration in their voices. In his experience, the tension could mean only one thing-the second wave of SAPS officers was still searching for a clear route to the Blackwater Land Cruiser. And if that was the case, the alley behind the Land Rover was probably still empty, which gave them at least one clear route of escape.

Giving up on the glove compartment, Kealey moved on to the second most likely location. Reaching up, he flipped down the overhead visor, and a folded map fell into his lap, along with a few torn envelopes and a handful of business cards. Unfolding the map, he spread the thin paper over the steering wheel and slid his finger down to the M2, searching for their last known position. Finding it, he studied the surrounding streets, trying to determine which route they had taken.

It was hard to be certain, given the speed with which it had all taken place, but he was reasonably sure that the initial ambush had occurred at the intersection of Goud and Main Street. That was six blocks east of the Carlton Center, which marked the eastern edge of Marshalltown. If he was right, and they had traveled three blocks north before swinging into the alley, that placed them…

Kealey traced the route with his finger and landed on End Street, directly below the M2 overpass. That had to be where they were now, he decided, and a quick glance at the side mirror proved him right; behind them, he could see the sweeping arch of the double-decker highway. The concrete artery was held up by a long row of massive supporting pillars curving gently to the southwest, but while the road was imposing in scale and height, it was dwarfed by the surrounding buildings, most of which were residential in nature and at least ten stories tall.

Satisfied that he had their current location nailed down, Kealey went back to the map and started searching for the nearest medical facility. He found it quickly enough; the MBS Hospital was located in the urban sprawl of Doornfontein, ten blocks to the north in Region 8. He took a few seconds to memorize the route, his eyes occasionally flicking up to the windshield. Then he mentally checked off a number of possible detours he could use if they happened to run into a police roadblock. The hospital was his first and most important destination. If he could get there, he would feel comfortable leaving not only Flores but also Zuma and Oliphant in the care of the physicians on duty. He knew that Zuma’s welfare was supposed to take precedence over everything, but he was not willing to abandon Whysall and Stiles to their fate outside the parking garage on Kerk Street. Not if there was something he could do to save their lives.

Looking back through the windshield, he saw that the grenade he had thrown forty seconds earlier had performed as expected, releasing a thick cloud of noxious gray-white smoke between their stolen Land Rover and the approaching police officers. He had been exposed to CS on several occasions, and he knew how unpleasant the effects could be. The officers unlucky enough to be in the vicinity would be suffering a number of symptoms. Their exposed skin would be burning; their noses would be clogged with mucus; their throats with bile and spit. There was a good chance they wouldn’t be able to open their eyes, let alone find their way to the place where the Land Cruiser was parked, directly in front of Kealey’s newly acquired vehicle.