Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

The Bentley was roaring up to sixty now, and he barely had control of it. He dared a glance into the rearview mirror and could see several razorbacks coming up on him very fast. Soon they were flickering laser light all over the car. He smashed the rearview mirror off the ceiling with his fist.

“Fuck!”

The Bentley caromed off the sides of several cars parked along the restaurant drive, and he struck one of the parking valets. The man’s body tumbled into the bushes.

The Major stomped the accelerator and listened for the deep howl of the approaching bikes behind him. Their thunderous engines grew in volume. He was going eighty now and still accelerating—palm trees and dense brush passed by very fast. It looked like he was going along the coast and the huge private homes there.

Suddenly The Major slammed on the brakes, bringing the large sedan to a screeching stop and sending him hard against the dashboard. The headless body stayed secure as the seat belt pretensioners kick in. A split second later he heard several crashes as the car nudged forward. A large motorcycle hurtled over the left side of the car and tumbled in a shower of sparks down the road.

The Major gunned the engine again, looked behind him to see two more bikes lying on their sides in the road—along with a section of his back bumper. He killed the headlights and turned the car through the front fence of a nearby estate. The Bentley crashed through a white wooden fence line and shuddered across uneven ground as security lights turned on all over the lawn. He dodged palm trees and bushes to bring the car roaring alongside the house. He smashed through patio furniture, aiming toward the pool, then let up on the gas. He opened the passenger door—to dinging alarms—and waited until the right moment. He grabbed his gun, flicked on the safety, and rolled clear onto the grass.

He slid to a stop and watched the Bentley continue through the pool fence and dip nose-down in what turned out to be the shallow end, sending up a column of steam.

“Damnit!”

He got up and ran toward a nearby tree line, motorcycle engines converging on his location. He heard dogs barking. There was a salt smell in the air. He felt very much alive at the moment—adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. It had been a while.

He ran through some trees and reached a wood fence line. Shoving the pistol into his belt at the small of his back, he climbed over the fence deftly. Dropping to the other side, he moved through ornamental tropical brush toward an even larger Mediterranean mansion.

Security lights started kicking on all around him and he cursed his bad luck for being in such a high-security enclave when this had gone down. Far better to be in some shantytown or packed city street where he could get lost among the populace. He picked up a rock from the garden and hurled it at the garage light next to him, shattering it and bringing back darkness.

He could hear what sounded like a dozen razorbacks on the road now, but they weren’t following the trail of carnage to the pool next door. They were concentrating on the gate at his current location. Goddamnit.

The Major ran around the garage toward the backyard, kicking open a tall fence gate and coming face-to-face with a portly caretaker holding a flashlight. The man was strapping on a pistol holster.

The Major drove his fist into the caretaker’s solar plexus, and followed with an openhanded blow across the throat. He then cleared the man’s legs out from under him. The flashlight fell to the paving stones and went out. The caretaker gasped for air, while The Major grabbed the gun from the man’s holster. He clicked the hammer back and pressed it into the caretaker’s right eye. “Car keys! Where are the keys?”

The man’s eyes were wild with fear. He pointed at the garage, trying to speak. He finally croaked out, “Box on the wall . . .”

The Major pistol-whipped him unconscious and then rolled him into the pool.

Goddamnit! What if there’s surveillance video here, too?

He’d been balancing risks. If he let the man live, the guy would call in the car as stolen, and The Major might get caught in a police standoff. And either way, he’d need to get rid of any witnesses.

He ran to the garage and kicked in the door. He soon found the lights and saw three cars there, two under tarpaulins and one not—a silver ’69 Camaro with black racing stripes. There was a strongbox on the wall, and he felt the anger rising when he found it locked. He aimed the caretaker’s .38 revolver at it and fired first one, then two, then three shots. He finally got it open and located the Camaro keys.

Meanwhile, outside there was pandemonium. It sounded like every razorback in the area had already gotten onto the estate and was scouring the place for him. The Major was becoming calmer with every second. He was easing into a familiar groove. Fieldwork had its rewards and adrenaline highs were one of them.

He got into the Camaro and strapped himself into the racing harness. He started the car and it let up a satisfying roar. Suddenly Boston was playing on the stereo—“Don’t Look Back.” The Major turned it up, revved the engine again, and realized that he had sunglasses in his jacket pocket. He put them on. They might not completely protect him from laser light, but they’d help. He then tapped the garage door opener on the visor and roared out of the garage, tires squealing.

He found three razorbacks waiting in the driveway outside the garage; he hit the first one and sent it skidding into the fountain. As laser lights focused on him, he spun a one-eighty and headed out through the rear lawn. There, he smashed aside another razorback that tried to throw itself under the car and brought the Camaro crashing through the rear fence. He’d made it out onto the beach.

The Major could see a dozen powerful green lasers tracking the car’s movement as it skidded sideways, straightened out, and then started roaring down the beach toward the mainland. From the unevenness of the sand, he figured the motorcycles would lose any speed advantage—they might not even be able to steer. He cranked up the music as muzzle flashes appeared in the trees to his right. Bullets clanged into the car body and spidered the window glass. Human operatives as well? “Is that all you’ve got, you sons a bitches?”

He kept the pedal down and sped on, watching the lights of beachfront homes race by.

The Major kept going for nearly five miles, at times reaching a hundred and twenty miles an hour as he raced down the nighttime beach as close to the water as he dared. He was surprised not to see a single person. The wealthy certainly had an odd idea of what to do with a beach.

But eventually he would run out of island—that much he knew. And there was only one causeway off of it, which would definitely be guarded. So he couldn’t go that way. The fact that no police had arrived told him that there was a major operation under way to get him. Something had leaked. He was starting to get mad just thinking about it. How had he been located?

From what he remembered, there was another barrier island not far south, separated from this one by a narrow inlet. He kept going south, and soon found himself driving over shallow dunes. He slowed the car down and stayed close to the coastline.

He was heading into utter blackness now. After he killed his headlights, there was only starlight to see by. The Major kept his eye on a luminescent dashboard compass the owner had installed. Due south.

Soon enough he saw lights of distant houses ahead, and with very little warning, he almost drove into the narrow inlet that separated the low strip of sand he was on from the other island perhaps a hundred and seventy-five yards away.