But if he was nuts, the Audi drivers were too, because they were now carving their way rapidly upstream on the wrong side of the road in the Mercedes’ wake. It seemed like nothing short of suicide was going to shake these guys off.
Nor the chopper. Ben could no longer see it, but he could feel the deep thump of the rotors in his guts and knew it was directly over them, keeping pace and flying low. This wasn’t getting any better.
Suddenly, it got worse. Warning signs shot past announcing that a construction zone was up ahead. Beyond the sweeping curve of the next two hundred metres Ben could see the cranes and road works for the new overpass near the Porte de Sèvres, and the long elevated section of the Périphérique carrying traffic over the exit routes to and from the city. In the distance, traffic was down to a single lane in each direction and moving slow.
Just as Ben thought his options were dramatically falling away, he saw them drop to zero when he spotted the third Audi up ahead on the overpass. It had come round to head them off in the opposite direction and was storming through the oncoming traffic a hundred and fifty yards away and closing fast.
Whatever these guys were planning, they were betting on getting it done quickly. The trap was closing in and the endgame was just seconds away. Ben could visualise the passengers of the three Audis cocking an arsenal of small arms in preparation of hosing the taxi full of bullets and then beating a rapid getaway before the police came roaring down on the scene.
The Mercedes sped up the slope onto the overpass. The side barriers streaked past like ribbons. Streets and rooftops twenty feet below. The chopper hovering right above, its swaying belly visible through the sunroof. The two Audis closing in from behind. The third looming larger in front of them every second. Eighty yards; sixty. A game of chicken, with nowhere to go.
But Ben wasn’t going to stop, even though there was no sane alternative. He pressed harder on the pedal. ‘Wrap the seatbelt tight around you and stay low!’ he yelled at Roberta over his shoulder.
Fifty yards. Thirty.
No sane alternative.
But sometimes there was no room for sanity.
Ben twisted the wheel. One quarter turn, hard right. Before Roberta had time to cry out, the Mercedes veered crazily off course, hit the side and burst through with a massive rending crash of metal on metal, ripping a whole section of barrier from its mountings.
The car flew over the edge of the overpass and into empty space.
Chapter Thirty
For just a second or two, it was like floating. Ben experienced a strange sensation of weightlessness that was somehow liberating and not unpleasant. The howl of the soaring engine and Roberta’s cry from the back seat seemed muffled and far away.
Then reality cut back in with terrifying speed as the Mercedes dropped like a missile towards the road below and the traffic lumbering in and out of the Porte de Sèvres. Ben caught a glimpse of a huge articulated truck coming the other way and he was utterly convinced they were going to plummet right into its path and be smashed and rolled and twisted into tiny pieces all across the tarmac.
But then the bone-jolting impact as the taxi’s spinning wheels touched down on the truck’s roof told him that death wasn’t going to be quite so instant. The Mercedes tore across the top of the truck with a shearing crunch that felt as if it had ripped the whole underside away, bounced, twisted in mid-air and nose-dived sideways towards the construction works at the side of the road. An inch difference in its trajectory and the car and its occupants would have been mangled against a steel rubbish skip. The car overflew it and landed on its left side in a ten-ton pile of sand that exploded outwards as if a bomb had burst against it
The driver’s airbag punched Ben in the face as he was hurled forwards to meet it. He was stunned, but only for a moment: his first thought as his mind snapped back into focus was of Roberta. He wrestled the collapsed airbag out of the way, twisted himself around to see into the back of the mangled, overturned taxi and called her name.
‘I’m okay,’ came a muffled gasp from inside the flattened space between the rear seats and the roof. ‘I’m fine, I’m okay. What about you?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. He was blind in his left eye for some reason, and he could taste blood – but that didn’t matter to him. He struggled to free himself of the seatbelt, only very dimly aware of the carnage that was happening just a few yards away on the overpass.
As the Mercedes had gone flying off the edge, the three Audi Q7s had hammered on their brakes to avoid a three-way collision, skidding all over the road. The one that had been approaching from the opposite direction had lost control, rolled spectacularly and gone spinning through the yawning gap that the Mercedes had left in the barrier. It tumbled in mid-air as it dropped like a stone, and landed on its roof.
At the same time, the articulated truck whose cab roof had been half torn away by the flying Mercedes had gone into a violent skid, its trailer slewing around and broadsiding one of the tall steel power masts that flanked the overpass bridge.
The helicopter pilot had brought his aircraft about and was hovering, uncertain as to what to do next, close to the side of the overpass as the destruction unfolded all around. The crippled power mast began to topple, dragged down by the weight of the cables. Before the pilot could react, the collapsing thick steel wires became entangled in the tail rotor and instantly shattered the blades in an explosion of sparks.
The aircraft’s rear plunged downwards and it spun out of control, smashed into the side of the overpass and exploded in a bright little supernova of combusting avgas that rained fiery fragments all over the road below, instantly setting fire to the fallen Audi before any of its occupants, if they were still conscious, were able to escape. The truck driver leaped from his ruptured cab and ran for his life as burning debris blasted in all directions. The wave of fire that washed across the overpass engulfed another of the black Audi Q7s before anyone had time to get out. Thick smoke billowed skywards.
In seconds, the scene had become a battlefield.
Fully alert now, Ben kicked through what was left of the wrecked Mercedes’ windscreen and clambered through the sand that came pouring inside the cab. He could smell petrol and spilled fluids and hear the ticking of hot metal. Still unable to see out of his left eye, he staggered around the mangled underside of the car, managed to haul himself on top of its scarred flank and with all his strength hauled open the rear passenger door.
He reached a hand inside for Roberta. She grabbed it and climbed out, and they slid down off the wrecked Mercedes into the soft sand. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asked insistently. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘No, no. Just a little banged up, that’s all. But you’re covered in blood.’
He touched his fingers to his left temple and they came away thickly coated in red. Only then did he realise that blood was streaming down his face, filling his eye. He wiped it with the back of his sleeve, blinked and could suddenly see again. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just a scalp wound.’
‘Look,’ Roberta said, standing up. Ben turned and looked back at the overpass. Flames leapt high from the burning Audi. The blazing wreck of the helicopter was still clinging by its mangled skids to the side of the overpass like some grotesque giant insect on fire. The enormous column of black smoke rising up from the carnage blotted out the sunlight. Meanwhile there was bedlam as panicking drivers who had managed to stop short of the devastation now tried to U-turn back the way they’d come, creating a massive snarl-up extending hundreds of yards back from either side of the scene. A cacophony of blaring horns filled the air.
As Ben and Roberta watched, a secondary blast tore the chopper completely apart. Its blazing shell fell away from the overpass and crashed down into the still-burning wreckage of the Audi that had plunged to the road.
A sudden breeze tore a hole in the pall of smoke and Ben saw that just one of the three Audis had escaped unscathed. It had skidded a full hundred and eighty degrees round on i
tself as it came to a halt: he could tell from the damage to its left side that it was the car he’d rammed into the side of the tunnel during the chase. Its four occupants had jumped out, the vehicle so hopelessly boxed in by the log-jam of stationary traffic that they had no option but to quickly conceal their weapons and beat their retreat on foot.
One of the men paused to stare from the overpass barrier. Even from a distance, his eyes seemed to meet Ben’s. Ben recognised the hard, lean features and distinctive prematurely-silver hair of the driver. He was a big, powerful-looking man, six-two or three and broad across the shoulders. Their eye contact lasted only a moment before the man disappeared into the chaos and the smoke.
The chorus of horns was swelled by the wail of incoming sirens. Flashing lights appeared on the overpass. The thudding beat of a second helicopter, a police chopper, grew louder as the aircraft hovered as low as it could over the scene.
‘We need to get away from here fast,’ Roberta said.
Ben didn’t disagree. Wiping more blood from his face, he reached inside the car wreck for his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He grasped Roberta’s hand in his bloodstained fist and they began to run up the middle of the road towards the nearest houses a hundred yards away.
‘Watch out!’ Ben slithered to a halt and almost yanked Roberta off her feet as a car suddenly shot out of a side street and came dangerously close to running them down. Its brakes squealed as the driver did an emergency stop. The door flew open.
It was an ancient Citroën Dyane, brush-painted green with an all-over mural of psychedelic flowers. The battered hippy-mobile was a good dozen years older than the curly-haired, bearded guy who darted out in alarm from behind the wheel. He took in the scene of the devastated overpass and the crazy-looking couple in the middle of the road, and his mouth dropped open. ‘Fuck me. You two okay?’
‘Is this your car?’ Ben said, letting go of Roberta’s hand and striding up to him.
‘Did you know you’re bleeding, man? Your head’s like, fucking cracked open or something.’
‘I said, is this your car?’
The hippy nodded blankly. Ben took a step closer towards him. ‘How does it go? Is there anything wrong with it? Tell me, I need to know.’
The wail of sirens was building rapidly in the background. Ambulances were arriving on the scene. A second police chopper came pulsing overhead.
‘It’s fine, man. Stops and starts like it should. Almost, anyway. What do you want to know for?’
‘Because I’m buying it. How much?’ Ben said quickly.
‘I was thinking of selling it,’ the hippy replied with a bemused shrug. ‘Five hundred?’
There was no time to haggle over pennies. Ben counted off the notes and pressed them quickly into the guy’s hand. ‘Let me get my stuff,’ the hippy said, grabbing a satchel and a few things from the back. He gazed in astonishment at the money in his hand while Ben and Roberta piled into what had, until just seconds ago, been his car.
Ben gunned the raspy twin-cylinder engine, pulled a tight turn in the road and the Dyane sped off in a cloud of blue smoke.
Chapter Thirty-One
‘Let me see that cut,’ Roberta said as Ben pushed the little car as fast as it would go through the backstreets, intent on putting as much distance between them and the scene of destruction as possible. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and tentatively mopped the blood away from the laceration just under his hairline. ‘I think it looks worse than it is,’ she said.
‘I’ll take care of it later,’ Ben said. He threw the Dyane into a corner, making it lean perilously over on its flimsy suspension, then floored the pedal without mercy to milk as much power as possible out of the feeble engine. Nothing happened for a moment, then the Dyane coughed and whined in protest as the revs reluctantly climbed. To make this underpowered tin can progress at any speed, momentum was everything. Every few seconds he stole a glance at the rear-view mirror in case there might be more pursuers after them.
None appeared. They seemed to have got away – for now. After a couple of miles he relaxed and began to slow down a little, not wanting to draw more unwanted attention from the cops.
Roberta patted the dash. ‘Well, you wanted to buy a car. You got your wish.’
‘Not exactly what I had in mind,’ he said, torturing the gearbox for another approaching bend.
‘It’s cute. Kind of reminds me of my old 2CV.’
‘That’s the problem.’
Nonetheless, the old banger managed to get them out of Paris, not perfectly inconspicuously with its garish paint-job, but unnoticed at least by the people they were trying to avoid; it also had the decency not to self-destruct as Ben thrashed it pitilessly north-westwards along the N13. The engine note settled into a steady howl that made conversation difficult. Roberta slumped deeper into her seat, and fell asleep with her head against the window.
After a couple of hours on the road, they stopped for fuel at a motorway service station, where Ben managed to clean himself up, wash most of the dried blood out of his hair and change his stained T-shirt for the last fresh one in his bag. They bought some pre-packed sandwiches and bottled water at a shop within the complex and ate a hurried lunch in the car. Then, not wanting to leave Roberta on her own too long in case someone somehow caught up with them again, Ben drove about hunting for a payphone so that he could make the necessary arrangements for the next leg of their journey. Public phones were getting hard to find these days, which wasn’t so convenient for people on the run whose every movement could be tracked via their mobile.
‘It’s all part of the same global conspiracy,’ Roberta said darkly. ‘They want to know exactly what everyone’s doing, all the time. Coin-operated phones are just about the last real freedom of telecommunication we have left. They won’t be around much longer, rest assured.’
After two circuits of the services complex, they finally discovered the graffiti-covered kiosk hiding behind a recycling bank. Freedom was in a sorry-looking state, but the phone still had a dial tone. Ben fed in a handful of coins and dialled Ruth’s mobile number.
His sister didn’t sound too enamoured with him. ‘What do you mean, you’re calling from a motorway services near Lisieux? Where’s my plane?’
‘It’s safe,’ he replied, fervently praying that was true. ‘Listen, that’s what I’m calling about. I need clearance to land in Sweden later today.’
‘Sweden!’
‘I haven’t got time to go into it, Ruth. We have to get to a place near somewhere called Jäkkwik.’ He spelled it. ‘If you can find me a small airfield not too far away …’
‘You’ll be grateful as long as you live,’ she finished for him tersely. ‘If you live that long, bro. Tell me: by “we need to get” do you mean to say you’re still gallivanting around with that woman?’
‘I told you she’s just a friend. That’s the truth. And we’re not gallivanting.’
‘Hmm. Yeah. A friend in need. Brooke needs you more. Thought about her lately?’
‘I haven’t stopped thinking about her,’ Ben said, and meant it.
‘Really. I spent the whole of yesterday with her. I’ve been on the phone to her for an hour this morning. She can’t stop crying. She’s devastated, Ben. You hear me? You broke her heart. You just fucking crushed her.’
Ben gripped the receiver tightly and fought the urge to smash it to pieces in grief and rage against the steel casing of the phone box. ‘Thanks for taking care of her,’ he said with heartfelt sincerity. ‘If you talk to her again, tell her I love her, okay?’
‘I’d say that’s for you to tell her, not me.’
‘I will, in person, as soon as I get back.’
‘I don’t know if she’ll even want to see you,’ Ruth said. ‘To be honest, right now, neither do I much. If you weren’t my brother, I swear I wouldn’t be having much to do with you. I hope you realise the damage you’ve done.’
‘I’ll make it up to her,’ Ben said, controlling his voice.
‘But now I need you to do this for me. There isn’t a lot of time.’
There was a long pause. Then Ruth sighed and said, ‘All right, give me your number there. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Well?’ Roberta said as he put the phone down. She saw the look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We need to wait. You stay in the car.’
Ben paced up and down under a dark cloud as the next ten minutes stretched painfully into what felt like an hour. Eventually, the pay phone rang. He snatched it up quickly.
Ruth didn’t waste time on ceremony. ‘Are we talking about the same Jäkkwik that’s right up in the wilds of Lapland, nearly five hundred miles north of Stockholm? I had to search for it on the map. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but forests and mountains.’
‘It’s the only Jäkkwik I could find,’ Ben confirmed.
‘I won’t even ask what you want to go there for. Anyway, I had to twist a couple of arms to get this done so fast, but you have your clearance. The nearest landing point I could locate was a tiny airfield twenty kilometres away at a place called … got a pen and paper?’ Ruth spelled out the name and gave him the coordinates to get there. ‘I don’t think it gets a lot of traffic. The Swedish military use it from time to time for exercises, so there should be plenty of landing space for you, okay? Now, you’re looking at over twelve hundred nautical miles distance, so by my reckoning you’re going to need fuel soon after Copenhagen. There’s a small airport called Thisted in northern Denmark where private flights can come and go unscheduled. You can refuel on the Steiner Industries tab there. Just give them this reference number. It’ll basically allow you to top up on the company account anywhere in the world. That’s not a license to globetrot, though, okay? I’ll give you the coordinates for Thisted airport too. Ready?’
The Nemesis Program_Ben Hope Page 17
