‘No doubt,’ said Lucy. ‘Except there’s a terrorist suspect in that silver roadster. We need you to get after him.’
‘A terrorist?’
Marc nodded. ‘We’re undercover officers with Europol,’ he lied, reaching for the first thing to come to mind. ‘Been tracking him from Eastern Europe.’
‘And every second we stand here talking, he’s getting further away.’ Lucy nodded at the Veyron. ‘My friend here is looking at that thing like he wants to marry it, so I’m guessing that means it is fast. You see where I’m going?’
The cop held up his hand and his manner became stiff. ‘These cars are not used for high-speed pursuits,’ he replied, in a rote manner that told Marc he had given this reply more than a few times. ‘They are for display only. For public-relations engagements.’ He took a breath. ‘If you are who you say you are, present your identification and I will –’
‘You’ll call it in?’ Lucy snapped, and Marc saw her temper fray. ‘Nah. Hand over the keys.’
The cop snorted. ‘I will do no such thing –’ He fell silent as the gold Sig Sauer came out of nowhere and pressed itself against his chest. The bystanders watching the scene saw the weapon and broke away in a panicked rush.
Marc shrugged. ‘You’d better do what she says, mate.’
‘There are no keys,’ insisted the police officer. ‘The cars operate on a radio-frequency ID chip system. Only we can drive them.’
The young man shifted, trying to conceal something, and Marc grabbed at his arm, pulling it up. He wore a black plastic bracelet around his wrist, like a fitness monitor. ‘A chip like the one in there?’
‘No,’ he insisted, struggling against Marc’s grip.
When Lucy spoke again, her voice was ice cold. ‘Is that car worth your life?’
‘It . . . it’s worth eight million dirham!’ he blurted.
Lucy pulled back the hammer on the pistol. ‘Is that how much your life is worth?’
The blood drained from the young cop’s face, and he reluctantly removed the wristband, slapping it into Marc’s palm. ‘Do you know what you are doing? We have very strict laws in this nation. Do you understand what your punishment will be?’
‘We’ll take our chances.’ Lucy shoved him back with the gun. ‘Get his weapon, too.’
Marc snatched the Caracal pistol from the man’s holster. ‘If it makes you feel any better, we’re on the level about the terrorist.’
‘The only criminals I see are you two,’ the policeman shot back.
‘I’ll try to bring it back in one piece,’ said Marc, and he ran to the car, with Lucy on his heels. He pulled open the supercar’s door and failed to suppress a faint smile.
Lucy sent him an acid glare over the roof of the Veyron. ‘Stop enjoying this,’ she said sternly.
‘Belt up,’ he replied as he climbed in and thumbed the ignition button. ‘And hang on.’
SIXTEEN
‘This is a cop car?’ Lucy sank into the passenger seat of the Veyron and took in the dark leather all over the interior. ‘My best shoes don’t look this fine.’ She shook her head, frowning at the excess. ‘I swear, this city is like Billionaire Disneyland . . .’
‘And then some. Here we go.’ Marc tapped the RFID bracelet against the locking module behind the steering wheel and the car slipped away from the hard shoulder as if it was made of liquid mercury. He applied steady pressure to the gas pedal and the Veyron responded with a rolling engine note as the revs grew.
She had to admit, it was pretty damn smooth, and even with the traffic flashing past alongside them it felt as though they were hardly moving. In other circumstances she might have appreciated the ride for what it was, but right now all that mattered was that this thing was quick, that it could catch up to Ramaas before he decided to get off the freeway and vanish.
‘There’s gonna be a lo-jack in here somewhere . . .’ She bent forward, feeling under the dashboard and around her feet. Her hand found a black box beneath her seat, out of place against the upholstery. ‘Wait, I got it. Never mind.’ Lucy used the butt of Kawal’s gun to crack it open and rip out the GPS tracker inside.
Marc located the control that triggered the Veyron’s lights and sirens. ‘What do you reckon? Blues and twos?’
‘They’ll see us coming,’ she replied.
‘That’s pretty much a given anyway in this motor,’ he countered, and flipped the switch. Gripping the steering wheel firmly, Marc slowly increased the power.
An angry voice spluttered from the radio built into the dashboard, and Lucy silenced it with the twist of a dial. ‘If the local five-oh weren’t on to us before, they sure as hell will be now, Dane. Tell me you can handle this thing.’
‘I’ve driven one before.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, not so much driven. More like, stood next to. But I got it. It’s cool.’ They hurtled between a pair of water trucks that seemed to be standing still, and Lucy’s gaze caught the needle on the analogue speedometer as it effortlessly topped a hundred miles per hour and continued to climb.
She glanced behind her, through the slit-sized back window at the road retreating behind them. She couldn’t be certain, but in the distance, up in the sky, Lucy thought she could see a helicopter. ‘Gimme the gun you took,’ she ordered.
‘Jacket pocket,’ Marc instructed, unwilling to take his hands off the wheel at such speeds, even for a second.
Lucy pulled the Caracal semi-automatic and checked it over. As with the car, the cop’s gun was immaculately cared for. But like his wheels, never used in anger, she noted.
‘Target,’ said Marc. ‘Red Z3, centre lane, coming up fast.’
She grinned, holding the Caracal in one hand and the gold-plated Sig Sauer in the other. ‘Shall we give him a ticket?’
Marc had to ease off the gas to make sure they didn’t overshoot. ‘Do it quick. We still have to find that SLR before the next junction.’
‘It’s cool,’ she repeated, but the words were lost in the sudden roar of wind that whipped into the car as she pressed the switch that dropped the power window.
*
‘The police . . . ?’ Guhaad saw the strobing flicker of warning lights as the supercar emerged from the slower traffic falling away behind them.
‘Not the police,’ Bidar shouted, slurring the words a little and bearing his stained teeth as he squirmed in his seat. ‘It’s them!’ He had been chewing on the last of his khat supply since they left the bomb-maker’s mansion and it was making him bold. He rattled the Uzi in his hand. ‘I have to kill them twice, brother!’
Guhaad’s eyes flicked around. They were on a clear stretch of highway, with nothing but eight lanes of open asphalt between the two vehicles. He tensed. This time, they could not afford to fail. He held the wheel firmly. ‘Do not miss!’ he yelled, pitching his voice to be heard over the engine.
Bidar laughed wildly as he dragged himself up onto the passenger seat, clutching the submachine gun to his chest. ‘Come on!’ he yelled into the wind.
The green-and-white racer came upon them, moving like a fish through water, and Guhaad glimpsed a dark woman’s face inside the vehicle, eyeing him coldly. She had a gold pistol in her hand. ‘Now, Bidar! Now!’
With a shout, Bidar bobbed up from the passenger seat and leaned across the back of the BMW, one hand clutching the back of the driver’s seat to steady himself, the other holding the Uzi extended toward the police car. He was laughing.
Guhaad’s eyes snapped back to the road, but from the corner of his vision he saw the double muzzle flash from the gold gun, flaring brightly in the half-second before Bidar pulled the trigger. Then in the next instant Guhaad’s face was spattered with hot blood jetting from wounds in Bidar’s chest.
Bidar’s laughter became a scream and he lurched forward, collapsing over the driver. His gun-hand tightened in an involuntary muscle spasm, his arm dropping to point the Uzi downward. The weapon discharged with a droning rattle, spitting bra
ss shell casings into the slipstream, and discharged the remaining ammo in its magazine through the back of the BMW, blowing holes in the chassis and tyres.
Guhaad felt the car rebel against him. It shuddered and gave off an accusatory howl, before pulling sharply into an uncontrollable turn toward the hard shoulder. He couldn’t see properly, not with Bidar’s blood all over him and the dying man collapsed across his arms. He tried to apply the brakes but the pedal thudded uselessly against the floor. He was still trying to arrest the turn when the BMW careened off the road and slammed into a gravel-choked ditch.
*
‘You got him?’ said Marc, risking a glance away from the road as they accelerated again.
Lucy twisted in her seat, discarding the gaudy gold pistol in the footwell, now that it was spent and its slide locked back. ‘Maybe,’ she admitted. ‘He skidded off the highway.’
‘Can’t go back and check.’ He stabbed a finger at the sat-nav GPS screen built into the Veyron’s dashboard. ‘Exit is coming up.’ The digital screen showed another cloverleaf junction approaching fast, roads branching off the motorway and into an area known as the Extension, a sprawling industrial estate that formed part of the economic Free Zone around the port of Jebel Ali.
Her head jerked up and he knew that her keen sniper’s eye had spotted their quarry. ‘Is that him? I see something silver, at one o’clock.’
As Lucy said the words, sunlight flashed off a bright metallic object at a distance and Marc drew the Veyron across the lanes bring it closer. The car was moving into position to take the exit ramp. He hesitated. ‘Anywhere else in the world, I’d say yeah, for sure . . . But this is Dubai. Every trust-fund kid with an Amex Black card probably has a Merc SLR in their garage.’
‘So get me close!’
Up until now, Marc had been afraid to really push the Veyron, but they were running out of road. He flicked the gearstick and put his foot down. The supercar’s quad-turbocharged engine responded instantly to his demands and poured velocity into the road, automatically deploying the rear air spoiler. G-force pushed the two of them back into the cockpit seats and the Veyron swallowed up the distance in a swooping surge of power. Marc had to brake a heartbeat later to avoid overshooting the silver SLR, even though both cars were topping a hundred and fifty as the curve of the off-ramp loomed before them.
Lucy was at the window, the Caracal pistol in a two-handed grip, the desert wind shrieking now, tearing at each exhale from Marc’s mouth. ‘It’s him!’ she shouted, and fired a shot into the other car that hit but did nothing to slow it.
Marc couldn’t stop himself from flicking a look to the side, and he regretted it. He got an impression of a shape inside the SLR – long and angular, aimed out across at them – before his mind caught up to what he was seeing.
‘Gun –!’ cried Lucy, as the pump-action shotgun Ramaas was pointing at them discharged.
Marc jerked the Veyron’s wheel as she yelled, and felt the impact rather than saw it, hearing the grind and clatter of heavy-gauge pellets screeching off the roof, the door, and the hot ricochets rattling around inside the vehicle.
Lucy recoiled back against him, letting out a bark of pain.
‘Are you hit?’ he shouted.
‘Get after him,’ she shot back, one hand clamped to her face. ‘Go, go!’ Blood was already running over her fingers, but Lucy voice was filled with anger instead of pain. ‘Goddamn that son-of-a-bitch!’
The SLR’s remaining undamaged tail light flared red and the car swung its long nose toward the exit ramp, accelerating as it went. Marc gave the Veyron’s steering wheel a savage twist and the tyres screeched as the streamlined prow veered after the other vehicle.
The cars crowded in on each other as they both took the exit way too fast, leaving streaks of rubber on the road as their traction control systems briefly warred with mass and gravity to keep them from spinning out.
Eight open lanes narrowed abruptly to two, and it was as if the blacktop had folded in on itself. Suddenly, room to manoeuvre was sparse and made more dangerous by an increase in other traffic. None of that bothered Ramaas, however, who immediately floored it as they pulled off the wide highway and onto the local road. Marc gunned the Veyron’s engine and paced him, coming up fast to nudge the SLR’s rear bumper. He glanced at the speedo; they were bouncing around the hundred mark, and the less-maintained surface of local road was translating up through the shock absorbers in a steady, teeth-rattling vibration.
Ramaas veered sharply into the oncoming lane to drift around a dusty sedan and back again. Marc followed suit, in time to see a truck coming the other way fill the Veyron’s windscreen. His mind told him to hit the brakes, but he let instinct overrule it and accelerated through a blare of horns, barely threading the needle as the truck thundered past.
Lucy made a growling noise and drew her hand down her face. A couple of red streaks crossed her brow and vanished into the dark line of her close-cropped hair. ‘That stings,’ she hissed, and extended her hand out of the window to plant two shots in the SLR’s rear.
‘Don’t shoot at the trunk,’ Marc snapped. ‘Remember, bombs.’
‘I was aiming for the tyres, but no joy. He must have run-flats . . .’
The traffic was thinning out, but the road was growing less even by the second and it became an effort to keep the Veyron steady at high speed. The chase kicked thick clouds of dust into the air, and Marc kept dropping off the pedal. The speedometer needle fell by margins in quick jerks.
‘Keep on him!’ Lucy demanded. ‘The road curves up ahead . . .’
‘We can try to run him off, copy that,’ Marc finished the thought for her. As they approached the turn, he glimpsed a long, flat building rising from the sands in the middle distance. The nondescript warehouse had to be Ramaas’s ultimate destination.
The SLR picked up speed again as Ramaas attempted to put more distance between them, but Marc wasn’t about to let that happen. He felt the all-wheel drive bite as he shifted gears and the streamers of desert sand whipped up around the car as it gained a fresh burst of speed.
Then something at the apex of the turn shifted. Marc had assumed it was an outcrop of rock, but it was a man in a brown dishdasha robe, concealed behind a tarp that blended him into the landscape.
Now revealed, in his hands was the distinctive drainpipe shape of a Russian-made anti-tank rocket launcher, familiar to anyone who had ever watched front-line war reports from the world’s brush-fire hotspots. He pointed it at the archway-shaped grille in the Veyron’s hood and fired.
Marc saw the flash of back blast and wrenched the wheel over as hard as he could, but it wasn’t enough to get clear of the rocket. The shooter’s lack of good aim sent the warhead into the road surface directly in front of the car, but the high-explosive charge inside was enough to blow a metre-wide crater in the cracked asphalt and flip the Veyron into the air.
The ground revolved around them as if they were inside a jet doing a barrel roll. The car’s multipoint harnesses kept Marc and Lucy pressed tight to the seats as gravity pulled them this way and that. The Veyron described a single aerial spin before it hit the highway again, and then more across the asphalt and the sand as it began to destroy itself. Wheel cowlings, sections of the bonnet, the lights bar and the rear spoiler were all ripped from the frame until the car finally came to a shuddering stop, back on its wheels.
Marc felt dizzy and sick, raising his hands to claw away the airbags that had blown out to cushion him from the crash impact. It had been bad enough losing the Audi back down the motorway, but this was a hundred times worse. His head and shoulders ached where he had been whipped around by the G-force, his joints singing with stress. For a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to move – but then the odour of burned plastic and spilled gasoline reached his nostrils and it was like an electric jolt to his system.
‘Lucy?’ He grabbed for her. ‘We have to . . . have to get out.’ The doors were jammed into the car’s framewor
k and wouldn’t open, but the shattered windscreen was hanging loosely out across the broken prow of the Veyron. He hit the quick-release buckle on the seat harness and lurched forward. ‘Lucy!’
The man in the brown robes was walking calmly toward the car from the road, picking his way through the trail of broken Bugatti pieces and sizzling debris. He tossed the spent launcher tube away, drawing a revolver. Marc saw him look up into the air and then break into a jog, coming closer.
Lucy’s head lolled forward, and then snapped back as she came to from a daze. Sleepily, she barely gave the man in the dishdasha a sideways look before she raised the Caracal pistol and shot him through the windscreen. ‘Asshole,’ she muttered.
They helped each other out of the wrecked Veyron and slid down into the sand. Marc looked back at the ruined supercar and felt a pang of guilt. Not because he’d stolen the vehicle, but because he had been party to the destruction of something beautiful.
‘How much is eight million dirham, anyhow?’ Lucy asked, surveying the wreck.
‘Two million,’ he replied. ‘We just wrote off two million dollars’ worth of car.’
Lucy patted him on the face. ‘Don’t cry. They can sue us.’ She went to the man in the robes, who was still alive, and stooped to get his revolver. ‘You.’ Lucy prodded the injured man in the chest. ‘Where is Ramaas?’
He pointed toward the warehouse, gasping through shallow breaths.
‘How many men does he have?’ Marc asked the question, but the injured shooter looked at him blankly.
‘That’s all we’re getting from him,’ Lucy concluded, and for a moment Marc believed she was going to finish off the man in cold blood. Lucy caught his look and waggled the pistol in her hand. ‘Just conserving ammo,’ she explained, tossing the revolver to Marc. He caught it and checked the chambers.
*
They trudged the rest of the distance toward the warehouse, following in the lines of the SLR’s route. The car’s tyre tracks ended at one of three wide roller doors at a loading dock, but there were no other entrances along the sunward side of the building.
Exile Page 29
