Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘Mothra,’ the voice on the walkie-talkie said, ‘the Huntsmen ahead have RPGs and heavy machine guns. We must use the payload. There is no other way.’

  Zakaria nodded grimly and gritted his teeth. He gave Chloe a nod, and she pressed the talk button.

  ‘Okay Godzilla,’ he growled. ‘Bring it in.’

  ‘I will. Take the next right, then right again after that. The chopper will take out the Humvee, and you’ll have a clear path to freedom … if you can get rid of the bikes.’

  Zakaria stomped hard on the brakes before making the turn. He craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of the sky and noticed that no aircraft was in sight. Despite his centuries of battle experience, panic began to lick its tongues of searing flame across his pyre-bound feet.

  ‘Where’s the fucking chopper?!’ he roared, spittle flying from his lips as he struggled to keep his emotions in check.

  He skidded through the next sharp turn, almost rolling the careening van in the process, and then burst onto a wide four-lane street. A claustrophobic aural hurricane of sirens screamed their fury through every alley and across every street, the howls closing in around the hurtling van like the grasping digits of a thousand-fingered fist. In staccato intervals the sound rocketed through the alleys; the police were closing in, and what little window for escape remained was almost shut. Just behind the van the three motorcycles catapulted out of the narrow street, sweeping in frantic arcs through the corner, leaning low … and one Husqvarna took it just too fast. The bike slid out, skidding across the asphalt like a grounded comet in a spectacular shower of orange sparks, with the rider following his machine as he bounced and ragdolled along the road before slamming brutally into a parked car.

  Zakaria allowed himself a brief grin of victory, but the abrupt jackhammer thudding of bullets against the van wrenched the smile from his face. He blared on his horn for traffic ahead to get out of his way, but when the surprised commuters cleared he saw a black Humvee blast out of a side street directly ahead, blocking his escape route.

  ‘Talk, talk!’ he screamed, slowing down.

  Chloe, wide-eyed, fumbled with the walkie-talkie but managed to press the talk button.

  ‘Godzilla! Where’s the chopper, where’s the damn chopper?!’

  Four Huntsmen troops outfitted in SWAT riot gear sprang out of the Humvee ahead. Two of them were armed with RPGs, and the others began setting up an M2 heavy machine gun. Civilians fled in panic, while nearby cars turned and sped off, while others screeched to a halt, the drivers scrambling out of their vehicles and fleeing.

  ‘Almost … almost … THERE!’ the crackling, disembodied voice announced triumphantly.

  From over the top of a high-rise a small remote-controlled helicopter descended at speed. Gripped by a little robotic arm attached to its underside was a one-kilogram package of PETN explosive.

  ‘Hurry, for God’s sake!’ Zakaria roared as he bore down on the Humvee and its contingent of Hunstmen troops. ‘You’ve only got one shot, make that payload count!’

  ‘May the Earth forgive us for this travesty of violence,’ the voice whispered.

  Zakaria, meanwhile, muttered a prayer in the ancient language of the lost Kingdom of Alwa. Chloe dug her fingers into the seat with a white-knuckled grip, whimpering wordlessly, while in the back the other teenagers screamed and cowered as the Huntsmen troops took aim with their RPGs and the machine gun. Zakaria was slowing his pace steadily, and the bikes were now riding parallel to the van, one on each side, corralling Zakaria in and pushing him into the waiting jaws of the trap ahead. At that moment the tiny helicopter dropped its package of PETN, and a heady cocktail of jolting courage and debilitating terror surged through Zakaria’s veins as he watched the parcel hurtling earthwards. For one horror-soaked moment his heart locked up; if the package failed to detonate it would cost everyone in this vehicle their lives.

  The package, however, did not fail to detonate. A gargantuan explosion ripped through the streets, blasting out every window in a four-block radius and leaving nothing remaining of the Humvee and the Huntsmen soldiers but a gaping blast crater the size of a swimming pool. The force of the blast flipped over almost every car in the immediate vicinity and sent a shock wave rippling through the ground, bowling over the few pedestrians who hadn’t already fled. It also slammed into the van, sending a jolt through the vehicle and cracking the already damaged windscreen.

  ‘YES!’ Zakaria howled, temporarily inebriated on a gushing orgasm of victory as he drove straight through the billowing cloud of debris and swerved around the smoking blast crater. A chaotically bouncing Humvee tyre smashed into the front of the van, but he managed to stay on course. He quickly suppressed and swallowed this hollow triumph, however.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he shouted, castigating himself. ‘One cannot celebrate the destruction of life, even if it is that of one’s sworn enemies!’

  Chloe, meanwhile, was staring blankly ahead, muttering ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ over and over again in a mantra of sheer terror.

  ‘Pull yourself together, child!’ Zakaria shouted. ‘Talk, talk! Press the damn button!’

  When he blasted out of the debris cloud, he saw that the two Huntsmen motorcycles were still hot on his heels.

  ‘Godzilla!’ he yelled as Chloe pressed the button. ‘I’ve still got the bikes on me!’

  ‘I can use the chopper to take one out.’

  ‘The Ducati, the Ducati! That’s the one with the—’ A vicious punch rocked the vehicle as a twelve-gauge slug tore through the rear window, obliterating a chunk of the front passenger seat and causing Chloe to shriek with fright. ‘—combat shotgun!’

  Another slug ripped through the back window, and this time it smashed the top corner of the driver’s seat to smithereens, driving shards of twisted plastic into Zakaria’s shoulder.

  ‘Argh!’ he howled, hot pain ripping a scalding passage along his left arm.

  ‘Mothra, are you hit?’

  ‘Flesh wound, just a flesh wound,’ Zakaria groaned, his nostrils flared and his teeth gritted in the face of the fiery pain. ‘But the next one might not be, hurry!’

  The Ducati rider behind them accelerated hard, trying to bring the bike up alongside the vehicle so that her pillion could get a clear shot. In response Zakaria swerved hard to the left, and the rider only just avoided crashing into the back of the van. Nonetheless, the biker was immensely skilled; she hit the brakes hard enough to kick the back of the bike up in a rolling endo, changing direction on the front wheel only, and the moment the rear wheel touched down she whipped the bike around in an attempt to get around the right side of the van.

  Again Zakaria swerved in her direction and almost clipped the bike’s front wheel … almost. Once more the rider managed to avoid a crash, and yet again her pillion pumped a shotgun slug through the rear window, the shot accompanied by multiple screams from the teens in the back. This time the impact of the projectile obliterated the entire pane of bulletproof glass, leaving a gaping gap through which the attackers would be able to unleash a rain of bullets.

  Before that could happen, though, the remote-controlled helicopter sped around the van in a kamikaze attack, flying straight into the open face of the motorcyclist’s motocross helmet. The impact was enough of a shock to unseat her, and both she and her pillion went down in a violent tumble of flailing arms and legs. Zakaria and his passengers were by no means safe, though; one more rider was still hot on their heels, and it appeared that he had no intention of giving up the chase.

  ‘Talk, talk!’ Zakaria snapped at Chloe, taking no time to relish in the minor victory.

  Chloe, weeping and shaking like an autumn leaf in a gale, managed to jam a violently trembling thumb onto the talk button.

  ‘There’s one more bike on me! And the other two Humvees!’

  ‘I don’t know how they keep figuring out where you’re headed, but they’re gaining on you. You can escape, though, if you shake this last rider.’

  Zakaria, gr
owling, glanced in his rear-view mirror and saw the biker raising his submachine gun to fire through the now-unprotected rear window. He ducked just as a spattering of bullets blitzed through the opening and slammed into the backs of the seats. Hoping that by stopping unexpectedly the biker would rear-end him and crash, Zakaria stomped viciously on the brakes. The rider, however, was too fast; he slid his rear wheel in a ninety-degree arc and then accelerated, coming up next to the driver’s door, which he leaned over to and tried to open. Zakaria attempted to sideswipe the biker, but the rider was too nimble, and he simply dodged the lumbering vehicle.

  ‘Mothra, US Army choppers are coming in,’ the voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. ‘They’ve mobilised the National Guard too. Get off the streets now!’

  Next to Zakaria the rider braked hard, so that he was back behind the van. This time he was close enough to lean forward and grab the van’s door handle and jump off his bike, clinging spider-like to the back of the van, leaving his motorcycle to crash and tumble, spitting broken plastic and twisted metal in all directions as it cartwheeled. Zakaria glanced behind him just in time to see the soldier sticking his helmeted head, and his right arm through the smashed-open rear window.

  ‘No! Great Mother, NO!’ he howled, his voice hoarse.

  The Huntsman soldier took hasty aim at the tiger and squeezed the trigger, but as he did Daekwon, roaring, kicked the gun out of his hand. There was a smattering of submachine gun fire as the weapon unleashed a burst of bullets in mid-air, but none of them hit the tiger. Before the Huntsman troop could reach for his pistol, Daekwon, afire with adrenalin, aimed a savage right hook at the man’s chin, the point of which was just protruding from beneath the helmet. It was a punch he had practiced thousands of times over, and his aim was flawless and his power concentrated. The Huntsman didn’t even have time to think about dodging the blow before his head was whipped back from the crunching impact. Knocked out cold, he flopped off the back of the van and tumbled limply along the road as the vehicle sped away.

  ‘Motherfuckers!’ Daekwon screamed, sticking his head out of the broken rear window and glaring with wild eyes at the unconscious biker’s body, which was finally coming to a rest in the middle of the road. ‘Punk-ass s-, son um’ma bitch motherfuckers!’ He pulled his head back into the van and staggered back, dropping into a crouch and gripping his temples with his right hand. ‘What the f-, fuck I got myself into?’ he muttered, his eyes bulging. ‘What the actual f-, fuck is even g-, goin’ on here?’

  ‘Guys,’ Jun groaned, his voice barely audible. ‘Uh, guys…’

  ‘This ain’t happening,’ Paola wailed, curled up in a foetal ball on the floor next to the tiger with her hands clamped over her ears. ‘This ain’t happening, this ain’t happening, this ain’t happening!’

  ‘Guys,’ Jun repeated, his voice even fainter.

  ‘This is batshit crazy!’ Chloe shrieked from the front of the van as they speed onward, careening through the streets. ‘Stop the van, stop the fuckin’ van! I can’t deal, I just can’t! Fucking … fucking stop the van, let me out! I can’t do this, I can’t do this!’

  ‘Guys…’ Jun croaked.

  ‘F-, f-, fuck this shit man!’ Daekwon howled. ‘I just w-, wanted to help the p-, p-, planet an’ shit, an’ I end up b-, being shot at an’ near g-, gettin’ killed! S-, stop this fuckin’ ride, I’m gettin’ the f-, fuck off, stop the ride, s-, stop the fuckin’ ride!’

  ‘GUYS!’

  Everyone stopped and looked at Jun; none of them had ever heard him yell. His face had grown deathly pale, and the baggy clothes on his torso were dark with blood, the saturated fabric heavy and slick, clinging to his meagre ribs with the terrifying volume of it.

  ‘I’ve been shot,’ he managed to rasp, and then his eyelids fluttered for a few moments before closing, and his head flopped limply onto his chest.

  20

  ZAKARIA

  ‘Oh shit man! Oh sh-, shit!’ Daekwon shouted, scrambling over the comatose tiger to get to Jun. He clasped the thin teen’s face, cupping his hand under Jun’s chin, and pulled his slumped-over head up. ‘W-, wake up man, wake up! C’mon w-, wake up, open yo’ damn eyes, w-, wake the fuck up!’ Jun was completely unresponsive, so Daekwon slapped him across his cheeks. ‘C-, come on lil’ dude, o-, o-, open them eyes, w-, wake up, wake up!’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Paola whimpered through her paroxysm of weeping, her reddened, teary eyes locked with horror on Jun’s blood-soaked chest. ‘Jun, no, oh my God, Dios Mio, no Jun, no!’

  ‘Put pressure on the wound!’ Zakaria roared from the front as he flung the van into another sharp turn. ‘Try to stem the bleeding!’

  ‘We need to get him to the ER!’ Chloe yelled. ‘Now! Turn this van around and get him to a fucking hospital!’

  Zakaria ignored her and floored the accelerator.

  ‘No,’ he growled, immovable as a mountain. ‘I’ll do what I can to save the boy, but we’re not going to any hospitals.’

  ‘He’s been shot, you fucking lunatic!’ Chloe shrieked, her eyes wild with hysteria. ‘Turn the fuck around and—’

  The radio crackled, cutting her off, and the voice on the other end was tremulous with dire urgency.

  ‘You can’t shake them, no matter where you turn. Two Blackhawks are almost on you, and they’re carrying a payload that’ll atomise that van and all of you along with it. You need to get off the streets right now! Take the next left, after that you’ll see an exit after three blocks, next to a dry-cleaning place on the right corner. You’ll see one of our white Festivas parked outside.’

  Zakaria hurtled around the tight left-hand turn, and saw the Festiva right away, a hundred yards down the street.

  ‘All of you, brace for impact,’ he growled as he gunned the van towards the car. The screaming teens had little choice but to do as he said, curling up and covering their heads with their arms. With a bang the van smashed into the Festiva, crumpling the back of the little car into a concertina-like mess of steel and shredded upholstery, the van’s momentum ploughing it out of the way.

  In the sky above, three Blackhawk helicopters crested a row of glass-fronted skyscrapers a couple of seconds after the van slammed into the Festiva. In the lead chopper, behind the pilot, sat an old man. Perched on his prominent, bulbous red nose were a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and a grim-set jaw, meticulously shaved, jutted harshly from beneath a down-turned slash of a mouth bordered by insubstantial crimson lips. His full head of grey hair was shaved at the sides and slicked back, styled in the manner of a much younger fellow, but sulphuric vengeance rather than youthful vigour burned like ignited petrol in his pale grey eyes.

  ‘That’s them,’ he hissed. ‘Hit that fucking van with the full payload!’

  ‘Sir, this is a civilian area, I—’ the pilot protested.

  ‘Fire those fucking missiles or I’ll have your limbs removed with a hacksaw!’

  ‘Aye aye sir,’ the co-pilot interjected. ‘Target acquired, aaaand locked.’

  ‘Fucking hit them then you pantywaist!’ the old man rasped.

  Without further ado the co-pilot squeezed the trigger of his joystick, and four missiles rocketed with a furious hiss from the helicopter’s side-mounted launchers, streaking earthward with murderous intent. The old man narrowed his gaze, grinding his teeth as he watched the steel dragons racing towards their target. All four crashed into the van, and a great fireball billowed upwards while a shock wave surged out in all directions, blowing out storefronts and windows, knocking pedestrians off their feet, and upending a number of cars parked nearby.

  ‘Land the fucking chopper now, go, go!’ the old man roared, his liver-spotted hands, fleshy claws, white-knuckled on the armrests of his seat.

  The pilot wheeled the Blackhawk around, manoeuvring in a sweeping arc around a lone skyscraper that towered head and shoulders above the rest, and then, as black Humvees and police vehicles began closing in from all directions, stopping a healthy distance from the burning wreck, the h
elicopter started its descent. On the ground, troops poured out of the Humvees and police cars, dropping to the pavement and aiming their weapons at the smouldering wreckage.

  Inside the chopper a squadron of troops prepared to disembark, while in his seat the old man sat and scowled. Clad in a crisp, spotless black business suit, with a black silk shirt and black tie beneath, he kept one hand tucked inside his jacket, his fingers coiled around the grip of his chrome-plated .357 revolver therein. As soon as the helicopter touched down, the heavily armed troops stormed out and got into battle positions, while the old man stepped out behind them with an air of bristling anger and fiery impatience, partially supporting his weight on an ornate narwhal-tooth walking cane.

  ‘Advance on the vehicle!’ he bellowed in a hoarse voice.

  Eight of the lead troops, each armed with an M-16 assault rifle, approached the burning wreckage. A badly wounded teenager, shivering madly with shock as blood gushed out of her body, which was riddled with shrapnel from the obliterated van, pleaded with her gibbous green eyes in horrified silence for help as the troops approached her. The soldiers, however, simply stepped over her as if she was nothing but another piece of broken rubble. The old man ignored her gasps and whimpers too, and pressed a button on the side of his spectacles: the latest tech, which featured a microscopic camera with extreme optical zoom that projected real-time imagery onto a translucent screen on the inside of the lenses. He zoomed in, but could see neither body parts nor blood amidst the jagged shards of steel, grotesquely twisted lumps of molten plastic, and the serpentine, hyperactive tongues of flame.