by Tom Wood
Victor increased his pace to a run. Raven did the same. The team had seen them. They were following. There was no point trying to remain inconspicuous. He dashed across the street. On the far side the slogan on the huge billboard stretching wide above a bank was unreadable.
The men sprinted. He heard the clatter of their shoes on the asphalt behind. They were fit and fast and determined to catch them or kill them and succeed and receive praise and glory and promotion. But his determination was to survive and remain free, and no other potential reward could equal that most basic of motivations. Raven had to have the same desire, else her need to stop Halleck was as strong.
They ran under signs, once illuminated, hanging dull and lifeless. They passed through the warm yellow glow spilled out from a bar’s windows; inside hundreds of candles had been lit to keep the business running. The front door had been wedged open to let the cold air in to counteract the heat of all the flickering flames.
Behind them, the men shoved people aside who were too slow to move or too wrapped up in their own existence to notice what was going on. A coffee cup was knocked from a woman’s hand.
Victor leaped over a pushchair and skidded round a corner. A guy walking his Rhodesian ridgeback almost collided with Raven and hurled four-letter words as they ran past.
The dog barked as their pursuers rushed by a few seconds later.
He ran fast, breathing hard, breath clouding in the cold.
He felt himself pulling away from them. He had a sprinter’s pace and a marathon runner’s endurance fuelled by the unparalleled will to survive. He could outrun the men, but not their bullets if they opted to shoot him down on the street. The two Audis were out there as well, unseen for now, but closing in. It was only a matter of time before they became trapped between the Audis and the men pursuing them on foot.
On the next street, when they had created enough distance, Raven hailed a cab and it pulled over in front of them. She gestured to the driver – a nonsense hand movement, but enough to distract – and approached the driver’s window, mouth open as if struggling to find the words or with a language barrier.
The window descended so the driver could better hear. He was a skinny Indian guy in a string vest, arms and shoulders covered in dark hair, teeth bright and crooked.
Still gesturing with one hand, Raven wrenched open the door with the other. The driver, distracted, was too slow to react and stop it from happening. By the time he understood his predicament, Raven was dragging him from his seat and throwing him to the road surface.
She ignored the man’s cries of protest and climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the door shut. Victor jumped into the passenger seat.
Flashing lights alerted him to the approaching cop car.
FIFTY-THREE
The blue-and-white cruiser skidded to a lateral stop in front of the taxi before Raven had a chance to pull away, blocking the road with no space to accelerate around it.
Two cops exited, fast and smooth, rushing towards them with guns drawn and cocked, leaving the driver and passenger doors open in their hurry. They shouted at Victor and Raven in two voices of overlapping contradictory commands to freeze and put their hands in the air and get out of the vehicle and stay where they fucking were and not to do anything at all.
Victor waited, acting scared, with Raven performing a similar routine of passivity, as the cop from the far side of the cruiser circled around the bonnet to join his partner.
As one, they came forward.
Raven ducked low and put the transmission into reverse and stamped the accelerator.
The front wheels spun and shrieked. A plume of tyre smoke and rainwater mist clouded in front of the taxi, spraying and blinding the two nearby cops for an instant, so when they fired their handguns the bullets went high. One cracked a hole through the raised sign on the roof, scattering fragments of glass and plastic over the bonnet.
When the taxi had reached fifteen miles per hour Raven pulled the handbrake and swung the wheel, spinning tyres flaring up rainwater, before changing up to drive and accelerating. By the time the taxi finished its tyre-screeching one-eighty, she was speeding away. Glass and plastic fragments from the bonnet scattered on the asphalt behind them.
The two cops dashed back to their cruiser.
The road surface was slick with rainwater. The cab’s tyres threw up huge sprays of it while the wipers worked hard to keep the windscreen clear. They sped past the team in pursuit on foot. The four men from the two Audis stood impotent on the pavement, shouting at each other and into their wrist microphones. But with cops nearby no one drew a weapon to shoot.
Ahead, another cruiser was rushing towards them, racing fast and weaving between the cars in the opposite lane.
Raven took a hard right, the oncoming cruiser following seconds later. An orange Mazda coupe appeared at the intersection ahead. She veered around it, deft and assured, but the cop car clipped the Mazda on the rear end, shearing off its chrome bumper and sending it cartwheeling along the street.
A white four-door sedan swerved to avoid the bumper, and in doing so collided into the back of the Mazda. Brake-light glass exploded into a cloud of glittering red. Tyre smoke swirled. The boot shot open, dented and distorted. A detached alloy hub cab spun end over end.
The driver of an oncoming delivery van managed to swerve around the crash as the coupe was sent into a spin.
Raven accelerated down a side street, a second NYPD blue-and-white now in pursuit. Another nearby patrol car called in to assist. The two cops who had taken shots at them would have little chance of catching up now, but others like this one could be on the way. She veered to the left, slipping into a bisecting road, speeding past townhouses and tenements and trees that lined the road.
Up ahead, vehicles were slowing and pulling over in reaction to the nearing cop car and the flashing lights and blaring sirens. Brown leaves scattered and swirled as they shot by in the taxi.
The driver of the nearest cruiser was caught off guard and went shooting past the turning. The second car, further behind and with more time for the driver to react, braked as it neared and slid into the corner, wheels spinning and tyres smoking, but losing ground on them.
Screeching rubber alerted Raven an instant before a panel van collided into the passenger side of the taxi as she sped across a four-way intersection.
The van caught the cab on the rear fender, crumpling the metal siding and sending the vehicle into a spin. A passenger window exploded and the rear windscreen popped out and flipped end over end until it hit the asphalt and disintegrated.
Victor tensed against the force trying to throw him around as Raven controlled the wheel and accelerated out of the spin, leaving the van driver staring aghast at her from out of a lowered window.
The spin had given the cops time to catch up and Raven manoeuvred at speed round the slow-moving traffic. Horns sounded and drivers yelled at her. The impact with the van had canted a rear wheel and Victor felt the immediate loss of power and control. The damage caused the rear tyres to lose traction on the slick road and she had to fight the wheel and ease off the accelerator to prevent the swerves becoming a spin.
Raven braked and changed down to slip through denser traffic, tyres protesting against the erratic back and forth movements. She sent the car into the opposite lane, making the oncoming vehicles swerve and brake to avoid her as they raced towards them.
The two cruisers followed, close behind. Headlights and brake lights reflected off the water misting behind the taxi. Raven swerved to avoid a truck. In the rear-view, their pursuers did likewise, one cruiser going to the right of the truck as Raven had, the second going around the left.
But the cops going left didn’t have the room they thought and the cruiser’s nose, crushed between the truck and a parked car, came to a sudden, juddering halt.
One cruiser remaining.
Raven took a hard left, clipping a parked sedan as she did, shearing off a wing mirror as the taxi rebounded away,
tyres smoking, into the oncoming lane. A Lincoln Town Car braked in time to miss the speeding taxi, but an SUV coming up behind crashed into the back of the Lincoln, crumpling the car’s rear end and knocking it forward so it clipped the taxi on the passenger side. Victor jolted in his seat. The front bumper was ripped away. Headlight glass and fragments of metal and plastic sparkled as they passed in spinning patterns through the headlights.
The taxi spun away while the Lincoln careered up the kerb and into a trash can, sending it skyward. Pedestrians ran out of the way as the can came crashing back to earth.
Raven wrestled with the controls and against the force of the spin. Rubber squealed against wet asphalt, painting wild black patterns before she had regained control enough to stop the vehicle colliding with a parked removal van.
The police cruiser was right on them now, no more than half a car length behind. Sirens wailed. Victor glanced back to see the cop in the passenger seat shouting into a radio.
A motorcyclist, weaving fast around the traffic, saw the taxi too late and turned too hard to avoid it. The bike tipped on to its side and grinded along the road, the rider sliding and rolling behind it amid a trail of sparks.
Alarms and horns were sounding all around them as Raven accelerated away, avoiding the rider who lay alive but groaning near the crashed Town Car. A confetti of glass covered the road surface, glinting and sparkling in the wash of headlights.
The cop driving the chasing cruiser didn’t see the rider until he was almost hitting him. Smoke billowed from screeching tyres, but braking wasn’t going to be enough to avoid running the man over. The driver wrenched the wheel and the cruiser missed the rider by inches, jumping the kerb and ploughing into a fire hydrant, knocking it over, sending a jet of pressurised water skyward.
Within seconds the cruiser was a dot in the taxi’s rear-view.
A truck passed over the intersection ahead, blocking the way. Raven slammed the brakes and slid the taxi into the mouth of an alleyway, losing the remaining wing mirror as she did.
In the narrow confines of the alleyway, the cab’s exhaust roared loud and fierce. Metal screeched against brickwork. Sparks brightened the darkness.
They emerged out of the other side, skidding into the line of traffic.
Two oncoming cars swerved and braked as the taxi appeared ahead of them, shunting into each other with a scrape and crunch of denting metal. Crossing pedestrians fled from the careering vehicle, some throwing themselves to the pavement to avoid being hit.
Slow-moving traffic hampered their route. To get caught up in gridlock meant certain death or capture, but there was nowhere to turn. Besides, the taxi was a wreck. It couldn’t take much more punishment.
Raven said, ‘We need to switch.’
‘Do it.’
She switched lanes and slowed until they were three metres behind a silver Chrysler, tough and powerful, as if she had chosen to push on through the jam, and put the cab into neutral.
It collided with the Chrysler’s rear bumper hard enough to cause a dent, but not moving fast enough to do any serious damage to either vehicle.
Victor heard the Chrysler’s driver scream in rage and he jumped out of his vehicle. Victor and Raven climbed out too.
The driver was big with weight training and steroids, his good suit tight and straining to contain the swollen musculature.
‘What the holy fuck?’
He reached out to shove Raven, who was closer. She grabbed the hand and twisted it into a goose-neck wristlock.
The Chrysler driver yelled through gritted teeth as she put him to the ground.
‘Stay down,’ she said, then to Victor: ‘Would you like to drive?’
The man did as he was told, cradling his damaged wrist, as Victor jumped behind the wheel of the Chrysler and Raven climbed into the passenger seat. Putting the transmission in reverse, Victor pushed back the taxi in neutral gear until there was room to manoeuvre out of the line of traffic. He cut between the gridlocked cars in the other lane.
Ahead of him were two black Audi sedans.
FIFTY-FOUR
Their xenon headlights gave them away even before Victor could make out their distinctive shape and manufacturer’s badge on the grille. He worked the gear shift and accelerated away, the big eight-cylinder engine of the Chrysler working hard and doing what it was designed to do. The difference in acceleration to the taxi was monumental. He sped between the Audis, which had to brake hard and swing U-turns to give chase, one driver handling it better than the other and losing only seconds.
Even with a head start, the lead Audi was catching fast. It was almost as powerful as the Chrysler, but much lighter – a far better power-to-weight ratio and more grip from four-wheel drive resulting in better acceleration.
Victor shot under an overpass, turning when he came out the other side, heavy back end sliding out but under control. The black Audi followed, just as controlled, but much faster because it was four-wheel drive.
Victor accelerated past a slow-moving SUV on the outside, then cut inside to avoid a taxi. He saw the black sedan close behind, impossible to shake. In a straight line the Chrysler would pull away with its bigger engine, but on city streets the more manoeuvrable Audi had the considerable advantage.
‘Gun,’ Raven warned.
Victor saw the man in the passenger seat was readying his pistol.
They raced down a sloping road, out of the black city and towards the bay. Victor braked and swerved to avoid a cyclist and the Audi caught up the last of the gap, coming alongside him on the near side.
The passenger – a man with a shaved head and small, sunken eyes – took aim with his Ruger and squeezed the trigger.
Raven was already down, and Victor dropped low in the seat as shattered glass scattered over him. More shots thudded into metal and smashed small holes in glass.
A stamp of the brakes sent the Audi shooting past him. Victor swung the wheel, taking the Chrysler into the closest street, knocking over trash cans on the corner and almost hitting a lamp post as two wheels went up the kerb.
The black sedan swerved on to the street behind him, faster, smoother.
The second Audi appeared, having headed him off, guided by the guys in the first car. It swerved into him from the side, forcing him towards the centre of the road and the oncoming traffic. Victor worked the steering wheel and pulled the silver Chrysler ahead of the Audi, which then charged him from behind.
Gunshots popped behind him. The rear bumper came loose at one end, dragging along the road, and Victor jolted in his seat, for a second losing control as the car fishtailed back and forth. Raven shot out a palm to brace against the dashboard.
Another charge, this time into the driver’s side rear fender.
The collision knocked the air from Victor’s lungs and hit the right spot to send the Chrysler spinning. He grimaced, g-force flattening him against the seat as the tyres squealed and smoked and fragments of destroyed bodywork and bumper clattered on the asphalt. Pebbles of windscreen glass rained down over the car in a brief storm.
The Chrysler ended up perpendicular to the Audi, which collided with the car yet again and propelled it along the road in a T-shape of moving metal.
More shots came Victor and Raven’s way, but with better accuracy now they were an almost stationary target. A .22 calibre bullet took a chunk out of the steering wheel. Another tore a hole through the driver’s seat. Victor smelled the melted and burned foam.
He ducked and changed into reverse and scraped away from the Audi, metal shrieking against metal, which knocked the Chrysler’s nose straight again as it sped past. A brake light exploded.
Victor slammed the brakes, changed back to drive, turned the wheel and accelerated towards the Audi as it braked as well to perform a U-turn, and headed his way. A panel van swerved to avoid the oncoming black sedan and tipped on to its side, blocking the lane.
‘This is going to hurt,’ Victor said to Raven, who nodded.
The Audi driver
realised Victor’s intention too late as both Victor and Raven turned their heads ninety degrees, and had no time to get out of the way before Victor rammed the Audi head-on.
On impact, the Chrysler’s driver airbag exploded out of the steering wheel and slammed into the side of Victor’s head with enough force to have broken his nose. The strong, heavy build of the Chrysler did what it was designed to and protected Victor and Raven while demolishing the front of the Audi and pushing it back and into a half-spin of its own.
He reversed away while the two men inside were still dazed, and spun the Chrysler into a one-eighty, because the other Audi had appeared in his rear-view.
He accelerated away, taking the next available intersection, the rear bumper only half attached and scraping along the road surface. Horns blared and tyres screeched. Brake dust, rainwater and smoke swirled together in the cold air.
Rundown storefronts flashed by. Citizen volunteers directing traffic fled out of the way as he raced towards them, the black Audi sedan in pursuit.
A police cruiser rushed towards Victor and Raven, but made no effort to block or engage. It raced past them, on its way to some other violation. Maybe in pursuit of a stolen yellow taxi.
The Chrysler struggled on, damaged and dented in many places, but still drivable. He followed a ramp down into a tunnel. Without lights it was black save only for the headlights of the vehicles within, travelling even slower than usual because of the poor visibility.
They were easier to swerve around as a result, for Victor and their pursuers. The horns sounding in their wake were louder down here, piercing and incessant. The Audi hurtled closer and closer.
They exited the tunnel, the rain and puckered windscreen obscuring the road ahead. Victor gripped hard on the steering wheel as he struggled to see through the downpour, accelerating fast, vehicles and buildings blurring by. He tensed to stop sliding in his seat as the Chrysler’s wheels lost traction on the wet road surface. The tyres screeched, rainwater misting in huge clouds.
