by Rob Jones
“We have to get out of here right now!” Kim yelled. “She’s getting away!”
“Everyone get in!” Camacho said, staring at the Beetle.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Lexi yelled. “This piece of crap up against a Boxster?”
“But you haven’t seen my driving, babe,” Camacho said. “And I have a friend’s death to avenge. That adds more speed.”
“This could damage my street credibility,” Scarlet said.
“You have street credibility?” Kim said.
“You know what they say about the difference between Beetles and porcupines – porcupines have the pricks on the outside.”
Kim shook her head. “For your information, my parents used to drive a Beetle.”
“Oh,” Scarlet said coolly. “I’m very sorry.”
“You’re such an asshole, Sloane.”
“What? I apologized!”
“Are we all safely buckled up?” Camacho said over the top of them, and then reversed it out into the cobblestone yard. He swung the wheel hard to the right and spun the decrepit car around one-eighty. The CIA man then stamped on the throttle and the little VW shot off out of the yard and bounced off the kerb hard. He jammed his foot down on the pedal as hard as he could as he steered toward the highway at the top of the hill in pursuit of the Porsche.
The hill gradient increased, and Camacho responded by flooring the accelerator pedal and dropping down into third. This increased torque to get the Beetle up the incline, but the much more powerful Boxster convertible was now well ahead and streaking back down the other side of the hill toward Acapulco.
They finally reached the highway and hung a fast left to hit the northbound lane going down the road to central Acapulco, but the rear-end of the Beetle swung out on the turn and skidded into the oncoming traffic. Dozens of cars flashed past in a hail of horns and fist-waving.
Scarlet shook her head. “This has gone far enough,” she said. “Being seen in this thing is the last straw.”
She gripped the back of Camacho’s seat and stood up in the back of the convertible before loosing a savage volley of fire at the racing Boxster but they all went high.
Not to be outdone, Lexi followed suit and fired a shot at the Porsche’s rear tire. The bullet shredded the rubber and the German sports car spun out of control. As Lexi gave Scarlet a smug look, the rear-end of the Boxster juddered with the loss of the tire and skidded out into the oncoming traffic for a second or two. Aurora was thrown all over the place as she struggled to correct the skid and punch the car as hard as she could down the hill on three tires.
“Where did you learn to shoot again?” Lexi asked.
Scarlet let the comment slide and struggled to get a second shot as the Beetle skidded around all over the hot asphalt. With one of her tires blown out they all knew they had a chance now and Camacho pushed hard to draw level with her, swerving the dilapidated Beetle to avoid a collision with a U-Haul truck dawdling up the hill.
But even on three tires the Boxster was outperforming the battered Beetle and now Aurora was making a call on her cell phone.
“She ordering a pizza or something?” Scarlet said.
“Damn it all!” Camacho said, and smacked the top of the steering wheel. “We’re not going to make it!”
“We’ll see about that,” Lexi said, and fired a second shot.
She hit the other rear tire and sent the powerful Porsche into a frenzy of sparks and smoke as the rear-engine sports car tried to drive forward on two wheel rims.
A second later they drew level with her but she swerved wildly into them. With another shower of sparks and a terrible grinding sound, the VW nudged the Porsche onto the shoulder and tried to force it from the highway but Aurora jammed the throttle and powered the damaged Porsche forward. A shower of sparks trailed behind her in the hot Mexican sunshine and as she accelerated they clipped the rear of her car and she spun around one-eighty.
The impact had a similar effect on the Beetle and it spun around ninety degrees until its front fender collided with the crash barrier and brought the car to a halt. Its engine began to putter. “Oh, crap,” Camacho mumbled.
Aurora seized the chance and pointed the Boxster’s nose at them, turning the powerful car into a missile.
“Er…” Kim said. “She’s heading this way.”
With the Boxster now bearing down on them in the bright sun, Camacho held his nerve. He pushed down on the clutch and revved the tired engine to keep it alive. If it failed now it was game over.
Then the engine died.
“Shit!” Kim screamed. “This Aurora bitch is batshit crazy!”
“Get us moving, Jack!” Lexi said.
Camacho tried to turn the engine over but it wouldn’t start.
“She’s getting closer!” Lexi said, and fired at the Porsche now bearing down on them.
Camacho tried again, but still it didn’t turn over.
“A hundred yards, Jack!”
Scarlet and Reaper now fired on the Boxster, puncturing the steel and shattering the window, but still Aurora kept driving. She blasted the tires on the left hand-side of the Beetle to shreds and Kim felt the car sink down.
“We’re listing to port, darling!” Scarlet added. “Time to break out the life jackets?”
“Twenty yards!” Kim yelled. This was a nightmare.
On the third twist of the key, Jack Camacho finally managed to turn the engine over and the car rumbled unhappily to life. By now the busy Acapulco traffic had backed up behind them and the highway was mostly blocked with cars, but the Porsche was still bearing down on them and Aurora Soto had only one thing in mind.
Camacho yanked the gearstick into reverse and slammed the accelerator down. In a cloud of rubber smoke he powered the Beetle back away from the crash barrier and spun the wheel to bring the car facing north again. With a second to spare the Boxster ripped past them, missing the front of their car by inches.
“That was too close!” Kim yelled.
Having missed her target, Aurora Soto swung the Porsche around and made another pass, firing wildly with Doyle’s gun as she shot past them one more time.
Reaper fired and blasted a line of bullet holes in the side of the Boxster but it was gone again.
“Time to end this,” Camacho said, swerving the VW harshly through the traffic in pursuit of the Porsche. “She’s out of her mind.” Drivers waved fists out of their windows and sounded their horns as he went, but the ageing CIA agent focussed on the job.
They hit the bottom of the peninsula and were now racing along an avenue running parallel to the beach. Aurora turned in her seat and pointed an Uzi at them before firing off a short burst. The bullets punctured the engine cover of the Beetle and snaked their way up the car shredding the vinyl on the rear of the roof.
“She keeps an Uzi in the glove box,” Reaper said. “I’m impressed. I keep those little mints in mine.”
Scarlet looked at him, narrowed her eyes in confusion and shook her head. “What?”
“Just saying.”
Lexi and Kim stood up and fired again, but Aurora returned fire with the Uzi. Bullets smashed through the window and shredded what was left of the vinyl roof which was now flapping loose behind them. A second later the wind got under it and tore it back off its frame. It flew back away from the car like a giant black bat before crashing into the road behind them.
Lexi stood up and gripped the windshield rim for support as she fired off another burst from her pistol. She struck one of the Boxster’s remaining good tires and the Porsche skidded off the road, totally out of control. She crashed through a break in the buildings which divided the road from the beach – an open-top bar through which Kim now glimpsed the sparkling ocean.
In hot pursuit, Camacho steered toward the bar, mounted the kerb and smashed through a line of potted palms.
Scarlet pushed back in her seat and shook her head. “You’re having a laugh!”
“Sorry, babe… but no.”
> Aurora smashed the Porsche through the tables and chairs and skidded over the bar’s patio before crashing through the rail running around the decking. In a cloud of smashed wood and bent parasols the Boxster launched off the deck and flew through the air for a few seconds before crashing down on the hot sand of the beach.
Camacho never hesitated and followed in the Boxster’s wake of destruction. Now, Kim screamed, wide-eyed with terror but Camacho knew what he was doing. A second later the VW smashed hard into the hot, white sand of Condesa Beach and after covering several screaming tourists with an arc of sand, raced off to the north in pursuit of Aurora.
A crowd of disgruntled people had formed on the bar’s deck and were now busy making calls on their phones. Kim guessed local law enforcement wouldn’t be too far away.
Weaving in and out of various parasols on the beach as terrified tourists scattered for their lives, Camacho pushed the Beetle north in a desperate attempt to catch up with Aurora. Now they were on soft sand the blown-out tires were no longer the disadvantage they had been on the highway.
Kim gasped as Camacho piled through a line of coconut-matting sunshades. “Never did this in training.”
He laughed and nodded his head in agreement. “Me neither!” He checked ahead and saw the Porsche’s mighty engine was powering the car through the sand faster than he expected.
“I did…” Scarlet mumbled.
“She’s still getting away,” Kim said.
“She’s driving straight for those rocks!” Lexi added.
They peered into the distance and saw a stack of enormous rocks rising up out of the sand. A large white hotel protruded into the tropical sky above them.
Reaper sighed. “I know they’re some kind of suicide cult, but this is crazy!”
Then they heard an approaching chopper and looked up to see a Bell thundering over the top of them from behind. They felt the mighty downdraft as it swooped forward and slowed to keep pace with Aurora’s Boxster.
“Not a pizza then…” Scarlet sighed.
“Surely not,” Kim said.
Reaper gave an appreciative nod. “Mais oui… I think so.”
Camacho looked on in disbelief as Aurora Soto unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up on the driver’s seat of the Porsche. She grabbed the skid on the bottom of the Bell and then the chopper climbed sharply away from the road.
The Boxster, now a lethal runaway, careered along the beach and ripped through a line of parasols before crashing into the jumble of rocks at the base of the hotel. The gas tank ruptured and a second later it exploded into a tremendous fireball, scattering shrapnel all over the beach for hundreds of meters in every direction.
In the distance to the east, they watched the Bell turn hard to starboard and disappear over the bright white skyline of the city.
“Now that’s what I call an exit,” Scarlet said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jack Brooke watched the Californian sun sparkling on the water as his government jet made the final approach into San Francisco International. Somewhere down there in the center of the city his staff were preparing for him to make his speech the following day. Was it a crazy idea? Maybe, and the weight of the covert Mexico mission just increased the pressure. Even now as the plane touched down on the hot tarmac he still wasn’t sure if he was doing the right thing.
His ex-wife wanted him to do it, but his daughter Alex was against the idea. He understood why – his political career had eclipsed his job as a father and taken him away from her during her childhood. Now they were finally getting close again and he was running for President of the United States – what other reaction could he expect?
Charles Grant was a good man and a great president, and his kidnapping at the hands of Klaus Kiefel had only increased his massive popularity with the American people – but thanks to the Twenty-Second Amendment to the US Constitution no one was allowed more than two terms in the Oval Office and Grant’s eight years were up.
Brooke hadn’t made the decision to run lightly. His family was a major consideration – as was his ranch in Idaho. Sitting on the Hill listening to committees and steering groups his mind had wandered more than once to his sprawling property in the mountains. He was an outdoors kind of guy who liked nothing better than fishing out in the rivers or riding his Appaloosa into the hills. Bred by the Nez Perce Indians of western Idaho, the Appaloosa was the perfect horse for trail riding and even some mountain hunting and that ticked all of his boxes. But what kept his heart in the mountains was the same thing that boosted his popularity with the electorate, and it was clear that he was the party’s best chance at securing the Oval Office.
Now the plane was trundling off to a gate on the south side of the airport. Soon they would whisk him away in a line of state government Escalades all the way to the hotel at the Embarcadero Center for the speech of his career. Scott West was a dangerous opponent in the primaries and it was neck and neck in California. But everything rested on the Golden State now – whoever won here would secure the party’s official nomination and go on to fight Bill Peterson for the White House. Brooke thought Peterson was weak on defense at a dangerous time for America, and it was that belief that had finally driven him to run. It was a tense time.
Worse still was the Mexican business. Deploying Kim, Doyle and Jack Camacho down there was risky but unavoidable. The intel was minimal but clear – Morton Wade had paid tens of millions of dollars to an unidentified arms broker in Astana but what he had bought and where it was currently located were still two massive and lethal ‘known-unknowns’. Someone had to get to the bottom of it, and working with Eden’s ECHO outfit seemed a great way to keep things well under the radar.
He glanced at his watch and frowned. He hadn’t heard from Kim Taylor yet, and hoped all was okay. Running a semi-covert mission in Mexico could ruin his chances if there was any blowback, plus his daughter Alex was in the region, on the Eden Consortium’s private island in the Caribbean. He knew what she was doing down there, even though she had never spoken to him about it, but he had no power to tell her what to do. Even if he got into the Oval Office he knew she still wouldn’t listen to a damned word he said.
He cracked a brief smile at the thought. That’s Alex...
When the crew opened the airplane door the hot air flooded in and washed over him. Outside on the tarmac was a gathering of journalists. Jack Brooke gave his famous crooked smile, slipped on his sunglasses and made his way down the steps. A long day of small-talking, glad-handing and grip-n-grins was ahead of him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On the flight to Rome, Joe Hawke was struggling to focus on the issue at hand. He thought maybe it was just too long since he’d been a full-time soldier, but no matter how up in his face the Wade business was, he couldn’t stop thinking about Liz, and the grisly trail that had led all the way to Matheson. Avenging her death hadn’t felt anywhere near as good as he’d thought it might, and there was still Lazaro to consider.
Alfredo Lazaro, known to his victims as the Spider, was the Cuban hit-man who had pulled the trigger and killed his wife. He was acting on the orders of various middlemen stretching back like puddles of slime to James Matheson, and he too would pay the price for the part he played.
Now, Hawke cast a tired eye through the tiny window of Eden’s private jet and winced at the pain from the wound in his shoulder as he watched the speeding aircraft descend through the broken cloud. Below he could see glances of the famous olive-covered hills of Tuscany and beyond them rose up the Appennini Mountains of Umbria and Abruzzo. This was somewhere he could lose himself when all this madness was over, but would that be with Lea Donovan?
Before he could think about that future, visions of James Matheson rose again in his mind like a rotten corpse punching its way out of a shallow grave. He was right to kill him. There was no doubt of that. Matheson had ordered Operation Swallowtail against his wife. No matter what truths she had kept from him, he knew she had loved him once… and that was why Ma
theson had to pay the final price. But with Matheson gone, the thought of why Swallowtail was ordered began to gnaw at him.
What the old man had said about how he was just following orders was nagging at him, pulling on his mind like a claw. What was that name again – the Oracle? Hawke shook his head. Who could be so powerful that he secretly directed the policies of entire governments? As for the claim that this Oracle was tied up with the murder of Lea’s father – Hawke didn’t know what to think. At first he thought he had to tell Lea straight away, but then he decided against it. If that old bastard Matheson had been lying it would only stir up painful memories for Lea with no benefit at all.
But if he was telling the truth, then whoever the Oracle was had a lot to answer for – not only ordering Matheson to execute Liz, but now some sort of involvement in the murder of Harry Donovan. The thoughts swirled in his mind but he decided to keep Matheson’s final ramblings to himself, at least for now. He was lost deep in thoughts of tracking down the Spider when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see not Lea, whom he had expected, but Maria Kurikova.
“Lost in the woods?” she asked with a fresh smile. Before he could reply, she sat down opposite him and handed him a coffee. “I know the feeling. I get lost in my thoughts all the time.”
“Can we talk?” he said, taking a short sip of the coffee. He glanced up and saw Lea and Ryan were sleeping at the back of the plane and decided to take the moment to speak with her.
“Sure.” She flashed that smile of hers.
“I wanted to thank you, Maria.”
“What for?”
“You read the news today?”
“Only Pravda. I don’t trust the Western press.”
He gave her a look. “Any stories stand out?”
