Spiral (51 page)

Carter glanced around, then sprinted for the nearest cover, switching magazines in the Browning as he ran. From the bushes he saw the police squad cars and two huge fire vehicles charging up the road, horns blaring. Carter made it to the pavement, shoved his Browning back into his pocket and ran.

He was motoring on instinct now. All six cylinders.

He sprinted, boots thudding against the sidewalk. As he skidded onto El Camino Drive he saw the distant lights of cars and cursed. He dived over a low wall and watched the vehicles - three large black GMC trucks - go screaming past, engines howling.

Bad, thought Carter.

Real bad.

He continued to run.

Two minutes later, pouring with sweat, he reached the Corvette. He jumped in, gunned the engine and floored the accelerator. The huge VI2 roared and, leaving rubber tread smeared heedlessly against the concrete, he wheel-spun towards the end of the fire-scorched alley and out onto the road—

The GMC trucks were prowling, waiting, searching. Their engines howled as they raced down the highway after the Corvette as it appeared: wolves hunting down this running lamb.

All four vehicles screamed around a huge loop of tarmac, suspensions dipping as they veered round corners and ended back on Wilshire Boulevard. They slipped past the fire trucks and Carter, bent forward over the steering wheel, sweat dripping in his eyes, cursed his pursuers—

Carter pulled free his Browning and kissed the grip. ‘You’ve saved me before, baby,’ he muttered.

He fired through the Corvette’s rear window. Glass exploded in a shower and the three GMC trucks veered, one mounting the pavement and sending a couple of pedestrians sprinting for cover, wheels churning an old man into the ground with quadruple impacts.

They regrouped on the road and, their lights dazzling Carter, accelerated towards him.

Where’s fucking Kade when I need him? he thought. Closely followed by, I should have stolen a faster car—

The lead GMC truck smashed into the back of the Corvette. Carter was jolted in his seat, and almost lost his Browning. His foot slammed to the floor and suddenly he veered right, down a narrow slip road leading away from Beverly Hills—

The GMC trucks followed in tight formation.

They sped past a parked patrol car. Red lights flickered.

The police car pulled away from the kerb and gave chase.

Carter growled to himself. He fired another few bullets from the rear of the ‘Vette and was gratified when he popped a headlamp. But that did little to take the GMCs out of action.

They’re too high up, he realised. Their cabs are too fucking high up.

The lead GMC shunted him again.

Carter fired the remaining bullets; there was a high-pitched squeal and a rattle from the engine compartment and the truck veered off, hammering into a low wall. Carter caught a glimpse in his mirror of a dark body catapulted like a rag doll through the windscreen before the howl of police sirens made him drag the steering wheel to the left. The Corvette’s wheels screeched at the abuse as the car power-slid around a corner through a crossroads, the back end hitting and bouncing from a set of lights.

More police cars joined the chase.

Who’re they fucking chasing? he thought sombrely.

Me or them?

He pressed his foot to the floor. The engine growled.

Help,
he thought.

The Corvette sped through an intersection; there was a multiple music-blare of horns as cars zipped insanely all around and Carter closed his eyes for a moment. Kade? Where are you, Kade? Come and get me out of this shit!

Come and fucking
help me...

He no longer checked his rear-view mirror. The view in it only seemed to get worse.

Engines howled close behind him, mechanical animals with their teeth bared, ready to tear and rend him with anger and hatred ...

Once more he wrenched on the steering wheel, feeling the car lose traction as tyres slid around the corner, and once more he narrowly missed another vehicle - a fire truck, this time. The horn screamed at him and Carter involuntarily flinched, half ducking down in his seat...

Focus, he thought.

Meeting. With Natasha, and Jessica...

And Langan.

His gaze flickered up, checking the signs. He feinted a left turn, then dragged the Corvette over the grassy embankment and forced a U-turn through heavy traffic. Tyres squealed, horns blared; Carter caught a flashing, almost hallucinatory scene of angry faces and waving fists. The Corvette’s rear bounced from the wing of a brand new Porsche...

‘Motherfucker!’ came the scream.

Carter checked his rear-view as he sped away. He had managed, by some twist of fate, by some fluke of gridlock, to cause a massive jam across the six lanes of highway; the GMCs had stuttered to a halt against a wall of metal. LAPD cops flooded the road, guns out - yelling—

Gunshots rattled.

He heard the wet
thump
of metal in flesh.

Carter ducked low and floored the Corvette’s accelerator.

He drove for ten minutes as dusk began to fall, reducing his speed a little so as not to attract too much unwanted attention. As he sped down towards Inglewood and the meet, he checked his mirrors again.

There, in the distance, he could see a group of GMC trucks.

‘No,’ he muttered, frowning. ‘Fucking impossible!’

He saw the trucks accelerating, still distant blobs, their grilles like teeth.

Smiling teeth.

Carter’s jaw tightened. His foot hit the floor again and the Corvette jerked forward, spun right down a tight bend and into a McDonald’s drive-through. He slammed on the brakes and the Corvette screeched to a halt beside a wooden bench under a group of flowering trees where Natasha and Jessica sat, empty Coke cartons in front of them.

Carter leaped out.

‘We’ve got trouble.’

‘Big trouble?’ asked Natasha.

‘Oh yes.’

Carter slotted a fresh mag into his Browning and as a car pulled free of the service window of the drive-through he pointed the gun and screamed, ‘Get out of the fucking car!’

The Ferrari F355 Spider stopped abruptly. The engine rumbled, a deep-throated V8 purr.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Natasha.

‘You were right. We need something faster.’

‘Hey man, you have
got
to be kidding!’

Carter met the man’s outraged glare: he was young, wore a skull-and-crossbones bandanna, Oakleys and no shirt, revealing a heavily tattooed torso. When he spoke, his hands lifted from the steering wheel in emphasis.

‘Get out.’

‘You motherf—’

The Browning moved. There was a
blam.
A hole appeared in the passenger side of the windscreen - and in the fine leather upholstery beyond. The man stared at the hole in the windscreen, then at the seat. Then he leaped from the vehicle as if stung.

Carter, Natasha and Jessica jumped in.

‘You know how much this car cost, man?’

Carter met the man’s gaze again. ‘Sue me,’ he said as he slotted the tiptronic into first and floored the gas pedal; the Ferrari F355 roared, the bellowing of a 375-bhp lion, and shot off so fast that Carter was pinned back into the seat.

‘You motherfuckers!’ screamed the tattooed man, waving his fist and a strawberry milk shake in the air.

The Ferrari F355 became practically airborne from the speed bump as they took off past five black GMC trucks, the windows all blacked out, their engines rumbling and lights blazing in the gloom of the Californian dusk. He slotted the vehicle into sixth gear and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as the V8 3496cc motor roared with renewed vigour and the road became a blur of twisting concrete snake; it danced ahead of him like a scene from a bad trip.

Natasha leaned forward - both women had leaped into the cramped rear of the roofless sports car. ‘Erm, Carter, how fast are you going?’ There was an edge of fear to her voice.

‘I don’t know,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m watching ... the ... road.’

‘Are we in that much trouble?’

‘Yes,’ said Carter softly.

‘Did you see my father?’

Carter looked at Natasha from the corner of his eye. ‘No, Natasha. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh.’

She sat back, deflated. Carter wanted to say,
I told you so; you shouldn’t have got your hopes up, love.
But he bit his tongue and concentrated on the road, a winding 180 m.p.h. roller coaster of orange and grey beneath the colourful bruise that was the sky.

‘Who did you meet?’

‘It was a set-up. I’m afraid I blew up the hotel room ...’

‘With what?’

‘A couple of HPGs.’

‘You lunatic! What did they - whoever
they
were - want?’

‘It was the Nex,’ said Carter sourly. ‘And they wanted the QIII schematics. Hold on,’ he snapped, slamming the Ferrari down a couple of gears and using the engine braking to get them sliding and squealing around a corner. Carter grinned like an excited child back at the two women.

They didn’t look impressed.

Sirens screamed suddenly off to one side as a convoy of police cars burst from a junction, almost running the Ferrari off the road. Carter swerved violently, the motor roaring, and just made it around.

The squad cars took up the pursuit.

‘Shit.’

Carter accelerated back up to 180 m.p.h., a wide grin on his face.

‘Catch this baby, little piggies,’ he muttered as they fell away behind him and he focused on the far distance. ‘Natasha, get a message to Langan to come pick us up. There must be a thousand cops after us.’

‘But the Nex will tag us ...’

‘So fucking what? They already know we’re here.’

Natasha pulled free the ECube as Carter concentrated on driving; night fell over California as they sped south and left their pursuers far, far behind ...

The motel was in the middle of nowhere; there were two pickups parked out front when the Ferrari F355 sped around a corner and came to a sudden halt. Carter lit a cigarette as Natasha and Jessica climbed out and stretched their tense, aching muscles.

‘You’re a lunatic,’ said Jessica.

‘I got us out.’

‘What happened back there?’ asked Natasha.

Carter shrugged. ‘There were Nex waiting for me; they wanted the QIII schematics and we had a bit of a lovers’ tiff. There was a bit of leg-slapping, hair-pulling and face-scratching and I had to make rather a sharp getaway ...’

‘You’re hurt.’ Natasha stepped in close, her finger brushing his cheek. Carter looked into her eyes then and smiled. He took her fingers, lifted them to his lips and kissed them.

‘There was a sniper. Waiting for me.’

‘Bad ...’

‘I think I hit him.’

The drone of the Comanche reached their ears and Carter gazed up into the darkness. Lights suddenly glared from the black as the chopper banked and, with a heavy wild
thrumming
of rotors, flashed overhead. It circled, then slowed and Carter, Jessica and Natasha backed away, shielding their eyes as the Comanche whined down, its suspension bouncing as the machine landed lightly beside the Ferrari. There were several hisses and whines, plus the drone of incredibly powerful engines being gently but purposefully abused. The HIDSS-helmeted figure turned, looked out from the smoked cockpit and gave a thumbs-up.

Outside, the trees and bushes were tossed from side to side by the rotors’ turbulence.

‘Here’s our ride,’ said Carter, something unheard and unseen making him turn, his dark eyes peering out over the gloom and shadows of the nearby trees and dirty highway beyond the motel’s parking lot. Something burned uneasily at the back of Carter’s mind. His head turned as he glanced uneasily down the road, eyes searching for the dark GMC trucks that had so recently given chase ... but there was nothing there.

Nothing out of place.

Nothing
wrong...

Someth
—

His gaze returned to the Comanche.

And he could hear it. A distant voice: like a scream, in passion, in anger, determined but pinned down, restricted, forced into silence against its furious force of will—

Something’s wr
—

Carter frowned. The whole world seemed to slow. The Comanche’s blurred rotors whirled at a snail’s pace,
thrum thrum thruuuuum.
Carter reached for his Browning and it seemed that his hand took an age to reach the heavy weapon as his head was turning towards Natasha and his lips formed the words, ‘Let’s
... go…’

There was a distant
crack.

Carter’s eyes caught the muzzle flash.

Something’s wrong.

A hole appeared in the Comanche’s cockpit canopy and Langan was punched backwards, flipping slowly across the inside of the helicopter, a huge splatter of blood mushrooming up against the smoked glass. Carter’s Browning appeared instantly in his hand and he cursed the slowness and clumsiness of his own actions, cursed the sluggishness of the world around him and within him as his mouth opened to scream the words and both Jessica and Natasha turned, their movements painfully slow, to gaze in confusion up at the helicopter, the whirling rotors, the slumped figure in the darkened depths of the imprisoning and suddenly insect-like machine—