I glanced at Gleason. She nodded. ‘I’ll find it.’
That unnatural laugh again. ‘You better. You’ve got thirty minutes.’
Click.
As I put the phone down and hit the stopwatch on my wrist, I was already on my feet, reaching for my helmet. Parker was by my elbow all the way. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to. It was, I realised, enough to have him there. Gleason was on the other side, giving me immediate instructions and telling me they’d guide me to my location.
I glanced at her. ‘GPS tracker in with the necklace?’
She nodded. ‘And another in your comms gear, just in case the two of you become … separated.’
‘I thought that was the whole idea?’
‘The teams will keep station in a rolling diamond formation around you,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘They’ll stay at least a half mile from your position at all times.’
I shrugged. ‘Just make sure they don’t scare this guy off.’
‘They won’t.’
Parker helped me into the rucksack and tightened the shoulder straps in place. I checked I could still access the SIG beneath it.
‘Good luck, Charlie,’ he said softly.
I grinned at him, threw my leg over the bike, twisted the key and hit the starter. ‘Just be ready to intervene if some bloody traffic copper decides to pull me over for speeding,’ I said, and toed the Buell into gear.
I rolled out through the open garage door and down the driveway, taking a moment to settle myself, then hit the street and caned it.
Torquil had been taken forty-five hours, just short of two full days. With any luck, we’d have him back before that milestone was reached.
Through the earpieces, I could hear the tense comms traffic, the brief relayed instructions to the chase teams, who had started out wide and were now converging on the location we’d been given as the first rendezvous point. Gleason’s directions were calm, clear and concise, to keep straight or turn, as one set of traffic lights or another flashed past. The four teams had to hustle to keep pace and maintain the gap around me. Well, that was their problem. I wasn’t going to miss a deadline waiting for them to play catch-up.
I was moving through the middle of Southampton village, the leafy streets lined with upmarket boutiques and bistro cafes. I even passed a sign warning all persons they were required to wear proper attire on the streets. I had two guns, a knife, body armour and a bike helmet. That sounded like proper attire to me.
Ahead of me, a set of traffic lights at an intersection hopped up to amber, then red. The street was still quiet at this hour, but I eased off anyway.
‘We have you slowing down, Charlie,’ Gleason’s voice said in my ear. ‘Problem?’
‘Just traffic lights, just traffic lights,’ I said, making sure the voice-activated mic caught my words. ‘If you want me to jump them, you’re going to have to pay my tickets.’
‘No need to attract any unwanted attention if you don’t need to,’ Gleason said. ‘You’re looking good on time. Just—’
A voice I didn’t recognise cut straight across whatever she’d been about to say, louder in my earpieces. ‘All teams, hang back. Repeat, hang back!’
‘Who gave that order?’ Gleason snapped. ‘Identify yourself!’
I heard an engine turning lazily along the street behind me, glanced over my left shoulder and saw a big four-door family Dodge roll up slowly towards the lights, which were still on stop.
I turned back facing front, toed the Buell into first gear with the clutch in, ready to make a clean getaway as soon as red dropped to green.
And then all hell broke loose in the form of high-frequency white noise flooding the comms network. I let go of the clutch and the bike lurched and stalled under me, but that was the least of my worries. I was too busy scrabbling for my helmet strap, my only thought to get the pain out of my head.
Even above the horrendous volume in my earpieces, though, I heard the rising howl of the Dodge’s engine, felt the rumble through the road surface. I opened my eyes and jerked my head round, just in time to see the car pick up speed and swerve straight for me.
‘Ambush, ambush!’ I yelled into my useless radio. Then all I could do was hope to survive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A moment before impact, I yanked my left leg upwards. The front end of the Dodge hit the side of the bike’s frame just about where my knee would have been, and kept on coming.
The Buell was whipped viciously sideways by the force of the collision. Weighing less than one of the car’s axles, it never stood a chance. As I hiked my leg up over the tank, the bike started to disintegrate under me, scattering aluminium and plastic like shrapnel. And all the time, the dreadful screeching noise drilled into my brain.
I never had a second’s suspicion that this was a simple traffic accident. I didn’t need to flick my eyes to the two occupants and see the ski masks covering their faces, but I did it anyway, just to be sure.
Then I was hitting the ground hard enough to jolt the air out of my lungs, the bike partially on top of my right leg as we skated across the asphalt. The Dodge’s horns were locked into the tangled machine that had once been my pride and joy and it wasn’t letting go.
There was nothing I could do to stop being ploughed across the deserted intersection, so I kept my arms and head tucked in as much as I could to avoid injury and waited until they deemed I’d gone far enough. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot else I could do.
Fortunately, the jacket and jeans and boots I was wearing had been designed with just this kind of road contact in mind. They kept skin and bone intact, so when we finally slid to a stop almost at the far kerb, the only damage was to my nerves and my temper.
My right foot was still pinned by the bike, which itself was half underneath one of the vehicle’s front wheels. I kicked at it with my left leg, but I was totally trapped. Heart pounding, hands suddenly cold as fear squirted adrenaline into my system and primed my body to run, the only course left to me was to fight. I scrabbled for the SIG, but I was lying awkwardly, sprawled on my back, and the way the rucksack had been dragged underneath me as I’d been scraped along the asphalt meant I couldn’t quite get my fingers to the gun. I reached for the KA-BAR instead, ripping it free of the tape that held it in place to my boot.
The car doors slammed and two figures converged from either side, looming over me. The driver raised his arms, hands clasped. I had a flash image of Torquil’s paralysed fall on the beach, and instinctively knew what was coming.
The last time I’d suffered direct contact with a Taser I had not enjoyed the experience. It was only as the driver’s hands tightened that I realised he had something altogether more permanent in mind.
And then he shot me.
Even with body armour, taking a round to the chest at close range hurts like a bitch. I dropped the knife and doubled around the point of impact, gasping. The second man stepped over the ruined tail of the bike, kicking the KA-BAR away as he did so, and slashed through the straps of the rucksack, dragging it off my shoulders roughly. They backed away.
Ironically, removing the rucksack freed up my access to the SIG. Still panting, I snaked a hand behind me and freed the weapon, but the two men were already out of eyeline beyond the car’s bonnet, climbing back inside. I couldn’t even see the windscreen from down there, so I went for the softest available target, putting four rounds straight through the front grille.
The engine was hot, the coolant system under pressure. The rounds punctured the radiator and sweet yellow-green antifreeze sprayed out like blood. As the Dodge reversed rapidly, bumping down off the mangled remains of the Buell, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing the wounds I’d just inflicted on the car in return were mortal.
