The Hunt For Atlantis

“What’s going on? What do you want?”

Starkman held out his other hand. “Your notes, for a start.” The gun was pointing at her chest. Numbly, she handed him the folder. “Too bad you didn’t bring your laptop. Guess we’ll have to pick that up after.”

“After what?” His silence and stony expression brought her to a horrible realization. “Oh my God! You’re going to kill me?”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Desperate, she looked around frantically for any way to escape.

She tugged at the door handle. It moved, but only a little. Child locks. Even though she knew it was pointless, she threw herself across the seat and tried the other door. It too refused to open.

Trapped!

Panic rose inside her, constricting her chest. Her green eyes wide with fear, she looked back at Starkman.

His expression had changed to one of surprise, his gaze flicking away from Nina to the rear window-

Whump!

Nina was flung forward as something rammed the Bentley from behind. Starkman’s breath whooshed from his mouth as he was slammed against the dashboard. He angrily shoved himself upright and aimed the gun at the rear window. Nina shrieked and dived out of the line of fire.

“It’s Chase!” Starkman shouted. “Son of a bitch!”

“How the hell did he find us?” the driver asked.

“I don’t give a shit! Ram that Limey bastard off the road and get us out of here!”

The Bentley swerved sharply. Nina slid over the smooth leather, banging her head against the door. Above her, Starkman swung the gun, tracking something outside.

Another impact!

This time it came from the side, the two-ton car lurching violently as metal crunched and twisted. Through the window Nina saw another vehicle, a large black SUV.

Starkman fired. Nina screamed and clapped her hands to her ears as the side window blew apart in a hail of glittering fragments. The SUV dropped back sharply, tires howling. Wind whipped through the broken window.

Two more shots rang out from Starkman’s gun, the rear windshield shattering and spraying Nina with chunks of safety glass. Car horns hooted furiously, the sound rapidly Dopplering away behind them as the Bentley accelerated. The driver swore and swerved again to dodge something, sending Nina slithering back across the seat.

“Go right!” Starkman shouted. Nina barely had time to brace herself before the Bentley screamed into a sharp turn.

“Shit!” the driver gasped as the car hit something with a flat thud. A person, Nina realized with horror. Shouts and screams came from outside as somebody tumbled from the car’s hood. But the driver didn’t stop, instead struggling to keep the Bentley under control as he accelerated again.

Starkman fired two more shots. Nina heard the other vehicle’s powerful engine revving behind them. As he took aim again, the gun was right above her.

She grabbed his wrist with both hands and pulled his arm down, sinking her teeth into the flesh of his hand as hard as she could.

He let out a roar of pain-and fired.

The flash was blinding, and the noise, just inches from her head, momentarily overpowered all her senses. The bullet slammed into the back of her seat.

Starkman pulled his hand free. Huge colored blobs danced in Nina’s vision, afterimages from the gun’s muzzle flame. Her hearing started to return in time to hear more gunfire.

But not from Starkman’s gun.

The headrest of the driver’s seat burst apart in a flurry of shredded leather and stuffing, followed a millisecond later by the driver’s head. Dark red blood and gray brain matter splattered the pale lining of the roof and the front windows.

The Bentley swerved as the driver’s corpse slumped to one side. Starkman yelled and grabbed the steering wheel. The vehicle straightened, throwing the stilldazed Nina back across the rear seat.

Wham!

The SUV rammed them again.

Swearing, Starkman leaned over the dead driver and grasped the door handle. The door opened. He stabbed the seat belt release and shoved the corpse out onto the road, then pulled himself over the center console and dropped into the driver’s seat just as the SUV hit again, harder. The Bentley snaked from side to side before Starkman regained control, sawing at the wheel and flinging the car into a hard turn to the left as he stomped on the accelerator. The tires shrieked in protest, the heavy car wallowing.

Nina’s head hit the right-hand door again as the turn flung her across the car. She pulled herself up. If Starkman was occupied with driving, then he couldn’t use the gun…

The other vehicle, a Range Rover, drew level with them. She recognized the face at the wheel-the man in the leather jacket!

With a huge silver gun in one hand, pointing at the Bentley.

“Stay down!” he shouted.

She dropped flat onto the seat again as two booms like cannon fire came from outside. Starkman ducked and shielded his face as the windshield burst apart, the wind driving the fragments back into the car.

Holding the wheel with one hand, he twisted and fired three shots over his left shoulder. Nina heard the Range Rover’s tires screech as it swerved for cover directly behind its quarry.

More horns sounded as Starkman wove the Bentley through the evening traffic, a nerve-shredding grind of metal assaulting Nina’s ears as it sideswiped another car. She looked up. They were somewhere around 17th or 18th Street and rapidly approaching the western side of Manhattan, only the broad lanes of the West Side Highway ahead, and beyond that the cold waters of the Hudson River.

Starkman fumbled with his gun, barely keeping hold of the wheel. Nina realized what he was doing. The automatic’s slide was locked back; he was reloading…

Which meant he couldn’t shoot!

She sat up sharply and clawed at Starkman’s face. He swiped at her, trying to use his weapon as a club. She ducked to one side and continued her attack, feeling something soft beneath the middle finger of her right hand.

His eye.

She drove her nail against it. Starkman howled, thrashing the gun violently at her.

“Stop the car!” she screamed. A glimpse of the speedometer told her that the Bentley was doing sixty and still picking up speed as it careened down the street, directly towards a knot of traffic waiting at the lights.

She screamed again, this time in panic, and pulled her hands from Starkman’s face. Blood covered her fingers. He saw the danger just in time and threw the wheel to the right to miss the rearmost car by mere inches, slamming the Bentley up onto the sidewalk. A trash can spun into the air as they plowed into it, but that was the least of Nina’s concerns, because now they were heading right into the path of the traffic racing along the West Side Highway-

To her horror, Starkman sped up.

The Bentley flew off the end of the sidewalk and smashed back down onto the road, the underside of the car grating against the asphalt. Nina saw headlights flash and heard the desperate shrill of locking brakes. Cars slewed in all directions to avoid a collision, only to be hit from behind by other drivers too close to stop in time.

They shot across the northbound lanes, reaching the median unharmed-only for Starkman to turn into the traffic on the other side, heading uptown directly against the southbound vehicles!

“Oh my God!” Nina shrieked as he flung the Bentley between the lanes of cars and trucks. Other vehicles flashed past on either side just inches away, their drivers swerving frantically to dodge the maniac charging straight at them. More horns blared ahead and behind, an orchestra of fury and fright. “Stop the car before you get us both killed!”