collapse and crush them. But after an eternity of splintered fractions and fragments of time, they came to rest with a slight jerk as inertia tugged back at the momentum of impact.
She heard Granger cursing, weakly, and became aware of blood everywhere, but whether hers or his, she could not be sure. After the savage, caterwauling din of the crash, the silence that followed seemed to roar in her ears like a force nine gale. But not so loudly that she couldn’t hear the tinkling of glass and the tortured creak of metal as the weight of the wreckage resettled itself.
The crunch of boots on gravel. Running. And men shouting.
Gunshots cracked and popped somewhere nearby, but muted, perhaps by distance, perhaps because her ears were full of blood. Granger cursed again, but he trailed off into a groan as he struggled to release himself, or to retrieve something from beneath his seat.
Jules could not put one thought after another in any sort of coherent fashion. She was annoyed at ruining the clothes she’d bought just hours ago, even though she hated them and would have thrown them away. She felt cool, despite the heat of the day pouring in through the damaged windscreen, which looked as though a giant had put his fist through it.
And still the gunfire popped and crackled. Until, without preamble, a single shot roared with the concussive power of a small bomb going off beside her head. Someone screamed - it was her, she was screaming - at a blast wave of mutilation. Blood, bone, skin, gore. And Granger yelling and roaring, and trying to push her head down between her knees as he fired out of his window with the cut-down shotgun.
Two bangs sounded next to her ear, followed by metallic crunching, and then her door was open and she caught a glimpse of a blade. She tried to cry out, to warn Granger of the threat. But he was snarling and shouting as he fired off round after round from the pump-action shotgun.
Julianne tried to sit up but this man was too strong. But then the blade was gone, and her seatbelt had been cut, and she was being dragged out of the vehicle and away. Away from the burning oil, the iron blood, the tangy aftertaste of gunfire. She fought to free herself until she recognised Birendra’s voice.
‘It is fine. It is good. You are safe, Ms Julianne. You are safe. Just come with us, we have to go. Now.’
The world was a red mask of death and chaos. Her eyes were tacky with blood. What little she could see and understand gave her to believe they had been rammed at an intersection and two more cars had blocked them in. Both of the blocking cars were burning, riddled with bullet holes. She and Granger had been ambushed and would have died, save for three carloads of Shah’s men who had materialised from the traffic flow.
Some of the attackers lay on the ground. One man in a pair of Levi’s cut-offs lay across the hood of the cab, still twitching from the last sparks of his neurons as they faded away.
The gunfire had ceased, she realised. It had stopped some unknown time ago. Her internal clock seemed to have been damaged in the crash. Had she been here for hours?
‘Come on,’ said Birendra. ‘We have to get you to a hospital. The others can chase them down.’
Although hardly able to stand, she still shook herself free of the Gurkha and the second man hurrying her towards their waiting SUV. Other vehicles in the Shah Security group pulled off down the road at high speed, in hot pursuit.
‘They’re getting away?’ she croaked. ‘No. We have to go now. I’m coming now.’
She reached around and flapped her hand at the small of her back. The SIG Sauer was still there, and for the first time she became aware of a burning pain at the base of her spine, as though she’d been punched there by a stone fist.
‘Come on then,’ said an exasperated Birendra. ‘We have to move quickly. There is no time.’
He hurried her gently, but firmly, over to the last SUV, a black Volvo XC 90. The endorphin rush her body had released immediately after the crash was wearing off, and she was waking into a world of pain. A radio crackled with reports of the chase.
‘
‘Hop in, Ms Julianne,’ came a familiar voice. She blinked away the thin crust of dried blood and found Shah patting the seat next to him in the rear of the vehicle. He didn’t seem to care that she was about to bleed all over his soft, cream-coloured leather. Brass casings had burnt small holes into the upholstery and carpet. She thanked him as he handed her an antiseptic wet wipe.
‘We must go now if we are to catch them,’ he told her, smiling.
A PKM very much like Fifi’s old machine gun rested on the wound-down car window. Shah pulled it inside and handed it off to one of his men in the back, in return for a more reasonable, G-36 carbine. Birendra helped Jules up before climbing into the front passenger seat. The driver reversed, slamming into another vehicle before snapping it into gear, jerking them around with almost the same amount of force as that created by the crash. Once they were straight and true, he stomped on the gas before the last door closed, launching them into the disrupted traffic stream.
Birendra grabbed the radio’s microphone. ‘Status?’
‘
‘Return fire at your discretion. We’re coming up on your six now,’ Birendra said.
She heard a siren, and searched fruitlessly for any sign of the police until she realised the warbling klaxon was coming from somewhere just outside. The driver had fired up his own siren. Seeing her confusion, Shah smiled. He appeared serene in the midst of all this chaos.
‘Do you forget, Ms Julianne, that I am an FPDA-approved security contractor. Licensed and bonded to the development authority, and subcontracted to the city to maintain order during emergencies. I think there has been enough gunfire and bloodshed this morning to constitute an emergency. And two vehicles are currently fleeing the scene of that gunfire at high speed, endangering law-abiding motorists and pedestrians and threatening the dignity and repose of the city at large. It is our duty to pursue them. And so we shall. You are still armed?’
She shifted in her seat and retrieved the SIG Sauer. Her neck muscles and most of those in her upper back seized up as she did so; she ignored the discomfort. The weapon felt heavy in her hand. It felt like something that could open up all sorts of possibilities.
‘How is Granger?’ she asked.
Shah turned off his smile while he answered. ‘Mr Cooley acquitted himself admirably,’ he said. ‘He detected the ambush as the attacking vehicle sped through the red light and he accelerated his own vehicle early enough to avoid being rammed amidships, so to speak. The impact was still significant, but it spun you around, rather than smashing and flipping your vehicle into the deep ditch by the side of the road, as was intended, I believe.’
The driver, a man Jules did not recognise, whipped the steering wheel back and forth as he weaved through the traffic at more than a hundred klicks an hour. They passed a pair of police cruisers going in the opposite direction. The cops showed no signs of providing back-up today.
‘But is Granger okay, Shah? He looked terrible after the crash.’
The old Gurkha nodded. ‘He has sustained injury. But he shall live and probably recuperate. Mr Cooley is one of my best men. Even shocked and disoriented by the collision, he managed to hold off your attackers while our support vehicles closed in. He killed one of them, in fact, as the man was leaning into the car to shoot you both.’ This seemed to amuse Shah greatly, and his face lit up again, smiling with Taoist contentment.
‘Oh … I guess I didn’t notice,’ said Jules, not really believing the words as they came out of her mouth.
Had Granger blown some bugger’s head off right next to her? She shook her own head in wonder, aggravating the strained muscles in her neck again.
‘How many of them are there?’ she asked.
Birendra drew out his seatbelt so he could turn around to answer. ‘There were about thirty of them, Miss Julianne. Many more than we expected.’
‘I am certain we will find that Mr Cesky’s agents have secured support from one of my rivals,’ said Shah. ‘I recognised two of the men back at the intersection. Freelancers. And not in the way Mr Pappas is a freelancer. These men are scavengers. Not skilled or reliable enough to secure permanent employment with any reputable contractor, they sell their services on the grey market, doing work like this, one or two steps away from the agency holding the original commission.’
The driver swung hard left, taking them off the main drag past the airport and away from the thickening chaos of the traffic banked up there. Jules was not familiar enough with the city’s layout to know where they were
