He smiled at her, reached over, and rubbed her belly. Alex Jr. was kicking around like crazy. Probably scared, too. “Hang on, baby. It’ll all be over in a minute.”
He popped a charge into the breech. With a grunt, he rolled the side door open, then pointed the launcher at Donovan’s windshield.
“Send up a prayer, motherfucker. You’re about to kiss God.”
The grenade launcher barked and Donovan swerved. The charge hissed overhead and a parked car behind him exploded, erupting in flames.
Score one for the good guys.
But Gunderson wasn’t a quitter. He popped another charge into the breech, let it fly.
Donovan braked and swerved a second time, hearing another ominous hiss as the grenade streaked past his windshield and blew a chunk out of the blacktop.
Two-nothing, home team.
But he’d been lucky. If Gunderson fired that weapon a third time, there was a pretty good chance they’d be peeling Donovan’s hide off these car seats with a pair of forensic tweezers.
He floored the accelerator, regaining his momentum, and just as Gunderson finished loading up charge number three, Donovan jerked the wheel, hard.
The van shuddered and fishtailed, the impact knocking Gunderson off his feet. He fumbled the carbine, which tumbled past the doorway, slammed onto the hood of the cruiser, then bounced into the street. Gunderson was about to follow when big hands grabbed him and yanked him back inside.
But Gunderson’s troubles were far from over. The news van swerved wildly now as its driver fought for control of the wheel.
Up ahead, a road crew had set up shop in the middle of the street, signs warning drivers to PROCEED WITH CAUTION — and the van was doing anything but.
The next happened so fast it barely had time to register in Donovan’s brain:
Swerving to avoid the road crew, the news van tilted sideways onto two wheels, then tipped over with a rusty groan and began to roll. Gunderson and a big guy in a ski mask were launched through the open side door by the force of the impact. As they tumbled onto the street, the van rolled and rolled, metal pounding blacktop, windows splintering, until it finally barreled through a row of parked cars and came to rest against the fresh carcass of a BMW.
Donovan, meanwhile, jammed his foot against the cruiser’s brake pedal, feeling the tires melt beneath him. But it was too little, too late. The patrol car skidded into the mangled leftovers and stopped cold.
That’s when Donovan’s forehead met the steering wheel and everything went black.
7
A baby was crying. Somewhere far away.
Gunderson lifted his head off the blacktop, felt the burn of road rash against his left cheek, the tickle of blood on his forehead. He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Someone was lying near him on the road. Dressed in black. Groaning.
Luther?
Sounded like him. Looked about his size. Still wearing his goddamn ski mask, the paranoid fuck.
Luther always said he’d back Gunderson’s play with everything he had-everything except his face. “I’m no superstar,” he’d once told Gunderson. “You tell me what to do, I’ll do it, but my ma ain’t gonna see my face all over the TV news.”
Luther wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but Gunderson had to respect his point of view.
But then, Luther wasn’t the concern right now, was he? Something else sat unformed at the periphery of Gunderson’s mind, something he needed to take care of. Unfortunately, his head felt like a can of soda that had been shaken up and left in the freezer too long.
In the distance, the baby was still crying. Getting closer now. Couldn’t somebody shut that fucking kid up so he could concentrate?
No, wait. Not a baby.
A siren. A police siren.
Then all at once it hit him: Special Agent Jack. The van. Tina losing control of the wheel.
Oh, shit.
Sara.
Body screaming in protest, Gunderson jumped to his feet and spun, scanning the area until he found the van, which lay on its side like a dead elephant amidst a litter of old bones. There was a spray of blood across the cracked front windshield.
Oh, my fucking Christ.
“Sara!”
Gunderson stumbled toward the van, scrambled up and over it, and climbed in through the side door. He nearly stopped short at the sight of the carnage inside.
Gabe was gone for sure, lying at an impossible angle in back, head canted, eyes open and glazed. Nemo lay faceup across the middle seats, half-conscious and blinking. “What the fuck just happened?”
Then there was Tina. Jesus. Poor Tina had half a steering wheel embedded in her face, her once blond hair now wet and stained crimson, Queen of the Gladiators no more.
And Sara.
She was strapped in front next to Tina, eyes closed, arms dangling, a pregnant Raggedy Ann.
Gunderson felt gut-punched. He climbed over to her, touched her face, her neck, searched for a pulse.
Nothing there.
“No,” he groaned, and unbuckled her seat belt. She fell into his arms, all bony angles and beach-ball belly, as lifeless as a sack of potatoes.
This can’t be happening. Not this.
Blood dripped from the car seat. A dark stain spread at the crotch of her dress.
Gunderson groaned again. He slapped her face, trying to rouse her. “Wake up, baby, wake up!”
He slapped her again and then again, her head flopping listlessly beneath his blows. “Goddamn you, you little bitch, don’t you fucking do this to me!”
The sirens were even closer now. He heard movement behind him, Nemo sitting up, probably still blinking.
“We’re dead, man. We gotta get out of here.”
Gunderson cradled Sara in his arms. He’d never been much for tears, but he felt them coming on now and struggled to choke them back.
She was alive. He knew she was alive. Her pulse was too weak to register, that’s all. There’s no way she was gone. Not Sara.
He turned to Nemo. “Help me get her onto the sidewalk.”
“Are you kidding me? We don’t have time for this shit.”
Gunderson wrapped his fingers around Nemo’s neck and jerked him forward. “Help me get her onto the sidewalk, needle dick, or I swear to Christ you’ll wish you were Tina.”
Nemo shot a nervous glance at Tina’s bloody corpse.
“You’re the boss,” he said.
When Donovan came awake, he saw the big guy in the ski mask getting to his feet. Donovan’s brain kicked into autopilot, sizing him up: six-three, 240 pounds, most of it muscle. He ran the catalog of possibilities through his mind, thinking he knew the names and faces of everyone on Gunderson’s crew, but this guy was a mystery to him.
