shoot at me. I hoped this Escalade was bulletproof, and its tires solid rubber. I hoped the drones didn’t mistake it for a target.
“If ‘twere done when ‘twere done, then ‘twere well ‘twere done
When I shifted into second it shuddered, nearly stalled, but didn’t quite. I rattled across the courtyard and over the crater, swerving around the searing shards of twisted metal, squinting through the windshield’s abstract art as I went offroad around the largest chunk of debris, remembering Zavier, trying to ape his cool control as I bumped my way back onto the scarred asphalt and changed into third gear.
The physical mechanics of the escape took all of my attention, it was like being immersed in a video game. It wasn’t until I was in fourth gear and I glanced up to see the compound dwindling in the rearview mirror, cubist through the cracked glass, that I realized its guards hadn’t fired a single shot.
In fifth gear the engine made a horrible grinding sound and I quickly shifted back to fourth. Something important must have been jarred loose by the explosion.
I hoped for a few minutes that they might not even pursue me. But that dream was quickly dashed.
Chapter 51
In the rearview mirror I saw two sets of headlights coming up behind me, moving fast. Trapped in fourth gear all I could do was watch, my throat clogged with helpless fear, as they closed. Strobelike lights began to flicker from both pursuing cars. It wasn’t until the bullets began to thwack dully into the Escalade that I realized it was gunfire.
I started with the realization, crouched down as far as I could. The wheels slewed off the road and only a reflex twist of my hands brought me back before I went into the boulders and cacti. I had to straighten up to see the road. I felt like I was sticking my head out of a foxhole during an artillery assault, but I did it. Then I realized that the bullets weren’t penetrating. Stealing an escape vehicle from a drug lord’s fleet had been smarter than I knew; it was indeed bulletproof.
The most important thing was to keep my pursuers from overtaking me. With no fifth gear there was only one possible way. I took a deep breath, steeled my neck muscles against whiplash, and stomped on the brake.
The vehicle right behind me was too slow to react and slammed into the back of the Escalade at about twenty miles an hour. The whole car rocked violently. Tires screeched. I forced myself to ignore my sudden nausea and kicked the Escalade back into gear, standing on the accelerator, upshifting as fast as I could. As I had hoped, the driver behind me took a little while to recover, and a few seconds passed before it began to close in again.
It got to within about fifty feet before a drone slammed into it from above and lit up the night. I had programmed them to destroy any pursuing vehicles.
That second shockwave lifted my back tires right off the road for a second and tore the back window away. I didn’t see what happened to the third car, but I was confident it wouldn’t be following anything anytime soon. Ahead of me I saw the distant lights of the second gatehouse. Instead of tensing up, I grinned crazily. My heart pounded not with fear but with giddy triumph. I was beginning to comprehend the astonishing power and precision of the force at my command, and I suddenly felt more like an avatar of Shiva the Destroyer than a captive fleeing for his life.
Four streaks fell from the sky as I neared the gatehouse, and bloomed into huge blossoms of flame, razing both gate and buildings. I drove straight through that field of shattered devastation, reached the public road that cut through the dark desert, and raced along it as fast as I could.
The night air was cold and dry. The road seemed endless, and the desert infinite, lit only by the shining moon; my sole headlight had died with the second drone. The Escalade’s engine soon developed a worrying clopping sound. The windscreen was so thoroughly shattered it was almost opaque, and I had to stick my head out of the blasted-out window to navigate.
A faint glow began to illuminate the eastern horizon. The clopping sound grew, and was joined by a whining; the alignment had fallen out of balance. My sense of glorious victory slowly curdled into rediscovered fear. A posse with unlimited resources was doubtless already girding up to pursue me from all directions to the ends of the earth, and I was still in the middle of Mexican nowhere, in a half-shredded vehicle that wouldn’t last much longer, with no more deadly weapons at my disposal, and only a vague idea where I was.
I passed a big green sign that looked familiar. I couldn’t make out the words, and even if I had, I couldn’t have understood them; but there was something about its semiotics, its shape and structure. And the line of light ahead of me in the distance, angled across the road, seemed also somehow familiar…
A highway overpass. Its appearance was so sudden and welcome it was like a mirage in the night. I steered the groaning Escalade up the on-ramp and onto a freshly painted, lightly trafficked, modern four-lane freeway.
Moments later a huge bus whistled past, honking loudly, probably at the wrecked state of my vehicle. Even by Mexican standards it wasn’t suitable for highway driving. But I nursed it onwards at seventy kilometres per hour until the mountains surrounding us were red with incipient dawn, a red that matched the warning lights winking on my dashboard; until the clopping became a clunking, and something seized, and the Escalade slewed to a final halt on the highway shoulder with smoke spewing from its engine.
I felt an irrational sorrow, almost like I had lost a friend. But I couldn’t stay, couldn’t afford to be associated with my fallen steed. So I got out and walked. I was covered with bruises I didn’t remember suffering, and my joints felt soldered shut, especially my neck and painful left hip. But I limped onwards, my thumb out and erect in the hopefully universal symbol for Ride Wanted.
Long minutes passed before a rusting Volkswagen Beetle pulled to a halt ahead of me. A head poked out of its window to regard me. I jogged towards it, ignoring the pain stabbing in my hip. The occupants were three teenage boys with long hair and all-black goth garb. I must have looked pretty rough; they stared at me like I was some kind of drug-induced hallucination.
“Mexico City?” I asked, then remembered the Spanish. “
They exchanged a bemused look, then asked me a question.
I shrugged. “
After a brief and amazed conferral the back door swung open. I got in before they could change their mind. The car reeked of pot, and the seat belts had long ceased to function. I was in no position to complain, but I spent the ride, which involved a good deal of distracted conversation and inadvertent weaving between lanes, all too aware of how bitterly ironic it would be to survive the night’s previous exertions only to be killed by a stoned driver.
They lit another joint and offered me a toke. I accepted; at that point, why not? Eventually, as the buildings around us grew thicker and taller, they asked me a question, and when I stared at them uncomprehendingly, repeated it with increasing exasperation.
I figured they wanted a more specific destination, but had no answer. The Canadian embassy? But I didn’t want to jump out of Ortega’s fire into the frying pan of Guantanamo Bay. Not when I had at least one potential option. So I said “Downtown,
Chapter 52
Mexico City was a vast and swarming metropolis, a kaleidoscopic mix of ancient and modern, civilized and backwards. The streets were clogged with ancient vehicles that were mostly rust and gleaming new Mercedes. We travelled down a majestic boulevard lined with skyscrapers, passed ragged potholed alleys covered with spaghetti tangles of improvised wiring. The only constants were noise and chaos.
The VW Bug wove through dense and crazed morning traffic and suddenly emerged onto a ring road around one of the largest public squares I had ever seen, with a massive cathedral on one side and walls of magnificent old buildings on the other three. Crowds teemed everywhere, like army ants.
The Beetle pulled to a halt. “Zocalo,” the driver said helpfully.
