As LUCIEN STAGGERED ALONG the street, his hair and shirt ablaze, Gus followed him out, keeping close enough so that the cops wouldn't risk shooting.
Or so he hoped.
To make them think twice about getting too close, he loosed off shots in both directions. The Beretta was fucking useless for this kind of action, but it sent the four men diving for cover.
Windshields shattered and screams of panic echoed in the street as the sidewalks emptied.
***
Reilly saw him raise the handgun in time to duck behind his car's door. The shots thundered in the street, two bullets crunching their way into a brick wall behind Reilly, a third lodging in the left headlight of his Chrysler in an explosion of chrome and glass. Darting a glance to his right, Reilly 37
spotted four bystanders crouching behind a parked Mercedes, clearly terrified out of their wits.
Reilly could tell they were looking to make a run for it, which was not a good idea. They were safer behind the car. One of them looked his way. Reilly made an up-and-down gesture with an open palm, yelling, 'Get down! Don't move!' The nervous man nodded his shocked acceptance and curled away out of sight.
Reilly turned, leaned out, and tried to squeeze off a shot, but the man he knew as 'Gus' had crept up right behind the gallery owner. He was too close to him. Reilly couldn't get a clear shot. More urgently, he couldn't do anything about the gallery owner who had now fallen to his knees, his cries of agony reverberating across the now deserted street.
Just then, Gus moved away from the burning man, firing a couple of rounds in the direction of the other agents. Time seemed to slow down as Reilly saw the opportunity and grabbed it. He held his breath and popped up from behind the car door, cradling his Hi-Power in a two-handed, straight-armed stance, and, in a split second, he lined up the front post and the rear notch on the gun and pulled the trigger in a smooth, even motion, using steadily increasing force. The bullet thundered out of the Browning's barrel. A red splatter burst out from Gus's thigh.
Reilly scrambled to his feet to rush to the burning man. Gus tried to cut short the heroic plans the agent was formulating when a delivery van chose that moment to come lumbering into the street.
***
Lucien was rolling around, arms flailing, desperately trying to quash the flames. Gus knew he had to make a run for it when something hit him in his left thigh, sending him staggering sideways. He felt the area of the wound, his hand coming up dripping with blood.
Sonofabitch. The cops had got lucky.
Then he saw the van and, blasting away at both sets of cops, he used it as cover and made his move.
He limped around the corner and now it was his turn to get lucky. A cab had pulled over, dropping off a fare, a Japanese businessman in a pale suit. Gus shouldered the man aside, snatched open the door, reached in, and dragged the driver out onto the street. Scrambling behind the wheel, he put it in gear, and then felt something hit him on the side of the head. It was the driver, out to reclaim his car, yelling in some unintelligible language. The dumb fuck. Gus shoved the muzzle of the Beretta out the window, squeezed the trigger, and popped a bullet into the man's furious red face. Then he was away, hurtling down die street.
Chapter 16
Flooring the black department Chrysler, Reilly ramped it over the sidewalk and past the delivery truck, catching a glimpse of a cluster of people leaning over the dead cabdriver.
On the radio, Aparo was talking and listening as Buchinski was organizing backup and roadblocks.
Too bad this had been rushed. They should have had the street totally sealed off, but then, like Buchinski had said, they might have scared away the big man before he even reached the gallery if the normally busy street had been unnaturally quiet. He thought about the blazing figure he had seen stagger from the shop, and the cabdriver blown backward from a head shot. Maybe it would have been better if scaring off the suspect was all that we'd done.
He glanced in his rearview mirror, wondering if Buchinski was with them.
No. They were on their own.
'Watch the road!'
His attention snatched back by Aparo's interjection, Reilly jinked the Chrysler through a chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks, most of them already blaring angry horns at the cab that had flashed past them. Now the cab spun into an alley. Reilly followed through a swirling cloud of trash, trying but failing to get his bearings.
'Where the hell are we?' Reilly yelled.
'Heading toward the river.'
A big help that was.
As the cab burst from the alley, it pulled a screaming right and moments later Reilly did the same.
Cars thundered past, seemingly heading in all directions. There was no sign of the cab.
It was gone.
Reilly darted looks left and right while trying to avoid the rushing traffic.
'There,' Aparo yelled, pointing.
Reilly rapiered a look, hit the hand brake, hung a tire-smoking left into another alley, and there was the cab. He floored the gas pedal as they bounced down the narrow street, swiping past garbage Dumpsters, which sent sparks flying down the side of tfie car.
This time, when they came out into a street, it was crowded with parked cars and he heard the screech of metal on metal as the cab ripped fenders and hubcaps from other vehicles, the impacts fleeting, but enough to slow die cab's progress.
Another right turn and this time Reilly could see signs announcing the Lincoln Tunnel. More to the point, they were closing in on the cab. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Aparo had his gun on his lap.
'Don't risk it,' Reilly said. 'You might get lucky and hit him.'
Causing the cab to crash at that speed on this street could be a disaster.
Then the cab turned again, scattering pedestrians who were ambling over a pedestrian crossing.
Reilly saw something emerge from the driver's window of the cab. Couldn't be a gun. A man would have to be stupid to drive and shoot at the same time. Stupid or certifiable.
Sure enough, a flash and smoke blossomed.
'Hang on,' Reilly said.
Swinging the wheel, he swerved the Chrysler into a lumbering fishtail, spotted a gap where a building had been torn down, and drove into it, ripping through chain-link fencing and raising a cloud of dust.
Seconds later, the Chrysler was spinning out of the vacant lot and was once again on the trail of the taxi. So far as Reilly could see, the driver's arm and gun were no longer sticking out of the window.
Aparo yelled, 'Watch it!'
A woman walking a black terrier tripped, cannoning into a delivery man wheeling a stack of beer crates that tumbled into the Chrysler's path. Reilly jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding the people, but not the crates, one of which bounced up and over the hood, smashing into the windshield, which held but was now spiderwebbed all over.
'I can't see a thing!' Reilly shouted. Aparo, using the butt of his gun, pounded the windscreen and on the third blow it busted out and flipped up, flying over the car and spinning to a rest on the roof of a parked car.
Screwing up his eyes against the buffeting wind, Reilly could see a no-entry sign where the street narrowed abruptly. Would the man risk it? If he met something, he'd be a goner. Spotting an opening on the right, maybe fifty yards short of the no-entry, Reilly guessed that's where the cab would go. He urged more power out of his car, hoping he might push the other driver into overcooking the turn. The Chrysler charged closer to the cab.
He almost succeeded. The cab screeched into the opening, its rear fishtailing wide to the left, lighting up the tires as it smashed into the brickwork on the corner of a building.
As Reilly followed into the new street, Aparo muttered, 'Oh shit,' as they both saw a kid on a skateboard gliding across the roadway ahead of the cab. The boy had earphones on and was totally oblivious to the approaching storm.
Instinctively, Reilly slowed, but there was no corresponding flash of braking lights from the cab, which was charging straight at the kid.
