Speeding bumper to bumper, the mini-van and the battered sedan approached the limousines. Only a bus separated the limousines from the two pursuing vehicles.
Blancanales leaned forward to Zaki. 'Faster. Keep even with them if you can do it.'
Zaki saw the curb lane open. He accelerated in a smooth sweep to the right. They passed the teenager on the motor scooter. In his peripheral vision, Blancanales saw the boy lift his walkie-talkie, then they left him behind.
The taxi passed an open-bed cargo truck and a bus. The bus slowed as a passenger stepped off. Zaki whipped the taxi to the left. They came parallel with the mini-van. Blancanales saw a face at a back window watching the traffic. In the front seat of the Fiat, the passenger spoke into a walkie-talkie. The man riding in the back of the mini-van lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips, answered.
Jabbing for the transmit key through the map that wrapped his hand radio, Blancanales shouted, 'Wizard! Get Katz moving! They're making their move, they're going to do it!'
Engine screaming, white smoke pouring from the exhaust, the Fiat varoomed to the left, over the center divider. The mini-van followed, horns sounding as the oncoming traffic skidded and swerved around the two wrong-way vehicles. In the instant before the van disappeared behind the bus, the side door flew open. Two men with rocket launchers knelt in the interior.
'RPGs! Wizard, get Katz out!'
In a coordinated maneuver, both Lincolns swerved to the right and hit their brakes, thus putting the bus between them and the hit squad. The Fiat and the van carrying the rocket-launcher team raced into the open but saw no targets. The limousines stopped dead in traffic, tires smoking. Hundreds of tires squealed behind them, bumpers smashed into bumpers, headlights and taillights shattered, horns blared in one vast sound. The police car's siren wailed.
Blancanales flashed past the limousines as Zaki maintained the taxi's speed. They passed the police car. The Fiat and the mini-bus were racing away up the boulevard. Blancanales looked back, saw the limousines accelerate, then skid through a right turn onto a side street.
'Keep that car and van in sight,' Blancanales told his driver, then keyed his hand radio. 'The limos are safe. We've got the hit team in sight, will follow.'
'Plan is to take prisoners, right?' Lyons asked, back in the traffic jam.
'You got it,' Blancanales answered.
'Not yet, but give me a minute…'
'What?'
Dropping his hand radio, Lyons leaned forward to his driver. 'Abdul, see the kid on the motorbike?'
'Yes, sir. We follow him?'
'For about fifteen seconds.'
Two car lengths ahead in the stalled traffic, the teenager on the motor scooter held the walkie-talkie to his ear. Without uncovering the Atchisson, Lyons grabbed the autoshotgun and the tourist maps covering it, placed it all on the floor of the taxi. Watching the teenager, Lyons checked the Velcro securing the silenced Colt .45 Government Model under his sports coat and waited.
Tires crunched over the broken glass and plastic of the rear-end collisions. The taxi was inching up on the motor scooter. Traffic moved faster as smashed and dented cars, their drivers shouting and waving fists at one another, pulled to the side. Lyons braced himself.
The taxi passed the motor scooter. Lyons waited until the teenager returned the walkie-talkie to his basket, then swung open the door.
In rush-hour traffic, with drivers watching, Lyons threw an arm around the teenager's neck as if he was greeting the boy like a long-lost son. Simultaneously he took hold of the left handlebar. As the boy struggled, Lyons walked the motor scooter to the curb, let it fall and grabbed the walkie-talkie. Choking, kicking, flailing with his fists, the teenager tried to break free. He couldn't. Lyons dragged him into the taxi.
Tires screeched again as the taxi roared away, slicing through traffic.
Lyons keyed his hand radio. 'We got one.'
5
Clutching a folded-stock Kalashnikov rifle, Sadek leaned forward from his rear-facing auxiliary seat. Today, he wore a powder blue summer suit. He lowered the limousine's power window a few inches, observed the traffic behind the limousines. At the other window, Katz held a Colt Commander .45 as he watched parked cars and trucks, bicyclists, sidewalk crowds and vendors flash past. The two Lincolns were careening through the boulevard's traffic.
Parks looked back through the rear window and spoke into the intercom microphone. 'We've lost them,' he told the chauffeur and the bodyguard in the front seat. 'But radio ahead to the airport, tell them to send out an escort car to meet us on the Heliopolis road.'
'It is very fortunate you saw them, Mr. Steiner,' Sadek said to Katz. Sweat beaded the Egyptian's sharp features. He clicked up the lever safety of the AK. 'They were, without a doubt, attempting an assassination.'
'You recognize them?' asked Katz, alias Steiner.
'Of course not! Do you mean their nationality? Perhaps Libyans, perhaps radical Palestinians. Foreigners certainly.'
'Certainly,' Katz agreed. He set the safety of the Colt, held the autopistol below the level of the window.
'Why not the Brotherhood?' Parks asked.
'Because our security forces broke those fanatics,' Sedak pronounced. 'However, there are other groups. Foreigners have come to make war in my country. Unfortunate, but true.'
'Is it possible your police could capture one of them?' Katz continued in his role of Steiner, speaking English with a slight German accent. 'Then we would know…'
'There will be an investigation, have no doubt.'
Katz smiled. 'I have no doubt.'
Low in the back seat, map wrapping the radio, Blancanales buzzed his partners. Zaki kept the Fiat and mini-van in sight by speeding, then braking, often swerving to maintain his rate through traffic. Horns and screeches came from all sides.
'We're staying behind them. My man's driving like a drunken trucker. But they'll see us gaining on them any second now.'
'East on Azhar!' Zaki called back. 'They turned east on Sharia el-Azhar.'
'Mo-man's moving!' Gadgets's voice told them. 'Says we're on… Qua… la… We're on that street, we turned, we're going north. He says we might make it. Watch them.'
'Watching. Making the turn now.'
'This is...' Lyons voice came on. Another voice cried out, then Blancanales heard what could only be a fist smashing into flesh, once, twice. 'Sorry, but I got a detainee who's acting up. We're right behind you and gaining. Making the turn…'
Looking back, Blancanales saw a taxi take the corner on two wheels. A white-uniformed policeman and many drivers saw the side-slipping taxi approach. The policeman commanded them all to stop with his white-gloved hand. The drivers responded with panic, some hitting their brakes, others standing on their accelerators. Metal smashed, glass fell, another wail of horns began.
Missing one car by inches and losing a taillight to a bus, the taxi then did the impossible: it recovered from the two-wheel turn and sped after Blancanales.
'I do not believe what I just saw. Who do you have driving that car, Ironman?'
'Man, this is wild. Here we come. I'll take point, you fall back. We'll rotate with the Wizard, chase these freaks wherever they go. But lose them or not, we got this prisoner.'
