He skidded through the next sharp turn, almost rolling the careening van in the process, and then burst onto a wide four-lane street. A claustrophobic aural hurricane of sirens screamed their fury through every alley and across every street, the howls closing in around the hurtling van like the grasping digits of a thousand-fingered fist. In staccato intervals the sound rocketed through the alleys; the police were closing in, and what little window for escape remained was almost shut. Just behind the van the three motorcycles catapulted out of the narrow street, sweeping in frantic arcs through the corner, leaning low … and one Husqvarna took it just too fast. The bike slid out, skidding across the asphalt like a grounded comet in a spectacular shower of orange sparks, with the rider following his machine as he bounced and ragdolled along the road before slamming brutally into a parked car.
Zakaria allowed himself a brief grin of victory, but the abrupt jackhammer thudding of bullets against the van wrenched the smile from his face. He blared on his horn for traffic ahead to get out of his way, but when the surprised commuters cleared he saw a black Humvee blast out of a side street directly ahead, blocking his escape route.
‘Talk, talk!’ he screamed, slowing down.
Chloe, wide-eyed, fumbled with the walkie-talkie but managed to press the talk button.
‘Godzilla! Where’s the chopper, where’s the damn chopper?!’
Four Huntsmen troops outfitted in SWAT riot gear sprang out of the Humvee ahead. Two of them were armed with RPGs, and the others began setting up an M2 heavy machine gun. Civilians fled in panic, while nearby cars turned and sped off, while others screeched to a halt, the drivers scrambling out of their vehicles and fleeing.
‘Almost … almost … THERE!’ the crackling, disembodied voice announced triumphantly.
From over the top of a high-rise a small remote-controlled helicopter descended at speed. Gripped by a little robotic arm attached to its underside was a one-kilogram package of PETN explosive.
‘Hurry, for God’s sake!’ Zakaria roared as he bore down on the Humvee and its contingent of Hunstmen troops. ‘You’ve only got one shot, make that payload count!’
‘May the Earth forgive us for this travesty of violence,’ the voice whispered.
Zakaria, meanwhile, muttered a prayer in the ancient language of the lost Kingdom of Alwa. Chloe dug her fingers into the seat with a white-knuckled grip, whimpering wordlessly, while in the back the other teenagers screamed and cowered as the Huntsmen troops took aim with their RPGs and the machine gun. Zakaria was slowing his pace steadily, and the bikes were now riding parallel to the van, one on each side, corralling Zakaria in and pushing him into the waiting jaws of the trap ahead. At that moment the tiny helicopter dropped its package of PETN, and a heady cocktail of jolting courage and debilitating terror surged through Zakaria’s veins as he watched the parcel hurtling earthwards. For one horror-soaked moment his heart locked up; if the package failed to detonate it would cost everyone in this vehicle their lives.
The package, however, did not fail to detonate. A gargantuan explosion ripped through the streets, blasting out every window in a four-block radius and leaving nothing remaining of the Humvee and the Huntsmen soldiers but a gaping blast crater the size of a swimming pool. The force of the blast flipped over almost every car in the immediate vicinity and sent a shock wave rippling through the ground, bowling over the few pedestrians who hadn’t already fled. It also slammed into the van, sending a jolt through the vehicle and cracking the already damaged windscreen.
‘YES!’ Zakaria howled, temporarily inebriated on a gushing orgasm of victory as he drove straight through the billowing cloud of debris and swerved around the smoking blast crater. A chaotically bouncing Humvee tyre smashed into the front of the van, but he managed to stay on course. He quickly suppressed and swallowed this hollow triumph, however.
‘No, no, no!’ he shouted, castigating himself. ‘One cannot celebrate the destruction of life, even if it is that of one’s sworn enemies!’
Chloe, meanwhile, was staring blankly ahead, muttering ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ over and over again in a mantra of sheer terror.
‘Pull yourself together, child!’ Zakaria shouted. ‘Talk, talk! Press the damn button!’
When he blasted out of the debris cloud, he saw that the two Huntsmen motorcycles were still hot on his heels.
‘Godzilla!’ he yelled as Chloe pressed the button. ‘I’ve still got the bikes on me!’
‘I can use the chopper to take one out.’
‘The Ducati, the Ducati! That’s the one with the—’ A vicious punch rocked the vehicle as a twelve-gauge slug tore through the rear window, obliterating a chunk of the front passenger seat and causing Chloe to shriek with fright. ‘—combat shotgun!’
Another slug ripped through the back window, and this time it smashed the top corner of the driver’s seat to smithereens, driving shards of twisted plastic into Zakaria’s shoulder.
‘Argh!’ he howled, hot pain ripping a scalding passage along his left arm.
‘Mothra, are you hit?’
‘Flesh wound, just a flesh wound,’ Zakaria groaned, his nostrils flared and his teeth gritted in the face of the fiery pain. ‘But the next one might not be, hurry!’
The Ducati rider behind them accelerated hard, trying to bring the bike up alongside the vehicle so that her pillion could get a clear shot. In response Zakaria swerved hard to the left, and the rider only just avoided crashing into the back of the van. Nonetheless, the biker was immensely skilled; she hit the brakes hard enough to kick the back of the bike up in a rolling endo, changing direction on the front wheel only, and the moment the rear wheel touched down she whipped the bike around in an attempt to get around the right side of the van.
Again Zakaria swerved in her direction and almost clipped the bike’s front wheel … almost. Once more the rider managed to avoid a
