‘Put pressure on the wound!’ Zakaria roared from the front as he flung the van into another sharp turn. ‘Try to stem the bleeding!’
‘We need to get him to the ER!’ Chloe yelled. ‘Now! Turn this van around and get him to a fucking hospital!’
Zakaria ignored her and floored the accelerator.
‘No,’ he growled, immovable as a mountain. ‘I’ll do what I can to save the boy, but we’re not going to any hospitals.’
‘He’s been shot, you fucking lunatic!’ Chloe shrieked, her eyes wild with hysteria. ‘Turn the fuck around and—’
The radio crackled, cutting her off, and the voice on the other end was tremulous with dire urgency.
‘You can’t shake them, no matter where you turn. Two Blackhawks are almost on you, and they’re carrying a payload that’ll atomise that van and all of you along with it. You need to get off the streets right now! Take the next left, after that you’ll see an exit after three blocks, next to a dry-cleaning place on the right corner. You’ll see one of our white Festivas parked outside.’
Zakaria hurtled around the tight left-hand turn, and saw the Festiva right away, a hundred yards down the street.
‘All of you, brace for impact,’ he growled as he gunned the van towards the car. The screaming teens had little choice but to do as he said, curling up and covering their heads with their arms. With a bang the van smashed into the Festiva, crumpling the back of the little car into a concertina-like mess of steel and shredded upholstery, the van’s momentum ploughing it out of the way.
In the sky above, three Blackhawk helicopters crested a row of glass-fronted skyscrapers a couple of seconds after the van slammed into the Festiva. In the lead chopper, behind the pilot, sat an old man. Perched on his prominent, bulbous red nose were a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and a grim-set jaw, meticulously shaved, jutted harshly from beneath a down-turned slash of a mouth bordered by insubstantial crimson lips. His full head of grey hair was shaved at the sides and slicked back, styled in the manner of a much younger fellow, but sulphuric vengeance rather than youthful vigour burned like ignited petrol in his pale grey eyes.
‘That’s them,’ he hissed. ‘Hit that fucking van with the full payload!’
‘Sir, this is a civilian area, I—’ the pilot protested.
‘Fire those fucking missiles or I’ll have your limbs removed with a hacksaw!’
‘Aye aye sir,’ the co-pilot interjected. ‘Target acquired, aaaand locked.’
‘Fucking hit them then you pantywaist!’ the old man rasped.
Without further ado the co-pilot squeezed the trigger of his joystick, and four missiles rocketed with a furious hiss from the helicopter’s side-mounted launchers, streaking earthward with murderous intent. The old man narrowed his gaze, grinding his teeth as he watched the steel dragons racing towards their target. All four crashed into the van, and a great fireball billowed upwards while a shock wave surged out in all directions, blowing out storefronts and windows, knocking pedestrians off their feet, and upending a number of cars parked nearby.
‘Land the fucking chopper now, go, go!’ the old man roared, his liver-spotted hands, fleshy claws, white-knuckled on the armrests of his seat.
The pilot wheeled the Blackhawk around, manoeuvring in a sweeping arc around a lone skyscraper that towered head and shoulders above the rest, and then, as black Humvees and police vehicles began closing in from all directions, stopping a healthy distance from the burning wreck, the helicopter started its descent. On the ground, troops poured out of the Humvees and police cars, dropping to the pavement and aiming their weapons at the smouldering wreckage.
Inside the chopper a squadron of troops prepared to disembark, while in his seat the old man sat and scowled. Clad in a crisp, spotless black business suit, with a black silk shirt and black tie beneath, he kept one hand tucked inside his jacket, his fingers coiled around the grip of his chrome-plated .357 revolver therein. As soon as the helicopter touched down, the heavily armed troops stormed out and got into battle positions, while the old man stepped out behind them with an air of bristling anger and fiery impatience, partially supporting his weight on an ornate narwhal-tooth walking cane.
‘Advance on the vehicle!’ he bellowed in a hoarse voice.
Eight of the lead troops, each armed with an M-16 assault rifle, approached the burning wreckage. A badly wounded teenager, shivering madly with shock as blood gushed out of her body, which was riddled with shrapnel from the obliterated van, pleaded with her gibbous green eyes in horrified silence for help as the troops approached her. The soldiers, however, simply stepped over her as if she was nothing but another piece of broken rubble. The old man ignored her gasps and whimpers too, and pressed a button on the side of his spectacles: the latest tech, which featured a microscopic camera with extreme optical zoom that projected real-time imagery onto a translucent screen on the inside of the lenses. He zoomed in, but could see neither body parts nor blood amidst the jagged shards of steel, grotesquely twisted lumps of molten plastic, and the serpentine, hyperactive tongues of flame.
The troops reached the wreckage and searched through the mess of burning material. As the old man roamed his digital eye over this unfolding scene a mounting rage, like a steadily building head of steam in a pressurised vessel, began to heat his entire being, darkening his skin in tones of beet and crimson.
‘No bodies,’ one of the troops announced after a few minutes of searching.
‘Well what does the fucking tracker say, you cocksucking imbecile?!’ the old man snarled.
The soldier pulled out a tablet, swiped across the screen a few times, and then shook his head, frowning.
‘It says they’re still right here, sir.’
The old man’s hand quivered with silent violence inside his coat, each of his knuckles straining like a parasitic pupa trying to burst free from its skin cocoon, and it took every ounce
