‘Freya?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Just don’t move in too fast, ’kay? We need the dust settled before we hit.’
‘Got you.’
Chance hitched up the straps of her backpack full of goodies, toed up the kick-stand on the bike and slipped back down the street, away from the route the presidential convoy was taking. The plan was to run parallel, then after initial detonation move in to mop up. The objective was straightforward in terms of those inside The Beast, and she was looking forward to it.
Leave no survivors.
Lock slumped back on the bench seat of the cruiser. No amount of pleading was getting the driver to stop. ‘At least patch me through to someone who can check it out.’
The female cop eyed him in the rear-view mirror with a jaundiced look that spoke of having had to endure too many crazies. ‘Listen, buddy, the Secret Service know what they’re doing. If there was a bomb they’d have found it already. There was sniffer dogs there just this morning. I saw them.’
But the dogs, no matter how refined their sense of smell, might not have been able to detect anything apart from the overpowering whiff of fresh tar. He had to get out of the car. And fast.
As the driver turned her attention back to the road, Lock slipped his right hand into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out the comb with his fingertips. Without looking, he felt for the final, thickest tooth of the comb, and again by feel used the tooth to press down on the pawl of the right-hand cuff, in an attempt to disengage the swing arm from the ratchet. The cuff on his right hand clicked open. He waited a second to see if the cop had noticed anything, but her eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
‘Listen,’ he said, leaning forward again, ‘I gotta pee.’
‘Hold it.’
‘I can’t. Can you at least pull over so I don’t make a mess of your back seat here?’
‘Forget it.’
It was the answer he’d been expecting. Keeping his hands low, he opened the zip of his jeans. ‘I’m sorry about this, officer, but I ain’t wetting my jeans.’
She squinted in the rear-view mirror. ‘Aw, Jesus. OK, OK, wait.’
She pulled sharply over to the kerb, and got out. As she opened the rear passenger door, Lock kept his hands low, figuring that her eyes would be everywhere but waist level or below. He guessed right.
He had a second, maybe two.
As she began to usher him to a patch of barren ground which doubled as a street-side parking lot, he hit her hard in the face just below her nose, sending her tumbling to the ground. As she fell, he was on her, freeing her service weapon from its holster. Next, he ripped her radio from her belt.
Picking her up under one shoulder, he tossed her into the still-open rear door and slammed it, then climbed in the front, jammed the cruiser back into drive and spun it round in a thick one-eighty turn that drew honks from oncoming cars as he cut directly across their paths.
He glanced back at the female cop in the back seat. She was sitting up now, trying to staunch the blood from her nose.
‘Lady, I’m sorry, but we’re short on time, so buckle up.’
She glared at him. He could hardly blame her.
Finding the switch that engaged the lights and sirens, he flicked the toggle and jammed his foot down on the accelerator, weaving through the traffic, scattering pedestrians and other vehicles behind him as he raced to the cathedral, praying he wasn’t already too late.
67
The motorcycle outriders slowed as they edged within a block of the cathedral. People crowded every sidewalk, children hoisted on to aching parental shoulders, while others craned their necks over police sawhorses, everyone eager for a glimpse of the President and his family.
Then, from a side street, came screams, the roar of a car engine at full throttle and the whip-crack of gunshots.
The needle of the cruiser’s speedometer hit seventy miles an hour as Lock’s mantra played out in real time.
Fast.
A patrol officer, set in a Weaver stance, his gun pointed straight at Lock, dived for the sidewalk as the patrol car Lock was piloting bore down on him.
Aggressive.
In front of him, three blue San Francisco Police Department sawhorses disintegrated, splintering under the wheels as the road opened out in front of him, shots pouring in, the presidential limousine in plain sight. Lock spun the wheel so that the limousine’s trajectory matched his own.
Action.
As the heavily up-armored SUV to the rear of The Beast spun out, the tailgate dropped to reveal two Secret Service agents sporting M-4s. As they opened fire on him, Lock’s hands slipped down to grip the bottom of the steering wheel, his foot lifted from the accelerator, and he wedged himself as tight as he could into the footwell.
With determination.
Seconds before The Beast moved on to the fresh asphalt in front of the cathedral, the front of Lock’s patrol car concertinaed into it at the driver’s-side front wheel arch. Lock’s shoulder rammed into the base of the steering column, sending a screaming pain through his body. A few more shots poured in, shattering what was left of the windshield. There was a fresh whimper from the officer in the back.
Lock closed his eyes and didn’t move. The engine block was directly in front of him, which was about all he had in his favour.
Voices, panicked and urgent, emanated from outside the vehicle.
‘Officer inside! Officer inside!’
‘Cease fire!’
‘Stop firing, you assholes! We got a cop in back!’
Lock stayed still. Any movement could get him killed. The preferred method of dealing with a suicide bomber, which is what they might safely assume he was, was to fill him full of lots of holes, quickly and without mercy.
The rear door was flung open first. Then his door.
‘Do not move, you asshole!’
Big hands rushed in and scooped him out, dumping him face down on the street. A gun was pressed into the back of his neck. Not a good sign.
More gunshots, then the rip of a single motorbike engine. The cold metal tickle of the gun lifted from his neck and he could hear the man holding it say, ‘Holy Mother of God.’
Lock opened his eyes, lifted his head from his prone position and caught sight of a man mounted on a fat-boy Harley with a teenage boy, presumably plucked from the crowd to serve as a human shield, in front of him. He was dropping flares behind and to either side of him, creating a thick, acid-trip-surreal soup of multicolored fog around him. It took a second for Lock to shift from looking to seeing, a second before he recognized the lone gunman as Reaper.
Lock grabbed for the sill of the driver’s door, pulling himself back inside the patrol car. The female officer’s service weapon had fallen into the passenger-side footwell. He reached in and grabbed it, aware of the screams of panic and confusion from the crowd.
Just in time, Lock emerged to see Reaper toss the M-4 he’d been spraying in all directions to the ground and reach back into the saddle-bags of the Harley. Lock took a quick breath in. He knew what was coming next.
There it was: an RPG launcher.
Reaper pushed his temporary hostage off the bike and took aim. And there was Chance, her blonde hair
