A second SUV slowed rapidly, tires screeching and black smoke funneling from beneath its wheels until it drew level with the Humvee. The third SUV performed a similar maneuver and came up slightly behind them.
“Boxed in,” Hayden muttered. “I don’t think so.”
The second SUV turned sharply, slamming against the Humvee’s side. Hayden struggled to control the wheel, forced into the left hand lane. And now, all the windows slid open and weapons were poked out. Even the wide rear window of the SUV in front powered fully open.
“Oh fu—” Kinimaka began, and then the deadly fireworks started.
Drake twisted the wheel hard. Alicia draped herself out the window shouting something like “Here, boys!” at the top of her voice, but the wind took her words and shredded them. He counted only three men left alive in the back of the F150. A second ago, they had thrown one of their dead brethren over the vehicle’s tailgate to give themselves more room.
There was no love lost between mercenaries and hired guns.
Alicia fired. Bullets pinged off the F150. One took out the small rear window. The car slewed dramatically.
“Driver’s hit,” Drake said. “You crazy bitch.”
“One,” Alicia shouted back. “That puts you last, Drake.”
Drake took matters into his own hands. These Humvees didn’t come equipped with cruise control, but they did sport something similar called throttle lock. Only difference was this thing didn’t turn off by applying the brakes. He clambered up onto the seat, keeping the wheel straight with his knees, and arched his back out of the window. His first shot sent a man flying over the side of the Ford.
“Now we’re even.”
Then the F150, driverless, careened across the interstate at fifty miles an hour and smashed into Drake’s vehicle.
Hayden reacted without thinking, turning the wheel and veering toward the hard shoulder. She heard Kinimaka’s matter-of-fact comment “It’s what they want,” and peered through the hail of fire.
“We’ll lose ’em in the trees.”
Kinimaka stared at her, then back at the highway. “What?”
Hayden wrenched the wheel hard just as the third SUV swung toward her. The realignment sent their Humvee across the hard shoulder and onto the grass verge. The car began to bounce as if they’d joined a dirt track, but the three SUVs followed her.
“Look out!” Kinimaka at last saw the trees ahead.
Hayden looked grim. She ploughed toward them, pulling left at the last minute. Two SUVs followed her; the third went right. All four vehicles lost traction in the grass and dirt. The straight line of tall palm trees continued ahead for as far as the eye could see.
“Let’s slalom the shit out of this thing.” Hayden skidded right, churning up grass and mud. The enormous frond of a palm tree whacked the windshield as they scrambled by.
Kinimaka stared. “You get palm trees in Washington state?”
Hayden grimaced. “How the hell would I know? I’m from Toledo.”
Kinimaka held on tight as they cut sharp left. “Doesn’t look right is all.”
Hayden aimed the big car at the sharp camber of an upcoming curve. “Mano, Hawaii doesn’t have the monopoly on palm trees. Get over it.”
She used the momentum the camber afforded them to swing down the slope and swerve around another big tree. The Humvee banked sharply, all the weight suddenly on the passenger side, lifting onto two wheels…
…and drenched suddenly in fire as the first SUV smashed headlong into the tree with a sound like the collapsing of the sky and exploded into a fierce fireball. Hayden’s face was bathed in hot red as she took a fleeting look through the side window. Kinimaka met her eyes. They were both consummate professionals and would never say it aloud, but that look spoke volumes.
I guess that puts the boss in the lead.
The second SUV clipped their rear end and spun out of control. Hayden struggled with the wheel, and for ten crazy seconds, they skidded from left to right with the second SUV spinning out of control and keeping pace with them…
…then Hayden swung right to avoid the next tree and the SUV crashed sidelong into it. A second crunch made even the SPEAR agents wince.
The third SUV hit them at speed. Hayden jerked, saved by her seat belt. Kinimaka hit his head against the inner frame and dropped his gun. The SUV plowed on, pushing them hard. Trees and leaves, patches of sunlight and flashes of the interstate all tumbled by as if they’d entered a frenzied kaleidoscope.
Both cars came to a juddering halt. The Humvee rolled precariously up on two wheels for the second time, showing its underside before crashing back to earth, scraping noisily down the hood of the SUV as it did.
Hayden jammed the accelerator down. Wheels spun uselessly. “Shit!”
The SUV pulled back. Kinimaka swore. “They’re gonna hit us again.”
Hayden and Kinimaka needed only six seconds. The Vehicle Emergency Escape system allowed both agents to remove the windshield by pulling out the locking pins, rotating the latch handles and pushing their respective windows out.
Hayden rolled off the hood, landing feet-first and already opening fire before the SUV pounded into their Humvee.
Drake and Alicia clung hard to the doorframe and then forced their bodies back through the window of the vehicle as the F150 ploughed into its front end. Drake retained enough presence of mind to land on the steering wheel itself, trying to hold it in place with his whole body. Alicia tumbled across the car, limbs flailing. Drake, stuck as he was with his body around the wheel and his face pressed to the window, was witness to the spectacular sight of the F150 actually somersaulting through space. The vehicle, propelled by a powerful momentum, hit the sloped front of the Humvee and flipped end over end. Men fell from the open bed. The huge chunk of metal crashed into the median, scraping and shuddering and vibrating to a halt.
Then, his hands were too full to think about anything other than saving their own vehicle. Desperately, he tried to undo the impetus that the F150 had given the Humvee, forcing it away from the median with brute strength, but that swift motion sent the vehicle into a spin. Tires squealed. Rubber coated the road. Thick smoke trails raged in the tire tracks. Drake held tight to the wheel with one hand and to Alicia with the other as the armored car turned over onto its roof.
At last, the world went still.
Drake groaned as he took inventory. A few bruises, a skull that pounded like the seven dwarves in a gold mine, a sprained wrist where Alicia had landed hard. When his head stopped spinning, he used the same method as Hayden to escape the car, helping to drag a foggy Alicia out after him.
Drake stood up, seeking only one thing. It came in the form of the three powerful cop cars that had so far been trailing the battle at a distance. All three were Dodge Chargers.
Drake flagged them down. The cops had been ordered by the offices of the Secretary of Defense to let the SPEAR team take the lead. That’s was why they had been staying close, but not engaging in the fray. Now, Drake slipped behind the wheel of one of the fast Chargers and fastened Alicia’s belt for her.
“Hope you’re wearing your big girl panties, Myles.” He tightened the strap and hit the gas with venom. “Time to finish this thing.”
Ahead, a great gantry hung over the interstate. The main off-ramp was signposted as Palicki Airfield.
The Charger — a super-modified police chase vehicle — spurted forward like a thing possessed, eating up the interstate as Kingston’s Viper, closely followed by the limo, Dahl’s Shelby Mustang and Komodo’s comparatively well-driven Humvee all hit the off-ramp together.