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 marking her out in the crowd, hunkered down at ground level among the terrified onlookers. Lock could see her hands working the zip of a large designer-leather backpack that lay on the sidewalk in front of her. Her knees and elbows were pumping as she slithered forward, unnoticed by those around her.
Could any of the police snipers positioned on the rooftops around the cathedral see Reaper? Lock assumed not: the smoke from the flares was still far too thick. He crawled back out, belly on the ground, aimed his SIG towards Reaper and fired a quick shot. It was enough to distract him. Lock fired again, this time finding his target. Reaper was blown backwards from the bike, the leather jacket he was wearing shredding into pieces to reveal Kevlar body armor As Reaper scrambled back to his feet, Lock took his chance, punching out another round which caught Reaper at the very top of his nose. Reaper’s forehead opened up. Blood and chunks of his brain spattered across the sidewalk. He fell with a thump backwards on to the sidewalk, his arms splayed out at his sides.
Lock’s focus snapped back to Chance as she opened her backpack and pulled out a matching compact RPG launcher. Most women carried Mace, or at most a taser, but Chance wasn’t most women. Moving on to one knee, the RPG launcher slung over her shoulder, she took aim.
So did Lock. Aiming for her chest, he began to squeeze down on the trigger. Then he froze.
The hard swell of her belly, made visible by her T-shirt riding up as she hefted the RPG launcher, stopped him cold. Something primal, or maybe something hard-wired from years of protecting life, kicked in. He shook his head. She was every bit as dangerous as her father, he told himself, resighting and moving his hands up less than half a foot so that now it would be a head shot.
But the two-second hesitation was enough. There was a zip, then a bang, and finally the roar of an impact as the grenade tore into the hood of The Beast. The front of The Beast arched up, then a hundred yards in front of it the newly repaired patch of road erupted, sending earth and debris high into the air and twisting The Beast in the other direction.
When Lock looked up, his mouth, nose and eyes clogged with dust, The Beast had come to rest on its side. The windows and the inner core looked intact, but what about the people inside?
There was a moment of stunned silence, then the screams began again, but where exactly they were coming from was anyone’s guess.
Through the smoke, what was left of the Secret Service detail poured towards The Beast, fanning out to surround it, while others worked to prise open the doors that lay air side up.
Lock got to his feet, the muscles in his legs shaking as he tucked the Glock into the waistband of his trousers.
Ty suddenly appeared through the murk. Lock was as surprised as he guessed Ty was to see him out of custody, but there was no time to dwell on that now. Already the limp body of a child was being lifted carefully from the wreckage of The Beast.
68
As Lock stared at the scene before him, through the fog emerged the President and the First Lady, their arms around each other and their eldest daughter. Lock put a hand on the cruiser to steady himself, wiped the dust from his mouth and took a big gulp of fresh air. They were safe.
Ty clamped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good shooting, brother.’
Lock glanced round. ‘Thanks.’
They stayed there for a few more minutes, until they heard the first Emergency Medical Service ambulances approaching.
Lock straightened up. ‘Let’s go see if we can find her.’
Together, they roamed the streets for close to an hour. There was no sign of Chance, and the shocked state of most people didn’t help matters.
Rounding the corner on to California Street, Lock caught sight of Carrie reporting live to camera. He waited for her to finish, admiring her quiet composure in the middle of all the chaos.
She threw her arms round his neck when she saw him. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, but one of ’em got away.’
‘Jesus, Ryan, will you switch off for two seconds? That’s not what I asked you.’
‘I’ll switch off when she’s found. I had her right in my sights too. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.’