"Hey! Fuck off! It's the middle of the day, you prat!" Cody shouted, saluting the car behind him with an extended middle finger raised against the rearview mirror. Still the headlights remained in his mirror. He slowed down considerably.
"Let's see how he likes driving slower than he can walk, the bastard," he said with a darkening scowl. Calisto did not want to look back and Jason kept stealing looks to the back window, but in the brightness he could not discern anything.
"What is his fucking problem?" Jason barked as they came to High Street. His voice had not an ounce of fear in it, but he did sound roused enough to be concerned.
The car tailgated them all the way. This was no coincidence on account of bad driving or alcohol, this was deliberate.
Suddenly the 4×4 jerked violently, forcefully throwing its three occupants forward. The car behind them had plowed into them and was speeding up again to crash its grill into the rear of the car. Calisto pressed the button to lower her window.
"Don't be stupid! They could mistake you for Mr. Purdue and blow your brains out!" Jason screamed, and he sank between the seats to grab the woman and pull her down, but he missed and she leaned out the window. Wildly grappling with his long arm, Jason got hold of her hoodie and pulled her inside.
"It's a Landie. They're driving a blue Land Rover," she wailed. But before the men could respond a hail of bullets sprayed the powerful armature of their vehicle.
"Stay down!" Cody shouted and lunged at the wheel, swiftly jerking it to the left. Over the pavement the 4×4 raced onto Cockburn Street with fury, but the Land Rover stayed on its tail.
Calisto ran her hand down her leg and pulled a gun from the quick-draw holster at her ankle.
"Cody, watch your head!" she screamed. "He is a high shooter!"
"Wha—?" Cody tried to duck, but suddenly a bullet smashed the back window and missed him by inches.
"This is bulletproof glass! How the fuck did they do that?" Jason shrieked, wrenching his Beretta from its holster.
"Elephant gun," Calisto cried, as she aimed for the Land Rover's front left tire. Jason looked at her in disbelief as she cocked the Makarov in her dainty hand. Expertly she blew out the tire. The rubber exploded with a crack and the Land Rover vaulted from its path, bounding wildly in three consecutive clean rolls before crashing into a wall.
"Stop!" Jason told Cody, "Let's go get the bastards. I wanna know what they want and why the hell they are trying to kill us!"
They parked the 4×4 close to the bent and steaming wreck of the Land Rover to cordon off its escape route, should it by some miracle still be able to move. Rushing to the mangled doors the two security guards had their Berettas handy for any surprises. Calisto stayed close behind Cody, her weapon still drawn.
"How did you get that?" Jason asked her. "We patted you down when we found you."
"I stashed it on the ledge before I jumped, so that I could retrieve it later," she frowned nonchalantly, giving Jason the distinct feeling that he was nothing but a novice at cunning.
Cody scoffed at her, equally dissatisfied with how stupid she made them look.
The three approached from the side of the road to determine the number of pursuers in the vehicle and the condition they were in. The other side of the capsized Land Rover was mere centimeters from the crumbling wall it had collided with. Cody and Jason crouched at the doors while Calisto stole to the back of the vehicle. As the two men sank down to look, they met the barrel of a gun at close range. Calisto could hear the bullets tear through fabric and flesh — two shots, one for each — maybe more. Her ears were unreliable in the din of her heartbeat and whimpering. Then there was silence. She carefully peeked over the elevated back tire, her hands shivering with adrenaline. A sick feeling came over her, as she expected to find her two escorts perished and their blood drenched on the cement, but they were both merely wounded. Jason and Cody had averted the direct hit and killed the two men in the car before they could pull their triggers again on that deadly aim.
Calisto came out behind the wrecked car and holstered her Makarov, not noticing the third occupant of the crashed vehicle slipping between the wall and the Land Rover's side. Jason saw him first and his eyes widened before he could utter a warning at the attacker behind Calisto. But she was more observant than her stalker knew. Jason's expression said it all. As the wounded, massive assailant wrapped his arm around her to put her in a fatal chokehold, Calisto fell to her knees on the pavement, eluding his grip. Without a moment's hesitation she used the loose bent doorframe to slam his knee out, catching him right on the patella. With a yelp he fell against the car, where the pretty dark-eyed woman crushed his trachea and instantly snapped his neck.
Jason and Cody stared with open jaws, holding their respective injuries between bloodied hands. Their spent guns lay next to them. It was unbelievable how all of this happened in fewer than ten minutes.
"We have to get out of here before the police get here," Calisto said. "I'll drive you back to the mansion. And don't worry; there are routes there that no one knows about. I can lose anyone who follows us. Now get your arses up, gentlemen."
Fueled by the rush of the frightening event the two security men made for Mr. Purdue's 4×4 and Calisto threw it into gear as they closed the doors. Speeding off into the narrow street, they left behind a big unanswered question, but it was better than being accosted by police and no doubt ending up with substantial legal trouble. Cody and Jason would have to be temporarily decommissioned from duty because of their wounds. Cody had a shattered femur. Jason came away with a very close rupture to his chest and abdomen from the two bullets he took.
Calisto drove them back to Wrichtishousis and immediately the captain notified Mr. Purdue of the incident.
"Mr. Purdue would like to have a word with you when he gets back tomorrow," the captain told Calisto. She nodded. "And for the security of the residence I would like to have your weapon."
Calisto raised her eyebrow in protest.
"Just until you leave the premises again," the captain sighed. Reluctantly Calisto handed over her favorite Makarov and went to take a shower. Her bones were frozen and her nerves shot.
"What do you think Mr. Purdue is going to do, cap?" asked Jason as the company med tech attended to the wound. The captain turned slowly to face the few men present in the infirmary under the ground floor of Wrichtishousis. Truthfully he did not know whether to scoff or grin.
"I believe he is planning to recruit her as his new bodyguard."
Chapter 6
"You suck at pool," Patrick said blandly, as Sam sank another white.
"I don't. I just have a lot on my mind," Sam excused his lack of aim, and he rounded the corner to recover the white ball from the bowels of the pool table.
"Yeah, right, as if you are not used to being a celebrity yet. It is just so alien to you, right?" his friend teased, as he chalked his cue.
It was Sunday night at the pub, but it was unusually busy in the musty establishment. Most of its patrons were comprised of ditched losers, retired coppers and lonely divorcees. The Kilt and Claymore had become Sam's new watering hole when he did not water at home. Having had that spat with Nina and having to deal with the egocentric bullshit of Professor Matlock for so long had put him off academic society as a whole.
Not that he did not already think of them all as pompous twats with God complexes, but he had to remove himself from that atmosphere after winning favor with the media as the Pulitzer-winning explorer, the pioneer of hardcore investigative journalism who could achieve anything short of walking on water. No doubt Nina hated him even more than she had initially, with his name constantly flaunted in the papers and magazines, but he elected to let that ship sail and concentrate on his work. Life after the Wolfenstein expedition had rekindled his fire for taboo topics and dangerous exploration, of hunting the story until he had all the facts, no matter what the cost.