His brain immediately calculated that it would tread across his body, crushing him if he didn't get out of the way. That realization broke the barrier between thought and action. He threw himself sharply to the right, rolling underneath the wagon as it advanced. He reached up and wrapped his right arm around the axle of the rear wheel and was immediately dragged along as the carriage picked up speed.
Although the grass beneath him was relatively soft, the burn of friction quickly reached a feverish intensity. Kismet got his free hand around the axle and hugged it to his chest so that only his feet were in contact with the ground. His boots offered considerably more protection than the fabric of his cargo pants, but the tradeoff was the intense exertion of holding himself up. He struggled simply to remain there for a few seconds longer, gathering his energy for what he knew had to come next.
A glance forward, past the front axle and the flashing hooves, revealed that the driver was making for the Transverse Road. Kismet knew he had only a few seconds left before the discomfort of being scoured by grassy earth turned into something much less pleasant. He let go with his right hand and began probing the underside of the carriage for handholds. His fingers found a metal frame, part of the leaf-spring suspension, and as soon as his grip was secure, he unwrapped his left arm and shifted it to the frame as well.
His situation was only marginally better; he was now a few inches further away from the ground — nowhere near where he needed to be — and his arms were burning with the exertion. From his new position though, he was able to get a better idea of what to do next. Directly above him was a small step, designed to hold bags and other cargo. Gritting his teeth in anticipation, he slowly relaxed his arms, allowing his body to drag once more on the ground, in order to bring the step within reach.
Kismet was dimly aware that, as he made contact once more with the ground, the pistol stashed in his waistband was jarred loose and went skittering away, but he couldn’t worry about that. He twisted around, taking the punishment on his knees, and managed to get his feet under him. He estimated that the carriage wasn’t moving faster than about fifteen miles an hour — maybe less — considerably faster than a walking pace, but not beyond the realm of possibility for a flat out sprint. As soon as the soles of his boots made contact, he started running.
He needed only a few steps to gather his momentum, and for that brief time, he was actually running faster than the horse that pulled the carriage. Yet what he saw in that brief instant as he ran forced him to revise his strategy. He only caught a glimpse of the driver and the shotgun he held trained on the captives in the coach’s front facing seat, but that was enough for him to realize that just climbing onto the step wasn’t going to be good enough.
Kismet ducked down again before the driver could glance back and spy him. He needn’t have worried; the man’s attention was momentarily focused on making the transition from the grassy ground of the Ramble to the hard macadam of the Transverse Drive. He slowed the carriage to a crawl as he neared the concrete curb, and Kismet knew that once on the paved road, his ability to keep pace with the horse would quickly evaporate.
He had noted that the driver was sitting sideways on this elevated bench seat, turned to the right so that he could keep the shotgun trained on the passengers while maintaining a view of the road ahead. As the horse stepped down onto the pavement, Kismet dashed along the left side of the coach, in the driver’s blind spot, and vaulted up onto the driver’s perch.
There was a great deal of risk to his friends — a reflexive trigger squeeze would shred the father and daughter in the back seat, but Kismet was counting on the man to react by trying to bring the gun around to meet the new threat. He was half right.
As soon as the driver realized he had company, he did indeed start to turn, but before he could, Higgins pounced forward, grabbing the short barrel of the gun and thrusting it up into the overhead canopy. The gun thundered in the semi-enclosed space, and a load of double-ought buckshot tore through the fabric. Higgins’ hand went instantly numb from the eruption and the gun barrel slipped from his grasp, but he did not let it slow him down. Even as Kismet drew back to deliver a cross-body punch, Higgins reached through the narrow opening and planted the heel of his left hand in the small of the driver’s back. The blow, delivered at almost exactly the same instant that the front wheels of the carriage dropped down from the curb, pitched the man from his seat. He rebounded off the horse’s hindquarters and bounced like a pinball from the rigging, before crashing onto the pavement. The carriage lurched twice as first the left front wheel and then the rear wheel were lifted a few inches off the pavement. The driverless horse continued out to the shoulder lane and veered to the right, heading east.
Kismet didn’t look back. His attention was focused on gathering in the reins, which the driver had taken with him in his fall, in order to get control of the carriage. He clambered over the raised footboard and cautiously reached a foot down onto the rigging. With his left hand gripping the carriage, he extended his reach as far as possible and managed to snare the trailing strap. A few seconds later, he settled back onto the driver’s seat and pulled back on the reins, bringing the coach to a halt.
He turned and peered into the passenger area. “Are you guys okay?”
“What?” Annie shouted, evidently deafened by the close proximity of the shotgun blast, but Higgins, who was cradling his right hand, just nodded.
Kismet took a deep breath and allowed his mind to process everything that had happened. About fifty yards behind them, the motionless form of the fallen driver was starting to attract the attention of motorists traveling through the park on the Transverse Road. They had to keep moving, but even as Kismet turned to relay this decision to his friends, he saw Annie brace herself against the backrest of her seat and then with both feet, shove the unconscious form of the man who had earlier held them at gunpoint out of the carriage. The gunman crashed unceremoniously onto the pavement, hidden from the view of traffic by the carriage itself. As soon as they moved, he too would become a spectacle, drawing more unwanted attention.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Annie shouted, still unable to gauge an appropriate volume level.
Kismet rolled his eyes at her impulsive action. They needed to abandon the conspicuous carriage and exit the park on foot. But before he could put this decision into words, he heard the hissing sound of a car slamming on its brakes and skidding to a halt beside them. It was a non-descript sedan, marked with a sticker identifying it as a rental car. It might have been just another curious rubbernecker, aghast at the sight of what appeared to be a dead body laying in the road, but somehow Kismet knew they weren’t that lucky. The windows reflected the scenery, denying him a look at the occupants, but he didn’t need to see inside to know that trouble had arrived.
“Leeds!” he rasped, as if the name was a curse. “Hang on!” He snapped the reins, urging the horse once more into motion even as the doors of the sedan popped open.
The car immediately began rolling forward again, but one of its passengers disembarked and began sprinting after the carriage on foot. Kismet glanced over his shoulder, saw that the runner was cut from the same cloth as the man that had been waiting with MacKay in the Ramble—mercenaries, he thought, unable to keep his face from contorting into a snarl — and then saw Higgins brusquely plant a foot in the man’s face as the latter caught up to the coach. That dealt with the immediate threat, but the sedan represented a problem on a different order of magnitude. Kismet shook the reins again, shouting for the horse to move faster. Grudgingly, it did.