“Move!” Dahl shouted at the milling car drivers. “Get out of here!”
He ran hard for the exit and Kenzie followed, spurred on by his bold moves. The stony waterfall bounced off them, drawing blood here and there but not even slowing them down. The final obstacle was more serious. Dahl paused.
Raised his gun and fired. “Only way to get ’em all moving.”
“It works for Jessica Ennis and Usain Bolt.” Kenzie peered over an unsteady boulder.
Dahl turned to her. “You’re a sports fan?”
“Only my entire life.”
“And what are your thoughts on the Swedish football team?” He fired another shot as people raced for their cars or decided to duck behind them.
“Didn’t know they had one. In truth though, I’m more of an athletics girl.”
“Fencing?”
She watched the blatant enemy advance. “Get out of here. They poke each other with matchsticks.”
“I hear there’s some skill involved.”
“Yeah, probably when they glue them together to build a tower.”
With the coast clear, Kenzie used the rubble pile as a barricade and leaned over, gun in hand. Four enemies ran at her, machine pistols poised. She took the first shot, bullet blasting wide. The return came at once, lead stitching a line across the tunnel above her head. Running and firing wasn’t their strong suit then. Dahl took his time, kneeling and aiming; his first shot sent the lead man jerking to the side. Kenzie fired once more. Again her bullet found thin air instead of hot flesh.
“Not one for the clay pigeon event then?”
“Up close is where it’s at. Your wife will probably agree.”
She kicked herself for her bluntness, striving for a more agreeable manner. It was the damn Swede that was trying to bring on the change. He shouldn’t bear the brunt. A clatter of gunfire sent her beneath the barricade, with bits of stone spitting off the top. One bullet managed to blast right through the piled stone and shattered the front grille of their car, reaffirming just how fragile her grip on life remained. She saw Dahl fire once more and curse, then popped her head up.
Three gunmen still coming, guns switched to auto.
Instinct sent her ducking, covering, scrambling to the left to change position. A man jumped over the barricade, shooting down at the position she’d recently occupied. She rose fast, swung her shoulders and unleashed the katana.
The blade chopped down through his arm, parting him from the gun and sending a look of horror across his features.
“What?”
“You tried to kill me first.” When the next man climbed over she wasted no time and no mercy shooting him in the head. She saw Dahl fall away from a man who jumped to the top of the entire barrier, gun blazing, then somehow manage to kick the rocks out from beneath him. The barrier shivered and then collapsed, the man falling among the stones.
Dahl finished him, then waved at Kenzie. Together, they flew over the rubble and charged the SUV. It saw them coming and turned to speed back down the hill. Dahl faltered. Kenzie stowed her weapons and took a wild look around.
“We have about thirty minutes,” she said. “Then we lose Treacle forever.”
Dahl grunted. “Oh, I love hearing those sentences we never expected to utter,” he said. “But they work better with kids. Put the dinosaur back in the conservatory.” He was casting around, searching for the bare bones of a plan as he spoke. “Granddad, Mum and Dad say we can’t talk about your fat belly anymore. Shit, I just trod on a crocodile…”
Kenzie took a moment to stare down the side of the nearest cliff, over Monaco. “Time’s ticking.”
“Yeah, and so is that beast.”
Dahl sounded so happy, Kenzie immediately whirled her head around. The Swede was galloping — no, more like frolicking — in the direction of a deep blue car with an imposing shape. Kenzie chased after him.
“So this makes you happy? A Maserati?”
Dahl’s head spun around so fast it almost turned three hundred and sixty degrees. “You like cars too?”
“I’ve sometimes been called a petrolhead.”
“I knew there was something about you. Who gives a fuck that you’re a trained killer? If we can talk about cars for an hour, we’re mates forever.”
Kenzie made a pained face as she caught up to him, not entirely sure she wanted to be the Swede’s “mate”. Not in the sense he meant anyway. Her father had been a car lover, and thus so had her brother, but good memories of them caused bad endings to re-emerge. Like predators, they were never far from the surface.
Dahl smiled at the man behind the wheel. “Sorry, mate. Need your car. I really will try to treat it well, but failing that, please know these things are happiest being driven hard.”
Kenzie opened the other door and popped her head inside. “Aren’t we all?”
The man, eyes already wide, noticed the katana and leapt past Dahl, leaving the driver’s seat open. “Cheers, mate,” the Swede called and jumped in.
Kenzie seated herself in the passenger side. “Nice of him.”
“Fasten your seat belt.”
“Yes, Dad.”
A dirty, deep growl came from the exhausts as Dahl trod on the accelerator, returned to the barricade so Kenzie could hop over and retrieve the Inca vase from their old car’s trunk, spun the car around and sent it shooting down the hill toward Monaco. Kenzie guessed they had about twenty minutes to reach the casino.
“Best step on it,” she said. “See what a GranSport can really do.”
Another tunnel stood ahead. Dahl floored the gas pedal all the way through, breaching the redline of the rev counter, seeing the kph climb past one hundred and fifty, and feeling his mouth fall open as the animalistic roar of the tailpipes resounded between concrete walls.
“That’s a great friggin’ sound,” he breathed.
Kenzie took the time to prep their weapons. The road dipped and plunged, sending them through two more tunnels and along a palm-tree lined road with the blue Mediterranean sparkling out to the right. The Maserati blasted past slower cars, its speed and power making a dangerous passing maneuver safe and easy, whipping past the great scenery on its way down to Monte Carlo. The mountain road twisted and turned, dangerous drops to the right one minute, incredible dwellings the next. Cliff faces rose above, dotted with expensive homes. The glittering bay sprawled below, a shimmering accompaniment to the star-studded streets, casinos and hotels it bordered.
Dahl blasted past the outskirts of the city.
“You know where the casino is?”
“It’s on the Grand Prix circuit.”
Kenzie scowled. That wasn’t really an answer, but she guessed to his mind it said everything. The Maserati growled past the bay, shops lining the left-hand side of the road where markings for the F1 starting grid covered the asphalt. Then the road began to climb steeply, first straight and then to the left. Dahl followed it around, slowing as they reached the top and nodding to the right.
“Casino’s behind those bloody hoardings. Looks like workmen have blocked the main entrance off.”
They followed the route around and drove past a pair of policemen to get to the casino’s other entrance. Kenzie laid eyes on the famous venue for the first time. The casino occupied the short end of a long rectangle; the Hotel de Paris one of the long sides. The facades were stunning blocks of intricate architecture, the entrance to the casino made dark by a jutting overhang. Cars were arranged in front of the entrance, all facing outward in a semi-circle. Crowds milled all around; tourists seated with cameras as if camped there for the day.
Dahl dumped the Maserati next to a blacked-out AC Cobra. “Balls, if we had time I’d snap a picture just to piss Drake off.”