CLEANING AGENT—AVOID SKIN CONTACT'. He grabbed it.
Then he leapt to his feet and ran forward—while everyone else ran away from the action—and peered down into the staff-only corridor where he saw the Zulu stop in front of an open doorway and raise his Cz-25.
Fairfax hurled the bag of powdered chlorine through the air. It hit the Zulu square in the side of the head and exploded in a puff of white dust.
The Zulu screamed, staggering away from the doorway, swatting at his powder-covered head, trying desperately to remove the burning zeolite on his skin. His Elvis sunglasses now bore a layer of white powder on their lenses. His flesh had started bubbling.
Fairfax dashed forward, slid on the floor underneath the Zulu, peered in through the doorway—and saw Dr Thompson Oliphant cowering underneath some supply shelves, covering his face.
'Dr Oliphant! Listen to me! My name is David Fairfax. I'm with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I'm not much of a hero, but I'm all you've got right now! If you want to get through this, you'd better come with me!'
Oliphant extended his hand and Fairfax grasped it, lifting the doctor to his feet. Then they ducked under the swatting Zulu and raced out past the reception counter into the early morning air.
The automatic sliding doors opened for them—just as the doors themselves shattered under Cz-25 bullet-fire.
The Zulu was moving again and coming after them with a vengeance.
An ambulance was parked right outside the Emergency Ward's entrance.
'Get in!' Fairfax yelled, throwing open the driver's side door. Oliphant jumped in the passenger side.
Fairfax fired her up and hit the gas. The ambulance peeled off the mark, but not before the two of them heard an ominous whump! from somewhere at the back of the vehicle.
'Uh-oh . . .' Fairfax said.
In his side mirror he saw the tall dark figure of the Zulu standing on the rear bumper, his hands clinging to the ambulance's roof rails.
The Zulu was on the ambulance!
The ambulance's tyres squealed as Fairfax gunned it out of the undercover turning bay and into the parking lot proper.
He bounced the white van over a gutter and a nature strip hoping to dislodge the Zulu from its bumper. The ambulance rocked wildly as it jounced down another gutter and Fairfax was certain that no-one could have held on after all that.
But then the rear doors of the ambulance were hurled open from the outside and the Zulu stepped into the rear compartment!
'Shit!' Fairfax yelled.
The Zulu no longer had his Cz-25, having discarded it in favour of holding onto the ambulance with both hands.
But now, safely inside the speeding ambulance, he withdrew a
long-bladed machete from his trenchcoat and stared at Fairfax and Oliphant with blazing fury in his bloodshot eyes.
Fairfax eyed the machete. 'Oh, man . . .'
The Zulu swept forward through the rear compartment, clambering quickly over a locked-down wheeled gurney.
Fairfax had to do something fast.
He saw the road up ahead divide—one lane heading left for the exit, the other sweeping to the right, up a curving concrete ramp that gave access to the hospital's multi-storey parking lot.
He chose right, and yanked the steering wheel hard over, hitting the gas as they charged up the spiralling ramp—the centrifugal force of their high-speed turn causing the Zulu in the back to lose his balance and slam against the outer wall, his forward progress momentarily halted.
But they could only go up for so long, Fairfax thought. The parking structure was only six storeys high.
He had five floors to think of something else.
At the same time, someone else was watching the ambulance's wild rise up the tightly curving ramp from across the street.
A strikingly beautiful woman with long legs, muscular shoulders and cool Japanese eyes.
Her real name was Alyssa Idei, but in the bounty hunting world she was known simply as the Ice Queen. She'd already collected the bounty on Damien Polanski and now she was after Oliphant.
She wore only black leather—tight hipster pants, biker jacket and killer boots. Her long black hair was tied back. Under her jacket, tucked into a pair of shoulder holsters, were two high-tech Steyr SPP machine pistols.
She started up her Honda NSX and pulled out from the kerb, and headed for the multi-storey parking lot.
Tyres squealing, Fairfax's ambulance wound its way up the curving ramp, its open rear doors flailing wildly.
They hit Level 3.
Three floors to go before they reached the roof—before the Zulu in the back would be able to move freely again.
But now Fairfax knew what he was going to do.
He was going to drive the ambulance off the top level of the parking structure—leaping out of it at the last moment with Oliphant, leaving the Zulu inside.
'Dr Oliphant!' he yelled, glancing back at the Zulu. 'Listen up and listen fast because I don't know if we'll get another chance to talk about this! You're a target in an international bounty hunt!'
'What!'
'You have an eighteen-million-dollar price on your head! I think it has something to do with a NATO study that you did back in 1996 with a guy named Nicholson at USAMRMC! The MNRR Study. What was that study about?'
Oliphant frowned. He was still in shock, and trying to assimilate this line of questioning with the ongoing attempt on his life was hard.
'MNRR? Well, it was . . . it was . . .'
The ambulance continued its dizzying ascent.
Level 4 and rising.
'It was ... it was like the Soviet Cobra tests, a test of—'
As Oliphant spoke, Fairfax stole a glance back at the Zulu—and suddenly saw that the demonic figure of the bounty hunter was far closer than he had expected him to be and was now swinging his machete right at Fairfax's head!
No defence.
No escape.
The machete whistled forward.
And slammed into the headrest of Fairfax's seat, its steel blade stopping—dead—a millimetre from Fairfax's right ear.
Jesus!
But now the Zulu was on them. Somehow, he had managed to manoeuvre his way forward, despite the powerful inertia of the turning-and-rising ambulance.
Level 5 . . .
And now Fairfax's eyes narrowed, focused.
He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.
The ambulance responded, increased its speed.
They hit the top of the curving ramp doing 40, the ambulance almost tipping over sideways, ail-but travelling on two wheels.
Then they raced out onto the rooftop—at this hour, it was completely empty—and Fairfax straightened the steering wheel and the ambulance, coming out of its hard turn, bounced back down onto all four wheels, the abrupt change of direction causing the Zulu to fly to the other side of the rear compartment and bang into the wall . . . leaving his machete wedged in Fairfax's headrest.
Fairfax gunned the ambulance, aimed it directly at the edge of the deserted rooftop parking area.
'Dr Oliphant! Get ready to jump!' he yelled.
They rocketed toward the edge of the roof, toward the pathetic little fence erected there.
Fairfax shifted in his seat. 'Get ready ... on three. One . . . two . . . thr—'
The Zulu lunged into the driver's seat from behind and grabbed both Fairfax and Oliphant!
Fairfax was stunned.
Now none of them could get out!
He saw the edge of the rooftop rushing at him at phenomenal unavoidable speed, so in desperation he yanked the steering wheel hard over and for what it was worth, slammed on the brakes.
The ambulance fishtailed, skidded wildly.
And so rather than hitting the fence head-on as Fairfax had intended it to, it did a screeching four-wheel skid, spinning a full 180 degrees so that instead, it slammed into the rooftop's fence rear-end first.