As he accelerated towards the gate, Jennifer kept just enough presence of mind to stretch past Michael and look for the light switches. She might have told herself that she should have got into the driver’s seat—only she’d forgotten how to say anything so complex. And, even if there had been the time to waste, she wasn’t sure she could have driven the car to better effect than Michael was achieving. She got the lights on in time to see a man dressed in English clothes outside the gate. He moved directly before them, pointing a rifle. Either Michael had forgotten about the brakes, or he wasn’t bothered. The man’s body crashed forward onto the bonnet, and slid off somewhere to the right.
Michael turned the car left into the narrow road that Jennifer thought must, after a few miles, lead to the dual carriageway. After a spell of continuing uncertainty with the pedals, he pushed hard on the accelerator and laughed maniacally at how the car shot forward. “Isn’t this wonderful?” he cried. She looked at his profile. In the glow from the dashboard lights, his whole upper body gleamed with a light sweat. His eyes were open wide, and his lips were drawn back over his teeth. He was going into another cry of triumph, when he took a bend at full speed and almost tipped the car over. She thought they’d crash into a signpost. But he spun the wheel again, leaning briefly into her lap, and got the car steady. Now he’d pulled off the bandage she’d managed to get on with so much fuss and effort, she could see that his stab wound was turning to a faint depression on his upper arm.
Jennifer remembered the seatbelt, and pulled it into place with a reassuring click. “Should we not slow down a little?” she found the strength to ask. Her answer was the glow of headlights far behind. “They’re coming after us!” If Michael heard this, he didn’t think to look into his mirrors. Considering their speed, and his erratic steering, this may not have been so bad an oversight. He drove on in silence, the lights coming ever closer. She twisted round to look back, and was just in time to see the two lights she’d thought part of a car move wider apart. They were being chased by motorbikes—and almost certainly by the same kind of men who’d blown themselves up in Oxford Circus. Would they remember the orders the old man had been relaying to the end? Too scared to tell Michael to push his foot right down, she watched the motorbikes close the distance between them.
Another minute, and she could hear the roar of powerful engines. A few seconds later came the crash of something heavy against the rear window. There was a second crash, and now a third. The concentrated beam from the motorbike that hadn’t yet caught up became a diffracted glow across the whole window. Another blow, and cubes of shattered glass splashed over the back seats, and the roar of the motorbike engine became louder still and more urgent.
Were they trying to get ahead of the car? If they did that, what next? Jennifer had seen police riders on the television, able to stop a car in a few minutes. But had the riders enough experience to do more than catch up and hack away with their swords? Michael took another bend without slowing, and the motorbike that had caught up with them fell back beside the other. She looked forward. The road was straight for as far ahead as she could see. “Michael, go faster,” she said. He nodded and pushed his foot all the way down to the floor. It was a couple of seconds before this had any effect on the speed. But the dark hedges lining the road were soon flashing past at terrifying speed. Surely, she told herself, no motorbike could keep up with this speed.
She was wrong. Now they too were through the bend, both motorbikes put on speed of their own. It may not have been half a minute before they hacking away again at the car. One of the men even managed to twist low enough to push his sword deep into the car and prod the back of her seat. She clearly heard his squealed exclamation. There was now a series of slight bumps in the road, and the motorbikes fell back again. She turned to Michael. He didn’t seem aware of anything but the pool of light in front of him. On the dashboard, an orange light was on that she hadn’t seen before. She thought back to the Olden Days. Her father’s car had gone for miles and miles before he got twitchy about the fuel warning light. But it was a question of speed and fuel quality. How far would she and Michael get before the engine cut out?
There was another approaching roar. Jennifer put hands each side of her face and squeezed as she tried for a useful or even a connected thought. In a flash, she remembered the gun. She’d put it on the dashboard as a failed warning to everyone back inside the gate. Michael’s wild driving since then had knocked it to the floor. She undid her seatbelt and reached down. The gun had somehow wedged itself under her seat. Remembering she hadn’t managed to find the safety catch, she got it carefully into her right hand. “Try to keep in a straight line,” she shouted at Michael. Still looking forward, he nodded and licked his upper lip. She took hold of her seat and pulled herself into the rear of the car. She felt but ignored the pricking of little glass cubes and knelt on the back seat. Holding the gun in both hands, she tried to aim at one of the approaching lights. Before trying to aim, the light had seemed so steady. It was now jumping all over the place. She waited until the sights of the gun were framed for a moment in the round light, and squeezed the trigger. If Michael had lost control of the car in the terrible crash that followed, she wasn’t aware of it. The next she knew for certain, she was trying to pull herself up from the floor. The gun had flown out of her hands in the recoil, and both lights were still approaching. She lay on the back seat and pressed clammy hands together. Where had the gun fallen? She got up and looked through the unglazed rear window. The motorbikes were coming on fast again, but were still about fifty yards behind. She turned round to Michael. “Stop the car!” He wasn’t listening. As if in a trance, he was clutching tight on the steering wheel. She pushed her upper body to the front of the car and repeated herself. His mouth moved slowly in a Greek she couldn’t understand. They were increasing their speed as the car flew down a gentle hill. In the up and down bouncing of the headlamps, she could see how, a mile ahead, the road twisted left. At this speed, they’d go straight off the road. “Put your foot on the brake,” she shouted He looked in her direction, and said something she still didn’t understand. But taking his eyes off the road had set the car into a slight wobble. She looked round. The motorbikes were closing fast. She could keep screaming at Michael until, doing ninety, he hit a tree. Or she could try something of her own that, however wild, had worked once before.
Jennifer shouted in English for Michael to brace himself. She got behind the front passenger seat and reached forward with her left hand, to take hold of the handbrake. She breathed in and shut her eyes, and pulled the brake up as far as she could. At once, her already bruised chest was pushed against the back of the seat, and there was a squeal of tyres and a smell of burning rubber, as the car spun left out of control. Then, as the engine went off, her window smashed inward and something big and heavy landed on top of her. She thought at first they’d hit a tree. “Death—that would be a fine adventure!” she heard herself inwardly quote
A fine adventure it might be—though not yet. After a long silence, Michael unclamped his hands from the steering wheel and stopped pushing at the accelerator. “What did you do?” he asked in a dreamy voice. Jennifer pushed ineffectually at the dead man who was pinning her to the floor of the car. She managed to get her head up to look about for anyone else who might still be alive. But she was stuck in her place. All she could say was that the only lights on were their own.