Shit!
Touch alone told him something was wrong. The open end of the clip was crooked, bent out of shape. He’d crushed it under his own weight when he rolled over the road. It wouldn’t fit into the UMP’s receiver.
Chase dropped the useless magazine, instead flipping the UMP in his hands and sweeping it at ankle height as Schenk rushed around the side of the X5, the Wildey ready in his hand-
The German’s shot went wide as Chase hooked one foot out from under him with the UMP’s stock. Schenk grunted as he was knocked off balance, and staggered, arms windmilling.
Chase rugby-tackled him, driving him back until he crashed against the guardrail, trying to force him over.
But Schenk was a solid slab of muscle, too big even for Chase to overpower by brute force. He realized the danger he was in and bent at the knees, dropping his center of gravity below the top of the railing. His arm swung, and the butt of the Wildey smashed down on Chase’s neck, felling him with a bolt of pain. Schenk’s boot cracked against the side of his skull. Chase dropped onto his side. Head swimming, he looked up.
The Wildey was pointed straight at his face. Beyond it, Schenk came into focus. The German grinned-
Blam!
Chase flinched.
But it wasn’t the Wildey that had fired.
It was Starkman’s UMP, the last bullet in its magazine gouging a bloody hole in Schenk’s right shoulder. The Wildey dropped from the German’s hand as he lurched back against the railing.
Chase caught his gun and flipped it around. “I think this is mine.”
He fired. The bullet hit Schenk in his left eye, the eyeball bursting in a revolting spray as the shot continued through his brain and exploded out of the top of his skull. His head snapped back with the impact and he toppled over the railing, falling hundreds of feet to the icy waters below.
Clutching his aching head, Chase staggered to the Ferrari. Starkman was slumped over the door, bubbles of blood dripping from his mouth. For a second Chase thought he was dead, but then his one eye twitched, looking up at him.
“Bet you’re glad you didn’t kill me now, huh?” Starkman said weakly. He pulled himself upright and flopped back into the seat. “Come on, you got a plane to catch…”
Chase opened the door to lift him into the passenger seat, but Starkman shook his head. “Leave me… I’m fucked, and company’s coming.” He looked in the direction they had come. One of the Jeeps from the roadblock was already chasing them, and more vehicles were speeding up the road from the corporate buildings. “I’ll stop ’em…”
“With what?”
Starkman somehow managed a half-smile and held up a block of CL-20-the timer already running.
“Just make sure you’re off this bridge in twenty seconds,” he wheezed, with his last ounce of strength forcing himself out of the Ferrari to lie on the road at Chase’s feet. “Fight to the end, Eddie…”
“Fight to the end,” Chase repeated as he jumped into the Ferrari and restarted the engine. He jammed it into reverse and pulled away from the BMW, then clicked into first and poured on the power.
Riding in the passenger seat didn’t even remotely compare to the experience of controlling 483 horsepower. The acceleration was so fierce it felt like taking off in a jet. By the time he remembered to change up a gear, he was already doing over sixty miles an hour, the engine wailing like a banshee behind him.
Into third, now doing eighty, snicking the gear lever through the gleaming chrome gate…
In the mirror he saw that the Jeep had almost reached Starkman, the other vehicles now pouring onto the bridge.
The other end of the bridge was coming up fast, but he could only guess how much time he had left before the explosive detonated. Just moments.
One hundred miles an hour and accelerating, but still a few seconds from solid ground-
The image in the mirror disappeared in a flash of light. A moment later came a huge crack like a thunderbolt, immediately followed by a lower, more sinister rumble.
The flat plane of the bridge suddenly became a slope-
It was collapsing!
Starkman’s bomb had blown out the center of the sweeping arch, the two halves of the structure plunging into the river below. All Chase could do was keep his right foot jammed to the floor and hope the Ferrari reached the end of the bridge before the whole thing dropped out from under him!
He was now driving uphill, speed falling alarmingly as a wave of jagged cracks swept past up the road surface. “Oh shit-”
Everything tilted, and the road disintegrated beneath him-
The Ferrari shot off the end of the collapsing bridge as it tumbled into the fjord, crashing down onto solid ground. The exhaust pipes were torn away as the underbody hit the road, the engine note becoming a raw, ragged rasp.
Chase fought to keep the car under control as it slewed around. He stamped on the brake. The Ferrari juddered as the antilock system kicked in, but it was skidding sideways, tires straining, threatening to burst.
He hauled at the steering wheel. The car spun backwards towards a wall.
Foot off the brake, and accelerate-
With a shriek of tortured rubber, the Ferrari came to a stop in a cloud of acrid tire smoke barely a foot from the airfield’s perimeter wall. Chase coughed as the swirling mist blew past him. Through the smashed windscreen he saw another cloud, a ghostly line of dust marking where the bridge had been. The security forces pursuing him were gone, having plunged into the river with their boss.
And Starkman.
Chase paused to give his ex-comrade a silent word of thanks.
Then he turned to look down the runway. In the distance, he saw the hulking white shape of the A380 against the dark backdrop of the surrounding hills, about to turn around.
About to take off.
He put the battered Ferrari into gear, then set off with a screech of tires.
TWENTY-NINE
The A380 slowed as it approached the end of the taxiway, preparing for the wide half-turn to point it down the two-kilometer-long runway.
Chase kept his eyes fixed on the aircraft as he accelerated, clicking up through the Ferrari’s gears. The blasting wind forced him to squint, eyes streaming, but all he had to do was keep going in a straight line.
He had never been aboard an A380, knew almost nothing about its internal layout beyond it being a double-decker. But that was the passenger version-this one was a freighter, meaning he was even more in the dark. He would have to wing it when he got on board.
He would have to wing it to get on board. Trying to block the plane’s takeoff with the Ferrari would be like trying to stop a tank with a cardboard box. The enormous aircraft would blow the sports car aside as if it weren’t even there.
And he couldn’t try to stop the plane by shooting at it-there was too much risk of killing Nina if it caught fire or crashed as a result.
Although if it meant stopping the virus then it might have to be a necessary sacrifice-with himself going the same way…
He was doing over 140, barely able to see the speedometer through his watering eyes. The A380 was a white blur ahead as it moved into its turn.
Whatever he was going to do, he had to think of it fast…
“Ms. Frost!” The pilot’s voice echoed over the intercom. “There’s a car on the runway!”
Kari went to the port side of the cabin to look down. “What?” she gasped. Nina peered past her. She saw the runway stretching off into the distance as the plane turned-and racing down it, a scarlet Ferrari convertible!
The car charged towards them at incredible speed, its lone occupant taking on form. Even at a distance she recognized the balding head behind the wheel the moment she saw it. “Oh my God! It’s Eddie!”