They would try to get past him. Try to block him in. And he knew he couldn't stop them all.
He glanced ahead and spotted an upcoming slip road, an exit just west of Trecasse.
The lights behind him glowed brighter. Engines roared closer.
He was going too fast to make it.
But he did.
The Fiat shed 20,000 kilometres' worth of rubber as he veered out of the grey haze of fog and headlight glare and off the autostrada.
He couldn't tell whether any of the pursuit cars had made it after him. He guessed not.
The Fiat clipped a barrier on the winding exit road. Spun sideways off the autostrada. Squealed to a stalled halt in an unlit street.
Sal started her up, found second gear and burned his way east, still parallel to the E45.
The helicopter's Nightsun was struggling to find him. It glowed in the fuzzy sky like a cobwebbed old light bulb in a vast dark cellar.
He pulled a left into Via Alessandro Manzoni. In his rear-view he could see two white dots in the far distance.
They were still on him.
Still.
But not close enough.
Oncoming headlights reflected in the road spray. It was raining now as well as foggy. He glanced up, squinted out of the driver's side window. The white belly of the GIS chopper was illuminated for a second, then vanished. They were breathing down his neck.
Sal pulled a hard right, then an even tighter left.
He was on Via Canarde San Pietro, heading north towards the darkness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park.
Soon they would be on his ground.
His sacred ground.
His killing ground.
106
ROS Quartiere Generale (Anti-Camorra Unit), Napoli Lorenzo Pisano drove his fist into the surface of the control-room desk, 'Porco Dio! ' The mild-mannered Major was in full rage. 'Porca miseria! Porca puttana! Porca Madonna! '
He turned and glared at Jack and Sylvia, as though it were their fault that the pursuit team had just found the Fiat abandoned after forking right at the end of Via Marsiglia.
Salvatore Giacomo was gone.
'The fog is so damn bad out there. I'm going to have to bring the chopper down. Fuck it!' He hit the desk again. 'The ground teams can barely see their own hands, let alone find this bastard.'
Lorenzo wheeled away from them and barked orders into desk mics. Slowly his voice settled down and he found his normal level of calmness. A bank of control-room monitors showed a live feed from the helicopter as it landed close to San Sebastiano. Traffic cameras were almost blacked out, picking up only occasional bursts of headlights. Foggy pictures swirled in from the armoured pursuit cars, now parked and awaiting instructions.
On a lower screen a real-time satellite map showed in vivid colours the whole area in which the chase had taken place. And the dead end where Sal had vanished. The dark-green vastness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park dominated the north of the picture. The orange ribbon of the A3/E45 ran west to east. The pale blue of the endless Bay of Naples sagged across the south.
Sylvia pointed to the map. 'There's a railway stop just there. Giacomo could be on a train by now – going in either direction.'
Lorenzo threw up his hands. 'Or on a motorway – or down any of a dozen other minor roads. Or who-knows-fucking-where. We've lost him!' The major dropped his head between his hands. Cover of fog, cover of darkness, cover of the Camorra – it was as though every element of evil had conspired against him.
Jack moved towards the monitors. 'He'll head north-east.'
'What?' Lorenzo looked up. 'Why? Why do you say that? North-east will run him round Vesuvius and out towards Ottaviano.'
'This guy is going where he feels comfortable. Believe me, you bury bodies somewhere for five or ten years you get pretty comfortable around that area.'
Lorenzo was unsure. He knew he had only one more throw of the dice before Sal was really gone. Not just gone for now. Gone forever. He scratched his head. He could muster barely a hundred men, maybe ten to fifteen sets of cars from five different barracks. Time was ticking away. 'Why wouldn't he double back, do as Sylvia says, and catch the train? He could be up in Rome in a couple of hours.' Another thought hit Lorenzo. 'Worse still, if he rides the tracks fully east he could be in Sicily by the morning.'
'It's your call,' said Jack. 'But believe me, our boy is right here.' He ran his finger along the Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio. 'Get me out there and we've still got a good chance of finding him.' The Nightsun was gone.
Salvatore Giacomo had watched it drop to earth like a dying firefly.
He guessed how much distance he had on his pursuers. A kilometre. Maybe two or three at the most. Better than that, though, they wouldn't have a clue in which direction he was heading. Three kilometres in one direction meant their search circle had to be six in diameter. He couldn't remember the exact formula for pi, but he knew that it meant the cops would have to set a dragnet perimeter more than eighteen kilometres long. And they'd have to do it lightning fast. Not a chance. Not at this time of night. Not in this weather. And with every further kilometre he gained, then it became less and less likely.
Without the dull thwack-thwack of the helicopter blades he could hear himself panting as he ran through the foothills of the parkland. The darkness of the hills swallowed him. He ran hard. Ran until he was breathless. Then he ran some more.
Finally he stopped. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. His lungs were on fire. His heart rate was more than three times its resting beat. He had pains in his chest.
Twigs and branches cracked beneath his feet as he ground to a halt. One minute. One minute's rest, then he'd run again.
As his breathing slowed he noticed that his legs, arms and face had been ripped by brambles and branches. In the morning, trackers would be able to see traces. They'd pick him up easy. But not now. Right now they'd find nothing.
His minute was up.
He ran again. Lorenzo rolled the dice and took his chance on Jack.
To be sure, though, he spread his bets. He sent search teams to the central train and metro station in Naples. He mobilized all the support he could from local carabinieri barracks. And he called in favours from the polizia, both state and municipal.
Four GIS members – the ones from the helicopter – continued tracking Sal from where he'd abandoned the Fiat. They fanned out in the thickening fog. Helmet and torch lights flickered on the sodden hillsides. Radio crackle broke the humid silence as they struggled to establish search patterns in the dense darkness.
Four more GIS members headed east with Jack and Sylvia. Two drove in the car with them, two rode on their own.
Neither of the GIS men had a name. Neither spoke unless spoken to. They'd been briefed to do whatever Jack and Sylvia wanted and beyond that they retained their normal high levels of security. Everyone had live radio links back to Lorenzo who still held ultimate operational command.
The faces of the GIS men were covered by full balaclavas and Jack used their eye colours to name them Blue and Brown. Blue was driving; he was taller and older, his baby blues sat on creases and bags that put him in his late forties. Brown squashed in the back with Jack and helped him into a GIS combat suit, complete with the unit insignia of an open parachute and vertical sword.
'Serial killers of this guy's calibre have approach and escape routes from their burial scenes,' explained Jack, as Blue hurtled them at a frighteningly high speed through the fog. 'And I mean routes, not route.'
Sylvia shut her eyes as the passenger-side mirror slapped that of a passing car. 'So this is all still a game of chance?' She clutched a grab handle as the Alfa zigzagged into the outer lane of the autostrada. Its siren wailed again and its blue roof lights flashed incessantly.