Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

He crushed his palm into the middle of the wheel and the horn blared, one loud endless drone, and most of them scattered.

But a mother and her daughter froze, wide-eyed with shock-induced paralysis.

Slater checked the traffic to his left and noticed a gap, only slightly wider than the Mustang, between the front and rear bumpers of two stationary town cars.

Then there was a larger gap, and beyond that the other lane was clear.

Didn’t mean it would be for long. This was 5th, so both lanes ran in the same direction. He’d be driving into oncoming traffic.

Better than the alternative.

He went for it.

He pulled the wheel to the left to avoid the woman and child, and the side of the Mustang’s front bumper clipped the back of the town car in front, and metal screamed, and people shouted, and Slater clenched his teeth, and then they were through…

The Mustang tore out into the far lane—

And a huge vehicle T-boned them.

Slater didn’t even realise what happened in the moment — it was that visceral, that violent. He noticed a flash of something approaching out of the corner of his eye, then the force threw him out of his seat, but the seatbelt caught him and slammed him back into place, none too gently. Alonzo hadn’t put his seatbelt on, so he was smashed into the dashboard, and the airbag deployed, adding to the chaos.

The Mustang spun in a half-revolution, tyres squealing, and came to rest facing south.

Everything between Slater’s temples became a mass of molten agony. The impact had brought the concussion after-effects roaring back to the surface, and he moaned out loud and worked his jaw as he threw the Mustang into reverse. His head swam, and he couldn’t see straight, but that wasn’t going to stop him doing everything he could to survive.

So he punched the airbag down until he could see over it, then started reversing before the operatives could surround the car. He saw them through the windshield frame, spilling out of the attack car, having successfully rammed Slater to a standstill. But now he was on the move again, and he spun the wheel and drifted the front around until it faced north, then he floored it again.

The Mustang choked, spluttered, protested…

…and obeyed.

46 Park Avenue, he told himself. 46 Park Avenue.

There was no time for the GPS. He didn’t have a second to spare. Already rounds were coming their way again, the black-ops killers having seemingly abandoned protocol. It could all be chalked up to an undercover police sting gone bad, an unfortunate firefight that played out on the streets of New York but resulted in a successful result with minimal civilian casualties.

These things happen.

Each throb in Slater’s head was like getting hit by a baseball bat. He tried to use them to his advantage, harnessing the pain, using it as fuel. He gritted his teeth and yelled through them.

The vehicle that had T-boned them — Slater identified it in the rear-view mirror as a modified Dodge RAM — was rumbling in pursuit, growing ever closer. The passenger’s window was down, but the hitman hadn’t yet resorted to hanging out of it, sitting on the sill to spray the Mustang with bullets. That’d overstep the line they’d already unknowingly crossed.

It was war in New York, less than a year after the lights had gone out.

Media attention would be relentless.

Slater didn’t worry about that now. He couldn’t. He flicked his gaze across to assess Alonzo. The man was bleeding from the mouth, and his jaw hung limp like a crooked drawer, like it was broken.

Slater said, ‘Can you speak?’

‘Yeah. I bit my tongue. It’s not my jaw. I—’

‘Hold on,’ Slater hissed. ‘And put your fucking seatbelt on!’

A stream of cars had turned left onto 5th Avenue from East 33rd Street, below the colossal base of the Empire State Building. Traffic lights had ushered them through, and they’d advanced unknowingly into the gunfight.

The first car in the column slammed the brakes as its driver saw the Mustang roaring toward a head-on collision.

Sweat ran from Slater’s brows into his eyes as he took in all the obstacles.

There were too many to count.

Cars, pedestrians, newsstands…

He let his thoughts fall away, gripped the wheel with one hand and the handbrake with the other, and exhaled.

Alonzo shouted, ‘No—’ but the sound died in his throat as he was hurled sideways again.

At least this time the seatbelt caught him.

He’d listened to Slater.

Slater ripped the handbrake and slid between two stationary cars. One side of the Mustang mounted the sidewalk, which felt like it would tear the whole car apart, and for all Slater knew it almost did. But he couldn’t pay attention to that because then he was accelerating to build momentum again, and a cluster of tourists reared up ahead, and he deployed the handbrake for a second time and slid back onto the road, where he avoided a collision with one of the stationary cars by inches.

Then he threw the wheel all the way over for a third time, and drifted onto East 34th Street.

Finally moving in the same direction as traffic.

He barrelled east for a few hundred feet, tearing around traffic, then ignored a red light and skidded out onto Park Avenue, heading north.

Somehow, the Dodge RAM kept up. It was right there behind them, its bull bar enormous. Perhaps its driver had taken a course in vehicular warfare.

Slater had to slow a touch to scour every turnoff on Park Avenue.

It should be right here…

There.

A right turn onto East 36th Street, and they’d come upon the north face of the long building that housed the consulate.

Slater slowed fractionally to turn.

The Dodge smashed into them from the back, throwing them both forward.

His head bounced off the steering wheel.

93

The President of El Salvador was ice as he clutched the phone.

You had to be, doing what he did.

Lording over a country where seven hundred thousand families lived in dire poverty.

You couldn’t let your conscience get in the way of anything.

He’d sent everyone out