Brute Force

Chapter 36

Quinn moved on autopilot, carried forward by instinct more than any actual plan. He slid behind the wheel and hit the Hellcat’s ignition, bringing the beast to life with a burbling roar. Bursaw’s nephew had both the red and black fobs on his keychain. When both proximity chips were in the vehicle, the more aggressive red key always won, all but screaming orders at the onboard computer, and awakening all 707 horses under the hood. The predatory blat of the supercharged 6.2 Hemi engine alone was enough to send the crowd stepping back as if they were afraid of being eaten.

Quinn whipped the wheel hard over, giving the muscle car enough gas to drift the rear tires to the right and point the nose in the direction of the fleeing Alfa Romeo Giulietta. It didn’t take much and he lifted his foot just enough to stop the drift, straightened the wheels, and then poured on the throttle.

The blower kicked in with a rising whine and the car sprang to life around him, as if it had caught the scent of new prey. Throwing him back against the bolstered leather seat, the Hellcat tore across the cobblestone drive in a shrieking squall of smoke and gravel. Less than a minute from the time the door shut on the Giulietta to speed away with Song, Quinn fishtailed the screaming Hellcat off the gravel and onto the paved highway toward Dubrovnik. It was late and thankfully there was no oncoming traffic, so he was able to use the entire road, drifting through the first long, arcing curve to the south, just in time to see the lights of the Giulietta wink out as they crested a hill, a quarter mile ahead.

Quinn used the paddle shifters to take the car down a gear, applying steady throttle to get maximum speed but without the smoking burnout that the powerful Hellcat was famous for. The effect was like being strapped to the back of a bullet with the Challenger eating up the distance to the fleeing sedan in a matter of seconds. Quinn let off the gas as the easily recognizable rear lights of the Giulietta loomed ahead in the darkness like two long number sixes tipped on their faces.

Song was nowhere in sight and Quinn assumed the two men visible through the rear hatch had pushed her down in the backseat. An arm appeared out the rear passenger window, buffeted heavily by the wind, and began to shoot at him. Quinn gave a tight chuckle despite the situation. Shooting backwards, in the dark, and from a moving car was useless.

Tracking in close like a guided missile on the Giulietta’s tail, Quinn took a quick moment to tap check Anton Scuric’s pistol he’d stuffed in his waistband, making certain it was still in place. In the middle of a long, slow curve, the little Giulietta used up the entire road. The little family car swayed and rocked back and forth to keep the heavier Dodge from passing. It seemed obvious that the driver wanted to be followed so he could lead Quinn into a trap, but he could not have expected to be overtaken so quickly, likely miles from any reinforcements.

Coming out of the turn and into the straightaway, Quinn took the Hellcat down a gear and feinted as if to pass on the right. The moment the Giulietta’s driver moved to cut him off, Quinn rolled quickly to the left, shooting the Hellcat forward between the fleeing sedan and the mountainside.

Nosing in along the Giulietta’s left flank, front fender to rear quarter panel, Quinn yanked the heavy Dodge to the right, aggressively nudging the lighter sedan just behind the back wheel and causing it to come untracked. He mouthed the words he’d used when first learning the PIT or “Precision Immobilization Technique,” toning down his aggressive driving as soon as the Alfa Romeo began to spin out and wrap around the hood of the Dodge to slam into the rocks to the left, facing in the other direction.

“GET!” Quinn barked when the cars made initial contact. And then, more softly, he said, “Out… of… my… way,” as he steered through the collision to make certain he didn’t end up spinning out of control himself.

With the Alfa Romeo behind him, Quinn took his foot completely off the gas, tapping the brake to bleed off speed. When the speedometer needle dropped below forty, he gave the wheel a slight flick to the right, shifting the weight off the inside wheels, then cranked it ninety degrees to the left and stomped the emergency brake. The back wheels broke loose, coming around in a semi-controlled “bootlegger’s” turn. Machinelike, he released the emergency brake and rolled on the gas, closing the distance back to the smoking Giulietta in a quick breath.

The little sedan had rolled up on its side, snapping an axle before colliding with a boulder and falling back to rest on all four tires. The driver, a tall and bony man wearing dark clothing, had just flung open his door and was climbing out with a pistol in hand when Quinn bailed out of the Hellcat, shooting him twice, center mass. He dropped to his knees and the gun slid away into the darkness. Quinn spent the third and fourth of the XDs’ six rounds on the backseat passenger who’d been shooting at him during the chase. He came out of the Giulietta on the far side, taking potshots and moving at a crouch — but not quite low enough. Quinn’s first round missed, but the second struck him in the back of his head.

Two rounds left. He had the extra magazine, but that would take time — something that was always in short supply during a gunfight.

The remaining kidnapper dragged Song out of the car, a pistol shoved under the base of her chin with such force that it caused her to gag. Blood ran from her nose in the glare of the Hellcat’s headlights. Her eyes hung half open and she slumped as if she could barely keep her feet.

“We have stalemate,” the man behind her said in heavily accented English. Albanian, Quinn guessed from his accent. A hired gun. He was sweating from fear and the effort of holding Song upright. “What now?”

Fifteen feet away, Quinn answered by shooting him in the exposed knee, relying on the gunfighter’s mantra to shoot the target that was available until a better one presented itself — and one did. The man’s shattered leg buckled at once, causing him to list sideways, reflexively throwing out his hands, including the one with the pistol, to catch himself. The sixth and final round from Quinn’s XDs caught the man above his eye as his head tilted out from behind Song. He toppled into the ditch and Song collapsed to the ground. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the headlights. Quinn dug into his pocket for the extra magazine and reloaded as he knelt down beside her, checking for wounds.

“I am fine,” she said, attempting to shrug him off, but grimacing at the pain. “My head was so full of that stupid music, they were able to catch me by surprise.”

Quinn looked up and down the highway, pulling Song to her feet. “Let’s get out of here before someone comes along and we have to explain all these dead kidnappers. I’m not sure my Australian passport will hold up under that kind of scrutiny.”

Kevin Bursaw’s mouth hung open when the Challenger growled back up the cobblestone drive in front of the inn with Song inside. His nephew, Craig, ran out to open the door, grinning from ear to ear.

“Thanks,” Quinn said, handing him the key fobs. “There’ll be a little damage to the front fender. I won’t blame you if you’re angry—”

“Do you joke?” Craig said. “They will write songs about my Hellcat. No way you could save the girl in lesser vehicle. My muscle car, she is now famous.”

Quinn moved to open the passenger door for Song. “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t, you know, spread that around.”

Craig waved off the comment. “All the people here know. That is enough for me.”

Kevin Bursaw stepped up and put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder while Petra helped Song inside.

“Stilvano?” Quinn asked, wondering about the fate of the fiddle player who’d fallen to the kidnapper’s gunfire when he ran to rescue Song.

“Right through the love handle,” Bursaw said. “It’ll hurt like hell for a while, but he’ll have a nice scar to show the grannies he likes to flirt with.” Bursaw looked past Quinn, mulling over some kind of plan. “We need to get you both out of here. Just in case those guys send back some of their friends. I’ll move my wife and kids for a few days until this blows over. The cops will have the road back to the airport blocked any time now. My father-in-law keeps a small cabin cruiser moored down in the bay below us. We’ll take you around to the city in that. It’ll be a safe place to wait until your flight leaves.”

“I’m really sorry about all this,” Quinn said. “I’m kind of a magnet for bloody murder.”

“Your brother always told me you had superpowers.” Bursaw chuckled. “Boy, was he right. We should call you Action Man. I never saw anyone react that fast — and I spent the better part of my life around bikers and other Type A personalities.”

Quinn shrugged. Sometimes, there was just nothing to say.

“I happened to look at my watch when you ripped away in Craig’s Challenger,” Bursaw said. “You know you had the car and the girl back in under six minutes? Hell, Jericho, there are people at this party still chewing the same bite of food.”