The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Ben followed the white van away from City Hall. He was good at tailing people, and had been doing it for a long time. The trick was to hang back by a decent number of car-lengths, using the vehicles between you and the target to block you out. Three was ideal. It worked best in heavy traffic, where you could maintain constant visual contact with little chance of being spotted.

But there were risks, too. Allowing a distance between you and the target made it possible to get separated. Traffic lights were a constant menace. Burn through a red to keep up, and bad things could happen — you might get into an accident, you might alert the target to your presence, and if you were really unlucky you might draw unwanted police attention into the bargain. That was why the best way to track a moving target was with a coordinated team in multiple vehicles, staying in contact by radio or mobile phone. A combination of cars, trucks and motorcycles was useful. Air support was even better. If one team member thought they were getting too conspicuous or had lost visual contact, they could call in another who immediately picked up the trail. When it was smoothly done, the target didn’t have a clue they were being tailed.

Ben didn’t have the luxury of a whole team of guys. He was on his own, and for that reason he had to play it extra safe as he chased the white van through the streets of downtown Tulsa. Instead of three vehicles, he hung back four, his gaze fixed on the dirty panels of the GMC’s back doors so as not to let it get swallowed up out of sight in the traffic. Even that didn’t keep him completely hidden, because the van was moving fast, constantly stepping out of lane and slaloming left and right as it overtook just about everything in front of it, and Ben was forced to do the same. The two men were definitely in a hurry to get somewhere. He swore as the van sped past a station wagon, and wished they’d slow down. This reckless nonsense was going to get them all noticed.

The van turned this way and that, screeching through intersections, cutting a jagged path northwards through the city. After a few minutes, Ben realised that it had caught up with another fast-moving vehicle up ahead, a blue Ford. The two of them were keeping pace with each other. From this distance it was hard to tell how many occupants were inside the car — maybe three or four.

The blue Ford and the van were forced to slow a little as they came into a long right-hand sweeper choked up with traffic in both directions. From his three-quarter angle further back round the bend, Ben could see that the front passenger windows of both vehicles were wound down. The front seat passenger of the Ford was a heavy-looking ape with dark glasses. He was talking on a phone. So was the guy in the van. Ben would have bet money they were talking to each other. They were travelling in convoy. And taking it very seriously. Wherever they were heading in such a hurry, they meant business and it was a job for a crew of several men. Based on the Madeira experience, that almost certainly meant that these guys were heavily tooled up. Whilst Ben was totally unarmed.

Maybe this was going to get interesting after all.

Then, suddenly, it all started going wrong. A gap appeared in the slow-moving traffic and the driver of the blue Ford went for it, speeding along the solid line of cars on the right. The van followed. Ben muttered a curse and did the same. The Jeep accelerated to forty, then fifty. As he picked up speed, he could see the blue Ford coming to an intersection, chasing down the green light with the van right behind. Ben could see what was about to happen. They’d make it through the lights and he wouldn’t. He’d have to choose between losing them or going right on through.

He was wrong. The green light turned to red before the Ford got there. But the Ford didn’t slow down. As Ben watched, it went storming brazenly across the intersection with the van close behind, cutting across the path of an oncoming Nissan and causing it to swerve violently to avoid a collision. The Nissan’s driver hit the brakes too hard, lost control and spun a full three-sixty and slammed hard into a Lexus that had been coming up behind it. The Lexus spun into a Subaru, which went careering straight into the path of a bus. Horns sounded in panic. Tyres screeched. Metal crunched and plastic splintered. The blue Ford sailed through the middle of the chaos without taking a scratch, but the dented Lexus rolled backwards into the way of the van. The GMC was bigger and heavier and smashed it out of the way in an explosion of flying wreckage as it followed the Ford away from the intersection and up the street.

Ben hit the brakes and sawed the Jeep’s wheel this way and that, swerving wildly through the pile-up until he saw that the way ahead was almost completely blocked by crumpled vehicles. He pulled to a halt and scrambled out of the Jeep. Saw the blue Ford and the van disappearing away into the distance. He’d lost them. He clenched his fist and pounded it against the Jeep’s bonnet.

People were getting out of their cars, staggering about looking dazed. Someone’s horn was jammed on. The back door dropped off the badly buckled rear of the Lexus where the wing of the van had ploughed into it. The Subaru’s front end had been mangled by the bus and a plume of steam was hissing from its radiator. The bus driver, a heavyset black guy in a uniform and cap, was scratching his head and staring around him at the damage. Some of his passengers were getting out, shaken and pale. A child was crying.

‘Did you see?’ an old woman said, pointing. ‘That guy was a maniac!’

‘Is anybody hurt?’ Ben asked. All he got in reply were numb looks and a few head shakes. He couldn’t see any blood on anyone. The only real injuries were to metal and plastic and insurance premiums. The only fatality of the situation was his chase. The Ford and the GMC were long gone.

At that moment, something caught his eye and he walked over to take a closer look, his shoes crunching on scattered bits of headlamp glass. Where the van had collided with the rolling Lexus, there was a big dark stain on the road. It had been quite a thump. There was a lot of smashed plastic everywhere. Most of the van’s right headlamp unit had been torn out, like an eye ripped out of its socket. It looked as if the radiator had taken a bad knock, too.

Ben crouched down and touched a fingertip to the dark stain on the road. It was wet and warm. Water, not oil. It hadn’t come from the Lexus. He could tell that from two things. First, there was little damage to the front end of the car. Second, there was a whole trail of black splotches leading away from the accident scene and in the direction the van had gone.

He got back into the Jeep.

‘You can’t leave, man,’ the bus driver hollered. ‘Cops will be here in a minute.’ Ben ignored the guy, put the Jeep in gear and gently nudged a way between the two damaged cars blocking his way. If he returned the Jeep to the rental company with nothing worse than one or two scratches, nobody would die over it. Once he was clear of the wreckage zone, he hit the gas hard. His chase was back on, but how far would the trail lead him?