The Hunter

CHAPTER 76

17:26 EAT

Victor followed the dusty road as it curved around and away from the hotel complex. Up ahead it joined onto the main road leading deeper into the city. The main road would be the quickest route out of the area, but it was also the most obvious choice. It would have to do. Victor didn’t know the area well enough to take to the side streets unless he had to.

He slowed down to blend in, joining the traffic waiting at the intersection. He checked the rear-view.

Two pick-ups, a Toyota and a Ford, raced toward him.

Victor accelerated, manoeuvred out from the line of cars onto the wrong side of the road, changed up a gear, and sped out across the intersection. He swerved around the cross-traffic, switched back to the right side of the road, and changed up again.

The pick-ups followed his lead, speeding across the crossroads, leaving clipped and crashed cars in their wake.

Victor released the throttle; slammed the brakes, power sliding the Jeep into a right; then immediately accelerated, the rear end slipping, vehicle rattling under the strain. He raced down a side street. Seconds later he saw the pick-ups following, taking the corner more slowly, glancing off parked cars as they tried to keep up with him.

Victor took another corner, sped across an intersection. He kept his eyes on the road, following it as it rounded a block of densely packed buildings, whitewashed stone colonials interspersed with shanties. Bald truck tyres lay discarded in loose heaps on the side of the road. He moved around slower vehicles, hearing horns and seeing drivers expressing their anger at him.

The road straightened out and split in two. For a second Victor hesitated, but then he veered left onto a wide street that sloped downwards. He looked in the mirror. Behind him the pick-ups overtook other cars or barged them out of the way.

Looking forward again he saw a grime-smeared taxi speed out from a side street, pulling onto the road directly ahead of him. There was no time to brake, no room to dodge. Victor floored it, smashing into the taxi’s front end, the bigger, heavier Jeep knocking the taxi back, sending it spinning into an oncoming car, wrecking both. Victor was thrown forward in his seat, but the seat belt kept his head from colliding with the steering wheel.

He struggled to keep the Jeep under control, swerving wildly, finally straightening out in time to see the first pick-up, the Toyota, fifty yards behind, swerve onto a sidewalk to avoid the mangled car and taxi. Sparks flew off the wall as the truck scraped along, side mirror obliterated. It skidded back onto the road, dust pouring from its wheels.

The second pick-up slowed down earlier, easily avoiding the crashed vehicles, and was gaining. In the rear-view Victor could see the face of the Russian behind the wheel, grim and determined.

Ahead of Victor the street banked to the left. He followed it onto a wide tree-lined avenue full of traffic. The road surface was smooth and even. Rundown two-storey residences with pillared verandas flanked the street. Some were painted in flaking pastel shades — creams, yellows, and blues. Vervet monkeys played in the vegetation alongside the road.

Victor, hands locked on the wheel, flicked the Jeep through the slow-moving cars, denting a wheel arch as he squeezed through a gap just before it closed again. The pick-ups were right behind him now, smashing their way through the other smaller vehicles. Horns blared.

The Toyota was close enough for Victor to see inside the cab and the Russian in the passenger seat readying his submachine gun.

Reed followed the destruction. The Land Rover was only a couple of years old; perfectly maintained; and, combined with his deft driving skills, took him quickly along Tanga’s roads. He had the Glock resting in his lap, loaded, cocked, ready.

He had not spotted the Jeep, but he knew he was on the right path. He raced past damaged vehicles and those that had pulled over to avoid crashing or those already crashed. The roads were clearer for him as a result.

He was gaining with every second, and it would not be long now until Tesseract was back in his crosshairs.

The Russian passenger in the first pick-up leaned out of the window and attempted to get into a firing position with his Bizon. Victor didn’t give him the chance. He pulled off the road, down a narrow street, the gap between the parked cars just wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Brightly patterned clothes and bedding hung from washing lines stretching between the buildings.

The pick-up followed, swerving as it took the corner too fast, its back end losing traction. The gunman managed to pull himself back into the cab just before the Toyota scraped along a stationary car, metal screeching against metal.

Victor accelerated as he crossed an intersection, not daring to slow down and give his pursuers a chance to catch up. He lurched to the side, another car smashing into his back end from the right, spinning the Jeep around, force pinning Victor against the door until the vehicle stopped dead. The other car skidded and crashed through a storefront.

The lead pick-up came out of the intersection fast but then braked hard, tyres billowing smoke. The driver swerved to avoid the Jeep in the middle of the road. The second pick-up was travelling even faster and followed the first, rushing past Victor. The driver stamped on the brakes, and the pick-up slowed before it clipped the back of the Toyota and careered to the side, vaulting up the kerb and through a row of market stalls protected from the sun by seaweed-thatched roofs. Exploded passion fruit and coconuts flew in all directions. Traders fled.

Victor put the Jeep in gear, reversed, crushing another market stall in the process, then changed to first, turned the wheel, accelerated. He saw the first pick-up pull a three-point turn to chase after him. The passenger was already out of the window this time. Victor ducked in his seat as 9 mm rounds sprayed the Jeep.

He changed up again, trying to put some distance between him and the first pick-up, but something was caught under the Jeep and slowing him down. He switched to reverse and accelerated, going backwards down the street toward the pick-ups. A broken wooden crate appeared in front of him, deposited from under his vehicle.

Victor braked, changed back to first, and swerved around the remains of the crate; he then turned quickly back into the narrow street lined with cars, knowing the pick-ups would have a hard time manoeuvring back into it.

The Jeep’s back window blew out. Glass pebbles scattered around the interior. Bulletholes cracked the windshield.

Victor emerged from the intersection, glanced both ways down the street. In one direction, vehicles blocked the road, stopped in reaction to the chase. In the other, a Land Rover was speeding toward him.

He saw the dark silhouette of the driver and knew who was coming.

There was no other way to go. Victor turned towards the oncoming Land Rover. He kept one hand on the wheel, and the other grabbed the Browning from his lap. The Land Rover raced down the opposite side of the road. Victor raised the handgun, and, when they were five yards apart, fired through the windshield. At the exact same time rounds came back at him.

For an instant Victor glimpsed the driver’s emotionless face as the vehicles passed each other. In his rear-view Victor saw the Land Rover braking. He heard a horn, looked to his front to see a rust-spotted dala-dala bus turning a corner into the street. He was heading straight for it, no room to swerve around. He slammed on the brakes and pulled the hand brake. All four tyres screeched and spewed out smoke. He came to a stop, close enough to see the terrified expressions of the bus passengers looking down at him.

The driver was giving him the finger as Victor put the Jeep into reverse and did a fast three-point turn. The pick-ups emerged from the intersection, turning his way, the Ford ramming into the side of the Land Rover as it performed a one-eighty.

Victor turned off the road at another intersection, not seeing the result of the collision. The Toyota pick-up braked hard behind him, took the same corner, gaining quickly until it was almost at his bumper.

He took another turn, hard, fast, hoping to send the pick-up the wrong way, but the Russian driver wasn’t so easily fooled. He followed but lost some distance. Victor joined a dusty highway. There was little traffic, and he accelerated. The Jeep shook under the strain. It was pulling slightly to the right, and Victor compensated.

The pick-up followed after a second, gaining with its newer, more powerful engine. In his mirror Victor saw the passenger lean out and steady his submachine gun.

Rounds punctured the safety glass of the Jeep’s windshield, spreading cracks across Victor’s view. There were holes close to his head. Far too close. Victor hit the brakes and the speedometer needle swung counterclockwise.

The Toyota was forced to brake as well to avoid crashing into the back of him, and the Spetsnaz gunman flailed around, unable to fire.

When the needle hit forty, Victor wrenched the steering wheel left. He released his foot from the brake pedal and, at the same time, pulled the hand brake. The Jeep slid sideways and Victor took off the hand brake, turned the wheel hard, accelerated, tyres screaming and smoking, losing traction as the Jeep fishtailed, oneeighty completed.

The first pick-up braked again, its wheels locked, but Victor was in the opposite lane, whooshing straight past it, his arm extended out the window, firing the Browning, two rounds at the driver. Ten left.

He kept accelerating, unsure whether he’d hit anyone, not willing to slow down to check. In the mirror he saw the pick-up perform a clumsy U-turn. By the time it had completed the manoeuvre, Victor was half a mile away. Perfect. He performed his own U-turn, faster, going back into the other lane. He accelerated.

Two hundred yards ahead of Victor, the Toyota cut across into the same lane. Victor continued accelerating, saw the passenger lean out of the side window, Bizon raised. Muzzle flashes exploded from the barrel of the submachine gun. Both vehicles were moving too quickly for the gunman to get an accurate shot, but the distance was closing fast. The Russian ceased firing, readied his aim.

One hundred yards. Fifty.

At twenty, the shooting began again, and Victor flicked the steering wheel, swerving left into the other lane, passing the pickup on the opposite side to the gunman. This time Victor didn’t miss.

Blood splashed on the inside of the Toyota’s windshield.

The pick-up lurched to the side, out of control, smashing side to side into a semitruck, crushing the Russian passenger before he could pull himself back inside.

The Toyota rebounded off the semi, swerving erratically, going onto two wheels, flipped once, twice, sliding down the highway on its roof, the flattened body of the Russian gunman hanging limply through the window.

Victor dodged around the oncoming traffic and left the pickup spinning slowly in his rear-view.

He breathed deeply and concentrated on the road ahead and where it would take him. For now it was over. The road was wide, empty, heading north to Kenya, just twenty miles to the border. There was no way he could risk going back for the assassin’s target. By the time he got back to the hotel it would be swarming with the authorities as well as Russians. Plus, the guy would be long gone by now anyway. Victor would have to use what he’d found from Olympus to continue his hunt, go through the paperwork. Do it the broker’s way. He kept the needle at sixty.

A vehicle appeared in his rear-view, fighting to get through the traffic bottlenecked by the crashed pick-up.

The Land Rover.

Victor pushed down on the accelerator pedal, and in seconds the Land Rover had disappeared into the blur behind him. All Victor had to do was keep the accelerator down, and, by the time the assassin had negotiated his way out of the tailback, Victor would be too far gone to catch.

He pictured droplets of water bouncing off dead eyes.

The muscles in Victor’s jaw flexed, his gaze hardened, and he eased his foot on the accelerator. The needle swung counterclockwise to thirty. Ten seconds went by, then twenty, and Victor saw a dark speck in his mirror appear, growing larger, clearer, closer. Good.

He took the next exit off the highway, again easing the pressure on the accelerator, drawing the assassin nearer. The street he turned into was wide, lined with one-storey houses made from cinderblocks and roofed with corrugated tin or seaweed thatch. Power cables hung low across the road. Graffiti was scrawled along the walls.

The Land Rover followed seconds later. Through the rear-view Victor’s eyes locked with Reed’s. Victor saw hatred in his gaze and knew the assassin saw hatred returned.

Victor accelerated and skidded round the next corner, back end sliding out. He fought the wheel as the Jeep pulled right, driver’s side grinding against a line of parked cars, denting a fender, crushing lights.

He veered back into the centre of the road. He was on a narrow, dusty street, flanked by shanties. There were no turnings visible. In the distance the shanties thinned out into lush savanna. Old row boats sat upturned along one side of the road, bottoms cracked and warped from the sun. Behind him, the Land Rover was close enough for him to see the assassin’s weapon raised.

Victor heard the abrasive pop of unsuppressed gunfire. New holes appeared in the windshield. A bullet tore a chunk from the dash, and Victor drove evasively, swerving left and right. The firing stopped, and in the rear-view Victor saw his attacker had both hands back on the wheel.

The Land Rover rammed into him from behind, jolting Victor in his seat. A few seconds later another impact forced the Jeep to the right, and before Victor recovered the Land Rover sped forwards, coming up alongside him so that both vehicles occupied all available road, thick dust clouding behind them.

Reed had one hand on the wheel, the other firing the Glock, eyes flicking between Victor and the road. Victor returned fire when he could — eight rounds left, six, four — but the angle was bad, he couldn’t get a good shot.

He didn’t have the ammunition to waste, so he dropped the Browning into his lap and swung the wheel to the right, slamming sideways into the Land Rover. Metal shrieked. Bullets raked the Jeep.

Victor pulled to the left and then back right, hitting the Land Rover hard, then again, and again. The firing ceased. Victor stared into the assassin’s unblinking eyes.

Both vehicles sped down the road, door to door. Victor’s arms were locked on the steering wheel, muscles taut, teeth clenched, gaze alternating back and forth between the road ahead and his enemy.

Victor waited until the assassin had his gun back up to fire and then released the accelerator, dropping back sharply, Jeep scraping alongside the Land Rover. Rounds punctured the hood. Steam hissed through the holes.

Victor swerved right, moving directly behind the Land Rover. He controlled the wheel with his left hand, took the Browning in his right, and fired his last four rounds, straight through his own windshield. Two holes appeared in the Land Rover’s rear bumper, dust blew out from the road, but the fourth bullet hit its mark.

The driver’s side rear tyre exploded.

The Land Rover swayed erratically, spun around, kicking up dust, going onto two wheels for a second before tipping and rolling off the road and into the brush.

Victor discarded the empty Browning and took the pressure off of the accelerator. The Jeep didn’t slow down. It started to shake, steam pouring from the engine. Victor tried the brake, but the acceleration was locked. The brakes squealed, brake dust clouding from the wheels, but the Jeep was still doing fifty. Smoke spewed out from under the hood. Followed by flames. He hurtled toward a T-intersection, going too fast to take the corner. The hood blew open, covering the windshield.

He tried to guess the corner and swerved to the right, the Jeep shooting off the road and into the vegetation. He wrestled with the wheel, unable to see with the hood up, travelling fast, tall grasses and trees rushing past the door windows.

Victor jerked in his seat as the Jeep’s suspension fought the uneven ground. Without warning the earth seemed to smooth out perfectly for an instant until the Jeep tipped forward and Victor realized he was falling just before everything went black.