The Last Templar

Chapter 16

Flooring the black department Chrysler, Reilly ramped it over the sidewalk and past the delivery truck, catching a glimpse of a cluster of people leaning over the dead cabdriver.

On the radio, Aparo was talking and listening as Buchinski was organizing backup and roadblocks.

Too bad this had been rushed. They should have had the street totally sealed off, but then, like Buchinski had said, they might have scared away the big man before he even reached the gallery if the normally busy street had been unnaturally quiet. He thought about the blazing figure he had seen stagger from the shop, and the cabdriver blown backward from a head shot. Maybe it would have been better if scaring off the suspect was all that we'd done.

He glanced in his rearview mirror, wondering if Buchinski was with them.

No. They were on their own.

"Watch the road!"

His attention snatched back by Aparo's interjection, Reilly jinked the Chrysler through a chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks, most of them already blaring angry horns at the cab that had flashed past them. Now the cab spun into an alley. Reilly followed through a swirling cloud of trash, trying but failing to get his bearings.

"Where the hell are we?" Reilly yelled.

"Heading toward the river."

A big help that was.

As the cab burst from the alley, it pulled a screaming right and moments later Reilly did the same.

Cars thundered past, seemingly heading in all directions. There was no sign of the cab.

It was gone.

Reilly darted looks left and right while trying to avoid the rushing traffic.

"There," Aparo yelled, pointing.

Reilly rapiered a look, hit the hand brake, hung a tire-smoking left into another alley, and there was the cab. He floored the gas pedal as they bounced down the narrow street, swiping past garbage Dumpsters, which sent sparks flying down the side of tfie car.

This time, when they came out into a street, it was crowded with parked cars and he heard the screech of metal on metal as the cab ripped fenders and hubcaps from other vehicles, the impacts fleeting, but enough to slow die cab's progress.

Another right turn and this time Reilly could see signs announcing the Lincoln Tunnel. More to the point, they were closing in on the cab. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Aparo had his gun on his lap.

"Don't risk it," Reilly said. "You might get lucky and hit him."

Causing the cab to crash at that speed on this street could be a disaster.

Then the cab turned again, scattering pedestrians who were ambling over a pedestrian crossing.

Reilly saw something emerge from the driver's window of the cab. Couldn't be a gun. A man would have to be stupid to drive and shoot at the same time. Stupid or certifiable.

Sure enough, a flash and smoke blossomed.

"Hang on," Reilly said.

Swinging the wheel, he swerved the Chrysler into a lumbering fishtail, spotted a gap where a building had been torn down, and drove into it, ripping through chain-link fencing and raising a cloud of dust.

Seconds later, the Chrysler was spinning out of the vacant lot and was once again on the trail of the taxi. So far as Reilly could see, the driver's arm and gun were no longer sticking out of the window.

Aparo yelled, "Watch it!"

A woman walking a black terrier tripped, cannoning into a delivery man wheeling a stack of beer crates that tumbled into the Chrysler's path. Reilly jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding the people, but not the crates, one of which bounced up and over the hood, smashing into the windshield, which held but was now spiderwebbed all over.

"I can't see a thing!" Reilly shouted. Aparo, using the butt of his gun, pounded the windscreen and on the third blow it busted out and flipped up, flying over the car and spinning to a rest on the roof of a parked car.

Screwing up his eyes against the buffeting wind, Reilly could see a no-entry sign where the street narrowed abruptly. Would the man risk it? If he met something, he'd be a goner. Spotting an opening on the right, maybe fifty yards short of the no-entry, Reilly guessed that's where the cab would go. He urged more power out of his car, hoping he might push the other driver into overcooking the turn. The Chrysler charged closer to the cab.

He almost succeeded. The cab screeched into the opening, its rear fishtailing wide to the left, lighting up the tires as it smashed into the brickwork on the corner of a building.

As Reilly followed into the new street, Aparo muttered, "Oh shit," as they both saw a kid on a skateboard gliding across the roadway ahead of the cab. The boy had earphones on and was totally oblivious to the approaching storm.

Instinctively, Reilly slowed, but there was no corresponding flash of braking lights from the cab, which was charging straight at the kid.

He's gonna hit him. He's gonna obliterate him.

Reilly jammed the horn, willing it to cut through the boy's private concert. The cab got closer. Then the boy nonchalantly glanced to his left, saw the cab mere feet away, and dove away in time as the cab bulldozed through, chewing up the skateboard as it streaked ahead.

As they passed the stunned boy, Reilly realized that the street ahead was relatively quiet. No moving vehicles. No pedestrians. If he was going to try something, now was the time to do it.

Before this thing turns really ugly.

He floored it again and gained on the cab. He saw smoke coming from its rear left wheel and guessed that the sideswipe of the wall had jammed the bodywork onto the tire.

Aparo noticed how close they now were. "What're you doing?"

Reilly rammed the Chrysler into the cab's rear end, the repercussion of the jolt cannoning through his neck and shoulders.

Boom. Once.

Twice.

He dropped back, floored it, and rammed him a third time.

This time, the cab went into a helpless spin before lurching over the sidewalk, catapulting onto its side, and scraping through a storefront window. As he stood on the brakes and the Chrysler screeched to a halt, Reilly looked over and saw the back of the cab, still on its side, sticking out of what he now saw was a musical instrument store.

As the Chrysler stopped, Reilly and Aparo scrambled out. Aparo already had his gun out and Reilly was reaching for his but soon realized that it wasn't needed.

The driver had flown through the front windshield and was lying facedown amid broken glass, surrounded by bent and twisted musical instruments. Pages of sheet music fluttered to a rest on his inert body.

Cautiously, Reilly poked the toe of his shoe under the driver's body and rolled him onto his back.

He was clearly unconscious, but he was breathing, his face slashed to bloody ribbons. With the movement, the man's arms spread sideways. A gun slid loosely from one hand. As Reilly nudged it away with his foot, he spotted something else.

From under the man's coat poked a jeweled gold cross.