The Nemesis Program

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Get us the hell out of this, Ben!’ Roberta yelled from the back seat.

Ben’s foot was hard down on the floor and the Mercedes’ revs were pushing the red line as he accelerated up the street with the two black Audi Q7s in pursuit. Lines of traffic swerved desperately out of their path. Horns honked furiously. Glass shattered and tyres screeched left and right.

Ben pressed on aggressively through the melee. Another set of traffic signals came flashing up, and this time neither the Mercedes nor the Audis slowed down for the red lights but went racing over the crossing, scattering pedestrians and flying across a busy intersection and straight out into the dense counter-flow of traffic.

A juddering impact almost snatched the wheel out of Ben’s hands as a Fiat, its driver’s mouth open in a soundless scream behind the windscreen, cannoned into the side of the taxi with a crunch. Ben felt the Mercedes go into a slide, controlled it and accelerated determinedly on through the chaotic ocean of swerving, skidding, honking cars. Out of the corner of his eye in the rear-view mirror he saw one of the Audis collide heavily with another vehicle, slamming it aside in an explosion of shattering plastic and glass.

A motorcyclist locked up his front wheel, and parted company with his machine, both sliding across the tarmac. Ben had to swerve violently to avoid running over him; the Mercedes veered towards the kerb and almost ploughed into a line of parked cars. Ben steered to the right of them, just clipping the wing mirror of the nearest before mounting the high kerb with a sound that made him worry deeply about the front suspension. But so far, German engineering seemed to be holding up to the job. The Mercedes went racing through the narrow gap between the shop fronts and buildings and the row of trees that lined the pavement. Shoppers scattered like pigeons.

Ben saw an opening in the line of parked cars and sent the Mercedes hurtling back out onto the road, the squeal of his tyres drowned out by the blare of horns from motorists skidding out of his path.

Both Audis were still in chase. Ben threw the car round a right turn, pushing it to the limits of traction and almost going up on two wheels. The first Audi followed his line around the bend. The second went wide and hit the opposite kerb, heading straight for the terrace of a corner café.

The breakfast crowd fled in panic at the car’s approach. Plastic chairs and tables and people’s morning coffee and croissants sailed up over its bonnet and into the air. The Audi ground to a halt and was quickly surrounded by a screaming mob, all beating on its windows.

Ben lost sight of the stalled Audi as he flew around another bend. The Mercedes blasted down the street with the other still right behind. A direction sign for the Périphérique shot past. Ben brutally hammered his way through the lines of slow-moving cars and followed it. The Audi came roaring after them.

The chopper was still directly overhead.

Tearing through the streets at such high speed, it was only a few moments before they were weaving through the flow of traffic on the Paris ring road heading west. The Mercedes was going as fast as Ben dared let it, overtaking everything in sight and swinging all over the road like a pendulum. The chasing Audi collided from behind with a small hatchback that got in its way, and sent it spinning mercilessly into the roadside verge as it powered on by.

Ben couldn’t see any sign of the second Q7, until Roberta’s hoarse cry of ‘There he is!’ alerted him that it was back, certainly guided via radio communication from the chopper, and rapidly regaining ground on them. Whoever these people were, they were determined, and they took advanced pursuit courses.

The entrance to one of the shorter tunnels came flashing up. Moments later they were speeding though the underpass, concrete pillars zipping past, swerving from side to side to get around the slower traffic. The Audis were back in formation now, hunting constantly for an opening to draw level with the taxi.

‘Ben, look out!’ Roberta yelled as one of them suddenly charged up and began to creep up alongside to their left. The dark-tinted glass on the passenger side wound down and Ben was able to steal a glance at the men inside. The hard-faced, heavily-built driver was in his thirties or forties but had the silvery-white hair of a much older man.

The face of the front seat passenger wasn’t something Ben gave much thought to. He was much more concerned about the pistol in his hand that was about to be aimed at the Mercedes.

Ben instinctively twisted the steering wheel and slammed the taxi sideways into the Audi, forcing it to the left. The Audi’s left flank scraped the concrete centre embankment in a storm of sparks. Another pillar was coming up fast and Ben meant to keep his pursuers pinned against the side and guide them right into it. At the last possible moment, he swerved violently away to the right so as not to get caught up in the devastating impact he expected to happen half a second later — but the Audi’s driver reacted just in time, expertly managing only to shear off his left wing mirror and wheel arches with a screech of rending steel. The heavy vehicle slewed into a weave and the second Audi had to brake hard to avoid ramming it from behind.

The Mercedes exited the tunnel and burst back out into the bright sunlight at over 120 kilometres per hour. The two Audis had fallen back a good distance and now Ben saw his first real chance of losing them.

He sliced past a dawdling Vauxhall Corsa and then swore under his breath as he saw the two big trucks that filled the lanes ahead, blocking his way and moving at about half his speed. There was no way round or between them.

In short seconds, he’d lost his advantage and the Audis were coming up fast again. The passenger appeared at the window of the lead vehicle and aimed his pistol. The shot was no more than a muted pop over the roar of the engines. The taxi’s rear window shattered, showering Roberta with glass.

‘Fuck it,’ Ben said. He twisted the wheel hard to the left and sent the Mercedes bucking and crashing over the central reservation into the opposite two lanes.

Suddenly they were in a sea of oncoming traffic hurtling towards them at combined speeds of over two hundred kilometres an hour. Roberta’s shout of ‘Are you nuts?’ dissolved into a scream as an oncoming Range Rover swerved out of their path and they only very narrowly missed a head-on collision that would have fused the two cars into one and annihilated everyone inside.

Ben was far too busy weaving his way at high speed through the mayhem to answer her. He needed every ounce of his concentration, as focused as a fighter pilot as he fought to keep them alive. Blaring horns wailed past on both sides and his vision was filled with headlights flashing furiously at him from everywhere.

But if he was nuts, the Audi drivers were too, because they were now carving their way rapidly upstream on the wrong side of the road in the Mercedes’ wake. It seemed like nothing short of suicide was going to shake these guys off.

Nor the chopper. Ben could no longer see it, but he could feel the deep thump of the rotors in his guts and knew it was directly over them, keeping pace and flying low. This wasn’t getting any better.

Suddenly, it got worse. Warning signs shot past announcing that a construction zone was up ahead. Beyond the sweeping curve of the next two hundred metres Ben could see the cranes and road works for the new overpass near the Porte de Sèvres, and the long elevated section of the Périphérique carrying traffic over the exit routes to and from the city. In the distance, traffic was down to a single lane in each direction and moving slow.

Just as Ben thought his options were dramatically falling away, he saw them drop to zero when he spotted the third Audi up ahead on the overpass. It had come round to head them off in the opposite direction and was storming through the oncoming traffic a hundred and fifty yards away and closing fast.

Whatever these guys were planning, they were betting on getting it done quickly. The trap was closing in and the endgame was just seconds away. Ben could visualise the passengers of the three Audis cocking an arsenal of small arms in preparation of hosing the taxi full of bullets and then beating a rapid getaway before the police came roaring down on the scene.

The Mercedes sped up the slope onto the overpass. The side barriers streaked past like ribbons. Streets and rooftops twenty feet below. The chopper hovering right above, its swaying belly visible through the sunroof. The two Audis closing in from behind. The third looming larger in front of them every second. Eighty yards; sixty. A game of chicken, with nowhere to go.

But Ben wasn’t going to stop, even though there was no sane alternative. He pressed harder on the pedal. ‘Wrap the seatbelt tight around you and stay low!’ he yelled at Roberta over his shoulder.

Fifty yards. Thirty.

No sane alternative.

But sometimes there was no room for sanity.

Ben twisted the wheel. One quarter turn, hard right. Before Roberta had time to cry out, the Mercedes veered crazily off course, hit the side and burst through with a massive rending crash of metal on metal, ripping a whole section of barrier from its mountings.

The car flew over the edge of the overpass and into empty space.