Thunder (28 page)

Jack needed to be a touch more circumspect.

It would be fine if his target mushed himself. Not so good if Jack did it.

~~~~~

Sikand pulled out, the other bike was still on his tail.

Fifty metres in front of him a car lazily pulled out from a side street, into the oncoming lane, filling the gap he was in the middle of. Headlights swung round and blared into his eyes as the car turned into the rapidly dwindling space in front of him.

He flung the bike even further to the left, bouncing back up onto the pavement, sending screaming pedestrians scattering in all directions...

~~~~~

Jack is still hurtling along, but not accelerating and decelerating quite as aggressively as he was before, so I risk lifting my head to look past his shoulder.

Brightly lit shopfronts flash past on both sides. Cars weave erratically in front of us, presumably as Sikand navigates his route through them. Suddenly I see our adversary’s machine flick out of the line of traffic, and straight into the path of an oncoming vehicle.

“Shit!” I hear myself shout, but somehow the terrorist manages to swerve violently over onto the far pavement.

Pedestrians are running in all directions.

The bike pops back into view, through a gap in the oncoming flow, and blends in on the right side.

For some reason, I’m thinking to myself that it would have to be one hell of a shot to hit a randomly moving target like this one. Especially amongst so many innocent bystanders.

The thought makes me smile.

~~~~~

Two looming, arched, strings of lights rose above the Erzsébet Bridge as it straddled the dark waters of the Danube in front of him.

Glancing into the wing mirror, Sikand could see that his pursuers were holding station. Matching his pace but not taking the same risks as he was.

Very wise. That last manoeuvre had shaken him up.

He needed to find somewhere he could either lose them, or take them on.

He had two shots left in the Makarov, and another full magazine in his jacket pocket.

He needed to get off these busy roads.

Traffic was backing up on the approach to the bridge.

This wasn’t good.

He pulled the bike to the right and took to the pavement again.

~~~~~

Jack had no choice. Faced with lines of cars, all slowing for the river crossing, and with Sikand getting away, he too headed for the pavement.

Here he was forced to slow down and swerve from side to side to get around the swirling masses of terrified pedestrians. People were hurling themselves in all directions to get out of the way of the two roaring high-powered motorcycles, and he picked his way as carefully as he could amongst them.

There was another road ahead, leading down to one side, and which appeared to run parallel with the Danube. He saw Sikand reach it, turn, and then speed off down its gentle incline.

Jack quickly reached the junction and bounced the bike back down onto the roadway.

~~~~~

The bike has been lurching from side to side as Jack struggles to avoid the startled crowds. At these lower speeds I’ve been able to grapple my Browning out from inside my jacket. Now I’m holding on to the bike with one hand. The gun is in my other: pressed tight between me and my pilot.

Jack flicks the bike to the right and then heads down a short incline. This road is following the edge of the river. Bright light continues to shine down from the buildings, up above us, on our right hand side. The river is a swathe of dark shadows to our left. Iron railings like scaffold poles mark the boundary between us and the water.

Traffic is lighter on this road, and Sikand has resumed his zigzag and squirt methodology for keeping in front of us. Jack is matching him easily, not least because, off the main drag, cars are often pulling over to the side after Sikand has frightened them with his sudden, noisy and unexpected overtaking manoeuvres.

Jack spots a gap and I predict his response. He opens the throttle, smoothly accelerating, and I grip tight to my one handhold.

We close quickly.

It’s the nearest we’ve been to him.

I pull my gun out from its protective nest and thrust my arm past Jack’s head.

“NO FUCKING WAY!” he screams into the oncoming airstream.

I keep my arm forwards.

Sikand is weaving backwards and forwards across my view, looking for his next opportunity to sprint away from us.

“DON’T DO IT!” yells the wildly blowing mass of brown hair.

“Not now,” whispers my Dad’s voice out of nowhere, and I frown to myself, surprised at this unexpected spiritual intervention.

Sikand starts to drift right again. He emerges past Jack’s right earlobe.

I am ready.

“Not now,” the spectral voice whispers again, and suddenly a woman runs out on foot from the shadows. She staggers straight into the road in front of us. She’s appeared out of nowhere and now she’s stupidly standing there, with her back to us, staring after Sikand’s rapidly shrinking form.

She would have walked straight into my bullet.

Jack slams on the brakes, and I feel myself being thrust forwards and pressed hard into him...

~~~~~

‘This is okay,’ Sikand thought to himself. ‘This is a better road. All I need to do is to keep going.’

His pursuers would only become a threat if they could get alongside him. Even then, the chances of them getting themselves into a position to attack him were slim.

All he needed to do was keep following the river.

Eventually he would get clear of the congestion and crowded architecture of the city centre.

If necessary, he could continue right out into the countryside...

~~~~~

At the last possible moment, the jaywalking woman leaps out of the way of Jack’s squealing front tyre and we race back up to speed. What the hell was she thinking? More to the point: how the hell did Dad know?

Somehow I’ve managed to keep hold of my gun and I heft it in my right hand.

Jack senses my movements against his back. “Don’t, under any fucking circumstances,” he yells, his face part turned to one side to make sure I can hear him, “...try to take a shot!”

“Why not?” I bark loudly back at him.

“You’re not good enough!” he yells. “Too much risk of collateral damage.”

He might be part-right – that Hungarian woman is lucky to still be alive – but I’m not endeared by his comment regarding my targeting skills.

Traffic is thinning out as we continue to hurtle, beneath the endless row of brightly lit buildings, which remain set high up above us, away from flood risk, atop an unbroken wall of stone which lines the right hand side of the road. This flood wall has occasional holes in it, presumably pedestrian access points. That random woman must’ve leapt out from one of them, but they’re nothing that Sikand could use. Unless he dumps the bike. Looks like he’s trapped between river and flood defences. At least for a while.

A few cars in front of us the road looks dark. No head or taillights visible. I watch as Sikand closes on the small convoy, and I know that he too will have registered the potential for a period of respite from constant weaving and overtaking.

“Keep up with him!” I yell.

Jack responds with a string of barely discernible, windblown, expletives which I imagine are a vigorous explanation of just how hard he’s being trying to do that all along.

Sikand drifts out to the left and overtakes the three cars.

Jack pulls over as well and opens up the bike. We’re only fractionally faster than our somewhat less steady adversary, and I watch as the other man maintains the gap.

He drifts slowly back toward the right side of the road.

I heft myself upright on the pillion, lean slightly to the right so that Jack’s hair is billowing onto the left hand side of my face, and wait for the target to emerge from behind my comrades head.

Here comes Sikand.

Slowly drifting across into the proper lane.

In the far distance I can see more taillights appearing as we speed toward the next gaggle of traffic.

We have a few seconds at most.

I raise my gun arm.

“DON’T DO IT!” yells Jack.

“I love you,” whispers Dad. “See you soon.”

That sounds promising.

~~~~~

Sikand accelerated as fast as he dared into the open stretch of road, and let the bike drift gently back onto the right side. He could see the headlight of his pursuers shining brightly in the vibrating wing mirror.

Whoever was riding that machine was very skilled. More skilled than he was. If he got into open countryside he wondered if he would be able to keep ahead of them. A better option would be to draw them in at high speed, wait till they were close, then slam on the brakes. He could easily draw his weapon and get off two shots toward them as they overshot and had to turn back to him.

He should look for another opportunity like this one had been. A longer stretch of traffic-free roadway. He’d do it as soon as he was clear of the endless flood wall, which currently blocked any exit away from the river. Once he ended up positioned behind his pursuers, he’d need options to blast off in a new direction. Not back toward the city again.

Taillights appeared out of the darkness.

Another small gaggle of cars that he’d need to...

~~~~~

I pull the trigger and my Browning coughs once in obedient response. The sudden rush of adrenalin coursing though my veins makes time seem to slow down around me.

I feel the slamming push of recoil driving the pistol backwards, and see the flare of flame spitting from the silenced muzzle.

Sikand continues to drift obediently across on his gentle lateral trajectory.

My bullet will arrive there soon.

~~~~~

The sudden and unexpected punch between his shoulder blades smacked Azat Sikand forwards onto a suddenly wet-smeared, blood red, dashboard and he choked in surprise as an explosion of searing pain ripped instantly across his entire upper body.

The bike jerked left, as the feeling in his arms vanished, and he sensed his throttle hand twisting uncontrollably, driving the bike’s engine note up into a howling banshee scream.

Glancing down, he stared incredulously at a gaping red hole which had erupted from the front of his tee-shirt.

~~~~~

“WHAT THE...!” shouts Jack.

Sikand lurches forwards.

Perfect.

The bike underneath us jerks to the left. “JESUS...!” yells Jack. We jerk right. At this speed I get the sense that he’s rapidly losing control.

In front of us, Sikand’s machine veers violently to the left, and I hear its engine note spring up into an ear-bending howl as it shoots sideways toward the river...

~~~~~

Jack wrestled the handlebars.

His fucking lunatic passenger has taken a shot, and the barking cough of the gun, right next to his earhole, naturally made him flinch. Which would have been okay if they were bumbling along at a comfortable speed, but they weren’t bumbling along, and in less than a heartbeat, the bike has been thrown from being a finely balanced missile into a heavy, swinging, high-speed pendulum...

“FUUUUCCCCKKKK!” he yelled pointlessly, as the oscillations continued to hurl him violently from side to side.

~~~~~

This doesn’t feel too promising.

Even though Jack’s let off the gas, the bike is flinging itself from side to side as he struggles to get it back into balance.

I’m probably not helping; hanging on as I am, one-handed, with the added inconvenience of Sikand’s heavy rucksack swinging from side to side on my back, and my gun arm flailing around like I’m some bull-riding rodeo cowboy.

As we swing to the right, I see the other motorbike jump up into the air as it hits the far kerb, travelling at full speed. It flies through the air for a second, twisting slightly as it crosses the short stretch of pavement and then it slams into the top of the iron guardrails in a shower of sparks.

Sikand was still astride it when it hit. His legs were still on either side.

A bloody and vaguely human looking piece of flesh drops to the ground beneath the impact point, and beyond it the bike and the remains of its rider tumble out into space, separating from each other as a pair of ragged, broken, darker shadows hurtling out and inevitably downwards toward the gloomy waters of the wide river.

~~~~~

Sikand’s bike has flung itself into the top of the fence with an almighty crash, and then continued forwards, spinning violently, out over the river. Jack could see the seemingly lifeless form of his target tumbling away from it.

The bike underneath him threw itself to the right again, but this time he was just a fraction of a second too slow to catch it.

He’d been too busy watching the other crash unfolding in front of him.

The front wheel jammed sideways, and momentum started to lift the back wheel off the ground.

There was going to be a crash here too.

He just knew it.

“Oh... SHIT...!” he yelled, as the back of the bike flipped upwards.

~~~~~

I feel the pillion seat pitching and twisting as it rises beneath me.

The grab handle feels lighter and suddenly presses itself into my palm.

I’m not letting go...

Jack vanishes from in front of me, as he’s flung forward over the handlebars, and I watch in fascination as the headlamp pans downwards to illuminate the rapidly passing tarmac that I’m now, strangely, looking down upon.

I’m still not letting go...

Not of the bike.

Nor of my gun.

The bike flips over in midair and for a few short moments we’re completely inverted. Then the engine dies, plunging me into sudden eery silence.

A huge splash from somewhere over the river announces that Sikand must have reached his final, watery, resting place and I can’t help but grin as I’m hurled through three hundred and sixty degrees toward what might well be my own rock solid one.

But by some miracle, the bike hits the ground rear wheel first, sideways on, and I decide that now might be a good time to abandon ship and I release my limpet-like grip and feel myself suddenly airborne...