Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4)

by Isaac T. Hooke

  “Faster!” Ethan tried to yell, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of an Airbus A318 taking flight.

  The Audi was only a few hundred meters away now and closing the gap at a pace that mocked Ethan’s plans of even getting close to the terminal building in time. Situated as they were at the far end of the concourse of buildings, there were only a few people in sight. The bystanders were probably a little unsure of what to make of the two women and two men bearing day-bags, running across the road while a luxury European sedan bore down on them.

  His senses were sharpened, almost painfully so. When he blinked, his eyelids seemed to take an age to close and open again. He saw the thin, rippling heat haze coming off the hood of the approaching Audi. He saw Boots, leaning well outside the window of the vehicle and bringing an assault rifle to bear. He felt the pleasant tickling sensation as Kiana’s fingernails scraped gently across his own callused palm. He noticed the flash of mirror-bright sunlight on the windows of the terminal building. Heard the high-pitched, whining roar of a turbo-charged engine getting closer and closer––

  From behind? Ethan realized.

  A black Mercedes-Benz GLC63 S performed a textbook bootleg turn, spinning one hundred and eighty degrees while staying within the width of the two lane road and reversing directions. The squeal of its wheels filled the air, and the vehicle cut so close across Ethan that he felt the wind of its passing. The Mercedes slid backward across the asphalt a short way before stopping dead, rocking to a stop on its twenty-one inch wheels, effectively forming a sleek, German-engineered wall between Ethan’s fleeing team and the oncoming Israelis. The stink of tortured Pirellis hung thick in the air.

  “What the fu––” William yelled.

  The driver side window of the Mercedes rolled down. Inside, at the wheel, was none other than Aaron Berkley: a former Army Ranger who Ethan had fought with in Iraq. If Ethan could have picked one person for Sam to send him and his team as backup, it would have been this man.

  Before Ethan could say a word Aaron pulled out a Glock 18 machine pistol and started firing at the incoming Audi.

  “Well what are you doing just standing there!” Aaron yelled between gunshots. “Get the hell in the car!”

  Ethan wrenched open the rear door and pulled Kiana in with him. He forced her toward the floor mat as gunshots hit the bulletproof glass behind him. William piled in after him and slammed the door while Bretta took the passenger seat in front.

  One of the wing mirrors on the Mercedes exploded like a plastic and glass bubble.

  Aaron dropped the empty pistol into the passenger side foot well and then hit the gas. The Mercedes’ four-liter bi-turbo V8 engine roared. The huge tires gripped the tarmac and the SUV took off with a noise like a storm cloud breaking.

  “Where are the spare mags?” Bretta demanded, snatching up the machine pistol from under her feet and ejecting the spent thirty-three round extended magazine.

  “Box. Under the seat.” Aaron spoke through gritted teeth, one eye on the mirror.

  He was looking good––healthy and strong. The last time Ethan had seen him, his friend had still been receiving physiotherapy for his shoulder wound. Aaron had been weak and sickly pale, his usually well-kempt beard scruffy and untrimmed. Now, he had no beard at all, just a light scattering of stubble. His gaunt face had filled out a little, and was now all pleasant angles. The square-jawed face of a strong man that could be depended on.

  The five-hundred and three horsepower engine screamed as the twin turbos spooled up. Ethan was pressed back into his seat as the two-ton vehicle went from zero to a hundred in under four seconds. A bang and crackle mingled with the general roar of the engine—no doubt due to a little excess fuel igniting briefly in the exhausts.

  There was a dull thump as another rifle round punched the rear bumper. Ethan pressed Kiana further down towards the floor mat. Most bullets would go through a modern car door like it wasn’t even there, and while the steel struts that made up the Mercedes chassis would have been reinforced with armored plates, Ethan wasn’t going to rely upon it.

  Aaron kept the accelerator pressed to the floor until they reached a slight chicane at the end of Aeroport Avenue. He dabbed at the brakes and flicked the steering wheel to and fro as he took the serpentine curve. The SUV handled the double corner like a race car, its all-wheel-drive system making light work of the task. In the back seats, the passengers were thrown from one side and then to the other.

  William smacked his head into the door sill. “Goddamn, Constrictor!” he said, invoking Aaron Berkley’s codename. “Who the hell do you think you are, AJ Foyt?”

  Ethan smiled at the reference to the famed Texan racer.

  “Get that seatbelt on,” Aaron replied tersely. He kept glancing at the rear view mirror.

  “By the way, nice to see you,” William said.

  Aaron grunted.

  Ethan lifted his head enough to peer out the back window. The Audi was some distance behind, but coming up fast.

  “You better lose them before we attract heat,” Ethan said.

  “Trying.” Aaron wrenched the steering wheel left and guided the Mercedes onto the C-32B highway. The SUV’s wheels screeched in protest as the big machine skidded across the road. Then the fat tires bit and the vehicle squatted down on its haunches as Aaron hit the gas again.

  A few seconds behind them, the Audi slid across the road, its tail wagging like an eager Labrador as the driver fought to keep the car under control. Horns blared when it almost collided with a van coming the opposite way.

  “By the way, probably don’t have to worry about the cops,” Aaron yelled over the wind rushing through the open windows. “Corona has them stretched thin. Heard this morning that a whole precinct in Sarria closed because one cop tested positive.”

  “They closed a whole precinct because one person had the flu?” Bretta asked, disbelievingly.

  Aaron nodded. “Looks like the whole city is going to go into lockdown. Look how empty the highways are already.”

  It was true. The traffic was so light that Aaron was able to guide the Mercedes through it with relative ease, even though the needle of the speedometer was nudging one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

  Ethan heard a skipping sound as another Israeli bullet deflected off the edge of the roof.

  In reply, Bretta leaned out her window and squeezed off a burst from the Glock. The sound of the gunshots was whipped away by the rush of the wind, but Ethan saw the copper shell casings flashing through the early evening sunlight as they fountained from the ejection port.

  The Audi jerked left and disappeared in the far lane behind an eighteen-wheeler. When it appeared again at the front of the semi, it was almost level with the Mercedes. The rear window was down and Ethan could see clearly that Boots was in the back cradling an IWI Tavor SAR, the semi-automatic variant of the assault rifle favored by the Israel Defense force for almost twenty years.

  “Brakes!” he cried.

  Without a question, Aaron hit the brake pedal. The ceramic brakes slowed the SUV in an instant. The Audi moved ahead; a flash came from the interior of the A6 and a bullet skipped off the black hood of the Mercedes, leaving a shining silver gash.

  “Pull alongside and lean back!” Bretta ordered.

  Aaron did as he was told and edged up alongside the Audi, both cars rocketing along at a hundred kilometers per hour.

  Bretta leaned across Aaron, squeezed the trigger and the machine pistol kicked and bucked in her hand, spraying out a prolonged burst of nine millimeter bullets. In an instant the gun ran dry.

  The Audi, sitting as it was in the inside lane, pulled left, almost scraping against the barrier that divided the traffic lanes. Sparks erupted across the flank as Bretta continued to fire, and a profusion of bullet holes punched into the thin metal of the back paneling. A few of the nine mil rounds must have gone high because Ethan saw the rear window cave inwards, covering the two passengers in the back seat with broken glass.

/>   Before he could ascertain whether Bretta had hit any of the occupants, Boots returned fire.

  Aaron hit the gas again and Boots’ returning shots must have shattered one of the rear lights because Ethan caught a glimpse of red plastic and glass.

  “Whatever security company you had beef up this SUV, they missed a few spots,” Ethan commented.

  “They certainly didn’t bring it up to B7 level,” Aaron agreed.

  “Can we lose these bastards?” Ethan pressed. As more bullets struck, Kiana let out a terrified moan beneath him.

  “Doing my best,” Aaron said. He flicked a switch on the steering wheel, engaging something called “Sports+ Mode.” With a touch of the button, Aaron sharpened the steering, stiffened the already adaptive suspension, and changed the throttle response––as well as refining the transmission shift points, so that the car changed gears automatically, in the interest of maximizing power and performance.

  The needle of the rev counter crawled into the red as the Mercedes hurtled along the smooth, even surface of the highway. The SUV flew easily around the long, sweeping curve of the on-ramp and joined the C-31.

  “We take this road until it turns off into the B-10, then follow that all the way into the city,” Aaron informed them, his eyes flicking every few seconds to the rear view mirror.

  The Audi still trailed them, though the pursuing vehicle seemed incapable of closing the gap between them at the moment. Aaron depressed the accelerator a little more, as another pot-shot from Boots struck somewhere.

  There was another impact as the next shot punched into the door.

  “They’re going for the tires,” Ethan said. He had released his hold somewhat on Kiana, but his arm was still draped protectively over her. More than once he thought he saw Bretta looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “We don’t have to worry too much about that,” Aaron said, guiding the Mercedes into the outside lane so it could flash past a short stretch of traffic. “We’ve got run-flats. Gives us seventy kilometers of range, but only if we slow down a little.”

  A bullet struck the back window. The bulletproof glass wouldn’t be able to hold up for much longer.

  Aaron jerked the SUV left, kissing the side of a pickup truck carrying boxes of fruit.

  The man driving the pickup looked half-asleep, but even if he’d been wide awake, he probably wouldn’t have been expecting to be side-swiped by a car nudging one-hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. The man wrenched his steering too far sideways, over-corrected the other way and sent the pickup into a spin.

  Ethan watched out the back window as the Toyota Hilux spun a full two-hundred and seventy degrees, fruit boxes unfastening from their straps under the inertia, oranges flying all over the road.

  The pursuing Audi hit the brakes and veered to the left. It missed the flailing rear end of the pickup by half a foot. The Audi squeezed down the inside lane; travelling at ninety, the car briefly scraped the concrete middle barrier, sending sparks fountaining into the Barcelona dusk.

  “Jesus, whoever is driving that thing is double-backboned, ain’t he?” William said. To Aaron: “By the way, what you did to that pickup, was that purposeful or accidental?”

  “Neither,” Aaron quipped in reply.

  The accident gave Ethan and his team a little breathing space and they pulled slightly ahead of the A6 as the Kidon driver got it back up to speed.

  The SUV moved past a black Alfa Romeo 159, cruising along in the middle lane. Something about the two stern-faced men in the front seats worried at Ethan’s mind as the Mercedes-Benz whisked past, but this niggle was quickly dispelled by the sight of the Audi moving back up behind them.

  “Jesus, this guy isn’t willing to give us an inch,” Aaron said. “He’s on us tight.”

  William craned around in his seat, frowning to see exactly what was going on through the cracked back window. “Like bark on a log,” Ethan heard him mutter to himself. Then the big man said loudly, “Ah, shit.”

  “Wha––” Ethan began, but then the interior of the Mercedes was lit with flickering blue lights.

  “That car we just passed was an unmarked police car,” William said, helpfully.

  Bretta patted Aaron sarcastically on the shoulder. “Good thing we won’t have to worry about cops, huh?”

  The Audi was in the inside lane, almost level with Mercedes now, which was boosting along in the outside lane. Ethan could see Boots’ head turning backwards and forwards, from the newly revealed police car to Celeste in the front seat. It seemed that they were having an urgent debate about something.

  Ethan wondered if the cop car would work to their advantage. I’d rather outrun a local, stretched police force than an Israeli hit-team, that’s for sure.

  “They might be thinking about bugging out…” Ethan said.

  The Alfa Romeo pulled up between the two speeding vehicles. Ethan could see the driver speaking urgently into the radio, glancing left and right at the Mercedes and Audi as if he were making sure to get accurate descriptions of the two automobiles. The other police officer was gesturing furiously for Aaron to pull over.

  Then the interior of the police car seemed to disintegrate. The standard Alfa windows shattered, exploded. The dashboard was torn into shreds of leather and shards of plastic. A few spurts of seat stuffing billowed white into the air. Blood sprayed in pink mists across the inside of the windshield, as the two unfortunate Spanish police officers jerked in their seats under a merciless hail of semi-automatic gunfire, courtesy of Boots unloading his rifle from the back seat of the Audi.

  The Alfa Romeo swerved right as the dying cop tried instinctively to get away from the murderous rain of bullets. Aaron was only just able to give the Mercedes enough throttle to get clear of the incoming police car, before it careened across his back bumper, tearing it off and sending the heavy SUV rocking dangerously on its thick tires.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Aaron hissed to the vehicle as it wobbled and fretted, warning lights blinking briefly on the center console screen.

  The police car veered hard across the road and ploughed into the bank on the outside of the motorway. Moving at over one-hundred kilometers an hour, it went up the embankment and flipped with a sort of lazy grace, the front right wheel ripping free at the impact and catapulting into space.

  Ethan could not help but be glad that Kiana was unable to see the sight, especially when one of the dead police officers was ejected from the stricken vehicle as it pirouetted in midair. The man cartwheeled like a ragdoll, fifteen feet in the air, as the Alfa Romeo came smashing down back into the embankment, upside down, in a shower of dirt, glass and rending metal. The Mercedes and the Audi whipped past the carnage, but not before Ethan saw the body of the police officer land on the road and roll like so much empty meat across the tarmac.

  Ethan was thrown into the door as Aaron took the exit that led onto the B-10. The Audi easily kept pace with them, the comparable lightness of the sedan making up for its slight deficiency in horsepower.

  “They’re following us into the city…” Bretta said.

  “I see that,” Aaron returned with a glance at the rear view mirror.

  Bretta peered up out the front windshield as they continued to rip along the highway. “Police helicopter.”

  Making sure the Audi hadn’t drawn parallel with the Mercedes and that Boots wasn’t drawing a bead on them, Ethan leaned forward and looked up into the fading mauve of the evening sky. Above, sitting like a vulture on the thermals, was the unmistakable shape of a MBB/Kawasaki BK 117 utility-transport helicopter. Ethan recognized it in an instant. Ever since it had been first produced in 1979, it had remained one of the most versatile and popular choppers in the world; used as military transports, air ambulances, aerial cranes and, as in this case, the eyes of local law enforcement.

  Aaron turned off the B-10 and onto the Passeig Josep Carner. This road took them past the tranquil Gardens of the Orchards of Sant Bertran and the more contemporary Gardens of W
alter Benjamin, home to some of Barcelona’s most colorful street-art. On their right was the magnificently grand building of the Regional Customs Offices of Catalonia.

  Aaron slackened his speed coming into the city proper, and the Audi moved up behind them. Aaron was doing a great job of keeping one or two cars between themselves and the pursuing Kidon. He was able to weave through the traffic far more effectively than he might usually have been able to, thanks to the decreased number of vehicles on the road. Usually, approaching the enormous traffic circle, Plaça de les Drassanes, at this time of day, the cars would be backed up. Now though, there was only a smattering of traffic circling the usually intimidating piece of road like flies around a corpse.

  Ethan looked through the back window. The Audi tailed them, but otherwise did not attempt to pass, or open fire.

  Now that Aaron had slowed to a more sedate seventy kilometers an hour, the drone of the police helicopter could be distantly heard.

  Ethan sighed. He had really hoped the chase through Istanbul was going to be his low point when it came to operating under the spotlight, but it looked as if Barcelona, the city of Antoni Gaudí, had other plans.

  “Constrictor,” he said, slowly and precisely, so that the man driving would take his meaning exactly.

  “Copperhead?” Aaron replied.

  “I need you to show this lot a clean pair of heels,” Ethan said.

  Aaron glanced at him in the rearview mirror, just as a police car sitting at the entrance to La Rambla––Barcelona’s most famous street, which divided the east and west parts of the city––lit up its blue roof light.

  “Roger that,” Aaron said, and floored the pedal.

  The five-hundred and three horsepower engine bellowed and the SUV peeled forward.

  Behind, the Kidon driver did the same. Both vehicles were followed by the police car from Barcelona’s Guàrdia Urbana.

  The trio of vehicles sped up La Rambla, ripping past the waxwork museum of Museu de Cera de Barcelona, leaving the few pedestrians out and about goggling as they flew by.