The Pyramid of Doom_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  “Shit, shit, shit!” She wrestled with the controls, feeling the back end sliding. If she braked, the Crown Vic would spin out and hit the other car—

  Instead, she spun the wheel back and stepped on the gas.

  The rear wheels writhed and squealed, kicking the taxi out of its skid—but not quickly enough to stop its tail from bashing against the Porsche. There was a horrible crunch as the cab’s rear bumper was ripped off.

  Nina straightened out. “Sorry,” she told Ricardo. He made a disgusted sound.

  Rising sirens. Flashing lights, the red and white strobes of police cars—

  In the mirror.

  “Dammit!” The precinct had been in the other direction, and now they were heading away from it, away from help.

  Macy, looking back, was happier. “Yes!” she crowed as the cars at the lights pulled out of the way to let the cops through. An NYPD patrol car accelerated across the intersection—

  And was hit by the Ram as it plowed around the corner, the police cruiser smashing into the Porsche and folding it like wet cardboard. The pickup tore away the police car’s front wheel as it wrenched free of the wreckage and continued the pursuit, twisted debris dangling from its bullbar like streamers.

  Macy’s relief vanished in an instant. “No!”

  “Do you still have the phone?” Nina shouted.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Call Eddie again!”

  Macy thumbed through Nina’s contact list. “What can he do?”

  “You’d be surprised. Just call him!”

  Macy frowned, but found the number and selected it. “It’s busy!”

  “What? Who the hell’s he talking to?”

  The Lamborghini powered out of 108th Street and turned sharply south, its broad tires and four-wheel drive keeping it clamped firmly to the road. The lateral g-force of the turn, on the other hand, threw Eddie against the door. Ahead, the long straight of Central Park West stretched to infinity, the park itself a swath of darkness to their left.

  Streetlights and windows streaked into hyperspace as the Murciélago accelerated. Eddie leaned back upright, Grant holding the phone against his ear. “So can you help us?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Amy—now in her official role as Officer Martin of the New York Police Department. “But it’ll take a while to get the word out to every unit—if you get stopped before then, you’ll get a ticket.”

  That was the least of Eddie’s worries. “I’ll just have to not get stopped, then.”

  “Or you could not break the speed limit …” Amy’s tone became dubious. “You’re speeding right now, aren’t you?”

  “A bit,” he admitted as the speedometer needle flashed past eighty.

  “Where are you?”

  “Hundred and Fifth … Fourth … Third …”

  “Goddammit, Eddie! Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”

  “Just make sure all your guys know that Nina’s the good guy and the fuckwits chasing her are the bad guys, okay? Bye!”

  “So …,” Grant said cautiously as he withdrew the phone, free hand tightening around the leather armrest, “you’ve driven fast cars before, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Eddie, focusing on the road. The Lamborghini’s grip and handling made weaving through the traffic a precise, almost game-like experience, but the slightest mistake would not only total the Murciélago, but probably injure or even kill innocent people as well.

  “Like what?”

  “Last thing I drove this fast was a Ferrari 430.”

  Grant nodded approvingly. “Cool car. Yours?”

  “You think I’d be working as a bodyguard if I could afford a Ferrari?”

  “Good point, man. Whoa, bus, bus!”

  “I see it.” The oncoming lanes were almost empty for at least two blocks. Eddie whipped around the bus and accelerated, the Lamborghini surging effortlessly past a hundred miles per hour.

  Grant let a relieved breath escape. “So this Ferrari—you took good care of it, right?”

  “Nope,” said Eddie with a small smile. “Smashed it to fuck.” The gulp from the other seat sounded as though Grant was trying to suck the breath back in. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after your Lambo.”

  “Not a scratch, okay?”

  “If it gets anything bigger than a scratch, you probably won’t be in any state to worry about it.” He let the actor figure that out for himself as the phone rang again. “Get that, will you?”

  “Eddie!” Nina shouted as Macy poked the phone through the slot. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m on my way,” came the Yorkshireman’s voice. “I’ve told a mate in the NYPD what’s going on, and I’m coming south—head uptown, I’ll meet you. Where are you?”

  “Going north up Park.” She had turned off the narrow 21st Street onto the much broader Park Avenue.

  “The bad guys?”

  “Right behind us!” yelled Macy.

  She wasn’t kidding. The lights in the mirror flared brighter, the Ram’s engine roar like a charging beast. Figures leaned from its windows, the bald man in the front passenger seat, Snakeskin behind the driver.

  Both had guns raised—

  Macy dropped flat, the phone snagging in the slot and falling to the dirty floor. Gunfire crackled, the flat boom of the revolver and the rapid chatter of a TEC-9 machine pistol. More shots struck the cab. The bulletproof screen took another two rounds, a fist-sized section crazing just behind Nina’s head. Another hit and it would shatter.

  She made a savage left turn, the Crown Victoria crashing heavily over the central divider between two trees. Ricardo yelled in pain.

  The Ram was too big to fit through the gap after them. She straightened and headed into the oncoming traffic, a car swerving onto the sidewalk to avoid a head-on collision, then turned again to swing the cab westward.

  The Dodge had to take the turn at a sharper angle. Its back end slewed wide, throwing Snakeskin back inside—and almost pitching the bald guy out onto the street. The oversized vehicle screeched to a halt to give the gunman time to pull himself back in.

  The stop had opened up the gap between the two vehicles. But not by much. Nina scoured her mental map of Manhattan for anything that might widen it further, at the same time working out the quickest way to meet Eddie. Across Fifth and Broadway, then north on Sixth Avenue …

  The Ram rejoined the pursuit, gaining fast.

  The Lamborghini screamed southward, eating up the three-mile straightaway of Central Park West. They were now near the bottom of the long avenue, approaching Columbus Circle. Eddie danced through the gaps in the traffic, accelerating.

  “Er, dude,” Grant pointed out, “you’re gonna have to slow down for the turn—it’s one-way.” Southbound vehicles on Central Park West were forced to turn onto 62nd Street, the southernmost two blocks being northbound only.

  “It’s my way,” Eddie corrected. There wasn’t time to take a detour. Instead he fixed his gaze on the lanes ahead. Was there a space?

  There would have to be.

  “Dude,” said Grant, voice rising in urgency as they neared 62nd Street. He jabbed a finger ahead—at the approaching headlights filling every lane. “Dude, dude, dude!”

  Grimacing, Eddie turned the car—

  Not right onto 62nd, but left—up the sloping curb at a crosswalk and onto the broad sidewalk along the park’s walled edge. A long line of parked cars flicked past to their right, hemming them in.

  “You’re doing seventy on the sidewalk!” Grant choked.

  “Yeah, I noticed!” He batted the horn, people leaping aside as the Lamborghini swept past.

  “If the cops stop us, I’m totally gonna say this was a kidnapping!”

  Eddie ignored him. They were at Columbus Circle, a large multi-lane roundabout.

  And they were about to go around it the wrong way …

  Grant let out a stifled gasp as Eddie whipped the Murciélago between two parked pedicabs and off the curb, landing with a b
ang. Teeth clenched in a rictus grimace, he swerved the Lamborghini between the disbelieving drivers rushing at him. Horns blared, tires squealed, headlights streaked past on either side as he swung the supercar from left to right and back again, each barely missed vehicle making a sharp swip! of displaced air as it whipped by.

  Central Park South—

  He turned, pedal down to blast through a gap before a truck closed it—and was clear.

  For a moment. A siren wailed, a police car on Columbus Circle engaging pursuit.

  Grant looked back. “Oh man! Cops!”

  “Just like in Nitrous, eh?” Eddie said. He powered along Central Park South, swerving through traffic to make a screeching turn onto Seventh Avenue. The road down to Times Square was relatively clear; relieved, he accelerated again. Over the rising song of the engine, he heard a voice. Nina.

  “The phone!” he said. Grant held it up.

  “Eddie, Eddie!” said Nina. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Are you okay?”

  “They’re still after us! Where are you?”

  He ducked across the lanes to avoid a knot of traffic. “Seventh.”

  “Seventh?” He knew the scathing tone; that of every single New Yorker, convinced they alone knew the best way to navigate their city. “Why the hell are you on Seventh? Take Broadway!”

  “I know where I’m going!”

  “Dude, not the time for a domestic,” Grant warned, pointing ahead. The neon glare of Times Square was approaching fast, the traffic getting thicker.

  “Where are you now?” Eddie asked Nina.

  “On Sixth, coming up to Thirtieth.”

  He remembered that if he got onto Broadway south of Times Square, it intersected Sixth Avenue at Herald Square, around 34th Street. “Keep going—I’ll meet you!”

  “And then what are you gonna do?”

  “I dunno—something violent! Just stay ahead of them!”

  He ignored the sarcastic “No!” from the phone, fixing on the road as the Lamborghini wailed through Times Square. Grant’s face, two stories high, watched it pass from a billboard advertising his latest movie. Cars streamed across their path on 44th Street—and beyond, he saw more flashing lights as cops from the small police station at the square’s south end started their vehicles.

  He sped up, angling for a gap—

  “Shit!” gasped Grant as the Murciélago shot through the cross-traffic, one car’s front bumper passing so close that it brushed the Lamborghini’s rear corner. “You said not a scratch, man, not a scratch!”

  “It’ll buff out,” Chase replied, the joke a cover for the shudder that ran through him as he realized just how near he had come to a crash. He shot past the little police station, then turned hard, cutting across a short section of 42nd Street to join Broadway.

  Strobe lights flashed across the buildings behind as more police cars joined the chase. He swore under his breath, looking down Broadway.

  Where was Nina?

  Where was Eddie?

  The cab reached the lower end of Herald Square. Nina risked a glance up Broadway as she crossed the intersection and continued up Sixth Avenue, seeing police lights in the distance, before looking back at the nearer and much more menacing lights in the mirror. The pursuing police cars had also drawn closer, but were unable to overtake the powerful truck.

  “Hey, there’s my store!” said Macy. Nina looked back, wondering what the hell she was talking about. “You know, Macy’s.” She pointed as the giant retailer rolled past to their left.

  “Just hold up the phone,” Nina snapped. “Eddie, where are you now?”

  “I’m almost there. Where are you?”

  The taxi reached the 36th Street intersection, Nina checking for traffic coming from the left—to see a bright orange sports car zoom down Broadway. “Eddie, are you in an orange car?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I just missed you! I’m going north on Sixth!”

  Eddie said something, but it was drowned out by Macy’s cry of “They’re catching up!” The pickup’s driver had put the hammer down, the great chromed whale-mouth of its grille looming large.

  And Snakeskin was leaning out of the window again, revolver raised—

  Nina hurled the cab into a desperate left turn onto 37th Street as a bullet punched through the door just above her thigh.

  Eddie heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet impact over the phone. “Shit!”

  He had to double back—but two NYPD cruisers were moving to block Broadway ahead, dispatchers alerting them to the second high-speed chase.

  And there were more police cars behind him.

  “Hang on!” he shouted to Grant as he stabbed a button to deactivate the traction control—then dipped the clutch as he spun the wheel with one hand and yanked hard on the hand brake with the other.

  Even with four-wheel drive the Lamborghini couldn’t keep its hold on the road, slithering around in a 180-degree spin as Eddie mashed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roar was accompanied by an earsplitting scream from the smoking wheels as the Murciélago lunged forward again, the tortured tires laying thick black lines of rubber on the pavement.

  Ahead, the other police cars moved to box him in—then hurriedly swerved aside as the cops realized he wasn’t going to stop. He shot between them, the two cruisers behind him pulling into single file to follow the writhing Murciélago through the gap.

  The tires found grip again, the sudden jolt of acceleration like a kick to the back as the oncoming traffic peeled off to either side, headlights flashing, horns blaring. Thirty-seventh Street was coming up fast. Eddie eased off, about to turn right to catch up with Nina—

  A battered yellow cab hurtled across the intersection right in front of him.

  Time slowed to a crawl as Eddie recognized the red-haired figure at the wheel, Nina looking around at him openmouthed as the Lamborghini thundered straight toward her—

  Eddie twitched the wheel—and accelerated. The world snapped back to full speed as the Lamborghini crossed just in front of the cab. He thought he heard Nina’s scream behind him, but it was probably his imagination: It would have been lost in his own.

  Adrenaline surging from the almost-collision, Nina looked in the mirror—to see the Ram smash square-on into a police car that had been chasing Eddie. The cruiser cartwheeled along the street in a storm of flying glass.

  The impact had affected even the Dodge, the bullbar buckled back through the radiator grille and the hood crumpled upward. Behind it, another police car skidded to a halt, cops breaking off their pursuit of the Lamborghini to help their colleagues.

  “Did you see that?” Macy said breathlessly.

  “Kinda hard to miss,” said Nina. “Eddie!”

  “You okay?” Eddie asked her as Grant held out the phone in his shaking hand.

  “Yeah! Jesus, I nearly hit you!”

  He turned west onto 39th Street. “Head for Times Square—I’ll get behind you and block them.”

  “Eddie, one of them’s got a machine gun!”

  “I’ll worry about the machine gun—you just put your foot down!”

  Grant blinked. “Worry about the what?”

  But Eddie had something else to worry about. Ahead, a truck was reversing into a loading dock, blocking the street. He braked hard and blasted the horn in frustration. “For fuck’s sake! What next, two guys carrying a sheet of glass?”

  The truck was clear; he veered around it, powering toward the Seventh Avenue intersection.

  Nina’s cab shot across the junction, heading north. If he could get ahead of the pickup—

  The dented Ram roared past just before he made the turn. “Shit!” He swung in behind it, vision filled by the broad red tailgate. Headlights blurred past on both sides. Like Broadway, Seventh was a one-way street, southbound only.

  Grant cringed as an oncoming SUV passed uncomfortably close to the Murciélago. “We’ll never get past!”

  “What’re you talking ab
out?” Eddie countered. “We’re in a fucking Lamborghini!” He dropped down a gear—

  And floored the accelerator.

  There was a gap in the traffic to the left—a short one, but it was all he needed.

  He hoped …

  The Lamborghini surged forward, rocketing past the Ram with a triumphant howl and darting back in front of it. Eddie braked. Startled, the pickup’s driver also slowed, his vehicle weaving, before realizing he had the clear weight advantage and could just barge the supercar aside.

  Eddie accelerated again, just enough to keep ahead of the truck. He saw Nina’s cab pulling away as it headed for Times Square, its taillights the only red points in the sea of headlights parting before it.

  And directly ahead of it, a bus.

  Ricardo gestured feebly. “A bus, there is a bus.”

  “I see it,” Nina told him. It was a red British-style double-decker, an open-topped tour vehicle for sightseers.

  Coming straight at them.

  “There is a bus!”

  “I see it!” She flashed the headlights and pounded on the horn, keeping her foot down.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Ricardo.

  Macy stared in disbelief through the cracked partition. “We’re gonna hit it!”

  “He’ll stop, he’ll stop …” Nina poised her other foot over the brake, ready to jam it down—

  The bus driver chickened out first, the safety of the few passengers on the last tour of the night his top priority. He braked hard, the bus’s wheels locking …

  It skidded.

  “Oh, that’s bad,” Nina gasped. The bus slewed around through almost ninety degrees, creating a metal-and-glass roadblock.

  But a driver in the lane to the right saw the danger and accelerated away just before the bus hit his car from behind—clearing a space.

  Nina took it.

  The Crown Victoria hit the curb with a bang. A huge NYPD logo on the wall of the Times Square station house filled Nina’s vision; she screamed and spun the wheel, the front bumper rasping against the sign as the car careened along the sidewalk. Pedestrians dove out of the way, but there was an obstacle dead ahead—