A stolen glance at his rearview mirror told him that the cars were on the move again. Three dazzling headlights where before there had been four. Growing steadily larger as they gained on their prey with discomfiting speed and ease.
More gunfire rattled in the night air, bullets punching through the flimsy sheet metal of the GAZ Sobol as though it were a tin can. Or a tin coffin. Which it could all too easily become if Ben didn’t get them out of this. Calthorpe’s people were obviously less interested in keeping Yuri alive than the late Antonin Bezukhov had been. Heading for the airport was out of the question. Ben knew he’d have to shake them off before he could get back on course.
The tree-lined iron railings of the old hospital were far behind them now. The street ahead had tapered into a narrow avenue flanked by looming white stone buildings. Ben was hammering the van for all it was worth, and more, steering a wild zigzag to present a harder target for the shooters on their tail. Bullets splatted off parked cars, buildings and the road. But most of them were hitting the van. It was taking heavy fire. Ben glanced sideways and saw the anxious gleam in Yuri’s eyes. Yuri seemed about to say something when another snorting rattle of gunfire punched through the Sobol’s bodywork and his face screwed up in pain and shock. He let out a grunt and slumped forwards in his seat. For an instant Ben thought he’d taken a fatal hit; then Yuri’s eyes snapped back open, wide as an owl’s. ‘I’m okay, I’m okay. The vest stopped it.’
But it was only a matter of time and chance before someone was less lucky. The situation couldn’t be allowed to continue – but Ben could see no obvious way out. He kept his foot down hard and sawed at the wheel, deepening the crazy slalom of his course until the wheels were slithering for grip on the road and threatening to break into a skid. He yelled, ‘Valentina, are you all right back there?’ She responded with a muffled squeal, ‘I’m scared!’
‘Hold on, Sweet Pea,’ Yuri called to her, holding on tight against the rocking, gyrating motion of the van and twisting in his seat to make eye contact with his daughter; but she was tucked low out of sight in the nook below the rear seats. Ben could only pray that the bulkhead behind her was as solid as it felt.
Yet another strafing, rattling burst of gunfire raked the back of the van, and this time Ben felt the chassis give a lurch and the wheelbase kick out sideways as a tyre blew. The left rear wheel started banging and thumping noisily, the shredded rubber flailing against the inside of the wheel arch. He sawed at the wheel, trying to contain the skid, but the forces of physics quickly took over and suddenly the view out of the windscreen became a blurred kaleidoscope of colour and light as the van went into a spin. A jarring crash slammed him painfully against the driver’s window as they careened sideways into a row of parked cars, shunting them violently aside and mounting the kerb with a thump that sounded like the whole underbody of the van being torn off. The facade of a building flashed towards them and Ben, wrestling with the steering, only narrowly managed to avoid crashing straight into its doorway.
The van lurched to a momentary halt, rocking on its suspension, listing slightly on its blown-out tyre. It took Ben a second to regain his bearings and realise that they’d turned a complete three-sixty and were still facing in the same direction. The headlights of the pursuing cars seared his retinas in the mirror. He gunned the accelerator and took off again, flattening a parked motorcycle and bumping a damaged Lada out of their path as he hammered back down off the kerb and onto the road.
The street ahead was narrow and the van’s steering had suddenly become much less responsive. Ben carved a lurching path between the rows of parked cars, scraping to the left, now to the right, somehow maintaining a more or less forward trajectory with his boot hard down to the floor and his fists clamped on the wheel. Daring to glance back, he saw the twin black Mercedes picking a path around the wreckage of battered cars they’d left in their wake.
Yuri let out some expletive in Russian as he glimpsed what lay ahead. They were speeding towards a T-junction where the little street joined a busy artery of night-time city traffic. The lights were against them. An unbroken stream of cars and trucks and motorcycles was shooting across their path with scant regard for speed limits. It would have been sheer suicide to plunge out into the fast-flowing river. But they were being funnelled straight towards it, and with Calthorpe’s men coming fast up behind, to stop for the lights would be even more fatal.
That was when Ben spied the sidestreet to his right, flashing up so fast that he was barely able to slow down enough to take the turning without overshooting the apex and slamming them headlong into the corner of the buildings. By the time he had registered the pedestrians-only sign, he was already committed. The van went screeching into the mouth of the sidestreet.
And moments later, Ben realised his mistake. After only a few dozen yards the way ahead suddenly dropped off the face of the earth, as though the street engineers had simply abandoned their work and left the road hanging off the edge of a sheer precipice. Yuri gave a squawk of terror as the van’s front wheels hit empty space and the vehicle’s nose dropped over what seemed to be a vertiginous brink. Suddenly the way ahead was visible again. But it wasn’t a reassuring sight. There was a reason for the pedestrian-only sign. A long flight of stone steps led down a steep hill flanked by tightly arrayed crumbly old red-brick houses.
Ben scarcely had time to say, ‘Hold onto your hats, guys,’ before the van was hurtling down the steps, banging and lurching and shaking and veering uncontrollably to the left and right. Using the brakes was not an option. All Ben could do was hang on tight, keep the van pointing downwards and pray they didn’t flip nose-over and go tumbling and rolling to their deaths.
Surely no one would be insane enough to follow them down here. But a glimpse in the rearview mirror informed him someone was. First one Mercedes and then the other came roaring over the top of the steps, flew into space and touched down with a crash, front wheels disappearing into their arches as the suspension hit the stops, showering sparks where their undercarriages bottomed out.
Then the chase was back on as both cars came slithering and careening after them. A man’s head and shoulders poked from the front passenger window of the car in front; then an arm, clutching a small machine pistol. He managed to let off a burst of fire, but he was soon about to come off much worse than his target. The slewing car jolted too close to one of the houses. Before the shooter could whip his upper body back through the window, he was squashed against the brickwork. Ben heard the short, sharp scream even over the cacophony of noise inside the van. In his mirror he saw the car swerve away from the wall and its passenger door swing open as someone inside booted out the mangled body of the injured man and he tumbled from the open door like a sack of garbage. The second car rolled right over the top of him.
The van had about a fifteen-metre lead over the cars. At last it reached the bottom of the steps, where a narrow pavement separated them from an adjacent street. A romantic couple ambling past arm in arm managed to scramble out of the way just in time to avoid being run down as the van burst by them and hit level ground with a crunch and a shower of sparks. The front bumper, now smashed away entirely, went clattering over their roof. Ben could go left or right; he picked left and hit the gas again. The van responded with a clattery rasp and reluctantly accelerated up the street.
Another mistake.
Yuri yelled, ‘It’s a one-way system!’
‘How was I to know that?’ Ben replied, swerving this way and that as oncoming cars honked their horns and flashed their lights in anger. ‘Valentina, are you still okay back there?’
‘Make it stop, Ben!’ came the muffled cry from behind the seats.
‘I’m working on it,’ he replied through gritted teeth. He took the first corner he saw, screeching hard right with two wheels off the road. The van careened onwards, thumping and banging and scraping, piling half blindly into the night. The wind whistled cold and shrill through the smashed windows. Every ounce of Ben’s conc
entration was focused on escaping from their pursuers. He had no time to look at the sat nav and no idea where he was, still less where he was heading. Imposing last-century buildings and street signs flashed by as they sped along a boulevard where the night-time traffic was heavy in both directions. The two Mercedes were still in pursuit, but had dropped back some distance. Calthorpe’s men seemed to be unable to catch up with them as easily as before. Ben wondered whether the lower-riding Mercedes saloons might have sustained more damage from the steps than their own vehicle.
‘We’re losing them,’ Yuri gasped. ‘We might still have a chance.’
But things that appeared too good to be true generally were.
Chapter 57
Just as it seemed they might indeed have half a chance of getting away, a beaten-up yellow taxicab suddenly emerged from a junction right in their path and lurched straight out in front of them, before the driver saw the van coming and panic-braked to a slithering halt.
Ben was going too fast to stop. He swerved hard to avoid a collision, but the van’s sloppy steering and burst back tyre caused him to lose control. He barely heard Yuri yelling as the van went into a violent skid. The GAZ Sobol glanced like a ricocheting bullet off the flank of an oncoming car, spun across the road, ploughed down a sign on a post and narrowly missed a head-on smash with an oncoming bus as they spun into the chaotic midst of a busy multi-way intersection. Lights dazzled Ben from all directions. Choruses of horns blared. He somehow brought the van back under control without getting them pulverised, and they were sucked into the fast-moving current like a boatman falling into white water rapids.
A stretch of dual carriageway was now leading them towards the mouth of a brightly lit underpass. Their pursuers had made up the distance between themselves and their quarry, aggressively forcing their way through the traffic with their horns jammed on. They were close behind now, like predators nipping at their heels, looming large in Ben’s rearview mirrors. Surging up to the bullet-chewed rear end of the van as if about to try to ram it from behind. Probing for opportunities to overtake. Other motorists, sensing danger, braked or swerved to give them a wide berth. It was just a question of time before some concerned citizen called the politsiya, and then the chase would take on a whole new dimension.
Ben was spurring the van on much too fast for a vehicle with a shredded tyre. The flailing tread sounded as though it was beating the rear wheel arch to pieces and might rip its way inside the passenger compartment at any moment. The steering wheel was vibrating so badly in his hands that they were getting numb and it was becoming harder to contain the vehicle’s erratic handling. It felt as though they were dragging a parachute in their wake. Then the last shreds of torn rubber let go of the wheel rim; the thumping ceased instantly and Ben saw black strips fly off in the mirror and slap off the windscreen of one of the cars behind them, before tumbling away down the road. The van was still virtually impossible to maintain in a straight line, but with the remains of the tyre shed the drag was noticeably less and the throttle felt more responsive. Ben felt a fierce glow inside him as the speedometer needle began to climb once more.
Just then, he saw a movement in his side mirror and realised that the lead Mercedes was trying to flank them on the left. Before he could react, its nose had pushed on by them and it was drawing up alongside. A rear window was rolled down. Ben glimpsed hard, grim faces staring up at him and the black O of a gun barrel pointing his way, ready to strafe the van broadside. The flimsy door skin would stop bullets about as well as wet cardboard.
He twisted the wheel and side-slammed the car with all the force he could bring to bear. Both vehicles went into a weave. Ben feared he was going to lose control again, but contained it. The Mercedes dropped back and he swerved to block it from a second attempt.
Now their speeding convoy was dropping down into the mouth of the underpass. Two fast lanes in each direction, separated by barriers and squat concrete pillars. The two cars were so close behind the van, Ben could almost have locked eyes with the men in the front of the lead vehicle. Something had to give. There was no way he could hope to outrun these men. It was time to try something else. Reaching behind him, his fist closed on the cool steel of the pump-action shotgun. He thrust the short-barrelled weapon into Yuri’s lap. ‘Use this.’
‘I’ve no idea how!’ Yuri protested.
‘It’s easier than breaking codes, Yuri. Work that pump, point it and pull the damn trigger.’
Yuri grasped the gun, as bewildered as if he’d been asked to defuse a ticking bomb. He unclipped his safety belt, twisted painfully around in his seat and looked through the shattered rear window at the searingly bright headlights in their wake. He wedged himself into the gap between his seat and Ben’s, awkwardly racked the action of the shotgun and was about to fire when he seemed to think better of it. ‘I’m scared of hitting Valentina,’ he yelled above the engine racket. ‘I can’t shoot over her head.’
‘Then hang out of the bloody window,’ Ben yelled back.
The passenger window had already taken a couple of glancing bullet hits and was badly cracked. Yuri smashed the remnants of glass away with the stubby muzzle of the gun, leaned out into the wind with his long hair streaming in black ropes, brought the shotgun to bear, squeezed his eyes shut and jerked the trigger. The booming report of the gun was all but lost in the wind and engine roar. The recoil almost pulled the weapon from his grip.
A clumsy shot, but a pretty effective one. The lead vehicle braked sharply in retreat, a pattern of silver-edged buckshot holes now punched into its bonnet and the lower edge of its windscreen covered in a web of fissures. It wobbled left, then right; then its front wheels lost their grip on the road and the car was suddenly turning broadside, spinning out of control before it flipped and rolled and hit one of the central pillar supports in a spectacular eruption of flying wreckage and debris. Then it exploded in midair. A rolling fireball expanded in all directions and seemed to fill the entire underpass in the van’s wake with liquid orange and yellow flames. Ben felt the heat on the back of his neck.
Still hanging half out of the window, Yuri let out a garbled cry of something between triumph and horror. His eyes met Ben’s with a fleeting expression that said, ‘Did I do that?’
Ben had no time to muster a reply. Out of the wall of fire that scorched the back of the van, the wreckage of the Mercedes came tumbling and hurtling towards them as though flung by a giant hand. A direct hit could have crushed them flatter than roadkill. Two tons of airborne scrap metal smashed into their rear with a glancing blow that lifted the van off its rear wheels and almost sent them flying headlong into another of the support barriers. The impact very nearly jerked Yuri right out of the open window, if Ben hadn’t shot an arm across the cab and seized hold of the Russian’s belt. The van’s rear came crashing back to earth and the vehicle swerved and weaved all over the road, its three tyres screeching and scrabbling for grip.
Then, somehow, they were bursting out of the opposite end of the underpass and back out into the night. Yuri fell gasping into his seat. ‘Ben – I lost the gun.’
‘No use in crying over it.’ Ben wasn’t sure if they’d need the gun any longer, anyway. All he could see of the underpass in his mirror was roiling fire and billowing black smoke. Other motorists had been well out of the way of the conflagration, but the second Mercedes had been inches behind its leader. Close enough to have been caught up in the smash. Was it over?
Even before he’d finished asking himself that question, the second Mercedes came bursting from the fiery mouth of the underpass, scorched and battered but still very much in the game.
Yuri yelled, ‘Shit!’
Traffic was streaming the opposite way, but the road behind was virtually empty apart from their solitary remaining pursuer. A pursuer Ben could now only hope to lose by luck or ruse.
The road climbed. High-rises and apartment blocks, new housing developments and redevelopments streaked past, the gaps between them offering snat
ched glimpses of Moscow’s light-spangled panorama stretching far off into the distance. They were in the outer suburbs now, though in which section of the city Ben had no idea, any more than he could guess how much longer the stricken van could keep going on this, for certain its final journey. The handling was all gone to pot – but worse, he could smell an acrid burning smell coming from somewhere. The temperature gauge needle was edging deep into the red. Dashboard warning symbols were flashing like angry little beacons, daring him to ignore them.
Keep going , he told the van. Just keep going while I still need you. But the van was losing power. Something was horribly wrong. A bullet must have done some sinister damage deep inside its mechanical innards, and now the Mercedes was inexorably gaining on them again. And the men inside still meant business, with plenty of firepower left to spare. A few shots cracked out, then paused. The men were going to save their ammo until they got closer.
‘They’ll soon be right on us again,’ Yuri said, glancing back in alarm. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Get ready for a standoff,’ Ben replied. ‘Whatever happens. We tried, Yuri. All anyone can do is try.’
Yuri boggled at him for an instant, eyes liquid and bulging, his whole face tremulous with emotion. Without a word, he started tearing off the bulletproof vest that had saved his skin earlier, then clambered out of his seat and over the row behind to throw the vest over Valentina like a protective blanket. Ben could hear the child sobbing as her father spoke reassuring words to her in Dutch.
Beyond the edge of the housing developments was an industrial zone where old factories and warehouses were being torn down to make way for the expanding city outskirts. Towering cranes and derrick towers stood silhouetted against the night sky. Far away behind them, Ben saw bright white lights hovering and blinking high over the city. He thought he could hear the distant thud of helicopters. The police were joining the show at last. How ironic, he thought, that the very people he was least anxious to see might be the only ones able to step in and stop him, Yuri and Valentina from getting shot to pieces.
The Moscow Cipher (Ben Hope, Book 17) Page 32