Prime (25 page)

The
frankenstein’s
limbs went rigid for a moment, like it was being electrocuted, but whatever
Queen had done, it was still not enough to permanently stop the beast. With an
agonized howl, it resumed pulling Sasha across the interior.

Queen kept raining blows into the thing’s
face, pummeling it unmercifully, but the monster did not relent. It drew its
human prize closer, pinning Queen’s arms down and crushing her against the
already immobilized Knight.

King twisted around and tried to find
something to shoot at, but in the tangle of bodies, there was no way to
separate friend from foe. Instead, he reversed his hold on the carbine and
slammed the butt of the weapon into the monster’s head. There was a sickening
crunch of bones breaking, but the creature refused to die.

Bishop stomped on the accelerator again, and
as the Surf lurched forward, he swerved to the left. Locked in a mortal
struggle, the other passengers were barely aware of the maneuver. None of them
saw the delivery truck in the lane beside them.

The side panel of the truck was like a solid
wall outside the windows of the SUV as the two vehicles scraped together with a
hideous grinding noise, and then suddenly the Surf shot forward again, breaking
free of the momentary effects of friction.

Rook and Sasha fell back as the creature’s
efforts abruptly ended. The
frankenstein—
or rather
what was left of him, head and shoulders—toppled forward into the SUV and
landed in Knight’s lap. The monster’s lower torso and legs had been crushed and
sheared away by the collision with the delivery truck.

For a few seconds, everyone just stared in
disbelief at the twitching remnants of the monster. Then Knight, with a shudder
of revulsion, pushed the bodiless corpse away, inadvertently putting it right
into Queen’s arms.

“Oh, hell no!”
She shoved it back at him.

King put an immediate stop to the gruesome
game of hot potato by reaching back and heaving the remains out the open
window, and for a moment thereafter, they all just slumped in their seats, too
physically and mentally drained to say a word. Even Rook seemed unable to add
his customary pithy insights.

It was Bishop that finally broke the silence.
“Guys, we’ve got another problem.”

That was when King heard the sound of sirens
in the distance. Behind them, weaving through the traffic on the road and
quickly gaining
ground,
was a long serpentine chain of
flashing police lights.

FORTY-TWO

King counted seven different sets of flashing lights, the nearest
perhaps two hundred meters behind them. Then he became aware of something else;
Deep
Blue,
was telling them that they’d missed a turn.

In the mayhem of the battle with the
frankenstein
, the task of navigating the unfamiliar roads
hadn’t seemed all that important. “Sorry, boss man,” he broke in. “We’re a
little busy here.”

“The road you are on will end in less than
half a mile. You have to turn around.”

Bishop glanced over at him. “Now he tells
us.”

King masked his concern with a sigh of
mock-frustration. “I guess you should turn around.”

“Yep,” agreed Bishop and slammed on the
brakes.

King was thrown forward against the
dashboard, and he heard a collective howl from the back seat as everyone
succumbed to the sudden deceleration. The Toyota skidded forward, enveloped in the
tumult of noise and a noxious cloud of rubber smoke, and then it drifted across
the road. It almost went into a spin, but Bishop kept making minor corrections
with the front wheels to keep its nose forward until most of the momentum was
gone. When the SUV was nearly at a complete stop, he let off the brakes and
cranked the steering wheel hard to the left.

King felt his center of gravity shift and
thought for a moment that the Surf was going to roll, but Bishop knew what he
was doing. He stomped the gas pedal down, racing out of the turn, and headed
back the way they’d come…and right down the throat of the advancing squadron of
police cars.

For just a moment, King thought Bishop was
going to challenge the Iranian National Police to a game of chicken. It was
just the sort of thing Bishop might do, and—live or die—King felt certain that
his teammate would never ‘lose’ in such a game. The police however, had no
intention of playing along; as the Surf swung around to meet them, the lead
chase vehicles broke formation and spread out to block both lanes. It was a
hasty affair, and King felt sure that they could blast through with a minimum
of damage. Unfortunately, the Toyota wasn’t the only vehicle on the road, and
now
a traffic
jam several cars deep was piling up in
front of them. Bishop, undaunted, kept accelerating toward the impasse.

Rook leaned forward, staring into the sea of
bright red brake lights. “Ummm…”

King resisted the urge to comment, waiting to
see what fancy evasive maneuvers Bishop would employ to get them past the
barricade. As they closed the gap however—eating up the distance in mere
seconds—King started to question his assumptions about Bishop having a plan…or for
that matter, being sane.

A millisecond or two after passing what King
thought surely must be the point of no
return,
Bishop
nudged the wheel to the left. The Surf missed the rear bumper of a stopped car
by millimeters as it veered into the opposite lane, now cleared of traffic
thanks to the roadblock.

The next few seconds were like an amusement
park ride from Hell. King was thrown sideways by the sudden turn, and then
pitched forward as the SUV slammed into the front end of a blockading police
cruiser. The impact sent the smaller vehicle spinning, but barely slowed the
Surf. Bishop cut back and forth, attempting—not always successfully—to thread
his way through the maze of vehicles. The Toyota’s bumper absorbed most of the
damage, but each impact crumpled the fenders and the hood, and as Bishop
slipped past the roadblock and into the now wide-open lane, King saw wisps of
steam rising from the front end.

“There’s a turn coming up on your left,” Deep
Blue intoned.

Bishop saw the side road, which angled away from
the opposite lane, before anyone else. Without warning, he cranked the wheel
over hard. To his credit, he managed to keep all four tires on the pavement,
but everyone inside was subjected to more punishment. Over the screech of the
controlled skid, the sound of gunshots was audible, but none of the rounds
found their mark, and as Bishop straightened the wheels, the tumult momentarily
diminished.

“Stay on this road,” Deep Blue said. “It will
get you to the pick-up zone.”

“How far?”
King said.

“Twenty
klicks,
give
or take. Senior Citizen will meet you there.”

King covered his microphone so that only
Bishop would hear him. “Can we make it that far?”

Bishop glanced at the dashboard where the
temperature gauge was starting to climb, and then shook his head.

Behind them, the police had regrouped and
were now filing onto the side road to resume the pursuit. Even if they were
able to reach the rendezvous, the police would overtake them as soon as they
stopped.

They needed a new plan.

King glanced up, through the gaping hole the
frankenstein
had torn in the roof. Somewhere up there, a
supersonic stealth transport plane was racing to a rendezvous that Chess Team
would never make.

Suddenly, he realized the answer was staring
him in the face.

He twisted around to the others. “Queen, get
Sasha into a STARS harness. Rook, Knight… We need to turn this thing into a
convertible.”

Rook was the first to figure it out…or at
least the first to say something. “Tell me you are not thinking what I think
you’re thinking.”

“It’s fundamentally the same thing we were
planning to do anyway.” King wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Rook or
himself.

“I can think of one pretty fundamental
difference,” Rook grumbled.

Knight rolled his eyes and started digging in
his pack.

“Don’t be such as sissy,” Queen chided. “It’s
probably not the craziest thing you’ve ever done.”

She had already retrieved the large rucksack
that contained the STARS gear, and after digging out a rig of nylon web belts
identical to the ones they were all wearing, she rested a hand on Sasha’s
shoulder to get her attention. The cryptanalyst, who had been practically
catatonic since the battle with the
frankenstein
,
nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Queen’s manner was
surprisingly soothing, a striking contrast to the tone she’d used with Rook.
“It’s all going to be over in few minutes.”

She’s
right about that
, thought
King.
One way or
another
.

While Rook and Knight set to work, affixing
small shaped charges to the door posts and support beams that held the SUV’s
roof in place, King called Deep Blue and told him the new plan.

There was a long silence.

“Deep Blue, did you copy my last?”

“I copied, King. I’m just not sure it will
work.”

“Unless you’ve got a better option, we’re
going to make it work.”

“I admire your ‘can-do’ attitude, but this is
a question of physics. I’m not sure this can be done. Or that you will survive
it.”

King eyed the temperature gauge. The needle
was creeping toward the red zone. “No time to discuss this,” he said. “We’re
going ahead with it. Let Senior Citizen know. King, out.”

“Jeez, it sounds like you’re asking grandpa
for a ride,” Rook muttered. “We really need another name for that damn plane.”

“Put it in the suggestion box,” King replied.
“Give me some detcord. I’ll get the front.”

Knight passed forward a spool of what looked
like thick orange wire, but which was actually Primacord—plastic tubing filled
with a thread-thin strand of the high-explosive compound pentaerythritol
tetranitrate. King reeled off about two feet and carefully cut it with his
KA-BAR.

“All set here,” Queen announced, giving
Sasha’s harness a final cinch for good measure.

As King wrapped a length of detcord around
the front doorpost on his side, Rook and Knight signaled that they were ready
to go. There was a blast of warmth from the Surf’s vents. Bishop had turned on
the heater in an effort to bleed off some of the rising engine heat. It was a
stopgap measure, and one that wouldn’t keep up with the spiking temperature
from the near constant acceleration. King tied the detcord off and then pressed
a small blasting cap into one end of the tube. He repeated the procedure on the
driver’s side, awkwardly reaching past Bishop to do so, and then settled back
into his seat.

“All set.”

“Get down if you can.” Knight’s voice was
eerily calm, but everyone took his admonition seriously. “Three… two… one…
Fire in the hole.”

The charges all detonated simultaneously with
a noise as loud as a gunshot, but the smoke and heat of the small explosions
was whisked away in the rush of air that swept through the now exposed interior
of the SUV. The roof, cut loose from its supports, was gone, skittering along
the road in their wake.

King now had an unobstructed view of the
landscape in all directions. They had left Maragheh behind and were now
traveling through the lightly wooded countryside. That was something in their
favor at least. The open road meant almost no traffic to impede them, but it
also meant there was nothing to slow down the pursuit. Behind them, the line of
flashing colored lights swerved around the remains of the Surf’s roof; the lead
police car was perhaps only a quarter-mile behind them.

Queen passed King a pair of
heavy-duty locking carabiners, both of which were connected at intervals to a
long rope that sprouted from the rucksack.
Everyone in the back seat was already clipped in. He hooked one to
Bishop’s harness and then secured the remaining one to his own.

Despite the noise of rushing air, King could
now hear a rapid ticking sound, the noise of the engine block starting to
expand as it heated up. In a few seconds, one of the pistons would probably
seize and the motor would stall, leaving them at the mercy of their pursuers.

“Rook, send up the balloon.”

Rook pulled a shapeless mass—it looked like
an enormous deflated red football—from the rucksack and held it over his head.
“Ladies and gentleman, in preparation for our flight, please make sure that
your seat backs and tray tables are in the upright position, and I want to
stress this, make sure that your seat belts are
not
fastened.”

There was a whooshing sound as the object in
Rook’s hands suddenly expanded, filling up with pressurized helium. The wind
whipped against the inflating bladder, but Rook held on until it was nearly
bursting at the seams. When he let go, the rush of air seemed to yank it
straight back, but as soon as it was clear of the Surf, it started rising,
trailing a heavy line out behind it—the same rope to which they were all
attached. There was a weird zipping sound, like two pieces of fabric rubbing together,
as the cable spooled out from the rucksack. The balloon rose up and out of
sight, and then with a
twang
, the
line went taut.

Sasha gaped in disbelief, finally overcoming
her shell-shocked paralysis. “That balloon isn’t big enough to lift all of us.”

“Nope,” agreed Rook, sounding almost
miserable. “But grandpa is.”

“What?”

King heard a new voice over the radio. “Chess
Team, this is Senior Citizen. We have visual contact. Hang on to your nuts.”

Queen gave a derisive snort…and then she was
gone.