The Charlie Cobb Series

Chapter 22

22

The driver door on the BMW is crumpled stiff. I force it open through brute strength. I jump in and pull it as closed as it’ll go.

Before the kid can buckle up and I can put the car in drive, two more black BMWs appear on the scene. They speed along the back road to the mills and bump their way onto the stretch of weedy concrete.

Frogger’s head and shoulders pop out of a passenger window on the lead car. An Uzi submachine gun in hand.

“Get down,” I tell the kid, slamming the gear lever in reverse.

The first round of automatic fire rattles the grill of the car as I back it up fast. The kid cowers low in his seat, hands over his head. My door swings halfway open as I spin the BMW one-eighty and stomp on the accelerator pedal.

The two cars give chase across the bumpy slice of industrial wasteland. I cut a diagonal path back onto the road, flying off the pavement and hitting the tarmac heavy.

As I punch it down blowjob alley, Frogger and Co. are still hot on my tail.

The good news is we’ve got time.

It’s eight-twenty and the trial recommences at nine.

The bad news is it’s rush hour. Even out here in the arse end of nowhere, traffic is stacking up.

“What time are you supposed to be on the stand?” I ask the kid.

He looks up at me from his brace position. “Uh, what? I dunno. First thing, I think."

More gunfire rips through the air. Cuts into the back of the BMW and punctures the rear windscreen and passenger wing mirror. I steer left and right, weaving through slow-moving morning traffic. Up a ramp that leads onto the M60 motorway.

I squeeze every drop of juice out of the engine and fly off the slip road onto the main carriageway.

I slice between a pair of HGV trucks and into the middle lane. I undertake the traffic on my right before jumping into the fast lane. I lean on the horn and flash my lights at the cars ahead. They’re already doing a hundred, but I’m pushing past one-thirty.

The two chasing cars are making a good fist of keeping up, so I dive back into the middle and slalom left to right. A whisker away from writing the damn thing off. A stiff, roaring wind coming in through the gap in the crumpled door.

A police chopper appears overhead in the distance. Blue flashing lights head down the next slip road. Price must have woken up and called it in.

The traffic’s snarling up as we head towards the city.

I'm forced to brake hard, down to sixty. I lurch forward in my seat, no belt to hold me in place.

The chasing cars soon catch up. One on the left, ramming into the passenger side. The other approaching fast on the right.

Up ahead, we’re bearing down on a creeping wall of cars. I see Frogger leaning out with that Uzi. Gurning at me, with those bulbous, weirdly-spaced eyes. Ready to fill me and the kid with holes.

Yeah, that’s it, Frogger. Closer. A littler closer.

Boom!

As they pull alongside, I emergency brake. I throw my shoulder into my door. It flies open at the right time and snaps clean off the hinges as it slams into Frogger's BMW.

Frogger drops the Uzi as he ducks out of the way. I keep braking and let the chasing cars fly by. I turn a hard left, minus a door. We cut across a honking truck, onto the hard shoulder.

I give it the full beans. Flying down the inside of three jammed lanes of traffic.

The cop car that joined the party earlier is right up my arse, with Rudenko’s goons not far behind. But I’m doing fine. Thinking we might make it.

That is, until I see a broken-down box truck ahead of us, the driver on the grass verge. A metal barrier on the inside of the truck, with a queue of cars lined up on the outside.

Is that gap big enough?

“You’ve gotta brake man,” the kid says. “You’ve gotta brake!”

The hell I do.