Prioritize, he told himself. First order of business, get control of this vehicle.
He manhandled the driver’s dead weight over onto the passenger’s seat, and then without letting go of the wheel, crawled over the back of the seat. By the time he finally got his legs onto the pedals, the Corolla was down to about 30 km/h-he could sprint faster than that. He cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the trailing pick-up hurtling toward him like a tsunami. King stomped the accelerator to the floor.
The engine revved loudly with the infusion of gasoline, but for a few seconds, the car refused to gain speed. Just as it was grudgingly beginning to cooperate, King’s head abruptly snapped back against the headrest. The charging truck had rear-ended him, hard.
A sharp pain shot through King’s neck, but he gritted his teeth through it and maintained steady pressure on the gas pedal. The driver of the pursuing Dodge had probably been hoping that the bump would send the Corolla spinning out of control, but instead it acted like the catapult on an aircraft carrier, launching the cab forward and giving it enough momentum to actually start accelerating again.
It was another small-too small-victory. King was still vastly outmatched. His unknown enemies had all the advantages. As he maintained steady pressure on the accelerator, the speedometer needle creeping past 100 km/h, he took quick stock of what he had to work with in order to mount an effective counter-attack.
It was a very short list.
He tore a hole through the damaged windshield to get an unobscured view of the road ahead. The lead truck was braking, slowing down and dominating the center of the road to prevent him from passing. The side mirror showed him the grill of the trailing truck, looming large once more as it closed in for another bump. It was safe to assume that the drivers were coordinating their actions; King knew that his only hope lay in unpredictability.
He steered to the right side of the road. The pick-up immediately moved right in order to block him.
King swerved to the left, and again the truck did, too.
He did this twice more, testing the driver’s reaction time, and more importantly, getting familiar with the Corolla’s capabilities. The vehicle was not in the best shape, but thus far he’d seen no indication that it was on the verge of breaking down. The temperature gauge showed the engine running hot-not too hot yet, but he didn’t want to take the chance of it failing at a critical moment. He turned the heater on full blast, venting some of the heat into the car’s interior. With the windows shot out, he barely noticed.
He steered left again, all the way to the edge of the road. The truck followed suit. He then swerved right, exactly as he had before, putting the Corolla in what he hoped was the lead truck’s blind spot. The driver of the pick-up took the bait, pulling all the way to the right in order to prevent King from passing on that side.
King shifted the automatic transmission out of overdrive and stomped the gas pedal. Even as the truck was moving right, King steered left. The taxi surged ahead closing the gap before the other driver could react.
King kept one eye on the pick-up as the Corolla pulled alongside it. He caught a glimpse of the driver-a Caucasian man-snarling in frustration as he hauled the steering wheel left to cut King off, but he was too late. The taxi slipped past the Dodge. King had escaped their killing box.
He didn’t waste time congratulating himself. His situation was just marginally better than it had been thirty seconds earlier. His only hope lay in finding a way to lose his pursuers, and that meant getting off the highway where the trucks had the advantage of superior horsepower. With one eye on the road, he took out his phone.
Before leaving home, he had downloaded a city map of Addis Ababa. It wasn’t quite as useful as a live GPS, but it was better than nothing. He dragged his finger around the touch screen until he found the airport, and from there, was able to guess his present position, moving northeast along Ring Road, the major highway that circled the city.
The area near the airport was sparsely inhabited, with few access roads, but a more developed section of the city lay ahead. If he could make it there…get lost in the maze of surface streets and buildings…he just might have a chance.
If, he thought grimly.
The sound of hammer blows reverberated through the taxi’s frame and King ducked as bullets plucked at the upholstery of the seat beside him. He felt something tug at his right arm and a moment later his biceps started burning. He didn’t look; his arm was still working, so it probably wasn’t anything more than a graze, and besides, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Then he realized, almost too late, that the shots had been a diversion. When he had ducked down instinctively, it had given the pick-up’s driver a chance to close in. The protective bumper guard that wrapped around the Ram’s front end filled the side mirror as the truck sidled up next to him.
In a rush of understanding, King realized that the other driver was trying to spin him. It was a technique taught in tactical driving courses; a carefully delivered hit to the rear wheel of a fleeing car could force it to spin around 180°, at which point the car’s momentum would be pulling against the direction of the drive wheels, causing the vehicle to stall instantly.
I took that class, too, asshole!
When the pick-up’s driver made his move, King was ready. As the Dodge veered toward him, he hit the brakes. The taxi was no longer where the driver of the pursuing truck thought it would be, but he had already committed himself to the maneuver. The truck swerved across the lane in front of the taxi, even as King accelerated again, steering the opposite direction to swing around on the other side.
It almost worked.
A crunch of metal shuddered through the taxi as the truck’s rear tire hooked the front end of the Corolla, and suddenly both vehicles were locked together, rolling over and over down the length of the road in a spectacular dance of mutual self-destruction.
2.
Sara Fogg hated traveling.
Perhaps “hate” was too strong a word. If her antipathy had been that strong, she surely would have chosen a different line of work.
Most of what she did as an infectious disease investigator for the CDC took place in the relatively safe confines of the laboratory, but like any other war, the battle to stop disease outbreaks before they could blossom into epidemics required her to be present on the front lines, and that meant travel, usually to unfamiliar and often remote locations around the world.
That, in and of itself, did not bother her. She wasn’t the least bit xenophobic; the world was a veritable buffet of diverse cultures, and she treasured each unique new encounter…well, most of them. Sara’s dislike for world travel and her preference for lab work, derived from a condition known as Sensory Processing Dysfunction, specifically a type of the disorder called Sensory Discrimination Disorder.
Normally, when a person receives sensory input, the signals travel from the sensory organs-eyes, ears, nose-to various parts of the brain where the stimuli is processed and reconciled with information already stored in that person’s memory. Smells and sounds and sights are compared with things that person has already experienced, and a sympathetic response is triggered. The smell of baking cookies might stimulate a person’s appetite. A loud noise might cause a release of adrenaline. But for someone with Sensory Discrimination Disorder, the nervous impulses don’t go where they’re supposed to. They might hear smells, or experience a seemingly unrelated physical reaction when exposed to a particular visual or auditory stimulus.
Because she had lived with it all her life, Sara didn’t really see her SDD as a liability. Indeed, it gave her an advantage in certain situations. Her heightened sensory abilities had saved her life during a mission with Jack Sigler and his team-several times, in fact-and when she had later been temporarily “cured” by exposure to an unusual quartz crystal, she had felt an acute sense of loss. Sometimes, she almost thought of the disorder as a “superpower.” But that didn’t make dealing with it in on a day-to-day basis any easier.