I drove for twenty minutes, frog-hopping lumbering trucks and ratty old cars, with the sedan and the Isuzu never far behind. I occasionally put on a burst of speed but didn’t make enough headway to lose them completely without making it obvious.
The traffic was mostly military or haulage, with a sprinkling of private cars and pickups. A troop carrier came blasting up behind, spreading exhaust smoke and shouldering its way through by sheer size and velocity. I let it go by. An old Range Rover decided to follow, overtaking on a suicide course and earning an angry blast from the Isuzu, before pulling in right behind me. It was full of kids with spiky hair and face jewellery, and they looked like they were having too much of a ball to care. I let them go, too. Somewhere in the mix of engines when we got bunched up close I could hear the raspy roar of a holed muffler.
The troop carrier ahead of me signalled right and I saw the sign to a truck-stop ahead. It was time to push the envelope. It was a risky strategy but I was pretty sure if the guys behind me were friends of Ivkanoy and had plans to take me out, they wouldn’t do it in front of a bunch of armed soldiers.
If they were official, and had already got my number, then it wouldn’t make any difference.
I followed the troop carrier in and parked at the side of the building and waited. I watched the sedan go on by. The passenger turned his head to look, but not at me. The Isuzu followed, the muffler noise going with him, but the driver was intent on the road.
I checked the café, which was busy, and went inside. I needed to get some food while I had the chance, and to see if anybody took an interest in the car.
The other customers were hunched over their plates, intent on their meals and getting back out on the road, truckers and co-drivers with a job to do and schedules to meet. The situation to the east had cast a cloud over everyone no matter where they were, and was inevitably affecting non-essential movements. That could be a problem if any local cops took an interest in non-military or non-haulage travellers, and gave me another reason to stay off the main roads as much as I could. I went back to the car and called up an app of the area on my cell phone to check the alternatives.
They were few in number. Other than the road I was on, there was the mirror route to the north — the M04 to Pavlohrad — with a thin network of roads and tracks connecting the two across an open expanse of fields, rolling hills, lakes and rough terrain.
I checked I had plenty of fuel and decided to take off. Three miles down the road I took a right turn and found myself on an unmarked metalled surface heading directly north into open country. If my map was accurate, this would lead eventually to the M04. If I didn’t like the look of that I could turn left and burrow deeper into the countryside until I reached Pavlohrad on back roads.
The houses or farms were few in number and scattered; low, small structures on plots surrounded by crumbling walls or wooden picket fences, it was like stepping back in time. I saw a couple of old people, mostly weather-worn and stooped, who watched me go by without expression, but that was it.
After an hour of rough, potholed road, I came up and over an escarpment dotted with a few straggly trees and saw the ground ahead drop away in front of me like diving off a cliff. I stamped on the brakes.
Doesn’t matter who you are, in this game you don’t go over a brow in unknown terrain without first checking your route is clear.
Once I’d made sure there were no surprises waiting for me on the other side, I got back in and began a long ride downhill. The road was narrow here, bordered either side by rough ground and rocks, with overgrown gullies where old river courses had carved their way through the earth from the higher ground.
As I picked up speed, I heard a loud bang and my world went crazy.
TWENTY
I came to after a few seconds and found I was hanging upside down with the seat belt across my throat, slowly choking me. The interior of the car was clouded with dust from the airbag, and I could smell fuel in the air and the sourness of ingrained car dirt, and my mouth was gritty with God knew what accumulated crap thrown off the floor. I braced myself with one hand on the roof and pushed the belt release catch, rolling into a ball to cushion my impact. I kicked hard at the driver’s door, which was partially open. No go. It was wedged tight with a screen of coarse grass and dirt flattened against the outside of the glass.
I squirrelled round and looked through the windscreen. The view wasn’t great, and starred with a crazy network of cracks. I breathed deeply, fighting back a sense of panic. If the bang I’d heard was a tyre being shot out, and I couldn’t get out right now, I was in deep trouble.
I forced myself to apply cool logic. There was no way anybody could have got into a position ahead of me to shoot out a tyre this soon. They wouldn’t have known I was going to take this route because until I saw it, even I didn’t know. And if I had been shot at, there would have most likely been at least one follow-up shot to make sure of a kill. So far there hadn’t been any.
That left a simple blow-out; one of those things that happens on rough country roads, the inevitable result of sharp stones meeting worn tyre walls. Circumstance and randomness coming together to play games with the best-laid plans.
I found my overnight bag and checked my surroundings. I appeared to be in a gulley facing downhill. A fine mist was being blown from beneath the hood and ghosting across the cracked glass, feeding into the car through a couple of small holes. The smell raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Smoke.
There was no way out through the front, so I checked the passenger door. It was badly buckled around the lock, but didn’t appear to have anything blocking my way out.
I swivelled my hips and smashed both feet against the passenger window. It took three attempts in the cramped space, and I prayed the vibration against the door wouldn’t cause the side pillar to buckle and collapse. The glass finally blew out with a crash and I followed fast, dragging myself through the hole and up the side of the car to the rear, where I rolled clear.
I lay on my back for a few seconds, winded and bruised, then rolled over again and prayed the Toyota didn’t blow, while I studied the road above me and the grassland below. If my logic was all wrong and the tyre had been shot out, rushing out into the open to avoid the car blowing could be the last thing I ever did.
But there was nothing. No vehicles, no voices, no sounds of anyone approaching. No shots. Just a vague sigh of wind ghosting across the grass, and high above me the innocent sound of a bird.
I got to my feet and checked myself over for breaks or cuts. I’d been lucky — or maybe the factory had turned out an especially good car that day. I’d come out of a major crash with nothing more than a couple of bruises and a hair full of someone else’s car crap.
I approached the car with caution to check it out. It was surrounded by a white veil of steam and smoke and the rank smell of burning rubber, but didn’t look in imminent danger of blowing up. I checked the tyres and saw the front left had a long tear in the sidewall where the fabric looked perished through age and neglect.
Just as I’d thought. Random.
I was moving away in case whatever was burning under the hood took hold and the tank blew, when I heard the growl of an engine being driven hard. It sounded high-performance, like the noise you get at a cross-country rally.
Which was all wrong for all kinds of reasons.
I dropped down off the road and ran at a crouch towards a large clump of rocks in dead ground two hundred yards away. Instinct told me the new arrival wasn’t going to be a local farmer willing to give me a ride out of here. In my limited experience, country farmers don’t drive hard and fast unless they have a prize pig to sell.