The Russian security man was only a few steps away now. Renee raised her plastic pepper spray gun and fired. Three pops in the night air.
The plastic pellets filled with caustic gas burst after impacting his chest. The Russian screamed in pain as the gas hit his eyes, then swore loudly. Max was already sprinting forward. He tackled the big Russian by jamming his shoulder into his chest, knocking him off of his feet and into the sand. The Russian crouched on the ground, trying to regain his balance while holding on to his weapon. Max chopped down with the field hockey stick, knocking the gun out of the man’s hands. He then wound up and slammed the stick into the Russian’s face as hard as he could. Lights out. The night vision goggles shattered, and his neck snapped back. He fell limp to the ground, unconscious.
Max heard the other Russian security man calling out from fifty feet away. Renee was now standing next to Max.
Max frantically searched around in the sand for the Russian’s fallen pistol. It was so dark he could barely see. He felt among the clumps of sand and grass, desperate to find the weapon.
There.
He clutched it in his hands. Cold metal, his fingers fitting neatly around the grip and trigger. He kneeled down and aimed at the Russian, who was running towards them.
Max fired three times.
At least one of the rounds must have found its mark, because the man spun around and fell to the ground.
“Come on!” Max called back to Renee as he headed for the empty SUV. He pressed the keyless start button, but nothing happened. He cursed and turned back to Renee.
“Check their pockets for a key fob,” Max said to Renee.
She ran to the unconscious man, found the keyless remote, and headed back towards the SUV.
Headlights lit up the dunes in the distance.
“That’s the other set of Morozov’s security men. It’s got to be. These guys must have radioed them.”
“Hurry, then.”
Max pressed the ignition button and the engine rumbled to life. He cursed as the headlights came on automatically, alerting the incoming vehicle to their presence. The headlights also illuminated the second Russian, the one who’d been spun around when Max had shot him. He was still on the ground, but now he was sitting up, aiming his weapon at Max and Renee from thirty feet away.
The windshield of their vehicle filled with holes as a barrage of bullets whizzed through the glass.
Max instinctively crouched down, put the SUV in drive, and slammed on the gas, turning the wheel hard left. The vehicle accelerated to near fifty miles per hour, moving through the beach sand.
Glancing up in the rearview mirror, Max saw that the other vehicle had stopped to pick up the wounded Russians.
“Where are you going?”
“If we keep following the beach, I think it connects with the road again.”
“I thought this was an island.”
He glanced at her. “Why do women have to question everything?”
She muttered something in French.
“You know I spent several years in France, right? I know the word for stupid.”
Renee began playing with the car’s center display.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the GPS. I want to see if I can find out where they’ve been.”
Smart, Max thought.
In the rearview mirror, Max could see the other SUV catching up now, its headlights springing up and down as it raced over the mounds of sand. The beach ended just ahead. But as he suspected, the road met with the beach at that point.
“I’m going to turn over the dunes and try to make it to the road. Once we get there, we can try and outrun them or get to a police station. They wouldn’t risk making a scene there… I don’t think.”
Their SUV launched itself over the dunes, bouncing hard against the suspension. Renee yelped as they went.
“They’re gaining on us,” she said.
As they reached the road, Max accelerated and turned hard left onto the pavement.
Loud metallic bangs emanated from the rear of the vehicle, and both Max and Renee ducked. Gunshots.
They heard a huge pop as one of the tires burst. Streetlights lit up the road as Max held his foot down on the accelerator and they began crossing the bridge. Bright white light revealed dozens of bullet holes throughout the vehicle. Their vehicle was slumping to one side, and the flat tire was making rhythmic slapping noises as they drove.
“What’s that? Someone’s at the other end of the bridge — who is that?”
Max saw it too. There was a sedan parked across both lanes of traffic near the end of the bridge they were trying to cross.
In front of the sedan stood a woman. She was aiming a large semiautomatic rifle at them.
“I think that’s Charlotte.”
Max looked in his rearview mirror at the SUV behind them, which was just coming onto the bridge.
“You need to ram her or go around her,” Renee said.
“There doesn’t look to be enough room to get around her,” Max said. “And if we ram her, they’ll catch up.” He glanced outside, trying to see where they were. Darkness lay on either side of the bridge. Nothing but a small bay.
“You’re a good swimmer, right?”
“I’m sorry?” She sounded afraid.
“Okay, lower your window and hold on. This is probably going to hurt.”
He swerved hard left and the tires slammed into the short concrete barrier. At the speed they were traveling, the barrier served as a ramp. The SUV left the ground and launched over the metal bridge rail. Max and Renee went weightless as they fell, the engine’s RPMs spooling up without the resistance of the road.
The front of the vehicle impacted the water, and both of them were jolted forward, their seat belts restraining them. The airbags burst open on impact, pounding them both in the face, but minimizing the whiplash.
The vehicle began sinking into the shallow inlet. Max and Renee had lowered their windows several inches before he’d made the jump. The SUV began to fill with rushing water.
The cool water rose above their heads and they sank, fast and quiet. The vehicle hit the seafloor seconds later, at a depth of about fifteen feet.
Max and Renee both unstrapped and swam out and away from the bridge. They were disoriented, but still aware enough to stay underwater as long as possible. After about fifty feet of swimming, Renee tapped Max on the back and signaled that she needed to come up for air.
They broke the surface, for just a moment, gasping for air as quietly as they could, and then went back under, continuing to swim away from the crash scene. Max had taken a snapshot of the bridge in his mind.
Charlotte had been standing near the edge of the bridge, where they had broken through the barrier. She was looking down at the wreckage. The Russian security team was in their SUV behind her.
His instincts told him that Charlotte hadn’t seen them. The streetlights shined bright white light onto the bridge, and the water was quite dark.
Max and Renee continued to swim underwater, both doing a sort of submarine breaststroke. Max’s shoes and clothes were slowing him down, but he didn’t want to take the time to remove them. Renee was indeed a good swimmer. She was keeping up with him no problem. She tapped him on the back again, and they came up for air.
Now they were substantially closer to an uninhabited section of shoreline. In the darkness, it looked like nothing more than a large sandbar with a swath of beach grass on top. They were far enough away from the Russians that they were treading water now, slowly sidestroking their way towards the shore.
“Do you think they saw us?” Renee panted.
“They would have fired at us if they did. It looks like they’re leaving now. They probably don’t want to be around when the police come to investigate the crash.”