Kara stepped on the gas, and Kornev positioned himself into an upright position in the backseat.
Ahead was the closed garage door. Kara began pushing all the extraneous buttons on the panel above the windshield. An overhead light snapped on, and the passenger reading light came on. But the garage door remained closed.
“If it doesn’t open, I will have to ram it,” Kara told Kornev.
“No way,” Kornev told her. “It’s a hurricane door. It won’t fail.”
Kornev reached over the front seat and pressed one of three buttons that protruded from under the rear-view mirror. The garage door immediately began to rise.
Kara looked at the button Kornev had pressed, making a mental note of the location of the button used to open the garage door. It would be useful information for the next time she was in a Suburban with a Russian arms dealer, while being chased by the twin brother of a terrorist on an isolated island inside a massive garage.
Her eyes shifted from the button to her rear-view mirror.
She saw a white door open and saw Baako enter the garage. He looked toward the sound of the SUV and loud garage door. He raised the Sig and pointed it at the fleeing vehicle.
“Get down.” Kara warned Kornev before Baako pulled the trigger. The back windshield of the SUV shattered, and Kornev’s left earlobe was clipped free, flew forward, and stuck to the inside of the front windshield. The bullet had wedged itself into the thick padded dashboard of the vehicle. Kornev grabbed the side of his head and cupped his ear with his left hand. He grimaced in pain and then checked his hand. He was bleeding, but he was grateful his head hadn’t been positioned two inches further to the left. He would have still been bleeding, but he wouldn’t have been alive to know it.
Kara cranked the wheel hard to the right. She heard two more gunshots as she blasted onto the driveway. She turned the Suburban sharply to the left, and the SUV danced for an instant on two wheels before it succumbed to gravity. Kara straightened out the wheel and pointed the car toward the road leading to the runway.
The sudden turn caught Kornev by surprise. Still pinching closed the bottom of his ear with one hand, he flailed out with his other arm to stop his fall, but it hadn’t helped. He ended up on the floorboard in the backseat — facedown and wedged between the seats.
“You better put on your seat belt,” Kara yelled back at him. “And what the hell is this glob on the windshield? What body part are you missing?”
Having to use both of his arms to extricate himself from the floor, Kornev sat back up and told Kara, “It’s a piece of my ear.”
Up ahead, Kara saw a fork in the road and said, “That’s got to hurt. Should we go right or left?” she asked. “I can’t remember.”
Kornev looked confused for a moment and told her, “Right, I think. But, where are you trying to go?”
“For a start, I want to get the hell off this island,” Kara shot back. “Our best bet is the airfield. Hail might be able to help us if his drones have some open ground to work with.”
In her rear-view mirror, Kara saw a pair of white Land Rovers turn onto the road behind her. She pressed harder on the accelerator, yet cautiously, understanding if the big SUV fishtailed, there was little she could do to recover. The Land Rovers behind them were smaller, faster, and could corner better. Then she saw something else in her rear-view mirror that she disliked even more than the Land Rovers. Each Land Rover had a machine gun mounted to their roll bars. A black soldier appeared from behind the gun in the lead vehicle. He reached out and unhooked the gun from its latch that secured it to a fixed position. Kara watched as he pointed the gun at her Suburban and prepared to fire the weapon.
“Ah, damn,” Kara exclaimed.
Kornev was getting ready to ask what? when his question was answered with automatic gunfire. The bullets thudded into the back hatch of the Suburban. But none of the bullets penetrated the cab.
Kara looked hopeful and yelled, “This SUV must have some type of armored protection. Those .50 caliber bullets would have killed us if it was an unarmored SUV.”
Kornev pinched closed his earlobe and said, “The metal might be armored, but the glass isn’t.” He poked up his head to take a quick peek at the vehicles pursuing them.
The SUV and the Land Rovers now threaded through the dense jungle on an extremely narrow road. It wasn’t built for more than one vehicle at a time. In addition, the road had deep pits and shallows worn into the jungle floor. It was challenging for any vehicle to maintain control when driving at these speeds.
The man who had been firing the heavy machine gun from the Land Rover continued to fire more volleys at the SUV. The gun jumped around wildly on its mount as its tires hopped and skipped over the road’s potholes.
Kara fought to keep from bouncing and skidding out of control. One small miscalculation, and they would slam into the thick banyan trees lining the edges of the road.
Kara could see a clearing ahead.
Kornev yelled to Kara, “You should be coming up to the runway.”
“Yeah, how can I forget?” Kara asked sarcastically. “Lovely fricken trip you planned for us. You really know how to treat a girl, you Russian scumbag.”
Kara was happy that she could finally tell Kornev exactly what she thought of him. During the last few days having to pretend Kornev was the best thing since the Internet had been its own type of torture. Even if they were going to die, at least that repugnant part of her life was over. Thank God!
Ahead of them, Kara could see the runway was elevated. The road they were on was much lower than the surface of the airstrip which made perfect sense. The water table on the island was very high. To prevent the runway from flooding and becoming unusable, it had to be built on an elevated levy. Just before the road met the runway, it ramped up quickly onto the asphalt landing strip.
As Kara rocketed up the ramp at 65 miles per hour, all four tires of the 6000-pound vehicle left the ground. Kornev was taking another look behind them when the SUV became airborne. The law of inertia sent Kornev flying even as the heavy vehicle was coming back down. When the SUV bottomed out, Kornev’s head smacked into the roof of the vehicle with a thud.
“Goddamn it!” the Russian wailed in pain.
“I told you to put on your damn seat belt,” Kara said patronizingly.
Kara spun the wheel hard to the right. The SUV shuddered and centered itself on the long runway.
“When you get to the end of the runway, there is a little road that leads to the only bridge that will get us off this island,” Kornev yelled, touching the lump on the top of his head, and then checking his hand for blood.
Kara looked at the Land Rovers in her rear-view mirror. The first one was flying up onto the runway.
“We’re not going to make it,” she told Kornev. “We’re sitting ducks on this runway. Hell, if I was behind one of those guns, I could take us out in less than fifteen seconds.”
The second Land Rover jumped onto the runway. Both vehicles now turned toward the SUV and drew up alongside one another. Each of the drivers pressed their pedals to the floor as they accelerated down the runway in pursuit of the SUV.
Kara saw two men pop up behind their machine guns. The width of the runway allowed the pursuing vehicles to spread out. They were now running side by side, and no longer in each other’s line of fire. Kara looked closer. She was certain that one of the men behind the guns was Baako. And, he was smiling again.
The .50 caliber Baako was manning opened up, and the big gun violently shook his arms. The only defensive action Kara could make was to press her foot all the way down to the floor.
Rond Point Port — Aboard the Hail Proton