The police fired first, but they were nervous, inexperienced, and nowhere near as well trained. The gunfight lasted all of four seconds. The policemen's bullets went wild as Douglas and Taleb hit their targets with nearly every shot.
However, the noise of the Chinese policemen's shots thundered through the early morning streets, and dozens of apartments lit up as residents awoke and looked outside to see what was going on.
"We must be going, Colonel.” Taleb said the words with his characteristic calm, but there was no hiding the urgency of the situation. Any one of the apartment residents could spot the white, unmarked van, and then the chase would be on.
Douglas and Taleb walked briskly to their car, hoping that, by not running, they wouldn't attract as much attention.
Back at our base, Fei had brushed aside the low-level encryption of the police radio frequency and was listening intently. "Shit, those cops were at the apartment building responding to a suspected robbery. Our guys were the only ones they saw walking out of the building, so they assumed Douglas and Taleb were the robbers."
Trying to sound reassuring, I said, "Hopefully no one got a good enough look at their van to identify it."
Inside one minute, Fei pressed his headphones tighter and said, "No such luck. Several eyewitnesses report shots fired by European-looking men in front of an apartment complex on Taijang Road, two policemen down. Suspects seen fleeing the scene in an unmarked white van, license plate… shit, they've got it all. They're dispatching a dozen cars to the area."
Acid rose in my stomach. I triggered the radio. "You hear all that Douglas?"
Douglas replied, "Yes, sir. Once we get to the G70 highway we can drive far enough away that we can change the license plate and paint job with the tools in the boot. We just need five undisturbed minutes to get it done. Keep us posted on what we're facing, and we can get out of this."
I replied, "Roger that."
Taleb said reassuringly, "Do not worry, sir. I have been evading policemen my whole life. This is why I am here."
Douglas was driving, and through his glasses camera video feed, I could see his strategy. He drove as ordinarily as he could, striving for anonymity. He turned onto the Sanxianzhou Bridge, heading south to the highway about five miles away. If he could get to the G70, he could quickly clear the area before more reinforcements arrived.
"Uh oh," Fei said. "The police are getting automatic reports from the surveillance cameras on the streets. They're radioing out constant updates on Douglas and Taleb's location."
"Bloody hell," Douglas cursed over the radio. "Time for Plan B." He stomped on the accelerator, swerving through the sparse traffic, moving as fast as possible for the highway.
Taleb said flatly, "We have company."
Two police cruisers had emerged into visibility about a hundred yards behind the van. Ironically, the police vehicles were Fords. Their lights and sirens announced their intention quite clearly.
“Keep them back, Mohammed,” Douglas said, anxiety evident in his voice.
“Yes, sir.” Taleb unscrewed the silencers from his pistol, then reached over to Douglas's and did the same. The silencers reduced muzzle velocity, making the weapons less powerful, and Taleb would need every advantage he could get. He stuffed one of the pistols into his belt and held onto the other.
The Palestinian climbed into the back of the van and opened one of the two rear doors. By now, the police cars were directly behind the van.
Taleb wasted no time. The bouncing and swerving of the van ruined several shots, but by taking careful aim, he took out the front left tires on both of the police cars using only one clip of ammunition.
Each police car had two policemen, and the passenger in each fired back. Taleb took cover behind the closed rear door, reloading his pistol. It would take a minute or two, but with their tires shot out, the police cars would eventually have to break off the pursuit, unable to keep up with the van when their tires were riding on the rims.
The Chinese policemen, figuring out Taleb's strategy, started aiming for the van's rear tires. Taleb had no intention of allowing them an easy shot, however. He emerged from behind the closed door and fired seven shots at the passenger in the police car on the left. That policeman, who had been leaning out the window trying to get a shot at the van's rear-right tire, took two rounds in the chest and shoulder and dropped his pistol on the street. The driver of that police car slammed on the brakes, frantic to save his wounded partner.
“HANG ON!” Douglas shouted as he swerved to avoid another police car approaching from the front of the van. Douglas maneuvered the car into the two lanes of incoming traffic.
The police cars followed him into the wrong lane, but the driver with the shot-out front tire had difficulty steering correctly. He slammed into an oncoming vehicle at a combined speed of nearly a hundred miles per hour, killing both of the Chinese policemen and the civilian motorist instantly.
The remaining Chinese police car pulled alongside the van on the right side, trying to get a clean shot at Douglas. The Scotsman instinctively swerved the van to the right, slamming into the smaller Chinese police car and driving it off the road into the trees lining Shangdu Road.
“Well done, Colonel,” Taleb said, catching his breath. “I am retrieving some of our heavier weapons. There will be many more police here shortly.”
Taleb barely had time to lift the lid one of the crates in the back of the van and retrieve one such weapon when three more police cars came careening through traffic behind the van. “Colonel, please hold us steady for a moment.”
“They'll shoot out the bloody tires if I do that!”
“Trust me, they will not have enough time.”
Douglas swore, but pulled into the correct lane and allowed the police cars to approach to within about forty yards of the van.
Taleb held a cylindrical metal object that looked roughly like an American football with the last three inches cut off of one end. The device, called the Needle by the Taiwanese scientists who developed it, had a pin at the tapered end. Taleb pulled the pin on the Needle, took aim at the middle of the three police cars behind the van, and threw the Needle.
The Needle hit the ground in front of the police car, as Taleb had intended. Though the sequence of events was too fast for Taleb to fully process, the Needle bounced once off the asphalt of the street, which turned on a powerful capacitor inside the device. The current from that capacitor induced a powerful magnetic field on the flat end of the device. When the Needle hit the front bumper of the police vehicle, the flat end latched on. If an observer could have slowed down time and taken a picture, it would look as if the police car had a small gray traffic cone latched onto its front bumper.
The Needle, sensing that the latching was complete, set off its charge.
The inside of the Needle was shaped like a cone, with the point touching the side closest to the vehicle. The explosives within that cone detonated, and the cone shape pushed all of the energy from the blast to the narrow-end of the device. A lead penetrator sat at the point of the cone, and when the superheated gas of the explosion reached the end of the cone, the penetrator shot out.
Using the explosive's energy, the penetrator sliced through the thin skin of the car, the engine, the passenger compartment, the gas tank, and the trunk of the vehicle. This process destroyed the engine, and started a massive gasoline fire, completely disabling the vehicle before its occupants even knew what had happened.
The Needle had been developed by Taiwan for use in urban guerilla warfare against Chinese tanks, but it worked just fine against cars as well. The sophisticated sensors and capacitor had allowed the Taiwanese to develop what was essentially a hand-held tank killer grenade.