Then a sound behind him. Getting louder. At first its significance didn’t register. Zaheer knew he was dying from the gunshot wound, and just as the glorious task that lay ahead had summoned whatever was left of his fleshly powers, he had summoned what remained of his inner life force to answer the call. Everything outside had been pushed from his thoughts as extraneous, a waste of precious strength. But perhaps he had been wrong.
Perhaps…
There had been the one in the car at the motel.
The one Earl had thought might be a watcher.
Zaheer listened again. Or rather focused on what he could not do anything but hear. That sound. No… sounds. The combined drone of rapidly accelerating engines. Revving fast in slow traffic. How could the two be reconciled?
Zaheer pulled his mind from the tunnel around it long enough to grasp what was happening, looked into his sideview mirror, and saw the motorcycles swarming up from behind.
The curve of the exit ramp within eyeshot, Zaheer slapped his hand on the wheel, blasting the cars ahead of him with his horn.
He was determined to reach the exit ramp before the infidels could overtake him.
Three-quarters of an hour late for her sales-clerk job at the Rariton Mall’s Fashion Bee, a job she’d landed just a week ago in the tightest of employment markets, Johanna Hearns was already about to come apart behind the wheel over being stuck in traffic, pound the dash and scream like a madwoman in a fit of frustration, when the idiotic driver of the U-Haul behind her started in with his horn, signaling he wanted to get off at the exit a car or two up ahead of her.
Johanna shook her head, spewing a string of epithets that would have astonished her husband with their inventiveness — and he thought he knew them all, hardy-fucking-har. What did Chief Dirty Ballsucker in the van think? That he was the only one in a hurry? That she was deliberately holding him up because she liked sitting bumper-to-bumper breathing in the smell of exhaust fumes and Jersey swamp air? Or that maybe she just couldn’t get enough of Imus in the Morning on her car radio? And while she was making with the relevant questions, here was another: that honking nut job aside, where the fuck were the cops when you needed them?
Johanna did some Lamaze to keep her cool, a holdover from courses she’d taken when her youngest was born. Mr. U-Haul was in such a rush to get to charming Trenton, she’d get her own flashers going, hope somebody in the left lane was decent enough to hang back so she could shift into it, and let him go on his merry way.
Stay cool, stay cool, Johanna thought, and slapped on her signal.
She only hoped the van driver choked on his next meal.
“That’s our van,” Ricci said over the radio channel linking his bike team. “I see the plate number.”
“Son of a bitch.” This over the radio from Cole, one of the ops behind Ricci. “He’s riding his horn to the ramp, getting those people up ahead to move.”
Ricci zigzagged between lanes.
“Squeeze him,” he said, and shot forward.
The last of the vehicles in front of him finally out of his way, Zaheer had almost reached the exit ramp when the attack bikes began to catch up. He checked his side-views, saw several of them closing in on both sides from the rear, the two in the lead nearly at his flanks.
Gunning his engine, he took a jarring turn onto the 25 mph ramp at double the permitted speed.
Gaining, gaining, gaining.
Ricci fisted a surge of gas into his cycle’s engine, took the exit ramp between the left side of the U-Haul and the concrete barrier to his left, roping along on the narrow shoulder.
He pulled even with the driver’s window, was able to snatch a glance inside.
The dark-suit at the wheel looked back at him — and in his brief distraction started slewing from side to side on the ramp.
Ricci dropped back an instant before the van’s flank would have run him into the barricade, saw Glenn do the same as the U-Haul veered to the right. Too close behind Glenn, one of the other riders lost control of his bike and took a vaulting jump over the barricade. The cycle flipped over sideways, hurling its rider from his banana seat to whatever was below the ramp.
Ricci heard his screaming begin over the wireless, heard it peak, then heard it abruptly stop.
“God almighty.” Glenn’s shocked voice in his ear now. “God almighty.”
“Cole,” Ricci said. “You hear me?”
“Yeah. That was Margolis. Shit, I think he—”
“Don’t think, just pull off and stay with him. The rest of you follow me.”
Ricci’s temples pounded. For a millisecond he was back in Earthglow, Nichols dying in his arms, turned into a sack of blood by the Wildcat. Ricci had felt something turn inside him. Grinding like a great stone wheel. I’m here with you, he’d told the kid. Be easy.
A millisecond.
It never ended.
Ricci saw the van pulling off the ramp ahead of him, and followed.
Grappling with the steering wheel at the bottom of the ramp, trying to keep it from wrenching out of his hands, Zaheer suddenly tasted blood. Coppery blood in his mouth, coming up from deep inside his body. There was a moment of greater weakness, his consciousness fading to gray.
Then he remembered the mission, the glory, and summoned himself again.
Al-hamdu lillahi, he mouthed silently. Repeatedly. Al-hamdu lillahi.
Feeling God guide his hand, Zaheer swung off the ramp, and as his eyes cleared, realized he’d turned the wrong way onto the boulevard into which it fed and was shooting into oncoming traffic.
The bikes were pouring off the exit ramp behind the van when it took its wide, erratic swing against the rush of traffic, then suddenly went screeching around in a U-turn.
Ricci heard a cacophonous outburst of horns as the stream of cars and trucks skidded and parted, saw two cars sideswipe while unsuccessfully veering to avoid a collision. There were screeches, a sickening crash, and then the van looped back in the right direction, roaring toward Ricci and the others, forcing them to scatter out of its way as it plunged ahead through two red lights and then barreled down a side street.
Zaheer recalled the turns he’d made before, recognized the factories and corporate signs.
With the motorcycles behind him still, Zaheer pushed his foot against the accelerator, believing he would now have an advantage… if only an advantage of a few minutes. He had taken this route before — would the same be true for them?
A handful of minutes, yes. All he would need was minutes to hold them off. Minutes, and he could trigger the Dragonfly cannon.
Zaheer barreled down a street to his left, then took a right, a second right, another left, and at last saw Raja’s employee lot ahead. The evil droning song of the motorcycles had briefly grown fainter at his rear as he’d left the turnpike, but he could hear it growing louder again, and knew he would have no chance to reach the intersection with the abandoned gas station.