Who was she? And how could he escape her?

‘Was it in your bloody plans for those men to show up and start shooting?’ Kristine demanded.

The men in the front remained silent. The driver’s lack of response was for the obvious reason. It took everything he had to dodge the cars as the van screamed down the roadway. Again and again, the SUV swerved, sped, slowed and jumped. Only occasionally did the vehicle hit something, and then never more than a glancing impact.

‘No,’ the hulking man said.

‘Then why were they there?’

‘Our prize is more popular than we anticipated.’ The hulking man shook his head. Blood droplets from his damaged ear spun into the air. ‘It doesn’t matter. Your part in this is done.’

‘Not till I get the other half of my fee,’ Kristine said.

While they sparred, Lourds considered his chances of escape. If he were Harrison Ford in an action picture, he could stand, elbow the hulking man in the face, then open the door and leap out onto the roadside without picking up more than a few scratches from the impact. Sadly, Lourds knew he was no Harrison Ford. He’d break something if he leapt from a vehicle moving at this speed – possibly even his neck. The impact with the pavement would probably skin him alive. And one of the vehicles they were weaving through might run over him. However, judging from the carnage they’d left behind at the airport, he figured he was a dead man if he didn’t do something to change his situation soon.

Nobody was paying him any attention. Maybe it was time to try something.

He’d played soccer since he was a boy. He still played on a university team and joined pickup games wherever he had the opportunity. He was in shape and he was fast. He shoved himself into a crouching position, succeeded in standing on his tangled feet, and slammed his head against the vehicle’s rooftop almost with enough force to knock himself out.

Not exactly what he’d planned, but it was something.

‘What do you think you are doing, pencil neck?’ The hulking man reached for Lourds.

Fuelled by adrenaline and operating on instinct, Lourds shoved an elbow into the hulking man’s face. He’d hoped to knock him out: the blow succeeded only in tearing off another chunk of the man’s tattered ear.

Roaring with pain, the man clapped a hand to his head and swung the machine pistol at Lourds. The barrel struck Lourds’ head with enough force to make him see stars. Unfortunately, the weapon also fired. Reeling from the noise and the pain, Lourds staggered back. The car swerved. Lourdes glanced at the driver. The back of the man’s head had been ripped away. Blood covered the shattered windshield. As Lourds watched in horror, the dead man fell forward over the steering wheel. The horn blared and the SUV swung wildly out of control.

Istanbul Cd

Yesilkoy District

Istanbul, Turkey

15 March 2010

Lourds lunged for the steering wheel. He met with resistance from the guy in the passenger seat. Lourds slammed his throbbing elbow into the man’s head. The guy went down. Dazed, Lourds continued to flail for control and ended up getting soaked in blood from the dead man. His hands slipped on the steering wheel and he watched in growing horror as the SUV sped toward an outside café.

Café patrons scattered, alerted by the SUV’s shrill horn still pressed down by the dead man’s head.

A strap whipped over Lourds’ head and settled at his throat. When the strap tightened, the pressure choked him. For a moment he thought someone was trying to strangle him.

‘Give it up, Professor,’ Kristine yelled in his ear. ‘The bloody car is out of control. Let’s see if we can survive the impending crash, eh?’

Giving in to the strangling seat belt, Lourds fell backwards and landed in the young woman’s lap. If circumstances had been different, it would have been a wonderful place to be. For just the briefest moment, he was aware of the feminine curves beneath and behind him as she shifted and dropped the seat belt across his chest.

You’re about to die and this is going to be the last thing on your mind?

Lourds couldn’t believe himself. Then he had no more time to think because the strap snapped tight round his chest, the woman wrapped her arms round him and buried her face against his back, and the SUV ploughed through the abandoned tables and chairs.

Something hard pressed into Lourds’ groin. Despite his situation, he couldn’t help looking. Kristine’s pistol lay in his lap. Before he could grab the gun, the SUV slammed into the side of the café. The right side of the car crumpled and the bloodstained windshield caved in and became a glittering haze of shrapnel ricocheting inside the SUV. Like a dazed boxer, the SUV rebounded from the wall and careened back toward the busy street. Lourds felt the shock of the impact all the way through his body. But the van rolled on. No sooner had the SUV rolled back into the street than a produce truck collided with it on the left side. More pain.

But he was still alive. The pain made that clear.

The crumpled side of the SUV dropped and Lourds thought he felt the front wheel roll away. With mass and speed on the side of the cargo truck, the SUV sagged and rolled over like a submissive hound before its master.

Lourds braced himself against the ceiling, but he and Kristine were thrown across the vehicle’s interior. Feeling cut in half by the seat belt, Lourds dangled. He watched in horror through the broken window as the right side of the hulking man’s face was ground away on the rough street as the SUV skidded along the pavement. The hulking man screamed briefly in agony before the shrieks stopped. The SUV continued careening down the street. Lourds fought to stay away from the huge hideously dead corpse. He feared the body would be reduced to scraps and then he’d share the same horrible fate.

Then both vehicles came to a stop.

The sudden lack of movement seemed almost inconceivable after the last few seconds, but the terrible sounds of screeching metal and human screams continued echoing inside Lourds’ head.

We’re alive! he thought.

Then he looked at the ground-up corpse and the driver with part of his head missing.

Well, some of us are still alive.

‘Get up,’ Kristine ordered.

Lourds didn’t move. ‘You’ve got your pistol in my crotch.’

Kristine moved the pistol. ‘Get up.’

Lourds tried, but the strap was too tight with his weight against it. He couldn’t pull free. ‘I can’t. The strap’s-’

A short combat knife flashed in the young woman’s hand. The strap parted like butter under its keen edge.

She has a knife, Lourdes thought. A very sharp knife…

It terrified him even more than the gun.

The strap’s release caught Lourds off-guard. He fell onto the hulking man’s bleeding body. Before he could recoil, Kristine fell on top of him, then swung round, kicking him in the head in her haste, and stood. She pocketed the knife, shoved the pistol into the back of her waistband, and turned her attention to the broken door, currently above her head.

A familiar sickly sweet odour tickled his nostrils.

‘Do you smell gasoline?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Wetness slid under the hulking man’s corpse. Lourds hesitantly touched it and sniffed his finger. It was definitely gasoline. The smell overpowered even the stench of blood and death.

‘There’s gasoline under us,’ he said.

‘The impact must have ruptured the gas tank. Give me a hand with this door.’

‘No! All we need is a spark, possibly from messing with that jammed door, and we could be burned alive.’

‘Do you really think just sitting here is our best option, Professor? Haven’t you realized there’s worse out there than fire?’

Lourds didn’t say so to his weapon-toting keeper, but he thought waiting for help was an incredibly intelligent idea.