The Darkest Day (23 page)

It took him an extra few seconds to identify them. He identified them because they used neither umbrellas nor phones and by their clothes, their postures and their actions. They were looking for him and Raven, and looking hard, drawn to the area by the police presence. Maybe they had access to police radios or scanners or were just receiving updates by cooperating agencies.

The specifics did not matter for the time being. What mattered was avoiding them.

He hadn’t seen these guys before. But that wasn’t surprising given the numbers Halleck had access too. These guys looked new. They looked and acted like a competent team brought in at short notice and asked to do a difficult job in difficult circumstances.

One guy with black-framed glasses neared him, gaze sweeping back and forth, intense and thorough. The suppressed Ruger in the guy’s shoulder rig made the canvas jacket bulge. Victor lowered himself to one knee and retied his shoelaces until the man had passed by. Raven drifted away a little so they did not look like they were together.

The team was all male, all fit and in shape, all wearing casual civilian attire. They were working in pairs, three mini-teams converging on their location from different directions.

Whichever direction Victor and Raven headed, they would risk crossing one of the teams’ line of sight. Halleck’s men had been effective at spreading out across the plaza and implementing a sweeping pattern that offered few avenues to chance. But to wait would mean getting trapped between all six and a guarantee of eventual discovery. They had no choice but to go.

Victor timed his move, approaching an arcade on the plaza’s west side using cover provided by a cute young couple with matching umbrellas. He passed behind one of the two-man teams, close enough to hear one say:

‘… we better get double for this…’

As Victor and Raven drew near to the arcade entrance he had to veer away from the cute couple, but saw he had made it far enough in cover that he was going to get through unobserved by the six men. But another problem was waiting for them. Standing to one side of the entrance, in the shelter of an awning, was a squat cop with a huge stomach and neat moustache, who had removed the plastic lid from his waxed takeaway cup and was blowing on the surface of the hot coffee it contained.

Don’t look up
, Victor willed as he neared.

The cop’s eyes were focused on the coffee. He lips were wet and pursed. Steam rose into the air.

When Victor and Raven were less than ten metres away the cop raised the cup and sipped. He grimaced, the coffee too hot despite his attempts to cool it, and glanced up.

Right at Victor.

The cop blinked and looked away in an idle sweep of his surroundings while he waited for the coffee to cool. Victor and Raven continued towards the arcade, now only five metres from the cop.

Who glanced back, a line of curiosity forming between his eyebrows as he searched his memory banks for why Victor looked familiar.

When he was two metres from passing out of the cop’s line of sight, it seemed as if he wouldn’t be recognised, but as he entered the arcade Victor saw, via the reflection in the plate glass of a storefront, the cop leaning over to place his coffee cup on the ground, and follow.

The cop followed them into the arcade.

The cop had not reached for his radio. He had not yet called it in. No backup was on the way. He was not sure about Victor. The curiosity had yet to become recognition. The squat cop had no wish to report a false sighting. He wanted to find out more before acting one way or the other.

For that, he needed to get close.

Victor went to one knee as if to tie his shoelaces again. Raven kept walking. Victor left his laces alone while he listened to the footsteps approaching, using the loudening sound to picture the cop at four metres, then three, before stopping two metres behind him.

‘Excuse me, sir…’

Had he been closer, Victor could have sprung up as the cop’s shadow fell over him, driving a fist into the cop’s abdomen and a palm strike into the cop’s jaw, taking him out of action fast and clean and maybe before anyone else saw what was happening. But the cop had stopped a tactical distance away. He was not sure about Victor’s identity, but he was not stupid either.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ the cop said again. ‘Can you turn around and show me some ID, please?’

Victor did not turn round, because he wanted the cop to only see his face when he was standing and ready to act. He rose, nice and slow so as not to scare the cop and draw an unnecessary reaction.

He turned.

The cop’s gaze met his own. The cop recognised him.

There was no mistaking the reaction, which gave Victor a split second to act as the cop went for the pistol holstered on his belt.

Victor launched forward, driving an elbow into the cop’s jaw.

His teeth cracked together and his head snapped back and he tipped over backwards, unconscious before he knew he had been hit.

Victor caught him so he didn’t slam the back of his head on the ground. A hit like that on an unconscious brain could kill.

He lowered the cop down and into a recovery position as if he were nothing more than a good Samaritan, glad no one seemed to have seen the attack and not too surprised by this. City folk more often than not went out of their way not to see trouble.

As he stood again, he heard a cry. A child, closer to the ground and not jaded by city life, saw the unconscious cop and the blood pooling out of his mouth. The child burst into tears.

The mother looked to see what had upset her child, and gasped.

Other people reacted and turned and stared at the cop, and in doing so at Victor.

He didn’t speak. There was nothing he could say to change the fact he was standing over a knocked-out police officer.
He fell
wasn’t going to cut it. No explanation was going to convince anyone they weren’t seeing what was right before their eyes.

He ignored the accusing stares and hurried away to where Raven waited for him. A teenager turned his phone in Victor’s direction to take a picture or record or whatever else kids did. Victor snatched it from the teen’s hand and hurled it at the closest wall. It smashed into pieces.

‘
HEY, MAN
.
What the
—
’

Victor ran.

He didn’t have to look back to know someone from the team in the nearby plaza would have seen or heard the commotion and if not pursuing right now would be in moments.

He followed Raven, vaulting over a barrier at the end of the arcade and on to the road. They weaved through the slow-moving traffic to the other side of the street.

Victor heard the roar of revving engines and ahead of him two black Audi sedans turned a corner on to the street, bright xenon headlights sweeping over him. The cars roared closer, then swerved to pull over, tyres sounding a squelch of temporary resistance on the wet asphalt. Doors were open before the cars had stopped. More men in dark clothes spilled out. Four – two from each Audi.

Victor and Raven took a sharp change of direction, crossing the street, heading east.

The men followed, jogging while signalling commands and relaying updates via wrist-mikes to the team in the plaza. At least he hoped that was the case and there were not even more out there to cut him off.

The street sloped at maybe fifteen degrees. Buildings dark with grime and pollution, made darker by the blackout, lined the road. Vehicles were parked nose-to-tail along the kerbs.

Victor increased his pace to a run. Raven did the same. The team had seen them. They were following. There was no point trying to remain inconspicuous. He dashed across the street. On the far side the slogan on the huge billboard stretching wide above a bank was unreadable.

The men sprinted. He heard the clatter of their shoes on the asphalt behind. They were fit and fast and determined to catch them or kill them and succeed and receive praise and glory and promotion. But his determination was to survive and remain free, and no other potential reward could equal that most basic of motivations. Raven had to have the same desire, else her need to stop Halleck was as strong.

They ran under signs, once illuminated, hanging dull and lifeless. They passed through the warm yellow glow spilled out from a bar’s windows; inside hundreds of candles had been lit to keep the business running. The front door had been wedged open to let the cold air in to counteract the heat of all the flickering flames.

Behind them, the men shoved people aside who were too slow to move or too wrapped up in their own existence to notice what was going on. A coffee cup was knocked from a woman’s hand.

Victor leaped over a pushchair and skidded round a corner. A guy walking his Rhodesian ridgeback almost collided with Raven and hurled four-letter words as they ran past.

The dog barked as their pursuers rushed by a few seconds later.

He ran fast, breathing hard, breath clouding in the cold.

He felt himself pulling away from them. He had a sprinter’s pace and a marathon runner’s endurance fuelled by the unparalleled will to survive. He could outrun the men, but not their bullets if they opted to shoot him down on the street. The two Audis were out there as well, unseen for now, but closing in. It was only a matter of time before they became trapped between the Audis and the men pursuing them on foot.

On the next street, when they had created enough distance, Raven hailed a cab and it pulled over in front of them. She gestured to the driver – a nonsense hand movement, but enough to distract – and approached the driver’s window, mouth open as if struggling to find the words or with a language barrier.

The window descended so the driver could better hear. He was a skinny Indian guy in a string vest, arms and shoulders covered in dark hair, teeth bright and crooked.

Still gesturing with one hand, Raven wrenched open the door with the other. The driver, distracted, was too slow to react and stop it from happening. By the time he understood his predicament, Raven was dragging him from his seat and throwing him to the road surface.

She ignored the man’s cries of protest and climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the door shut. Victor jumped into the passenger seat.

Flashing lights alerted him to the approaching cop car.

The blue-and-white cruiser skidded to a lateral stop in front of the taxi before Raven had a chance to pull away, blocking the road with no space to accelerate around it.

Two cops exited, fast and smooth, rushing towards them with guns drawn and cocked, leaving the driver and passenger doors open in their hurry. They shouted at Victor and Raven in two voices of overlapping contradictory commands to freeze and put their hands in the air and get out of the vehicle and stay where they fucking were and not to do anything at all.

Victor waited, acting scared, with Raven performing a similar routine of passivity, as the cop from the far side of the cruiser circled around the bonnet to join his partner.

As one, they came forward.

Raven ducked low and put the transmission into reverse and stamped the accelerator.

The front wheels spun and shrieked. A plume of tyre smoke and rainwater mist clouded in front of the taxi, spraying and blinding the two nearby cops for an instant, so when they fired their handguns the bullets went high. One cracked a hole through the raised sign on the roof, scattering fragments of glass and plastic over the bonnet.

When the taxi had reached fifteen miles per hour Raven pulled the handbrake and swung the wheel, spinning tyres flaring up rainwater, before changing up to drive and accelerating. By the time the taxi finished its tyre-screeching one-eighty, she was speeding away. Glass and plastic fragments from the bonnet scattered on the asphalt behind them.

The two cops dashed back to their cruiser.

The road surface was slick with rainwater. The cab’s tyres threw up huge sprays of it while the wipers worked hard to keep the windscreen clear. They sped past the team in pursuit on foot. The four men from the two Audis stood impotent on the pavement, shouting at each other and into their wrist microphones. But with cops nearby no one drew a weapon to shoot.

Ahead, another cruiser was rushing towards them, racing fast and weaving between the cars in the opposite lane.

Raven took a hard right, the oncoming cruiser following seconds later. An orange Mazda coupe appeared at the intersection ahead. She veered around it, deft and assured, but the cop car clipped the Mazda on the rear end, shearing off its chrome bumper and sending it cartwheeling along the street.

A white four-door sedan swerved to avoid the bumper, and in doing so collided into the back of the Mazda. Brake-light glass exploded into a cloud of glittering red. Tyre smoke swirled. The boot shot open, dented and distorted. A detached alloy hub cab spun end over end.

The driver of an oncoming delivery van managed to swerve around the crash as the coupe was sent into a spin.

Raven accelerated down a side street, a second NYPD blue-and-white now in pursuit. Another nearby patrol car called in to assist. The two cops who had taken shots at them would have little chance of catching up now, but others like this one could be on the way. She veered to the left, slipping into a bisecting road, speeding past townhouses and tenements and trees that lined the road.

Up ahead, vehicles were slowing and pulling over in reaction to the nearing cop car and the flashing lights and blaring sirens. Brown leaves scattered and swirled as they shot by in the taxi.

The driver of the nearest cruiser was caught off guard and went shooting past the turning. The second car, further behind and with more time for the driver to react, braked as it neared and slid into the corner, wheels spinning and tyres smoking, but losing ground on them.

Screeching rubber alerted Raven an instant before a panel van collided into the passenger side of the taxi as she sped across a four-way intersection.

The van caught the cab on the rear fender, crumpling the metal siding and sending the vehicle into a spin. A passenger window exploded and the rear windscreen popped out and flipped end over end until it hit the asphalt and disintegrated.

Victor tensed against the force trying to throw him around as Raven controlled the wheel and accelerated out of the spin, leaving the van driver staring aghast at her from out of a lowered window.

The spin had given the cops time to catch up and Raven manoeuvred at speed round the slow-moving traffic. Horns sounded and drivers yelled at her. The impact with the van had canted a rear wheel and Victor felt the immediate loss of power and control. The damage caused the rear tyres to lose traction on the slick road and she had to fight the wheel and ease off the accelerator to prevent the swerves becoming a spin.

Raven braked and changed down to slip through denser traffic, tyres protesting against the erratic back and forth movements. She sent the car into the opposite lane, making the oncoming vehicles swerve and brake to avoid her as they raced towards them.

The two cruisers followed, close behind. Headlights and brake lights reflected off the water misting behind the taxi. Raven swerved to avoid a truck. In the rear-view, their pursuers did likewise, one cruiser going to the right of the truck as Raven had, the second going around the left.

But the cops going left didn’t have the room they thought and the cruiser’s nose, crushed between the truck and a parked car, came to a sudden, juddering halt.

One cruiser remaining.

Raven took a hard left, clipping a parked sedan as she did, shearing off a wing mirror as the taxi rebounded away, tyres smoking, into the oncoming lane. A Lincoln Town Car braked in time to miss the speeding taxi, but an SUV coming up behind crashed into the back of the Lincoln, crumpling the car’s rear end and knocking it forward so it clipped the taxi on the passenger side. Victor jolted in his seat. The front bumper was ripped away. Headlight glass and fragments of metal and plastic sparkled as they passed in spinning patterns through the headlights.

The taxi spun away while the Lincoln careered up the kerb and into a trash can, sending it skyward. Pedestrians ran out of the way as the can came crashing back to earth.

Raven wrestled with the controls and against the force of the spin. Rubber squealed against wet asphalt, painting wild black patterns before she had regained control enough to stop the vehicle colliding with a parked removal van.

The police cruiser was right on them now, no more than half a car length behind. Sirens wailed. Victor glanced back to see the cop in the passenger seat shouting into a radio.

A motorcyclist, weaving fast around the traffic, saw the taxi too late and turned too hard to avoid it. The bike tipped on to its side and grinded along the road, the rider sliding and rolling behind it amid a trail of sparks.

Alarms and horns were sounding all around them as Raven accelerated away, avoiding the rider who lay alive but groaning near the crashed Town Car. A confetti of glass covered the road surface, glinting and sparkling in the wash of headlights.

The cop driving the chasing cruiser didn’t see the rider until he was almost hitting him. Smoke billowed from screeching tyres, but braking wasn’t going to be enough to avoid running the man over. The driver wrenched the wheel and the cruiser missed the rider by inches, jumping the kerb and ploughing into a fire hydrant, knocking it over, sending a jet of pressurised water skyward.

Within seconds the cruiser was a dot in the taxi’s rear-view.

A truck passed over the intersection ahead, blocking the way. Raven slammed the brakes and slid the taxi into the mouth of an alleyway, losing the remaining wing mirror as she did.

In the narrow confines of the alleyway, the cab’s exhaust roared loud and fierce. Metal screeched against brickwork. Sparks brightened the darkness.

They emerged out of the other side, skidding into the line of traffic.

Two oncoming cars swerved and braked as the taxi appeared ahead of them, shunting into each other with a scrape and crunch of denting metal. Crossing pedestrians fled from the careering vehicle, some throwing themselves to the pavement to avoid being hit.

Slow-moving traffic hampered their route. To get caught up in gridlock meant certain death or capture, but there was nowhere to turn. Besides, the taxi was a wreck. It couldn’t take much more punishment.

Raven said, ‘We need to switch.’

‘Do it.’

She switched lanes and slowed until they were three metres behind a silver Chrysler, tough and powerful, as if she had chosen to push on through the jam, and put the cab into neutral.

It collided with the Chrysler’s rear bumper hard enough to cause a dent, but not moving fast enough to do any serious damage to either vehicle.

Victor heard the Chrysler’s driver scream in rage and he jumped out of his vehicle. Victor and Raven climbed out too.

The driver was big with weight training and steroids, his good suit tight and straining to contain the swollen musculature.

‘What the holy fuck?’

He reached out to shove Raven, who was closer. She grabbed the hand and twisted it into a goose-neck wristlock.

The Chrysler driver yelled through gritted teeth as she put him to the ground.

‘Stay down,’ she said, then to Victor: ‘Would you like to drive?’

The man did as he was told, cradling his damaged wrist, as Victor jumped behind the wheel of the Chrysler and Raven climbed into the passenger seat. Putting the transmission in reverse, Victor pushed back the taxi in neutral gear until there was room to manoeuvre out of the line of traffic. He cut between the gridlocked cars in the other lane.

Ahead of him were two black Audi sedans.