Kindred Intentions (14 page)

 The quite regular surface allowed the vehicle
to proceed more smoothly, but it was evident that he was struggling to keep it
straight. A slight change in the terrain was enough to make the car swerve
unexpectedly. The more they went on, the more he was shaking his head,
accompanying his driving with grimaces.

All at once the sound of the motorbike engines
emerged from the woods. Amelia turned to one side, then to the other. She tried
to look forward and backward, but couldn’t see them. “Where are they?”

“Around here.” He leant forward with his head.
“Their headlights are off, too.”

She repeated his movement and tried to narrow
her eyes, in an attempt to distinguish something, but she couldn’t really see a
thing. She’d already been surprised with the ease with which he could see her
in the dark. In addition to being a former spy, did he maybe possess
superpowers?

Mike’s lips extended. “Attack is the best
defence.”

What?

She didn’t have the time to ask the question
because he accelerated. Enraged, the engine responded, giving power to the
wheels, and in spite of the imbalance, they made the vehicle rocket forward.
Amelia could see most of the various obstacles coming against them. Roots, bent
branches, boulders protruding from the ground. They were travelling downhill
and that made things easier for the traction, but they weren’t on a path, least
of all a gravel road; it was the wet bed of a channel, which just a few hours
earlier, during the deluge, must have hosted a little stream and now was
crossed by long miniature chasms, in random patterns, where the lighter
component of the earth had been brought downstream. The result of advancing in
those conditions was perhaps similar to what you feel in a kayak in the rapids
of a river. This was pure supposition on Amelia’s part, given that she’d never
been in a kayak in her life. But the sensation of being at the mercy of the
fury of water was strong.

She was holding tight to the handle over the
door and tried with her feet to counterbalance her tendency to fall forward.
Why hadn’t she fastened her safety belt again? Stupid. Now she couldn’t even
think how to do it. She felt only nausea as she listed in her mind the sequence
of necessary actions.

A hard hit from below ran through her spine,
taking away any strength she might have had to curse.

“Fuck!” Mike shouted in her place.

And then she saw it. She saw what he’d seen. A
motorbike in front of them was travelling along the same steep path. And
unbelievably, it was escaping from them. It was alone, and they were bigger.
“They separated to find us!” She laughed, because it seemed really funny. They
would crush it like it was a bug.

With a snap, Mike reached out into the door
storage pocket and pulled out his gun, then returned his hand to the steering
wheel, which he had difficulty in holding now. It was hard for him to drive.
The vehicle kept swerving to the right.

Trying not to fall, Amelia put her gun in her
belt, let the handle go and reached out to him, seizing the steering wheel with
both hands.

He lifted his gaze from the path for a split
second and nodded at her, then moved his left hand to the right side of the
steering wheel and put the other arm out of the window, aligning it as much as
possible in the direction they were travelling. There was a gunshot. The
motorbike swerved, losing ground. Mike shot again. A little dust cloud formed
beside their prey and was then run over by the off-road vehicle. But the
motorbike was still moving. “Put a hand on the right.”

Oh God, he wanted to give her full control of
the steering wheel so that he could aim. With her heart in her throat and her
body shaken by the recoils of the car, Amelia leant completely on Mike, as he
took a better position to shoot, sticking his head out of the vehicle. Now she
was driving, except that she didn’t control the pedals. It seemed like they
were going too fast. Each jerk caused her to shout, while the world fell
against her.

Another shot. There was a spark on the
motorbike chassis. He’d hit it, but not on a vital point. The more versatile
vehicle was gaining ground now, helped by the slope, but a moment later the
decline decreased and then inverted abruptly, favouring the car for a little
while, as it could still take advantage of its inertia. Mike withdrew inside
the compartment, putting a hand on the steering wheel again, and right after,
he accelerated. The motorbike grew closer and closer. The impact was
unavoidable.

The biker lost his grip on the handlebars and
fell backwards, hitting the windscreen.

For a moment Amelia had the impression he was
going to break it and end up on her. She shouted. The windscreen was
criss-crossed by cracks, but it resisted.

The man extended his arms, in search of a
handhold.

Mike braked hard.

The car skidded on the uneven terrain,
throwing up splashes of mud, then came to a halt. The biker slipped over the
bonnet. Amelia’s body was pushed forward. But her hands were firm on the
steering wheel. She hit the dashboard with a hip, then fell on her knees, and a
moan escaped her mouth.

Her partner was already opening his door. He
left and aimed his weapon.

In spite of the pain, she raised herself up to
see through the windscreen. The other man had stood up and, although limping,
was escaping.

Another gunshot.

The biker’s knee seemed to explode when the
bullet reached it. He fell to the ground, shouting. Mike’s silhouette appeared
in front of the windscreen. He was running towards his enemy.

As she saw him going away in the pale glare
preceding dawn, Amelia was overcome with anguish. For a split second her mind
imagined someone coming out from the shadows and shooting him. Even if the pain
in her hip intensified at each breath, she could open her door and leave the
car as well.

Mike stopped at a few paces from the wounded
man, keeping his gun levelled at him.

The other man was holding his leg and shouting
non-stop. His hands were oozing blood.

“Take off your helmet,” the courteous voice of
the former said.

The biker didn’t seem to hear him.

She walked closer to them, holding her gun
with both hands. She couldn’t take her eyes off that crushed knee. In spite of
the low light she could see it all too well and couldn’t help imagining the
suffering of the man.

“Remove his helmet.”

She needed a few seconds to realise that Mike
was speaking to her. She looked at him, imploring. Did she really have to
approach that wounded beast? A gesture of his head confirmed it to her. She
took a deep breath and, still aiming her weapon in front of her, she walked
around the biker, keeping at a safe distance. She put herself behind him. She
wasn’t really scared of him. It was more that she was dreading that knee. She’d
seen more than one person die in the lodge, but it had been a clean job. All
that blood, together with his cries, made her stomach clench.

“Come on,” Mike urged her, nipping her
retching in the bud.

She put her weapon in her sweater pocket. She
needed both hands to carry out the order. What the heck, she just had to take
off a helmet. It couldn’t be difficult. She released a nervous snort and decided
to move closer. The biker didn’t seem to notice her, as she unfastened it. In
that very moment she could see his leg closely, where a gush of blood was
coming out at regular intervals. She was caught by a shudder and turned her
gaze away. She grabbed the helmet and by leveraging on her feet she could
remove it. Then she backed off a few paces. Enough to not see the wound,
because it was now hidden from her sight by the man’s back.

“Hm.” Mike had given a groan of
dissatisfaction. “Is Jeff still alive?”

“Go to hell!” the other yelled at him.

“Lead the way.”

Mike pulled the trigger. A gunshot echoed in
the country, as the biker’s head bent backward, then his corpse collapsed.

Amelia’s body winced at that sound, but at the
same time she was relieved that the agony had ended. She raised her eyes from
the dead man and turned them to Mike, who was looking back at her. He’d lowered
his weapon. She caught worry in his expression. It wasn’t certainly on account
of the man he’d just killed.

A sound of distant motorbikes drew his
attention. He looked back. Then resumed gazing at her. “Let’s go.” He gestured
to her with his free hand.

Amelia nodded. She glanced at the helmet she
was still holding, then threw it away and started running from the horror. She
overtook Mike, keeping her head low, and hurried inside the vehicle. She
slammed the door. She fastened her safety belt with an automatic gesture, then
held her arms tight to her body, leaning forward a bit and staring at her own
knees.

She heard him entering the car and closing the
door. “Are you all right?”

She waved a hand. A part of her wanted him to
keep away; even his talking to her seemed too much. “I’ll be better in a
minute.” After all these events, she would become insensitive to anything. Or
she would spend the rest of her life in therapy. She didn’t know which of the
two options she preferred.

She could feel his gaze. She was expecting him
to start the engine up and drive on. She didn’t fancy any further
confrontation. But he didn’t do that.

“Now I know what you meant, when you said that
you can’t think in a lucid way because you are worried about me.” Words helped
her to calm down. “You weren’t referring just to my physical safety.”

His silence was more eloquent than any reply.
Yet the fact that she could glimpse a soul in that man, under his shell of
rage, was comforting her. She was still clinging to the details, because she
didn’t want to accept that she had ended up in that situation by chance, that
there wasn’t a bigger plan behind it, an undeniable opportunity. She would
rather stay in that position, because looking at him now would be worse.

At last Mike started the engine.

“We can’t just go away, can we?” It was a
rhetorical question. She knew full well that they had to eliminate the
remaining two.

“I’m sorry.” He had resumed his resolute tone.
The war machine had taken over again.

The two motorbikes had to be close. Amelia
tried to check around, although she avoided turning to him. She couldn’t see
any light, but it wasn’t necessary by now, even if the sunrise was still a long
time ahead.

“I need you to be all right,” he continued. It
was almost an order. “Understood?”

Meanwhile the car had resumed moving at a
walking pace. It was going up the incline. On the higher zone the woods thinned
out, allowing them to see better, and to be seen. But now there was no reason
to hide. It was almost an equal game. And she had to be part of it, somehow.
She had to shake off that sensation. Her life depended on it.

She forced herself to straighten her back,
extending her arms again. “Yes, understood.” And she looked at him, trying to
keep control of herself.

Mike nodded. He seemed satisfied.

Once they reached the top, he slowed the
vehicle down, stopping after a while. An annoyed snort interrupted his silence.
Amelia looked at him again. Instead of checking whether there was somebody
around, his eyes were turned to the dashboard.

“What’s going on?” She couldn’t hear the
motorbikes anymore, but she had the clear sensation that they were watching
them.

Mike was about to say something, when the wing
mirror on his side exploded in a thousand pieces. “Fuck!” He activated the
closing of the window winder and accelerated. “A precision rifle!”

It was a good thing that the shooter hadn’t
been very precise.

They entered the trees again, going downhill.
The dull sound of another shot scored on the bodywork, penetrating the car. It
was gaining speed, even if Mike braked from time to time, making it jerk. And
he kept shaking his head. He downshifted. The engine growled, but didn’t slow
down its run.

“Would you tell me what’s wrong?” Amelia had
decided to try funnelling her horror into rage. And it worked.

“The brakes don’t respond as they should.
Perhaps the calliper on the flat tyre is damaged or there’s something wrong in
the braking system.”

All of a sudden the light of a pale sun on the
horizon reached Amelia’s eyes, and she placed a hand before her face. The
plants were giving way to a clearing. How was it possible that you could
already see the sun? She could barely phrase that question in her mind as she
realised the new situation. They were descending a decline without obstacles.
The horizon had become very far, because the ground ended abruptly. There was a
huge drop over there. A precipice.

Mike was pressing hard on the brake, getting a
minimum effect in return. Then he reached out to her and unfastened her safety
belt. “Take the rucksack!”

There was no time to ask questions or to
retort, and so Amelia turned to the backseat and grabbed it.

“Get out of the car!”

“What?” The space in front of them was about
to end, but they were travelling too fast for her to simply get out.