Stalkers (50 page)

Authors: Paul Finch

Tags: #Thriller, #Mystery

Heck swore volubly – that was the last thing they needed.

It wasn’t so much that the van, now brutally battered, could outpace the police on a high-speed road, but there would be many, many more road-users on the motorway – and these guys had shown no interest in preserving innocent life.

Before they reached the motorway they hit another roundabout. Here, more police patrols – Traffic unit Range-Rovers – were waiting at the turn-offs. They seemed more interested in holding back the public than in attempting to intercept the target, thus allowing it to roar around the circuit unimpeded, spewing black fumes. Possibly, Milton Keynes Comms were issuing orders for officers to stand off. But Heck had received no such instruction; maybe because his radio reception was breaking and distorting – either way he continued the chase, bulleting along the slip-road and down the access ramp.

The M1 southbound was busy at the best of times. Now, at the tail-end of rush hour, it was heaving. The average speed was still about sixty mph, but it was like a fast moving log-jam. Despite this, the van played ‘weaver bird’ as it forged ruthlessly ahead, ignoring the honking horns and shaking fists. When making insufficient progress, it resorted to the old tactic of ramming and shunting. Heck hit his own horn repeatedly, but had to swerve and skid as vehicles were sideswiped into his path.

The bastards were trying to
cause
a pile-up, he realised. Their plan was to create a barricade of car-wrecks. And on top of that they were still armed. He glimpsed more flickering blue lights in his rear-view mirror, but they were far behind. Maybe the local chopper was now on the case. If so, he could fall back and let the fly-boys take up the pursuit, but he could neither hear nor see it, and nobody in the control room seemed to be answering his messages – at which point his quarry suddenly attempted the craziest manoeuvre Heck had ever seen.

There was a double-sided crash barrier down the motorway’s central reservation. A fleeting gap appeared in it – and the van jack-knifed into this, attempting a U-turn.

A U-turn! At sixty miles an hour! On the motorway!

By instinct rather than logic, Heck did the same thing. The next junction was a good fifteen miles way. He hadn’t been informed that air support was close, so he couldn’t take the chance that the race might be lost and the felons would escape.

But even though Heck jammed his brakes on as he turned, slowing rapidly from sixty to thirty, he lost control crossing the northbound carriageway, skidding on two wheels and slamming side-on into the grass embankment with such bone-shuddering force that his Fiat actually rolled uphill … before rolling back down again and landing on its roof, its chassis groaning, glass fragments tinkling over him.

The white van had also lost control, but whereas Heck had lost it at thirty, the Savage brothers had lost it at sixty. Their vehicle didn’t even manage to turn into the skid, but ploughed headlong across the carriageway – straight into the concrete buttress of a motorway bridge. The resulting impact
boomed
in Heck’s ears.

That sound echoed for what seemed like seconds as Heck lay groggily on his side.

At length, in a daze akin to the worst hangover in history, he began to probe at his body with his fingertips. Everything seemed to be intact, though his neck and shoulders ached, suggesting whiplash. His left wrist was also hurting, though he had full movement in the joint so it was likely only a sprain. With an agonised grunt, he released the catch of his seatbelt, crawled gingerly across the ceiling of his car and tried to open the passenger door, only to find that it was buckled in its frame and immovable. For a second he was too stupored to work this out; then slowly, painfully, he shifted himself around and clambered feet-first through the shattered window.

When he finally stood up, he found himself gazing across the underside of his Fiat, which was gashed and dented and thick with tufts of grass and soil. Clouds of steam from his busted radiator hissed across it. Passing vehicles slowed down, the faces of drivers blurring white as they gawked at him. Multiple sirens approached from the near-distance. From somewhere overhead came the distinct
chud-chud-chud
of a rotor-blade.

How about that
, Heck thought.
The eye in the fucking sky’s here after all
.

Clamping a hand to his throbbing neck, he had to turn his entire body to gaze along the debris-strewn hard-shoulder. Thirty yards away, the smouldering hulk of the white van was crushed against the concrete buttress like an accordion, reduced to about a third of its original length. Heck hobbled towards it, but when he got within ten yards the stench of fuel and rubber and twisted, melted metal was enough to knock him sick.

And so was the sight of the Savage brothers.

Whichever one of them had fired the shots from out of the back had been catapulted clean across the van’s interior, bursting through its windscreen, his head striking the buttress of the bridge as viciously as his vehicle had, and splurging several feet up the concrete in a deluge of blood, brain and bone splinters. The driver had been flung onto the steering wheel, and now lay across it like a bundle of limp rags. At a guess, from the crimson rivers gurgling out underneath him, the central column had torn through his breastbone and punctured his cardiovascular system.

Heck tottered queasily away from the wreck.

Other police vehicles were now drawing in behind his Fiat. The first of their drivers, a young Motorway Division officer in a bright orange slicker, came running up. ‘Is that him?’ he asked, pale-faced. ‘The Maniac?’

Heck, who was too nauseated to stand up any longer, slumped backwards onto the grass. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody hell … let’s hope so.’

Want more? Read the rest of

Sacrifice

when it hits the shelves in July 2013.

Hear more about Paul and his inspiration
behind the Mark Heckenberg series in
his monthly blog on Killer Reads.

Writing so good it’s criminal …

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 978-0-00-749229-9

Ebook Edition © February 2013 ISBN: 9780007492305

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

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