Mission Critical

He swerved left and right, willing the old Audi to go faster, and knew it was just a matter of moments before he would be overtaken.

His rear window cracked as a handgun round pierced it and buried itself into the dashboard over the radio on Court’s left.

He couldn’t outrun his pursuers; he had to fight them, but there was no way he could target them effectively with his pistol while facing the other direction.

Snatching up the SIG, he wedged it tightly between his seat and the door on his right, with the grip just rising above the leather upholstery. He then grabbed the Ruger by its long silencer, and this he tucked under his left thigh on the seat.

Another bullet hit the back window, and then a third shattered it fully, passed through the car, and spiderwebbed the windshield. Court calculated the distance to a pair of civilian trucks ahead of him and waited for an oncoming car to shoot by on his right. He put his right hand on the two o’clock position of his steering wheel, and his left hand grasped the emergency brake handle between the seats.

At eighty miles per hour he pulled his foot off the gas and drew it all the way to the seat so he wouldn’t be tempted to step on the foot brake, and then he yanked the hand brake up as hard as he could, locking the rear wheels.

Once in his high-speed skid he turned the steering wheel to the right slightly, moving his hand from two to four o’clock, and this spun the vehicle hard to the right on screaming and smoking tires.

As the 180-degree turn reached the halfway point he used his thighs to hold the steering wheel in position and let go with his right hand. He reached down between the seat and the door and drew his SIG Sauer. In front of him he saw farmland streaking to the left in a blur, and then the road he’d just driven down.

Just two and a half seconds after locking the brake he was now facing the matte gray Dodge Charger, which itself was smoking its brakes to arrest its closing speed.

Court shoved his pistol to the windshield in front of him and, less than twenty-five feet away from the oncoming vehicle, he opened fire, dumping round after round after round into the driver-side windshield. As he did this he shoved down the emergency brake and shifted the transmission into reverse with his left hand.

As he continued to fire the last of the 9-millimeter rounds he stomped on the gas, and his stolen vehicle lurched backwards, gaining speed with every yard as the tires whined and white smoke billowed.

When his pistol went black on ammo he tossed it onto the passenger-side floorboard and retrieved the Ruger, then emptied it into the windshield of the Charger while still flooring it in reverse, only looking into the rearview to fine-tune his backwards vector when he threw the silenced .22 onto the floor next to the nine.

The gray four-door Charger fishtailed and then lurched to a stop in the middle of the road: its driver dead, the vehicle stalled out. The Mercedes behind it had to slam on its brakes and then negotiate its way around both its partner vehicle and oncoming civilian traffic.

Court brought the Audi up to fifty in reverse, reached his right hand across the steering wheel and took it on its left side, then looked through the windshield. As the Mercedes began catching up to him again he took his foot off the gas and threw the steering wheel as hard to the right as he could, letting it go and beginning a reverse 180 on tires that wailed again in protest. The Audi spun to the left, the world a blur to the man behind the wheel, but as soon as his grille faced forward on the highway again, Court shifted the whirling car into drive, grabbed the wheel to stop the turn, and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. Within seconds he was back to one hundred miles per hour, weaving through traffic in both directions, heading east.

But it wasn’t over. The Mercedes had him beat by over one hundred horsepower, and it would overtake his A4 within moments if he didn’t find a way to stop it.

Court looked down at the backpack in the seat next to him. The stock of the grenade launcher was exposed, and quickly he had a plan.

As with the pistols, there was no way he could effectively target the moving car while facing the opposite direction, but if he faced the car, he might just be able to stop the threat.

He didn’t think there was any way these assholes chasing him would be dumb enough to overshoot him if he swerved and slammed on the gas, and they would be ready to defend against another 180, but he had another idea in mind.

He let go of the steering wheel, checking the alignment of the wheels. The Audi ran true, straight up its lane, with no pull either left or right.

He set the cruise control for ninety, and the car began to slow slightly, and then he grabbed his backpack and put it in his lap. He removed the M320 and loaded it with an HE round one-handed but left the rest of the bandolier of grenades, along with the other gear inside the pack. He unhooked one of the shoulder straps just as a fresh string of gunfire from behind him tore into the front passenger seat.

The men after him were having trouble keeping their aim steady at these high speeds, but they were closing on him faster now, and it would not be long before they couldn’t miss either the tires or, if they chose, the back of his head.

Court wrapped the strap over the steering wheel, then reclasped it to the backpack. He put the pack down between his knees. It hung from the wheel, keeping it extra steady with its weight.

He let go of the wheel now and checked the Audi’s trajectory, adjusting the pack once to realign the vehicle with the center of the lane just after rocketing past a slower-moving Toyota.

More gunfire raced up the road on his left, tearing asphalt, just as an oncoming car flashed by to his right. Court unbuckled his seat belt, lowered his seat back, and pulled himself rearward into the back, careful not to disturb the backpack that had taken the wheel of the speeding sedan.

Still more rounds impacted the rear of the car. Court imagined they were close enough now to where they were trying to shoot out the tires, and he thought it likely the Audi would run off the road if they did so.

He reached into the front passenger seat, pulled the M320 back to him, and then spun around to face his pursuers.

The old silver Mercedes was there, in front of him, just forty or so yards back. Two men hung out of it, both with submachine guns in one hand while they held on to the door frame with the other. Court recognized Kent from the hallway of the hospital, leaning out of the front passenger side.

Both subguns flashed, and bullets slammed into the Audi, forcing Court down to the floorboard, but the second they stopped he rose back up, balanced the M320 on the rear seat back, and pointed the muzzle at the center of the Mercedes. He raised his aim an inch, accounting for the high trajectory of the weapon, and then, with no further hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

The launcher bucked in his hands.

The high-explosive round left the M320, passing through the already shattered rear window, arced back up the highway forty yards, then penetrated the windshield of the oncoming vehicle. It detonated, and the explosion ejected both men hanging out of the windows onto opposite sides of the road.