Tom grabbed the rear-view and twisted it, scanning the car behind. Two thick-set men sat in the front seats of a black Mercedes, the half hidden bulks of more behind. He saw the front passenger door open and a man got out, his broad-shouldered frame swaggering towards them as if he’d watched too many dubbed Mafia movies.
Tom heard a shout just as Khan twisted the ignition key. As the car drove off a handgun was discharged. The round hit the rear windshield, the impact sending tiny shards of glass onto the back seat. It passed between them with a loud hiss and penetrated the plastic dashboard. Khan hit the gas and zigzagged into the outside lane, careering past a taxi. He honked the horn at a man on a moped, who wobbled but remained upright. Tom turned around and saw the Mercedes speeding up behind them. With that, the car engine started to splutter, and small geysers of hot steam rose from the air vents. Khan swerved behind a gold-coloured Lexus and slowed down.
“Damn them to hell,” he said.
The steam was obscuring the windshield and Khan tried frantically to clear it with his sleeve, but to no avail. Tom wound down the window and put his hand over a vent, but the steam burned him and he winced. Khan swung the car to the left, cutting back into the inside lane, and accelerated off the asphalt highway. The car dipped into a storm drain runoff, and rose up the kerb of the sidewalk before crunching forward onto a piece of waste ground between two apartment blocks. If the car had shocks, Tom figured they weren’t functional ones. As the car barrelled ahead he held the passenger door handle tightly, rocking with the impact, too preoccupied now with the recklessness of the manoeuvre to worry about the ISI. Khan was driving blindly.
“Stop the damn car!” Tom said.
Khan slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. Tom nearly hit his nose on the dash, but put up his free forearm just in time, banging his forehead on it. Ignoring the throbbing pain, he ducked down and pulled his SIG from the bag in the footwell, chambering a round. As he straightened up Khan put his hand gently on his right forearm. Tom felt bad, but he knew he couldn’t save the secretary from a Pakistani prison cell. He nodded and picked up his bag before opening the car door, hearing the Mercedes coming up close behind.
“I won’t–”
“Go,” Khan said.
As Tom propelled himself out of the car, he swivelled his head and saw the Mercedes bouncing forward, its headlights blinding his eyes. He turned and raced over the waste ground. Hearing rounds being fired behind him, he stopped instinctively. Twisting around, he watched Khan knock out one of the lights and aim at a front tyre, a round ripping open the rubber, flattening it.
The muzzle of a sub-machine gun poked out of the rear window of the Mercedes. Tom dived for cover onto the hard ground, grazing his knees. He saw the flash as a burst was fired, but the car had dipped into a small crater as the weapon had been discharged. The spray of bullets cut a shredded line less than a metre from his prostrate body, the stony soil peppering his face. If it hadn’t been for the uneven ground, the burst would have likely cut him in two.
He pushed himself up, turned and ran, leaping over mounds of hardened cement and rusted girders, the land being an abandoned construction site. He skirted around behind a blackened, portable cement mixer, and saw that Khan was keeping the ISI men at bay, his rounds bouncing off the Mercedes’ hood and slamming into the open doors. He’s a brave man, Tom thought. He spun around and sprinted towards the end of the site, careful not to sprain an ankle on the lumpy earth. Fifty metres on there was an industrial chain-link fence, about three metres high.
Reaching the fence, he heaved his bag to the other side. He stepped back before running at it. He managed to scramble over, ripping his linen shirt on a protruding piece of wire. He crouched down, the lack of streetlights adding to his sense of isolation but keeping him hidden.