“Straight to the airport! Get Novak to the airport! Gun it!” Westergaard radioed to Villar in car three as he heard the burst of gunfire at his back.
The damned overpass, he realized as the Jeep’s rear window exploded inward.
“They’re up on the overpass!” he yelled at Stackhouse. “Turn in somewhere. We need cover. Cover! Turn in!”
Just as he said this, the automatic gunfire became one long thunderous staccato. Westergaard threw up his hands in front of his face as a decimating fusillade of bullets knifed through the center of the roof, blowing apart the console and the radio and the dashboard.
“Return fire! Covering fire!” he yelled at Addison, standing in the back.
But Addison wasn’t standing in the turret anymore, Westergaard saw as he turned. He was kneeling now in the rear footwell, spitting blood.
“Addison!” he said just as the ex-marine turned cartel advisor caught one in the head.
The spray of his blood in Westergaard’s face from the head-shot was horror-movie-level. The sudden sprinkler jet of blood got in his eyes, in his mouth. Blinded and spitting, he wiped at it, yelling. It was warm and sticky on his fingers.
As the withering barrage of firing continued, something caught him in the shoulder from the back. He felt the bullet slice down inside of him. It was a weird sensation. Like swallowing something hot.
Then something touched the back of his neck below the base of his skull. A moment later, wetness began trickling down the back of his throat like a nasal drip. The liquid thick and salty and metallic.
When he looked up, he saw they were still rolling rapidly even though Stackhouse was now slumped over dead against the driver’s door.
He didn’t even have a chance to look forward to see the telephone pole that suddenly sailed in through the shattered windshield.
He blacked out briefly and when he came to, everything was black-and-white.
Like the old TV his father kept on his workbench in the barn, he thought.
After a moment, he noticed that the horn was stuck in the On position. He pushed at Stackhouse over the shattered plastic and glass until he slumped back over off the horn. Over the deployed airbag, white fumes rose from the folded-back edges of crumpled hood like smoke from the nostrils of a dragon.
He tried the door. No go. It was wedged tight.
He heard car brakes nearby.
“Freeze, asshole!” said a man a moment later.
Westergaard turned out the shattered window to see a blocky man arrive beside him.
It was him.
The American.
The stumbling block had arrived.