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Traveling at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour, Sofia rammed Talanov again and sent his car veering into the center divider. Talanov regained control, cut right across the highway and up an embankment of flowers to an exit ramp. With an angry curse, Sofia cranked her steering wheel right and skidded in front of two cars, where she gunned the engine and bounced her way up the embankment, following Talanov.
The ramp merged with a shady street that crested a small rise. There it split, with the right fork angling toward a quiet housing development fronting the beach, and the left to a bridge that crossed the highway. Talanov chose the bridge, turned left on the other side and raced down a ramp onto the highway again. In the distance, he could see the massive collision Sofia had caused. Lines of headlights stretched away into the distance. The flashing lights of police cars and ambulances were everywhere. One of the crashed cars had burst into flames, and a fire truck was on the scene. Farther along, he could see fire leaping into the nighttime sky from the burning café.
By now, Talanov’s stolen police car was making a loud tapping noise. He was running low on fuel, and black smoke was spewing from the tailpipe. With Sofia closing in on him, his only chance was to slow down as they approached the hospital, which was now on the other side of the highway, and allow her to pull up beside him on the left. Calculating – hoping – that she would wait until her car was alongside his to shoot, he would hit the brakes hard and cut right onto the shoulder of the highway and stop, again calculating – hoping – that her being caught in the flow of traffic would force her to speed past. This should give him enough time to jump out with Noya and sprint across the highway. Even if Sofia managed to pull over, stop, and chase after him, the flow of cars coming from the other direction should give him enough temporary cover to get Noya into the hospital. If the police took him into custody afterward, so be it. At least Noya would get the medical help she needed.
Talanov looked in his rearview mirror. He could see Sofia gaining. He couldn’t be too obvious about slowing down, but since they were nearing the hospital, he needed her alongside of him now. They passed the crash site on the other side of the highway, where Sofia had shot out the front tires of the other cars. The pileup was immense and firefighters were attempting to extinguish the burning car.
The hospital was just ahead so Talanov slowed his speed slightly. But Sofia would not pull up beside him. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror – willing, praying, begging her to come alongside – but she just stayed where she was, right on his tail. In his mirror he could see her grinning at him, as if she knew what he was planning. Seconds later, they sped past the hospital. His strategy had failed.
With his police car starting to blow smoke and sputter, Talanov raced through a stop light, where the Mediterranean Highway became less of a freeway and more of a wide boulevard through a tourist district. On each side of them were landscaped apartments that had been built above rows of boutique shops, nightclubs, and restaurants. Ahead was the Gordo Gato Café, which was still billowing smoke and flames up into the night sky. Firefighters were assisting crews wearing protective chemical and biological gear.
Talanov pounded on the steering wheel in frustration. Sofia had outplayed him. He glanced back and saw Zak cradling Noya’s head in his lap. He was stroking her forehead and talking to her quietly. “How’s she doing?” he asked.
“Burning up,” Zak replied. “We need to do something, and fast.”
“Can I have some water?” asked Noya.
“Soon,” Zak told her gently. “Soon.”
In the distance, traffic began to slow. A stoplight had turned red. Talanov swore under his breath. If he stopped for that light, they were dead. If they were to have any chance of escape, it was now or never.
Knowing Sofia would follow, Talanov gunned the crippled police car into the fast lane just as the light up ahead turned green. The median divider was now on their left. A line of six cars was now on their right. Talanov increased his speed and began passing the cars. With Sofia following closely behind, Talanov calculated the moving gap between the third and fourth cars and cut diagonally between them. With his hand on the horn, both cars hit their brakes just as Talanov bounded off of the highway, up over the curb and through a knee-high brick wall backed by a cedar hedge. The crippled police car crashed through the hedge, bouncing and fishtailing between several palm trees and across an empty dirt lot.
Sofia reacted but not quickly enough to clear the gap between the skidding cars, which cut her off from following Talanov.
Talanov bounced across the empty lot toward a hedge on the other side. He crashed through the hedge and bounced onto a residential street, where he cranked the steering wheel right and sped away.
“We’ve lost her for now,” said Talanov, breathing a sigh of relief. He switched off the patrol car’s flashing blue lights.
“We’ve got to find water,” said Zak. “Her temperature is climbing.”
“How about her coughing? Has it stopped?”
“The lemon balm seems to have worked.”
And yet in spite of that small victory, Talanov knew Noya was fighting an uphill battle, and if she were to have any chance of survival, she needed water and needed it now, as much to quench her thirst as cool down her body.
The street they were on curved gently into a local business district that was a concentration of storefronts and tiny walled courtyards. Vintage streetlamps among palm trees lining the streets gave the small precinct a friendly feel.
They came to an intersection. On the opposite corner was a restaurant. A neon sign in the window advertised fine Sicilian dining. In front of the restaurant were several tables and some chairs. Overhead was a striped awning in red, white, and green. Hopes raised and then dashed because the restaurant was closed, which meant if they wanted water they would have to break in. Talanov had no qualms about that. Right now, he would do anything to help Noya. But as he paused at the stop sign, his eyes were drawn to a burning car two blocks down. Hungry tongues of fire were raging out of its broken windows and a thick plume of smoke was pumping into the night sky. Nearby, shouting protesters had smashed the front window out of a storefront and were leaping out carrying televisions, which they were throwing into the burning car. One of the televisions exploded and the protesters jumped back and cheered.
With his focus on the blazing car and looting, Talanov did not see the group of protesters walking single file in the shadows to his left.
“Hold it, there’s a cop,” one of the protesters said. The group stopped just as the police car stopped.
“That restaurant will have water,” said Zak.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Talanov replied. Through the glass pane of the front door he could see glowing neon signs advertising German beer and French sparkling water. It was EU cooperation at its best. “One of those patio chairs through a window should do the trick.”
“That cop car’s a piece of shit,” one of the protesters said to the others. “Look how beat up it is.”
“Is that guy even a cop?” another one asked. “He’s not in uniform.”
“He sure as hell doesn’t look Spanish.”
“Maybe he’s that Russian spy who stole a police car,” said another. “I heard he got away, and that he’s on the run but still in the area.”
“It’s got to be him,” said another. “Look. I see someone inside the car with him. The radio said he took hostages.”
“Yeah, it’s got to be him.”
“Come on. Let’s see if it is.”
When Talanov heard the sound of footsteps coming toward him, he floored the accelerator and squealed right around the corner. In his rearview mirror, he could see the group run after him briefly before trailing to a stop.
“Dammit, why now?” he yelled, again pounding the steering wheel with his fist.
“We’ll find another place,” Zak replied, looking down at Noya, whose forehead was wet with perspiration. The torn-out sleeve was still covering her mouth and her breathing was raspy and labored.
Talanov did a quick assessment of where they were. Sooner or later, Sofia would double back and find him. She knew he needed a hospital, and with minimal traffic in this part of town, it would not be difficult to spot him in a stolen police car, assuming he didn’t run out of fuel first. Ahead was a stop light. There was no cross traffic so he ran the light. In the far distance he could see the Mediterranean Highway was flowing with traffic again.
Suddenly, for a second time, Sofia shot out from a side street and broadsided him with her stolen police car. The crash sent them into out-of-control spins across the inter-section. Tires screeched and metal groaned as Talanov’s car bounced across a planter of flowers and crashed into a clothing store. Plumes of dust floated in the air over the sound of the clacking engine. Seconds later, a large chunk of glass fell out of the front window of the store and smashed on the sidewalk. Jamming the gear stick into reverse, Talanov hit the gas just as Sofia yanked open the passenger door and grabbed the post an instant before the car hopped backward, dragging Sofia out into the intersection. Talanov hit the brakes, shifted into drive, cranked the steering wheel left and hit the gas, which sent the police car in a counterclockwise spin, its engine hissing and tapping, its tires whining over the smell of burning rubber.
Sofia held on against the centrifugal force of the spin until Talanov hit the brakes and Sofia flew forward against the inside panel of the front door, which was still wide open. Talanov stomped on the gas again and the car leaped forward, with the weight of the slamming door smashing Sofia into the door post. With the car racing forward, Sofia wedged the door open, grabbed Gorev by the shirt and tugged him out the door. In his rearview mirror, Talanov saw Gorev’s body hit the pavement just as Sofia pushed her way into the car. With one hand on the door post, she reached for the gun in her belt. Talanov hit the brakes, which threw Sofia off-balance, then hit the gas again while yanking the steering wheel back and forth. The door slammed closed against Sofia while the car swerved along the darkened street.
“Save Gorev!” shouted Talanov. “TAG . . . on three, two, one . . .” He hit the brakes, locking the tires, and the car skidded forward before Talanov punched the accelerator and the car lurched forward.
TAG, which is an acronym for Touch-And-Go, was a standard aircraft maneuver of touching down on the runway and taking off again without coming to a full stop. In his training of young agents like Talanov, Zak had adapted the technique to enable his men to jump from moving vehicles. When a driver hits the brakes, the agents would dive from the vehicle and do several shoulder rolls on the ground before coming up onto their feet, just as Zak did from the rear door of the car did when Talanov hit the brakes. When that occurred, Sofia was again thrown against the inside panel of the front door as it swung open. When Talanov hit the accelerator, Sofia was again slammed into the door post by the vehicle’s forward momentum. This time, however, she grabbed onto the post and worked her way into the car.
“Your dǎoshī did not train you well,” Sofia yelled over the blast of wind whipping her hair.
When Talanov snapped his head toward her with a dumbfounded stare, Sofia laughed.
“You think I did not know about your time in the mountains?” she asked, her expression hardening as the car raced down the street, its engine clacking and whining. “I was there, Colonel – at Lóngshù – years after you were there, but trained by the same dǎoshī who trained you. After all those years, they still they talked about you – by name – breaking their own rules about personal relationships, just as you have broken them now . . . for her, but not for me.” She glared into the backseat at Noya, who was struggling to breathe. “I gave you every opportunity, but you refused. You would not let me in, and yet you let her in. Why, Sasha, why? What is she to you, this pathetic, dying girl?”
“You wouldn’t begin to understand.”
“Perhaps not. But you will understand this.” And with a bitter sneer, Sofia aimed her Makarov and fired.
