Lim brought the Yamaha to a sudden stop. She put a foot on the ground, a finger to her ear. Driver was breaking up. All she got was static. Cheap crap. Unlike her homeland or former private clients, the West had things called budgets.
Lim readjusted her ear piece and looked around her. She was close to the rendezvous, but were they working to plan A or plan B? She waited a few minutes, checking her surroundings. If she’d been white and Western, her presence on the streets of Tripoli might have been a problem. Being from the Far East, most people would assume she was there as cheap labour. It bought her the time to wait. If they were working to plan A, the others would appear in the Land Cruiser any moment.
She checked her watch. The traffic had cleared up after the queues leading into the square. They should have been here by now. In the distance, Lim heard the boom of heavy gunfire, a call and response of high-calibre rounds. A sustained battle, echoing across the city. She revved the engine of the Yamaha, spun the bike around and rode towards the sound. Slaloming between cars and trucks, she tried to track the source of the firefight. It was moving all the time, but coming from the east and getting closer.
She pulled a sharp left into a heavy queue waiting at a set of lights, cutting across a stream of irate traffic and down a side street. It was an intricate maze of narrow roads to nowhere – blind alleys shaded by crumbling, graffiti-covered walls. Lim trusted her nose and followed the echo of guns to a dead end with a sudden left. Sliding the bike into the turn, she saw a way out onto the main streets. She skidded to a stop and opened the satchel. From it she took a 9mm pistol and tucked it in the waistband of her stolen uniform.
Pulling back on the accelerator, she sped out of the alley and turned right onto the street. It was empty except for the fast-approaching gun battle, the Land Cruiser battered by bullets. With a pickup to its right and a jeep to its left, Lim weighed up her options. Did she really want to get in the middle of this, for four strangers and an enemy? She didn’t have to, she could find her own way out of Tripoli. There were ways and means. But it would mean a life on the run. And what if Gilmore was right? What if this ridiculous operation was the only thing standing in the way of nuclear war?
As a gunner behind a PKM took aim at the Land Cruiser, Lim pulled harder on the accelerator, her other hand feeling around inside the satchel. Pulling out a device shaped like a hockey puck, she armed it with a thumb and slowed the bike.
Lim flashed past the Toyota in the opposite direction, cut between the chasing militia and threw the magnetic device at the jeep. It stuck fast to the fuel tank, the gunner with no time to shoot. The jeep exploded with a bone-shuddering boom.
Lim pulled a one-eighty turn in time to see the jeep land in flames on its side. She set off after the remaining pickup, swerving a body crawling from the fire. As the pickup pursued the Land Cruiser into a side street, Lim took her pistol from her waistband. She evaded a barrage of stray return fire from Wells and pulled in close behind the chasing vehicle.
There were three men in a row, concentrating their fire on the Land Cruiser. One noticed Lim on their tail. He let off a burst of fire. She veered left, pulled back in and shot him in the head. A second bullet took out another fighter on the half-turn, another punctured the neck of the third. He dropped in a heap on top of the others. That brought a fourth fighter out of the passenger window. A woman. She leaned out and fired with an AK-47.
Lim was already moving behind the pickup. She pulled back out to find the fighter hanging halfway out of the window, bleeding from a headshot delivered by Wells. Seconds later, Pope appeared and opened fire on the driver of the pickup. The truck drifted right and rammed straight into the front of an abandoned building.
Lim caught up to the Toyota and rode behind, her pistol concealed on her lap. She’d memorised the route from the massage parlour to the rendezvous. It hadn’t taken long. It never did. She’d been blessed from early childhood with an eidetic memory. It had taken her from the fishing huts of her village to the government’s secret academy for MSS agents. By Lim’s calculations, they were only half a mile away. There couldn’t be many more militia patrolling this area of the city. But it wouldn’t hurt for her to scout ahead.
She pulled alongside the Land Cruiser and tried again to communicate through her earpiece. ‘I’m going to ride on ahead,’ she said, looking across at Driver. ‘Make sure there’s no more—’
Bullets rattled into the side of the Toyota. Lim glanced over her shoulder. A black pickup was on them like a shark chasing a seal. Four masked men stood on the back, primed to fire in all directions. Lim bugged out down a side street. There were two more explosive devices in the satchel, but the element of surprise was lost. She wouldn’t get close enough to throw them. Now it was down to Driver’s plan. Lim had fulfilled her part of the mission. The rest of them were on their own.
‘Don’t these blokes take a lunch break?’ Pope said, reloading for a second time. ‘Jesus Christ, have a bloody sandwich.’
As the black pickup bore down, the GPS confirmed they were one turn away from the rendezvous point. But it would be useless if they didn’t make it to their destination.
Lim had already disappeared from their side. Wells was dry on ammo and Pope once again found himself forced to take cover.
‘Hold on,’ Driver yelled, drifting the Toyota into the final turn. It bought them precious seconds, the pickup not able to slide in the same way. But the break in play didn’t last long, and the more powerful pickup came chomping away at the dwindling gap.
‘Bloody fuck,’ Pope muttered.
Wells turned in his seat. ‘What?’
‘RPG,’ Driver said, watching a fighter arm a grenade launcher in the rear-view mirror. She looked on helpless as the fighter took aim, her only comfort that Serik might die from the impact too.
The fighter pulled the trigger on the RPG. Yet his shoulder took a bullet at the last moment. The grenade launched sideways into a skip full of rubble. Dust and cement exploded in all directions, the force of the blast rocking the Toyota. The fighter’s head was next. Popping like a balloon. Then one, two, three. The remaining militia were down.
‘You fucking beauty!’ Pope cried.
Yet whether out of anger or desperation, the driver of the pickup rammed fast and hard into the rear of the Toyota.
The street ended in a brick wall, with no room to turn and little distance to stop. Driver turned in her seat and saw Pope raise his weapon to shoot.
It jammed.
‘Second-hand piece of crap…’ Pope complained, wrestling frantically with the rifle.
Then a voice came over the comms – female and Mexican. ‘Tell Pope to get his melon head out of the way.’
Pope took the hint. A bullet punched a hole in the Toyota windscreen. It zipped through the cabin and shot out through the back, right into the chasing pickup, painting the windscreen red. The truck fell back, and back and back. Rolling to a stop. But the dead end loomed. Driver braked hard, hanging tight to the wheel. After all that, killed by a wall? The Land Cruiser skidded and lurched to a stop inches from the brickwork. She took a breath, jacked open her door and jumped out of the pickup. She and Wells moved around the Toyota, weapons trained high.
‘Relax,’ Rios said through the earpiece. ‘The area’s clear.’
Driver signalled the others. Baptiste pulled Serik out of the Land Cruiser. He and Pope held his dead weight by the armpits, the tips of his bare feet dragging along the hot asphalt. She led them down the side of a building through a shaded thoroughfare. It opened onto a back road facing a wire fence and a stretch of wasteland with a set of broken goalposts.
Pope looked around. ‘Where’s the bloody switch car?’
Driver was thinking the same thing. Had Lim screwed them over? She turned at the sound of an engine reversing.
A maroon minivan from a prior decade. It came to a stop and Wells slid the rear door open. As they bundled Serik’s limp frame into the back, Driver climbed into the front seat. ‘Where were you?’
‘Thought I’d hide the van,’ Lim replied.
‘Really?’ Wells said, as he closed the rear door behind him. ‘You sure you weren’t in the middle of taking off?’
‘She’s here now,’ Driver said, slamming her door closed. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’