Yasmin clung to Mahmoud as he raced the motorbike along the top of the bridge’s concrete divider. Traffic was banked up on their right but cars and trucks whizzed by in the lanes to their left. While Yasmin had faith in her brother’s riding skills, she knew that one slip here would be deadly. But slowing down wasn’t an option. The crooked cops had copied Mahmoud’s daredevil move. They were following along the narrow crash barrier, Jackal bringing up the rear.
Mahmoud blasted his horn.
Up ahead, their path was blocked. Drivers stuck in traffic had gotten out of their cars and were sitting on the divider while they played cards.
Mahmoud slowed down. ‘Move!’
The men glanced up from their game and shrugged. Behind them, Jackal and his men were gaining.
‘Time to play chicken!’ Mahmoud yelled back to Yasmin. ‘Hang on!’
‘No!’ she heard herself cry. ‘Don’t!’
Her brother didn’t listen. Instead, he angled the bike, twisted the throttle and jumped the machine off the crash barrier into the busy lanes of oncoming traffic. The driver of a van yelled behind his windshield as their motorbike raced at him. But Mahmoud kept his cool, swerving skilfully, shooting them between the van and a speeding lorry in the next lane, with just inches to spare on either side. A split second later the deadly game of dodge began all over again. Looming ahead was a blue car. Its driver honked his horn furiously. But Mahmoud steered them out of harm’s way safely. He weaved in and out of the approaching traffic again and again before a bus forced him back close to the crash barrier. A furious torrent of vehicles followed, keeping them near the concrete divider.
Yasmin’s heart sank. The cops must have cleared the card players as they were now racing along the barrier, gaining speed because they didn’t have to dodge vehicles.
A cop was almost alongside Mahmoud’s bike. Jackal was right behind. But the other cop had jumped his bike off the divider and was chasing them on the road.
‘Faster!’ Yasmin urged Mahmoud.
But his bike was going at full speed.
Pow-zing!
Sparks flew off the ground just ahead. Yasmin whirled. The cop on the road was riding one-handed and aiming his pistol at their tyres. He might not miss next time. She knew a blow-out at this speed would—
An AutoDrive car abruptly veered out of its lane just after it passed them. Yasmin glimpsed the passengers’ surprised faces in the windows as they realised their vehicle was out of control. An instant later the sedan—
Ba-crump!
—smacked into the cop’s motorbike head on.
The man didn’t have a chance. He and his motorbike were flung high into the air in a cloud of shrieking metal and shattered glass.
Yasmin didn’t have time to feel sorry for him. Through her shock she saw the other cop was closing in along the crash barrier. Steering his bike with one hand, he had his gun in the other.
Ba-bang!
The bullet whizzed by Yasmin and ricocheted off the road with a loud ping. The cop grinned. He took aim again. Yasmin had to fight back. But with what? Then she remembered. Radha’s present! Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the vial of sand. Yanking out the cork stopper with her teeth, she shook it like a wand at the cop.
The man screamed as the sudden sandstorm swept into his eyes. Blinded, he spun out of control, he and his motorbike tumbled off the barrier and crunched into the stationary cars in the eastbound lanes.
Then, as if by magic, the road ahead cleared. Mahmoud swerved smoothly across empty lanes and onto a ramp that led down into another of Cairo’s riverside avenues. Yasmin saw Jackal stop on the crash barrier behind them. He was waving his badge and gun to halt traffic so he could continue the chase. Even with his men scattered, injured and likely dead, the corrupt detective wasn’t calling it quits.
Brrrrt!
Yasmin’s phone vibrated in her pocket. The network was back up. Road rushing by, holding Mahmoud with one arm, she pulled out her phone and saw the caller was Miss Chen.
Miss Chen’s calm face appeared on the screen in her SmartGlasses. ‘Yasmin,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not all right,’ Yasmin gasped.
‘Where are you?’
‘Back of my brother’s motorbike.’
Miss Chen frowned behind her SmartGlasses. ‘I sent some men to assist. Did they make contact?’
For a terrible moment, Yasmin thought Miss Chen was talking about Jackal. Then she realised. The two men that were killed outside her family store had worked for Felix!
‘If they’re who I think,’ Yasmin said, leaning with the bike as Mahmoud zipped between cars, ‘they … didn’t make it.’
‘Are you saying they are dead?’
Yasmin nodded.
Miss Chen didn’t miss a beat. ‘I am tracking your phone on our computer system. Are you heading to the airport?’
‘Yes,’ Yasmin said. She glanced over her shoulder once more. A few blocks back, Jackal was racing off the bridge and down the ramp. The man was unstoppable.
‘Negative,’ Miss Chen said, eyes registering new info on her SmartGlasses. ‘Cairo Airport has just been closed. All flights are being diverted.’
‘Diverted?’ Yasmin said. ‘Where?’
‘Alexandria,’ Miss Chen said. ‘I can reroute your SpaceSkimmer and meet you there myself.’
Yasmin had been to Egypt’s second-biggest city for a beach holiday when she was ten. It was a three-hour drive from Cairo. There was no way they could ride all that way north. Not with Jackal on their tail.
‘Or you can wait until Cairo Airport’s open again?’ Miss Chen offered.
‘We can’t,’ Yasmin said. ‘The guy who killed your men is after us. He wants to kidnap me.’
‘We’ll get Yasmin to Alexandria!’ Mahmoud shouted. ‘Just be there!’
Miss Chen nodded. ‘I will make su—’
Yasmin’s phone screen went blank and then the words ‘No Service’ flashed up.
She tucked her phone back in her pocket and clung tighter to her brother.
‘We have to lose Jackal if we’re going to get to Alexandria,’ he said loudly.
‘The Old City!’ Yasmin yelled.
Her brother nodded and swung the motorbike off the main boulevard and onto a smaller road. From there, the streets cut haphazardly between tightly packed shops and markets, mosques and houses. Losing themselves in this maze might be their best chance of evading Jackal.
With a series of sharp turns, Mahmoud took them along lanes that became narrower and more lost in the shadows beneath ancient buildings. But no matter how many twists and turns they made, whenever Yasmin looked around she saw Jackal, just a block behind or storming around a corner, always following relentlessly.
‘I can’t shake him,’ Mahmoud said, seeing the cop in his side-view mirror, ‘but I’ve got another idea.’
Her brother twisted the throttle and pushed the bike to its limit. The burst of power put a bit more distance between them and Jackal, who’d been slowed down by a donkey cart and was shouting at the owner to get out of the way.
Racing around a corner, Mahmoud skidded to a stop. He jumped out of his seat and held the bike so Yasmin could hop off.
‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Give me the helmet, the jacket and the backpack!’
Yasmin understood. She shook her head. ‘No, Mahmoud, we have to stick together.’
‘There’s no time,’ he said. ‘I can outrun him. Come on!’
Yasmin did as he asked. Her brother let his precious bike fall with a clang so it looked like they’d crashed. He pulled on the red jacket, yellow helmet and threw the backpack over his shoulder.
‘Hide behind that,’ Mahmoud said, pointing at an old rusted car. ‘When it’s clear, get to the railway station. You can make it to Alexandria in a few hours by train.’
Yasmin squeezed his shoulder. ‘Be safe, brother!’
Mahmoud grinned. He almost looked like he was enjoying himself.
‘Take care, sister,’ he said. ‘Send me a postcard!’
With that, he ran off. Yasmin ducked behind the rusty car just before Jackal rounded the corner.
‘I see you, girl!’ he shouted.
For a moment, Yasmin thought their trick hadn’t worked, but then Jackal revved his bike and roared away. Daring to peek from her hiding spot, she saw her brother clambering across a rooftop, the bright colours of his jacket and helmet popping against the late-afternoon sky. From a distance, Mahmoud looked like her. Jackal certainly thought so, because the corrupt cop was off his bike and scaling a wall in pursuit.
A minute later, they were both out of sight. Yasmin prayed her brother would get away and that his clumsiness wouldn’t betray him. She stayed crouched in her hiding spot, paralysed by fear, until she noticed that the sky above was beginning to blaze with sunset colours. Yasmin had to move. She had to get to the railway station! She forced herself to stand up and brushed the dust from her clothes. But which way was it?
Yasmin looked around and noticed the strange doorway next to her. Her heart skittered. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she was standing outside … a tomb!
That’s because it was a tomb.
In fact, there were tombs everywhere. Then the realisation hit her.
Yasmin might have escaped Jackal. But now she was lost, deep in the legendary City of the Dead.