King Acid

1- THE PRODIGAL BROTHER (PART 3)

"Riley, I got him," the driver said, pointing at a radio. "He's all right. Notify Norton, over."

Norton. That word made him feel as if he had been stabbed directly in the brain. He noticed the blood pounding under the sutures of his face.

"OK, Nash. We're gonna receive you in Langley with fancy champagne and a buncha hookers. Over."

"I'll play surprised when I get there. Hey, tell Mike... wait... an unidentified vehicle is closing in. Have you sent any other patrols here? Over."

He turned his head to his left. Indeed, another convertible pickup was approaching on a diagonal line, driving past the rows of aircraft.

"You are the only operative in your position. Over."

"I got it on my nine. Maybe..."

A sudden gunshot cracked from the other car, and the driver pitched forward and hit his head on the horn, which roared stridently.

"Nash? Nash!" the radio hollered out between interference as the vehicle revved up and swerved towards the aircraft truss to the right. Despite the cuffs, he sprang to his feet to check the driver, whose blood had splattered across the steering wheel and windshield. He forgot about the shooter and acknowledged the nearest obstacle, the wheel of a troop transport, attempting unsuccessfully to translate the remaining distance between them and it into seconds before the collision. The driver's head still smashed into the blowing horn. The cuffs were all that kept him upright with the ascendant speed and the wind beating him in the face harder and harder. The second car stuck to his side, the driver pointing at him with his gun.

It's over. If he doesn't do me in, the crash will.

He would have liked to repent of his sins before entering Purgatory but, apparently, the amnesia would send him straight to hell. Probably because of the adrenaline boost, he distinguished with razor-sharp clarity the face of the assassin: a man in his thirties, eyes black as obsidian, grayish skin, stubble, and six inches of dyed hair debating between solar blond and onyx.

"Your hands! Stick 'em up!"

The driver gestured by lifting his hands from the steering wheel and holding them high and far apart from one another. Before any thought flashed through his mind, he found his hands raised and apart, as if trying to break the chain by brute force. The driver pointed his nickel-plated ASP handgun, but this time, he aimed for his hands. One eye squeezed shut, the other one in perfect line with the gun's rear and front sight, one wrist propped up on the other, the muzzle leaned slightly to the left to make up for the force of the wind and the speed of the other car, waiting till the last second. The stranger pulled the trigger, and the chains broke apart with surgical precision. He then realized that whoever that man was, he was a crack shot.

Good enough to want him alive.

Once again, his own body got ahead of him, and he pounced towards the steering wheel, slamming it over so the wheel of the cargo aircraft passed next to him, tearing off the right rear-view mirror and licking the plate paint. The body of the former driver slid down to crush him, causing a powerful stinging pain in his head. Although he was upside down, trapped in a passenger seat with a corpse on top of him and blindsided by a haze of pain in his mind, the cessation of the horn blowing allowed for a small mental break that he invested in reaching for the car key. When he pulled it out of the ignition, the all-terrain vehicle, careening like wet soap over burnished ice, slowed. Even with the still warm body holding him against the footwell in that bizarre position that prevented him from seeing beyond the gear stick, he savored with a frenzy the steady mechanical slackening down the blacktop as he felt the blood beating through his head, pricking his wound with each palpitation.