"Price, this is Rifle One-Two. I think we have one or more subjects in the brown van outside the hospital. I took the motor out with my rifle. They ain't going nowhere, Eddie."
"Okay." Price looked around. The local situation might even be under control or heading that way. He felt as though he'd been awakened by a tornado and was now looking at his wrecked farm and trying to make sense of what had taken place. One deep breath, and the responsibility of command asserted itself: "Connolly and Lincoln, go right. Tomlinson and Vega, down the hill to the left. Patterson, come with me. McTyler and Pierce, guard the prisoners. Weber and Johnston, get down to Team-1 and see how they are. Move!" he concluded.
"Price, this is Chavez," his radio announced next.
"Yes, Ding."
"What's the situation?"
"We have two or three prisoners, a van with an unknown number of subjects in it, and Christ knows what else. I am trying to find out now. Out." And that concluded the conversation.
"Game face, Domingo," Clark said, sitting in the left front seat of the Jaguar.
"I fuckin' hear you, John!" Chavez snarled back.
"Corporal-Mole, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," the driver said, without moving his eyes a millimeter.
"Okay, Corporal, get us up on his right side. We're going to shoot out his right-front tire. Let's try not to eat the fucking truck when that happens."
"Very good, sir" was the cool reply. "Here we go."
The Jag leaped forward, and in twenty-seconds was alongside the Volvo diesel truck. Clark and Chavez lowered their windows. They were doing over seventy miles per hour now, as they leaned out of their speeding automobile.
A hundred meters ahead, Sean Grady was in a state of rage and shock. What the devil had gone wrong? The first burst from his people's weapons had surely killed a number of his black-clad enemies, but after that-what? He'd formulated a good plan, and his people had executed it well at first-but the goddamned phones! What had gone wrong with those? That had ruined everything. But now things were back under some semblance of control. He was ten minutes away from the shopping area where he'd park and leave his car, dissapear into the crowd of people, then walk to another parking lot, get in another rental car, and drive off to Liverpool for the ferry ride home. He would get out of this, and so would the lads in the truck behind him-he looked in the mirror. What the hell was that?
Corporal Mole had done well, first maneuvering to the truck's left, then slowing and darting to the right. That caught the driver by surprise.
In the backseat, Chavez saw the face of the man. Very fairskinned and red-haired, a real Paddy, Domingo thought, extending his pistol and aiming at the right-front wheel.
"Now!" John called from the front seat. In that instant, their driver swerved to the left.
Paul Murphy saw the auto jump at him and instinctively swerved hard to avoid it. Then he heard gunfire.
Clark and Chavez fired several times each, and it was only a few feet of distance to the black rubber of the tire. Their bullets all hit home just outside the rim of the wheel, and the nearly-half-inch holes deflated the tire rapidly. Scarcely had the Jaguar pulled forward when the truck swerved back to the right. The driver tried to brake and slow, but that instinctive reaction only made things worse for him. The Volvo truck dipped to the right, and then the uneven braking made it worse still, and the right-side front-wheel rim dug into the pavement. This made the truck try to stop hard, and the body flipped over, landed on its right side, and slid forward at over sixty miles per hour. Strong as the body of the truck was, it hadn't been designed for this, and when the roll continued, the truck body started coming apart.
Corporal Mole cringed to see his rearview mirror filled with the sideways truck body, but it got no closer, and he swerved left to make sure it didn't overtake him. He allowed the car to slow now, watching the mirror as the Volvo truck rolled like a child's toy, shedding pieces as it did so.
"Jesuchristo!" Ding gasped, turning to watch. What could only have been a human body was tossed clear, and he saw it slide up the blacktop and pinwheel slowly as it proceeded forward at the same speed as the wrecked truck.
"Stop the car!" Clark ordered.
Mole did better than that, coming to a stop, then backing up to within a few meters of the wrecked truck. Chavez jumped out first, pistol in both hands and advancing toward the vehicle. "Bear, this is Chavez, you there?"
"Bear copies," came the reply.
"See if you can get the car, will ya? This truck's history, man."
"Roger that, Bear is in pursuit."
"Colonel?" Sergeant Nance said over the intercom.
"Yeah?"
"You see how they did that?"
"Yeah-think you can do the same?" Malloy asked.
"Got my pistol, sir."
