The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(53)

“You could have told me.”

“I didn’t know you were armed.”

We roared past a sign for the I-15 ramp.

“Get on the interstate,” I said. “They’ve hijacked the bus.” The taxi was old—it smelled like stale cigarettes and coffee and the seats were torn—but I figured even this old rattletrap could bury a big bus at high speed. He grunted something at me in appreciation for my grasp of the obvious and ran the red light for the southbound lanes, barely missing a pickup truck. The bus behind us didn’t—and didn’t let the truck concern it: the Vosch Express slammed head-on into its side, sending the truck into a spin, tires screaming in protest as they slid sideways across the asphalt.

I rolled down the window as Samuel accelerated onto the lane.

“Don’t waste bullets!” he shouted over the whipping wind.

The bus lost some ground making the grade up the ramp, but once it hit the highway it began to make it up. I heaved myself through the open window, planted my butt on the doorframe, and twisted to my right toward the bus. I could see Vosch at the wheel as it barreled straight toward me. I tried for the tires first. I didn’t want to fire at Vosch. Not that I had deep feelings for him, but if I did take him out, the bus would wreck and might hurt some innocent person. Then I saw the door on the side of the bus slide open and Flat-Face leaning halfway out, taking aim at me with what looked like a rifle.

I dove back into the cab and yelled at Samuel, “He’s got a rifle! Where the hell did he get that?”

“Under his coat!” he yelled back.

“I told you to take his gun!”

“I did!”

“But you left the rifle!”

“My hands were full!”

The window behind me exploded. Glass rained down, dusting my head and shoulders.

“Thanks, Mr. slitty-eyed flat-faced big hulking fatso palooka man,” I muttered. I kneeled on the seat, pressed my chest against the back and, holding the gun with both hands, leaned out the busted window, resting my elbows on the trunk to steady my aim.

“Alfred!” Samuel shouted. “Get down!”

I ignored him. Maybe Vosch was out of season, but Flat-Face was fair game. I fired at him; he fired at me; and neither one of us scored a hit.

We were slowing down. Flipping around, I peeked over the back of the front seat. We were coming up on a bottleneck: a car in the left lane was trying to pass a flatbed semi in the right, so both lanes were blocked.

“Take the emergency lane!” I shouted in Samuel’s ear.

Too late. When we slowed down, Vosch floored the gas, sending the front of the bus into the back of the taxi at seventy miles per hour. Samuel’s chest smacked into the steering wheel, mine into the front seat, and the cab’s rear bumper crumpled like tinfoil. The passenger headrest, about three inches from my head, exploded into a mass of cheap vinyl and yellow foam cushioning: Flat-Face had scored a hit.

Samuel yelled at me to get down again and this time I didn’t ignore him. I threw myself onto the floorboards as he whipped the cab into the emergency lane.

Suddenly the back of the car slung hard to the right, as if punched by a gigantic hand. Samuel fought the wheel as the cab filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber. He eased off the gas.

“Got the tire!” he shouted.

I peeked out the right window. Showers of sparks danced in the billowing smoke rising from our back bumper. I looked up, saw the big flatbed cruising in the lane beside us, then reached over the seat and tapped Samuel on the shoulder. He was hunched over the wheel, knuckles white as he fought to keep us from running off the road.

“Speed up!” I called.

“Can’t!”

“To your left!” I screamed. “Get us close!”

He glanced that way and nodded with a quick snap of his head. He used to be an Operative Nine; he got it right away. The steering wheel was jerking in his hands as if it might pop off the column any second. He eased us to the left, within a couple feet of the truck. I put my mouth close to his left ear and yelled, “Me first, then you!”

“Impossible!” he shouted back.

“Necessary!”

I forced the door slowly open—it’s hard to open a car door into a sixty-mile-per-hour headwind—looking straight ahead toward the truck because looking back was scary and looking down was terrifying. The flatbed was hauling a load of timber, a stack of twelve-foot two-by-fours held down by canvas straps. Holding the door open with my right, I reached out with my left hand and grabbed one of the straps. Now I was hanging halfway out of the car as Samuel fought to keep us more or less even with the truck, but the blown-out tire was giving him problems and the car bounced up and down violently—if the rim tore apart before we could bail, we were roadkill.

There was no going back now. If I let go, gravity would take me and the wheels on that bus going round and round would finish me.

I pulled—quick and hard—and flew out of the backseat.

The toes of my boots hit the pavement, bounced, then collided with the spinning tire of the flatbed. I knew I couldn’t hang here long; my biceps and shoulder muscles were already cramping, plus you couldn’t be in a more exposed position, plus I had to help Samuel get out of the taxi before one of Flat-Face’s rounds tore into the gas tank—or into my explosive-filled head.