Altered State

“Who told you to bring it with you, anyway?”

“Perhaps I had a premonition that we would be killed,” the slim Afghan replied.

“Hilarious. You doing stand-up now?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. Forget it. Just be careful where you’re pointing that antique.”

The city’s odor changed as they drove into Chindawol, from market stalls and roasting meat to sewage and despair. The streets and sidewalks were as crowded as before, but not with vehicles, since virtually no one in the district could afford to buy a car or keep it running.

“What I need,” Bolan announced, “is combat stretch.”

“Say what?” Falk asked.

“Some room to move,” he said. “At least to turn the car around, instead of leading a parade all over town.”

“We’ve got some waste ground coming up,” Falk said. “If we drive into it, I can’t swear we’ll get out again.”

Bolan considered that for something like a second and a half, then told her, “Try it, anyway.”

“Okay. It’s a half mile up ahead.”

The rearview showed her Cooper switching auto weapons as the first ran out of ammunition. Thirty rounds left, she surmised, and they were back to pistols. Against six or eight Kalashnikovs.

Better to end it while they had a chance.

If they still had a chance.

One last stand, coming up.

Falk focused on the road again, watching for vacant lots ahead and praying that she hadn’t missed her turn.

S CANLON HAD TRIED a long shot through his open window, knowing it was risky, but he couldn’t pull it off. It wasn’t shooting with his left hand that defeated him—he’d trained himself to become nearly ambidextrous with weapons—but the weaving, rocking motion of his car and the obstruction of the Camry traveling in front of him.

Last thing I freaking need, he thought, is shooting Eddie or one of his people.

Scanlon ducked back inside the Prius, spitting road grit or some kind of garbage that was thrown up by the two cars running hot and fast ahead of him. He didn’t even want to think about the garbage that was dumped in Kabul’s gutters every day, or how a person actually inhaled tiny particles of everything he smelled.

It was enough to make him envy the people who lived in plastic bubbles, isolated from the outside world until something broke down and they died like fish out of water, gasping for air.

Another burst of AK fire erupted from the DEA Ford, and this time Scanlon nearly mastered the involuntary flinch that came with it. They’re not shooting at me, he reminded himself. It’s on Eddie.

But still…

The bastards would be shooting at him, if they had a chance, and if anything happened to Eddie, Scanlon’s ass was next on the line.

“I need a better angle,” he announced, already knowing that his driver couldn’t manage it. The streets of Chindawol were so damned narrow, shops and housing crowded on both sides, that vehicles could only pass each other by mounting the sidewalk and threatening lives.

And even then, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. There’d still be people in his way—at least, until the Prius flattened them—and he’d still have a moving target.

Need to stop that, he decided.

Scanlon palmed his cell phone, hit Eddie’s number on speed dial, waited through two agonizing rings, then started barking orders as soon as he made the connection.

“Take out the driver!” he snapped. “If you can’t do that, blow the tires!”

He cut the link before Eddie could answer or object that he was trying. Trying was a lame excuse that losers used to cover up inadequacy. So far, it hadn’t lodged in his vocabulary.

A woman chose that moment, God knew why, to dart in front of the Toyota. Scanlon felt a surge of panic as her clothing fanned across the windshield, momentarily blinding him and his driver. Farid Humerya dealt with it efficiently, giving the wheel a little twist that jigged the car from left to right and dumped her at the curb.

It seemed to energize the driver, somehow, and Humerya put his full weight on the gas pedal, running up close behind the Camry.

If the lead car crashed now, could they stop in time?

Scanlon clutched the AKSU in his lap and offered silent prayers to a long-forgotten God.

T HE PROBLEM WITH A RUNNING firefight was, of course, the running. Moving while you fired shots at a target that was also moving, maybe even shooting back, could spoil the most experienced marksman’s aim. Throw in civilians by the dozen, ambling around downrange, and it became a soldier’s nightmare.

“How much longer to that waste ground?” Bolan asked his driver.

“One block,” Falk replied. “I see it now.”

“Pull off, if you can, and turn around. We’ll make them come to us.”

“Okay,” she said. “But if we get stuck—”

“First things first,” he interrupted her.

“Got it.”

And Bolan’s first thing was one more attempt to slow the leading chase car’s progress. Lining up his sights before the Camry’s shotgun rider could unload on him, Bolan pumped three rounds through the Toyota’s radiator.

“Here we go!” Falk warned, and then the Ford was swerving to her left, jumping a broken curb of sorts and bouncing over the topography of a large vacant lot.

Bolan had no idea if shops and houses once had stood there, or if it was undeveloped all along, nor did he care. His eyes picked out the mounds of rubbish dumped by passersby and neighbors, some still smoldering where they’d been set afire the previous night or by sometime in the recent past.

It was a little glimpse of hell on Earth, and kids were playing there, or maybe hunting rats. They scattered as the Ford snarled toward them, with the Camry losing speed now in pursuit, a Prius bringing up the rear.

Bolan kept watching while he could, as Falk raced halfway across the lot, then worked wheel and brake through a sliding 180 that placed them between two looming piles of garbage, facing back the way they’d come through clouds of settling dust. He saw the Toyotas separate, one going right, the other limping to his left before it stalled. Doors opened, gunners spilled out.

Bolan did likewise, warning Falk and Barialy, “Use whatever cover you can find.”

With Barialy’s nerve untested and his skill unknown, Bolan treated the odds as four to one. It could be worse.

Would Bolan’s enemies be edgy, since he’d dropped one-third of them in nothing flat, before they’d fired a shot? Or would it make them more determined to exact revenge? He could have tossed a coin on that one, but there wasn’t time.

Bolan went to his left, saw Barialy trailing Falk off to the right, around the other garbage Matterhorn, and wished them well. His pile of cast-off junk was ten or twelve feet high, which seemed to be the norm. It smelled of dust and something rotten that he couldn’t place, offhand.