Taking the Highway (36 page)

An insistent ping echoed into the car, but no voice told him what was wrong or what he needed to do. A sharp corner reminded him. Seatbelt. He steered with one hand while grasping for the restraint with the other. He fumbled for the latch and finally got it secured across his shoulder and hips. A few more turns and he made it through the display area, speeding out onto Oakwood Boulevard.

Now it was just him and the other cars. He saw brake lights flare in the traffic ahead of him and glimpsed a flash of a green Mustang darting across yellow lines. He barreled up the left-turn lane, diving into the oncoming lanes twice to go around other cars. The surge of the accelerator traveled up his body as he hit the gas.

Through his implant, he could still hear the furor back at Greenfield Village sorting itself out. He ignored everything until he heard that Lieutenant Cariatti, injured in a single-shooter incident, was now being transported by ambulance while the area was secured. Then came the report of a red Dodge causing havoc on Oakwood, but the report hadn’t even identified the car as a gasoline model and had him going in the opposite direction. There was nothing on a green Mustang and wouldn’t be unless Talic deliberately called attention to himself, which, of course, he would not.

Worse, the confusion tying up circuits would work to Talic’s advantage. No matter where he went or how fast he drove there, the priority would be protecting the government and business bigwigs at the economic summit party. No one would care about a cop who left the party early as long as the VIPs were safe and happy.

Andre pressed his thumbs and fingers onto the underside of the steering wheel, wondering what he thought he was doing. He was in an antique car, barely street legal, that he had no right to drive. He couldn’t even claim half ownership. He wondered if Oliver would be angrier that his little brother was driving the Challenger or that he’d taken it away from the show.

Andre swerved to avoid clipping the bumper of an Octave, unnerved by the lack of warning. He was too used to proximity sensors alerting him to hazards like that. He couldn’t afford to get a single scratch on the Challenger. Yes, it could be fixed. Dents could be hammered out, scratches buffed, engines rebuilt. Whatever the insurance company wouldn’t handle, they could fix themselves. But it would never be the same. Dad’s handprints were all over it—his work, his time, his vision of automobile perfection. One infinitesimal scratch and Dad’s vision was gone forever. One dent and he might as well scrap the Challenger for parts.

He slammed on the brakes to skid into a turn and slammed just as hard on that thought. No matter what, he had to think about Nikhil. He had to set aside his doubt that he would catch Talic in a fifty-year-old car, or his worries about what would happen when he did.

He came to the Southfield Highway and took his foot off the gas pedal. Had Talic gone here or—
there
. Still southeast on Oakwood. But the left-turn lane had vanished. Andre leaned on the horn, grateful that the next light was with him. Flashing the headlights and using the horn, he blasted up the dashed white line between the rows of cars with centimeters to spare on either side. The old-style rear display—nothing more than a mirror pointed toward the back window—showed a scene like a swath cut in a cornfield, cars scattered to either side behind him.

Talic’s car moved right as it descended beneath the overpass. He was getting on the highway. East on 94. Talic had to know something Andre didn’t, or had some kind of plan.

The green car vanished from view. Andre signaled to the right and moved without looking for a space. The on-ramp began beneath the dark bridges of 94 and ascended in a rising loop that pressed Andre against the driver’s side door and made him wonder, queasily, how well the Challenger’s restraint system worked. They’d had crashbag technology at the turn of the century, but it was still in its infancy. There was no airweb here, only a three-point harness and a single airbag.

Rotating alarm lights flared on both sides of the on-ramp as Overdrive picked up the non-equipped Challenger entering the highway. Police would be notified. Fines would be levied. Patrol cars would chase him down.

In the meantime, Andre was a ghost the system could not track or control.

As he merged into the rushing flow of the highway, it didn’t seem any different from a self-controlled surface road. No telltale flicker of Overdrive lights, no softly modulated voice quietly reminding him that his car was now part of the system. But it wasn’t.
He
wasn’t.

He gripped the wheel, feeling the rush of cars on every side. He’d had little trouble controlling the Challenger on surface streets. But the highway? Computer-assisted cars drifted in and out of lanes, any one of them able to cut him off or even ram him because the computers monitoring the system couldn’t see him. The proximity sensors should prevent crashes, but it took two to make it work with any kind of effectiveness. At these speeds, he could be right on top of another car before its sensors could see him. He’d be playing bumper cars in no time.

His only hope was to open up space around the Challenger. He had to see hazards in time to avoid them. He stomped the gas and caught startled looks with his peripheral vision. He wondered what the people on the road with him thought when they heard the roar of the Challenger’s engine and smelled the reeking exhaust he was leaving behind. The happy nostalgia of seeing a classic car meant nothing if the car was about to plow into you.

The green car moved out of sight, still in the fast lane, but a few seconds of chase brought it into view again. Talic was just cruising now, perhaps not realizing he was being followed. Andre felt a laugh welling up. He felt so damn conspicuous in this bright red car with its acre of hood and rocket engine.

Apparently Talic thought so too. He must have caught sight of the Challenger in his rear display because one moment, the Mustang was there and the next it had dipped between two freight-haulers and was gone. Andre swore and moved in. He rode the ridge onto the raised right shoulder to be sure Talic didn’t take an exit and lose him. He wondered if Talic would use the upcoming interchange with 96. There was the green car, hovering between two minivans. It disappeared left.

Andre tried to follow, but slashing across that many lanes involved a dodge-and-weave that cut way too close to neighboring traffic. He could bet that the proximity sensors were screaming in his wake, and in the end he only managed to change lanes three times. That would have to be enough. There was nowhere for Talic to go on the left—unless he was going to use an Official-Vehicle-Only turnaround—damn! Andre cut sharply left, and saw traffic slow around him as the other cars sensed an obstacle. He moved one more lane and hit the brakes on instinct, gritting his teeth as the Challenger almost ate the Mustang’s tailpipe.

“Shit,” he muttered, trying to get his breathing under control. Too close. Way too close. He could have completely wrecked the Challenger, not to mention injuring and possibly killing Nikhil.

Talic had already pulled away and across several lanes. Andre hit the gas and peeled out after him. Talic had been going for the turnaround. Now he couldn’t and he would fly on the highway as long as he could, letting Overdrive help him, while Andre—a woefully inadequate driver invisible to a powerful system—did all the work.

But perhaps he could get Overdrive to do some of his work after all. He changed lanes yet again, the tachymeter needle jerking toward the redline as he struggled to catch up. He positioned himself right behind Talic’s Mustang. Talic was stuck, hemmed in with cars in front and to the left, nothing but shoulder to the right, where Overdrive would not let him go. Someone driving his own car would weave, preventing Andre from coming alongside. With a computer in charge? Not happening.

Andre waited for his opening. One kilometer passed. Two. Traffic thinned as they neared the edge of the city, offering him a shot. He popped left into the next lane before Talic could.

And then he started. Nudged the wheel right so that the Mustang’s proximity sensor would force Talic right. Then right again. Not too much and not too suddenly, or Overdrive would take over and either slow Talic down or speed him up and get him into a safer lane. Andre had to prevent that. He matched Talic’s speed and made sure his right front tire was next to Talic’s left rear one. Over. A little more. A little more. And there was an exit. He herded Talic’s car onto the ramp like cattle into a chute.

He felt an absurd gratitude for the brake pedal as he gave it a gentle push and slowed the car. Adrenaline made his mouth dry, and his fingers tingled as if they’d been iced. His panting breaths filled the car as he finally had a chance to see where he was. Telegraph Road. Heading toward the worst part of the zone. Talic could skirt it by turning left. But the light was with him and he took a sharp right instead, then straight for a single block, then another turn, and they were fully in the zone.

No other traffic. People scattering into hiding at the sight of two well-kept cars.

No witnesses.

The rubble in the road was an obstacle course, but Talic didn’t let much slow him and not for long. He took several more turns, left and right. Smart. Talic was too damned smart. His Mustang, designed for higher speeds and quick maneuvering, took tighter turns than the Challenger. As long as Talic kept turning, Andre would fall back. His palms were slick on the wheel, his swollen right hand barely hanging on, but he didn’t dare adjust his grip. He had to stop Talic and stop him now.

Talic slowed to under fifty KPH as he reached a straight stretch of road that was littered with the burned-out husks of former automobiles. Many had parts spilling out into the roadway and Talic had to weave between them. Andre nosed closer, and then almost alongside.

“This won’t hurt,” he told the Challenger. “Much.” Making unspoken vows to personally hammer out any dents, he turned the car sharply right. He put his front bumper between Talic’s rear bumper and rear tire. He tugged the steering wheel and hit the gas. Talic’s smaller, lighter car spun out quite satisfactorily.

And then smashed itself into the steel frame of what used to be a pick-up truck.

Talic was on the brakes the moment he lost control of the vehicle, but it wasn’t enough to stop the momentum. In a juddering wail of overheating tires, crushing plastic and squalling steel, the cars came to a halt in a gaudy T, the back of Talic’s car a ruined mess. Airbags had popped out all over the front of the car, but not the back, where the impact must have destroyed the airweb mechanism before it could deploy.

Andre’s chest felt cut in two from the shoulder harness. He unlatched it and dragged himself out from under the seatbelt and around the door, staying low. He drew his gun and aimed it over the hood of the car. The Challenger had suffered three deep dents, plus one nasty scrape at least a meter long, probably from Talic’s bumper.

The bigger problem was staring him down from behind the other car. Talic aimed at him over the Mustang’s trunk, his Smith and Wesson Guardian looking like a tunnel.

“Nikhil!” Andre yelled. No answer. “Nikhil!”

“Unconscious.” Talic sounded breathless and harried. “Bleeding.”

Andre felt the sweat leaking down his ribcage. If Nikhil was bleeding out, he wouldn’t have much time. There was no way to trigger an emergency alert—the Challenger was far too old to have a screamer. Would Talic’s car do it?
If I hadn’t clipped him so hard, if I’d watched where I was going, if I hadn’t . . . if I hadn’t . . .
No matter how he clamped down on that thought, the self-blame kept spinning through his head. He couldn’t fix things as long as Talic held a very loaded, very lethal weapon on him.

“Let him go!” Andre yelled across the three-meter expanse between their cars. “Nikhil is nothing to you.”

“But he’s everything to you,” Talic said. “I still want Price-Powell.”

“So do I. But not like this.”

“Ah. So you do see things my way. We simply disagree on methods.”

“I’m sure that’s not all we disagree on.” Andre used his left hand to steady the Yavorit in his swollen right one. “What does it matter? Topher Price-Powell is long gone.”

“He’ll never leave,” Talic called. “Not until he gets what he came for.”

Andre brandished the Yavorit. “Give me my nephew.”

“So this is it,” Talic said, his voice remarkably calm. “You want to shoot me. This is where you’ve drawn your blue line. Right here.”

“That depends, Talic. Depends on where you draw yours.”

“No one can take back a bullet fired.”

“I know. You taught me that. First-year weapons training.”

“Your partner—”

“Danny. You shot Lieutenant Danny Cariatti.”

Talic dropped his gaze and ran a hand along his jaw. “And is the Lieutenant . . .”

“He’s okay.” Andre blew a breath through pursed lips. “Stupid, but okay.”

“He’s more than okay,” Talic lifted his head. “You be sure to tell him that.”

Andre slowly, carefully lifted both arms in the air. He turned the Yavorit in his hand and lowered it to the top of the Challenger. He let it go and took a step backward.

After a moment, Talic holstered his Guardian and showed empty hands. He looked at Andre under wrinkled eyebrows, as if he hadn’t quite seen him before. Then he nodded. “What now?”

Andre holstered his gun and moved to the side of the Mustang. Through the open door he could see Nikhil half off the seat, eyes closed, blood welling from a nasty-looking gash high on his forehead. Talic had cuffed his wrists to the floor ring, leaving Nikhil almost completely unprotected in the crash.

Talic was leaning in from the other side where the window had stress-shattered into rounded safety beads. “Don’t move him.”

“A dead hostage is no good to you.”

“The ambulance will be along soon. My car called for it the moment you ran me off the road.”

“You didn’t cancel it?”

“No.” Talic pointed to the car’s companel, where the display counted down the time until the ambulance’s expected arrival. Six long minutes, and that was if the ambulance driver would agree to go into the zone at all.