The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (10 page)

‘What’s the hold-up?’ Strickland said.

‘Key’s missing,’ Bishop said, leaning forward in his seat and quickly moving his hands over the carpet at his feet. There was nothing there. He worked his fingers under the seat bar and moved his fingers along.

‘Oh, man, I don’t
believe
this,’ Strickland said.

Bishop ignored him and kept looking. There was nothing under the driver’s seat. He leaned over to the passenger seat and felt along the floor on that side. The floor mat had shifted position so part of it was in contact with the centre console, and now he noticed something lodged in the space in between. Something that glinted. He pulled the mat away and saw a thick black transponder key on the floor.

‘Got it,’ he said, sitting back up. ‘Put your seatbelts on.’

As they both strapped themselves in, Bishop pulled his own seatbelt across and inserted the key in the ignition. He turned it clockwise. The engine caught instantly. The police scanner also lit up. He could see the numbers
159.21000
displayed on the screen. Based on what Delaney had told him, this was likely the North-east Dispatch frequency.

Bishop pressed down hard on the accelerator and the engine steadily rose in pitch. Once the needle was firmly in the red, he pressed his other foot on the brake pedal, released the handbrake and shifted the gearstick into Drive. ‘Whatever happens next,’ he said over the engine noise, ‘make sure you both stay down.’

He waited for a few more seconds, still revving. Watching the garage door directly in front of them. Waiting for one of the shooters to get curious about the noise. He estimated a fifteen-foot gap between the front bumper and the garage door. Hopefully enough space to get some decent speed up before he made contact.

When he saw a shadow fall across some of the holes in the garage door, Bishop gripped the wheel and took his left foot off the brake.

The tyres screeched against the floor as the SUV shot forward like a rocket, covering the space in half a second. The vehicle slammed into the garage door and immediately burst through it in an explosion of timber and noise. Bishop was jolted forward by the impact, but kept his foot firmly on the pedal. He felt the vehicle wobble as the wheels went over an obstruction. With luck, one of the shooters.

Bishop kept the vehicle pointing towards the gap in the boundary wall directly ahead, forty feet away. The bus was on the street just to the left of it. In a flash, he identified three men in the immediate vicinity. All with automatic weapons. Two on his left were turning as they approached the front door of the house. The third, the mailman, was right in front of them. He was standing inside the wall, just to the left of the gap.

He raised his automatic weapon and fired at the SUV. In the back, Strickland shouted something. Bishop winced as a stream of impact marks riddled the lower part of the windshield. He kept the wheel steady. The man kept firing. But now he was shooting low, aiming at the wheels and the undercarriage. The noise of the bullets making contact reverberated throughout the vehicle’s interior. More gunfire rained down on them from the left as the other two joined in. Bishop suddenly heard a harsh grinding noise under his feet he hadn’t heard before and just kept ploughing through.

Then he was through the driveway entrance and on the street. They were out. Bishop pumped the brakes, wrenched the wheel hard to the left until they were pointed east and stepped on the gas again. The rear end started to fishtail to the right until he compensated and got it under control again. He passed the school bus and just kept going down Gulliver Street.

‘You all right back there?’ he said as he took it up to forty. Forty-five. Fifty.

‘Jesus,’ Strickland said. ‘Yeah, we’re okay. Where to now?’

‘The nearest police station.’

Bishop had made a thorough recon of the area yesterday evening, so the various routes were still fresh in his mind. He knew every street around here. Every intersection. Three-quarters of a mile to the east was North 5th Street, which would take them to the downtown area of North Vegas. He knew the nearest police headquarters was on East Lake Mead Boulevard, about five miles south of their current location. But he didn’t want to take such a direct route if he could help it. No telling who might be coming after them.

He visualized an alternative route. The next turn-off along Gulliver was for Longacres Street, a hundred yards up ahead on the right. The one he wanted for North Gramarcy Street was another hundred yards beyond that. He looked in the rear-view and saw a dark sedan suddenly screech into Gulliver from the intersection back at the house. It kept coming in their direction. A backup in case the hit team let them get away, had to be. It was moving too fast to be anything else, which meant they weren’t out of it yet.

‘There’s another car,’ Barney said breathlessly, looking out the rear windshield. ‘It’s coming after us.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Bishop said.

The turn-off for Longacres was almost on them. Bishop made an immediate decision and tapped the brakes and yanked the wheel right. He swung the SUV into Longacres at forty miles an hour, straightened out and began to increase speed again.

‘
Watch out
,’ Strickland yelled from behind his shoulder.

Bishop had already seen it. Up ahead on the right, barely twenty feet away, a car was backing out of its driveway onto the street. Bishop pressed down on his horn twice and veered around the vehicle without braking, barely missing the rear bumper by inches.

‘
Asshole
,’ Strickland shouted. An angry car horn answered him.

Bishop kept going, checking the rear-view every other second. Waiting for that sedan. It was sure to have seen him take the turn. That grinding noise under the engine was also getting progressively louder. Bishop didn’t like that sound at all.

Up ahead about fifty feet away was the three-way intersection he wanted. He needed to reach it before the sedan turned into this street and saw which direction they took. He stamped down hard on the gas, giving it everything he had.

Seconds later, he reached the intersection and swung a hard left into Blackmore Avenue. The sedan still hadn’t made the previous turn. Bishop straightened out again and aimed for the intersection for North Gramarcy two hundred feet up ahead. They reached it four seconds later, still with no sign of the sedan. Bishop braked and looked left and right. Saw nothing. He turned right into North Gramarcy and took them back up to thirty-five. Single-storey houses passed by on either side. Their car was the only one on the street. But it wouldn’t be for long.

Bishop decided it might be better to stick to these smaller roads. It would take longer, but there’d be far less chance of their being tracked by the enemy. Especially as they stood out in this vehicle. The bullet holes were kind of hard to ignore.

Voices were coming from the police scanner and he reached down and turned the volume up.

‘…
confirmed, Seven-Adam
,’ a clipped female voice was saying. It sounded like the dispatcher. ‘
Address is 234 Gulliver Street. Same witness also reports three or four of the perps have just escaped the scene in a black Toyota Highlander. No registration available at this time. Be advised they are reportedly armed with fully automatic weapons and are to be considered extremely dangerous. Handle with caution, and don’t take any chances. Helicopter surveillance is also on its way. ETA, six minutes.
’

What the hell?
Bishop found himself slowing as he listened closely.

Another voice, this one male, said, ‘
Ten-four, Dispatch. En route now. Currently at the plaza on East Centennial Parkway, about to turn into North Gramarcy. Twelve-Adam’s behind me. And don’t worry, we definitely won’t be taking any chances with these guys
.’

‘
Shit
,’ Bishop said and hit the brakes, bringing the Toyota to a sudden stop. ‘East Centennial’s just over half a mile ahead of us. We’re on a collision course.’

‘Hey, what are they talking about?’ Strickland said. ‘We’re the
victims
here, not the perps. What the hell do we do now? Turn ourselves in? What?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Bishop said, thinking fast. ‘That cop sounds a little too gung-ho for my liking. The kind who shoots first and asks questions later.’

‘But what can they do to us?’ Barney said. ‘We’re in an armoured car.’

‘Maybe so, but that’s not the only reason to avoid them.’

Bishop studied the houses on either side of the street. The one just behind them on the left had a narrow driveway that ended in a carport at the side of the house. Driveway and carport were both empty. He could only hope the occupants had already left for work. It would only be for a few minutes anyway. He reversed a few yards until they were adjacent to the open gate, turned the wheel left and calmly steered the Toyota down the driveway until they were under the shade of the carport roof.

Bishop set the handbrake, but left the engine idling. He watched the rear-view. The cops would be racing past in a matter of seconds. He
hoped
they’d race past. He could already hear sirens approaching.

Strickland leaned forward. ‘What the hell are they talking about, armed and dangerous? We’re the victims here, like I said.’

‘That witness the dispatcher mentioned,’ Bishop said without turning. ‘If he’s one of the shooters, and I think he is, we’re being set up. That’s why I don’t want to let the cops take us just yet. Even if there’s no shooting, they’ll arrest us and call in with their current location, and you can bet your ass the perps will be listening in on their own police scanners. There’s that black sedan, don’t forget. Maybe that courier van, too. Who knows how many more vehicles they’ve got on the streets searching for us? Once the cops call in that they’ve caught us, they’ll simply converge on their position and take us
and
the cops out in one go. They’ve just wasted a bunch of US marshals to get to you. What’s a few more cops?’

‘The siren’s getting louder,’ Barney said.

‘Get down,’ Bishop said, lowering himself enough that he could still see using the side mirror.

Seconds later he saw a black and white whip by, the light bar flashing red and white as it went. Then a second one hurtled past immediately after it. The sirens gradually grew muted as they sped away. Bishop stayed where he was for a few more moments, watching and thinking. Mostly thinking.

Because getting them to police headquarters wasn’t going to work anymore. Five miles was too far to travel without being spotted by either side. Especially in a bullet-ridden SUV. And to make matters worse there’d also be aerial surveillance within the next five minutes. They still had the police scanner, but he didn’t dare use it to call for help, not with the perps listening in. And Bishop had left his cell phone back at the house, which meant they were completely on their own for now.

But one thing was for sure. They couldn’t stay here. A nosy neighbour might be reporting their presence to the police right this second. They needed to move, fast. And they really needed to get out of the city altogether if possible. Go to some other town and make contact with the feds from there. Vegas was far too hot right now. But where?

Bishop mentally ticked off the available options using the road map in his head until he was left with the one they’d least expect.

He quickly reversed out of the carport and yanked the wheel left until they were pointing in the direction from which they’d just come. In the rear-view mirror he noticed a middle-aged guy in a red tracksuit about twenty feet behind them, just jogging on the spot as he stared at the SUV. No doubt curious about all the bullet holes. Bishop was about to hit the accelerator when he remembered the GPS tracker that Delaney had mentioned. Hidden in the armrest, she’d said. Probably a good idea to get rid of it now rather than later. With the engine idling, Bishop looked down at the leather armrest set into the door panel at his side and tried dislodging the thing with his bare hands, but it wouldn’t budge a millimetre.

He said, ‘Barney, you still got your multi-tool with you?’

‘Uh, yeah. Why?’

‘Let me have it for a moment. There’s a GPS tracker in here we need to get rid of.’

Barney pulled out his multi-tool and handed it over. Bishop extracted the small one-inch knife and inserted the blade in the thin space between the armrest and the hard plastic of the door. After about fifteen seconds of jiggling, he felt the armrest start to loosen, so he removed the blade and used his fingers to pull it out the rest of the way. And lying in the space underneath there was a sleek-looking device that resembled a small, wireless, external hard drive. A pinhole-sized green LED light at the top showed it was currently active.

He pulled the device from its hiding place and pressed the switch to lower the window.

From the back, Strickland said, ‘I been thinking, Bishop. Why don’t you just let the two of us out of here, huh? I’ll call the feds from one of these houses and—’

‘Forget it,’ Bishop interrupted, and tossed the tracker out the window where it landed on the sidewalk. ‘There’s no way I’m letting either of you out of my—’

He suddenly stopped when he saw the jogger had moved closer to the SUV, so that there was now only five or six feet between them. The guy had his arm outstretched and was aiming a cell phone in their direction, obviously taking a photo.

‘Shit,’ Bishop said, and quickly raised the window again, hoping the guy hadn’t caught his face, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. They were out of time and needed to move right now. He released the handbrake and stamped hard on the accelerator. They sped away.

Strickland said, ‘So what now?’

‘Now we go off-road,’ Bishop said.

Bishop slowed as they got to within fifty feet of the Beltway up ahead. They were currently driving across the rough terrain of the Mojave Desert, having left the smooth asphalt roads of North Las Vegas five minutes before. Nobody was following them. Yet.