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‘Roger that,’ Morgan answered, realising there was no other option, but hating it nonetheless.
Knight eased his way around the final few cars and positioned himself in the blind spot for the truck’s mirrors, seeing that the rear shutter-type door had been secured by a thick, shiny new padlock.
‘Brand-new lock on the truck’s door,’ he told those listening in to his radio. ‘I need to take a look at the sides and confirm this is our guy. Maybe the paint got washed out by the showers.’
Knight edged his bike out to the side of the truck and saw that his hunch was correct – the black of the Jones Brothers lettering was showing faintly beneath the fresh coat of white.
‘This is our guy!’ he said excitedly.
But their guy was a Recon Marine before he was a kidnapper, and as such, Alex Waldron knew something about being scouted as a target. The black bike and its rider had aroused his suspicion, and now Knight saw a thick-jawed brute staring death at him in the wing mirror. He’d been spotted.
And that was when Waldron tried to kill him.
CHAPTER 32
WALDRON HIT A hard left and a right on the wheel, causing the truck’s rear end to shoot out, hoping to send Knight and his bike smashing into the line of cars parked nose to tail at the roadside.
Knight saw the truck’s movement just in time, and with a flick of the throttle the bike’s powerful engine pushed him forward and out of danger. He was now level with the cab. Waldron threw caution to the wind and began to drag the corner of the cab along the line of stationary vehicles. Knight would either be ground between the truck and the cars, or if he hit the brakes and dropped back, another flick of the wheel would send the truck’s rear end slamming into him.
He had less than a second to make a decision that would either save or end his life.
He took it, and with adrenaline pumping through his veins, he made the impossible leap to the rear of the truck’s cab. The bike fell to the tarmac and smashed to pieces under the truck’s wheels.
Somehow, amidst the chaos and destruction, Knight found a handhold, gripping on by his fingertips.
It was enough. Acting purely on impulse and instinct, he hauled himself to safety in the narrow refuge between the cab and its cargo container.
With a soldier’s sixth sense, Waldron had seen the narrow escape of his prey and began to throw the truck into a series of wild manoeuvres in an attempt to shake Knight loose, the blare of horns echoing as other drivers sought to avoid the menace that barged through the London streets.
Knight knew he had to act before the inevitable happened and someone was killed by this rampaging truck.
He pulled the helmet from his head, grasping it in one hand, and used his other to pivot himself outwards so that the Kevlar crashed against the driver’s window, cracking it. Through the spider’s web of glass, Knight saw a look of pure animal rage on the face of a man who seemed to hold no value for life.
Knight swung again, and this time the glass smashed. Waldron threw a savage punch through the now open window that connected with Knight’s jaw. The blow struck like a hammer, and Knight’s feet slipped beneath him on the narrow perch of the door ledge.
Inches away from becoming a bloody smear on the roadside, Knight managed to regain his footing. He grabbed hold of the driver and the two men grappled, Waldron oblivious to the pedestrians and motorists who fled in panic from the weaving truck. Grasping wildly, Knight felt his hand come into contact with the truck’s steering wheel. Seeing a line of parked cars, the pavement clear of pedestrians, he turned it hard left with all of his strength.
The truck slewed. Metal screamed as the cab ploughed into a lamp post that bent like a broken toothpick, the echo of the crash ringing out across the streets.
It all happened in a split second, and in that moment Peter Knight was thrown through the air like a rag doll.
CHAPTER 33
KNIGHT WASN’T IN the air long enough to register the sensation of flight. One moment he had been fighting with Waldron through the truck’s smashed cab window. The next, he was half inside the front windscreen of a Ford Focus, the shattered glass giving way beneath the force of his landing.
He wanted to lie there. The damage control centre of his mind was already telling him that he was bruised from head to toe, that his spine had suffered a blow, and that two of his fingers were likely broken. Looking at the awkward angle they’d assumed, he became sure of it. He wanted to lie there, but if he did, he knew he had about twenty more seconds to live – because Waldron was climbing from the truck’s smashed cab, his face as bloody as it was angry, and in his hands there was a knife.
No, Knight corrected himself, it was a KA-BAR. It was the weapon that had killed Aaron Shaw, and had sawn open the throat of Grace Beckit. If Knight couldn’t move, he’d be the next to be slaughtered.
Waldron was free of the cab and saw Knight, helpless. He grinned.
Ten seconds.
CHAPTER 34
WALDRON SMILED AS he closed the gap. Knight had met his kind before – the sickest members of humanity who could only find pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering on others. In most instances, Knight was as fascinated by them as he was disgusted. On this occasion, seconds away from dying on the man’s blade, his only thought was how to kill the Recon Marine first.
Waldron was on him now, his tobacco-stained teeth showing in a bloody grin. He could see that Knight was trapped in the Ford’s window, maybe paralysed. With nowhere to run, Waldron wanted to take his time in dispatching his victim. It was only the panicked cries of onlookers that brought him back to reality. He’d have to make it swift, so he brought the knife high, aiming to plunge the blade into Knight’s rapidly beating heart. Waldron knew it was over – but he didn’t see Knight’s left hand, or what it had grasped from the car’s cluttered centre console.
