Page 36 of Lone Wolf

The cop took the round to his chest plate, the domino effect nearly knocking them over. But Evan wrenched their joined arms north, forcing the shared pistol up, and fired twice at the Wolf.

She dipped low, rolling out of sight, the bullets puffing a mattress stood on end behind her. The cop was wheezing and grunting through clenched teeth.

Evan checked him for blood—none—and respiration—labored but clear —and left him, booking for the heart of the cobbled-together city. More units swarmed the perimeter, headlights skewering tents, engine noise reaching an oceanic roar.

The tents lit up in red and blue, buffeted by the wind, strobing kaleidoscopically. Evan took a step back, crashing into a shopping cart filled with empty cans and bottles. He spun a full 360 degrees. The labyrinth unspooled all around, promising more turns and alleys, dead ends and hidden nooks. Flashing at the edges of sight, officers closed the noose —a glimpse of boots beneath tattered nylon, a peaked police hat floating atop a cardboard wall, a duo of patrolmen plunging behind a row of decaying porta-potties. Two more seconds and he’d be spotted from at least three angles.

Another stumbling backward step brought him into a wider lane forged through the shabby habitat, a cleared thoroughfare atop a stretch of disused railroad track.

An Interceptor sedan flew past up a lane to his side, close enough he could see the gaping mouth of the driver. It swerved toward him, the rear fender clipping a cardboard house and lifting it straight off a frail woman inside sitting on a frayed lawn chair, her filthy skin like a crust.

The vehicle came at him, bearing down, the driver yelling into his radio.

Evan skipped back out of the lane, grabbing the edge of the shopping cart. Across its girth he locked eyes with the patrolmen emerging from the far side of the porta-potties. A few paces behind them stood the Wolf, head lowered, shoulders rolled forward, just another face in the crowd.

Ahead, the patrolmen surged toward him, knocking aside civilians.

Behind, the Interceptor’s engine screamed.

Grabbing the cart with both hands, Evan swung it around with a discus pivot, hurling it across the railroad track just in time for the patrol car to pancake into it.

Police airbags were rigged not to deploy for PIT maneuvers and minor contact; to register through the push-bumper assembly, they required a serious front collision.

He got it.

The impact was apocalyptic, an explosion of glass and aluminum throwing a literal cloud of shrapnel over the area. The twisted shopping cart flew up, up, and away like a flung clay pigeon. The bang of the front airbags deploying knocked the driver back in his seat, the autobrakes stuttering the car to a halt.

The driver’s door opened and the cop spilled out coughing, his face powdered with sodium azide residue.

Evan hurdled the driver, jumping into the Interceptor and ripping the door shut behind him. Hastened by a flurry of rounds from the pursuing patrolmen, the door slammed in its frame, jarring his shoulder and knocking him on a tilt over the console. He settled back, slapped the locks just as the lead patrolman banged into the side of the car, chest mashed to the pane, hands scrabbling at the handle.

Evan shoved the airbag aside and stomped the gas, four hundred horses roaring to life. The powerful sedan screeched along the railroad track through the rows of tents, shot from a cannon.

Faces and domiciles ripped by as if on a loop. Accelerating, he aimed for the concrete basin of the dry Los Angeles River, using the 101 overpass as a North Star. SUVs raced through the alleys, converging on him, vectoring in from both sides. He goosed the modified 3.5-liter V-6 even more, five hundred pounds of torque smashing him back into the heavy-duty vinyl.

The SUVs poured in at him, push bumpers rocketing for side impact, closer and closer.

He was joggling in his seat, the looming overpass shaking. If he could make it to the river basin he could—

An SUV clipped his rear panel.

Evan’s sedan was thrown into a bumper-car gyration, the world whipping by, the hood plowing through a Lego stack of trash cubed like bales of hay, releasing a garbage slick in his wake. The reek of burned rubber leaked through the vents.

Still rotating, the car slid down the slope and launched onto the concrete riverbed before the vast underpass, its sloped foundation pillars burgeoning like mighty oaks.

He stopped spinning in the center of the basin.

SUVs and patrol cars nosed forward, hemming him in from the left side —but at a cautious distance. A steeper embankment to his right. SUVs on the concrete riverbed behind him. A police blockade ahead beyond the overpass.

Evan gritted his teeth, felt the ache along his jaw.

Checkmate.

22

Nowhere to Go

The cops peered out at the Interceptor alone on the concrete plain of the riverbed. None of them dared to breathe. A silent standoff.