remaining parked cars in front of the brothel and sped toward them. A few tracer rounds streaked uphill and hit the road just short of Brodie’s position.
Brodie aimed the AK a foot above the headlights and fired a burst. The pickup lurched to its left and almost drove off the edge of the ridgeline before correcting. The vehicle kept coming. He fired again, then turned and ran toward the Mitsubishi just as Taylor had swung it around to face uphill. He jumped in the passenger seat and Taylor gunned it.
The road bent along the curve of the hill, and Taylor rocketed along the bumpy road at full speed. They were heading east, which was basically the opposite direction from where they wanted to go. But they needed to lose the pickup truck, which was still on their tail.
Taylor kept her headlights off, relying on the few points of light below to see where the edge of the road was in order to avoid taking the express route down the hill.
Brodie checked the rearview as another burst of automatic fire came at them from a guy riding in the truck’s flatbed. Brodie heard a shot ding off their rear bumper, and another went through the rear windshield and then out through the roof just above Brodie’s head.
It was a tight curve along the ridgeline; as Taylor sped up they lost sight of their pursuer, and the road began to flatten out toward the top of the hill.
Suddenly a motorbike shot out of an alley and into the road just ahead of them. Taylor instinctively swerved to avoid hitting the biker, who then swung toward them, drew a pistol, and fired two shots at their windshield. The first missed and the second punched through the top of the windshield between Brodie and Taylor.
Taylor kept her speed up and they whipped past the biker as he swung around and took after them.
Taylor made a sharp left turn at full speed onto a smaller road running downhill, and the car skidded perilously close to the wall of a building, but she cut the wheel and corrected. Brodie reminded himself that when it came to outrunning armed crazies, this wasn’t Taylor’s first rodeo. He also remembered that too many of these barrio roads dead-ended.
Brodie rolled down his window, turned in his seat, and leaned out with his AK-47. On the rear driver’s side, Luis too was leaning out with his Beretta.
The biker was maybe twenty yards behind them, his single head-beam lighting up the narrow road. Brodie saw three flashes from the biker’s pistol, and thought he heard one impact on the car.
Brodie took aim with his AK and squeezed off a short burst. He was firing uphill at a small moving target, and the AK tended to ride up on automatic, so he aimed low, and his second burst connected. The bike spun out in the narrow road and smashed into the side of a building, sending the biker airborne. Brodie was about to relax when he spotted the pickup roaring down the road after them, but it had to swerve around the bike in the road, which allowed them to get more distance as Taylor took a few more tight turns in the mazelike barrio roads. The Mitsubishi handled better than it looked.
Brodie sat back down in the passenger seat and kept his eyes on the sideview mirror. He couldn’t see the pickup, but he heard the roar of its diesel engine behind them, reverberating off the dense buildings as they navigated the winding barrio streets. He checked the AK’s mag and saw three rounds left.
They hit another straightaway and Taylor gassed it, then looked over at Brodie. “Everybody okay?”
Luis said from the back, “Sí, señora.”
Brodie said, “No Purple Hearts today.”
She asked, “What happened?”
“We were being chased by armed men.”
“I mean in the bordello, asshole.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“You got Mercer?”
“No, but I know where he is.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you later.” He added, “Good driving.”
Taylor made a few more random turns, and Brodie could no longer see or hear the truck behind them.
He said to Taylor, “Try to avoid dead-end streets.”
“What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Right.”
Taylor approached a wide road that looked like it would take them out of the barrio. She turned onto the four-lane road, put on her headlights, and sped downhill. The shanty barrio houses began to thin out, giving way to abandoned industrial buildings and long stretches of dense forest that climbed up the hills on either side of the