Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,21

he yanked open the one in front. The cab had started to roll but hadn’t picked up any speed.

He spotted a gun jutting from the open window of the SUV as he threw himself into the front seat. With both hands, he grabbed the cabbie and hauled the man toward him, then started climbing over him.

Bullets punched the side of the cab, shattering front and back windows and plinking through the metal doors. One caught the driver in the thigh. Drake had time enough to think that what he was doing was insane, that it was suicide to put himself in the way of the bullets. But he knew that doing nothing would also be suicide.

He got his hands on the wheel, kept his head to the side, and was about to hit the gas when a loud, crunching impact filled the air. He risked looking up and saw that the ambulance driver had purposely rammed the back of the SUV.

“Crazy bastard!” Sully whooped appreciatively.

“Bought us a couple of seconds,” Drake said.

Jada cried out as another bullet punched a hole in the roof, a new attack from the sniper, letting daylight in.

Drake gritted his teeth. They had to get away from both attacks, the sniper and the SUV, and there was only one direction open to them that he knew would accomplish that. He slammed it into reverse, backed the taxi up thirty feet, then put it back in drive, cranked the steering wheel to the right, and skidded into a turn down West 12th Street.

“Are you nuts?” Sully shouted.

“You’re going to hit the fire truck!” Jada warned.

Knuckles white on the wheel, Drake drove straight for the closest fire truck. Firefighters shouted and tried to wave him off. Survivors of the burning building scurried out of the way. The two cops on the sidewalk pulled their guns, but not fast enough, as Drake shot the taxi through the gap between fire truck and ambulance and careened down the street toward the police cars waiting there.

Gunfire punched the air, echoing off the buildings, but he didn’t slow down.

“Jada, are they following?” Drake asked.

She spun in the backseat and looked out the rear window. “Yes!”

“Are you kidding?” Sully said. “Who the hell are these guys?”

“We’ll be out of range of the sniper as soon as we turn the corner,” Drake told them.

“What about these nutjobs in the SUV?” Sully barked.

Drake smiled. He gunned the taxi past the two police cars parked diagonally at the curb, grazing a parked Mercedes, tearing off the taxi’s sideview mirror, and then accelerated even more. At the intersection, he hit the brake, turned into the skid, and slung the taxi into a right turn, driving the wrong way up Washington Street. Car horns blared, and a white box truck swerved to avoid a head-on collision.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the two police cars pulling out to block the road. Two officers on the street had their guns drawn and were rushing up to the SUV as it skidded to a halt.

“We’re clear!” Sully said.

“For how long?” Jada asked, leaning forward, looking at Drake in the mirror. “They’ll have cops crawling all over us in a minute.”

Drake hung a quick left on Jane Street, no longer heading into oncoming traffic. He glanced over his shoulder at Sully.

“What do you think? Chelsea Piers?” he asked.

“No choice,” Sully agreed.

“What’s at Chelsea Piers?” Jada said.

Drake smiled, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Same thing you generally find at piers. Boats.”

5

The High Line elevated park had started its life as a freight train track built above the city to keep the trains away from public streets. The elevated platform that ran through the Meatpacking District all the way to 34th Street had been converted to a long green oasis. Drake had never walked the park, but he had read an article about it in some in-flight magazine or other, describing it as a hidden gem of New York City. Someday he hoped to get a closer look at the High Line, but today he needed it only for cover.

He pulled the taxi to the curb on Little West 12th Street and let it roll into the shadows under the High Line. In the backseat, Jada was still shaking.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Sully took her hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. “We’re gonna improvise, sweetheart. Don’t worry. If there’s one thing Nate and I know how to do, it’s