Page 28 of Hellbent

Evan held the wheel steady, luring the lead car closer.

A crackly loudspeaker pierced the rain. “Pull over immediately! Repeat: Pull to the side of the road!”

Evan called back to the girl in the trunk, “You might want to brace yourself.”

The girl shouted, “Great!”

He unholstered his ARES.

Seventeen bullets.

The lead car crept up alongside him, nosing parallel to the Caddy’s rear tires.

The PIT maneuver, or precision immobilization technique, was adapted from an illegal bump-and-run strategy used in stock-car racing. The pursuing car taps the target vehicle just behind the back wheel, then veers hard into the car and accelerates. The target vehicle loses traction and spins out.

The lead cop car was preparing for it now.

Unfortunately for him, so was Evan.

He waited, letting the cruiser ease a few more inches into position at the rear of the Caddy.

Then he hit the brakes.

He flew backward, catching a streak of the driver’s Oh, shit face as he rocketed by.

The cars had perfectly reversed positions, the do-si-do taking all of half a second.

Evan crumpled the sturdy prow of the Caddy into the rear of the cruiser, steered into the crash, and stomped on the gas pedal.

The cruiser acquiesced to the laws of physics, sheering sideways. It wrapped around the grille of the Cadillac in a series of elegant mini-collisions before fishtailing off. As Evan motored ahead onto open road, he watched in the rearview as the cruiser wiped out one of its confederates, wadding them both into the roadside ditch, where they steamed in a tangle of bent chassis and collapsed tires.

One set of headlights held steady, navigating through, sticking to the Caddy’s rear.

A quarter mile flew by, then another, as Evan and the last cop standing gauged each other.

The cop finally feinted forward, trying to steer into position, but Evan held him off by veering squarely in front of him. They kept on that way, swerving unevenly across the sodden road, the cruiser coming on, Evan answering with avoidance maneuvers.

The Caddy was growing weary, the reaction time a little worse by the second. Evan was pushing it to the limit, but it was a low limit.

He eyed the mirror. The cruiser gathered itself on its haunches, readying to dart forward again to deal a decisive blow.

All right, Jack. What next?

First of all, get off your heels, son. The Ninth Commandment: Always play offense.

“Right,” Evan said to the empty passenger seat.

He raised his 1911, turned away, and shot out the windshield. It spiderwebbed, but the laminate held it in place. With the heel of his hand, Evan knocked out the ruined glass, and rain crashed in over him, a wave of spiky cold. Evan stomped the brake hard and whipped the wheel around. The boat tilted severely as the back swung forward, sloughing through mud. For a moment Evan thought it might flip.

But it righted itself into a sloppy 180, Evan jerking the transmission into reverse and letting the wheel spool back through his loose fists. Gears screamed.

So did the girl in the trunk.

Already he’d seated the gas pedal against the floor, capturing what forward momentum he’d had, except now he was driving in reverse.

Nose to nose with the cruiser, their bumpers nearly kissing.

The young cop at the wheel blinked at him.