Page 119 of King’s Ransom

‘I’m her boyfriend!’

Audrey looked up from her bed and her eyes boggled when she recognised me.

‘Sam . . .?’ she said weakly through her oxygen mask.

‘Yeah, it’s me.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m rescuing you—’

I looked ahead.

The two forward black chase trucks were speeding along just ahead of me, with the red Yaris whizzing between them like an insane bumblebee. Preoccupied with it, I don’t think they’d realised yet that their man had lost control of the ambulance.

Beyond them, to the right, I saw an exit ramp branching off the parkway, curving away to an interchange that forked again either to the George Washington Bridge or to the streets of northern Manhattan.

That was my chance—

Whump.

Someone else, however, knew I’d taken the ambulance.

A ski-masked assassin appeared outside my passenger window, having jumped onto the running board from his truck, the third black Ford which was on the right-hand side of the ambulance.

He raised an MP-7 machine gun at me—

—as I whipped up my pistol and shot him through the window.

Glass shattered.

His goggles exploded with blood.

And he fell, tumbling back down the roadway.

His Ford sped up, came level with my ambulance on the right and rammed me hard.

As it did, its masked driver shot wildly at me.

I returned fire, shooting blindly, and somehow hit him in the left hand.

I saw it burst with blood and he yanked it off the steering wheel in a reflex.

But he kept driving and—

Whump.

Another assassin must have jumped across from his truck’s tray onto my speeding ambulance.

In the right-side mirror I saw him hanging on to the side, gripping a pistol in one hand, trying to make his way forward to my cab.

I looked ahead: the off-ramp was rapidly approaching.

But the two black trucks in front of me were on to me now, and I saw them visibly slow, even though Heidi was still harassing them, zipping in between them.

Then one of the trucks tried to ram her and Heidi sprang her trap: she braked hard, skidding, and the first truck swung across her and hit the second one and suddenly both of them were sliding wildly, out of control, their wheels locked, and they bounced off two other cars and stopped, facing the wrong way, as my ambulance and the last truck shot past them.

The off-ramp opened to my right.