Page 70 of One Minute Out

Plus, now I have them close together. They are close to Talyssa, as well, which is suboptimal, but I’m a guy who takes the best shot possible and doesn’t wait for the perfect shot.

I floor the Vauxhall as soon as I decide on a plan. I’m going to take this van down and all the opposition in it.

Now, before they get to their destination.

It takes me a full minute to arrive to within two car lengths behind them, and now we are on a winding road heading northwest, with the moonlit sea off to our left. I cinch my seat belt tighter, put my hand on the gun on my hip for reassurance, and then speak to Talyssa.

“I’m right behind you. I need you to hold on to something, anything. I’m going to wreck the vehicle you’re in, and it’s going to be bad, but I have to do it.”

She immediately replies to me, right in front of the Albanians, with utter dread in her voice. “What? No... no... please, no.”

“Stop talking!” a man shouts, and then she screams in surprise and pain as if she’s just been struck.

I say, “It’s your best chance, Talyssa. You have to trust me. When the vehicle loses control, I want you to put your head in your lap and keep holding on till it comes to a stop. When it does, lie perfectly still, covering your head as best you can. I’ll get you out of the van, don’t worry. Just ride out the crash and this will all be over.”

“Oh, God, no. Please,” she says, and I imagine the Albanians are starting to wonder who the hell she’s talking to.

Flooring it now, I say, “C’mon, Gentry. You got this.”

I’m going to attempt a PIT maneuver, a Pursuit Intervention Technique, a standard tactic used by law enforcement around the globe to stop a vehicle, much better than shooting out tires or some bullshit like that.

That said, despite my comforting words to my Romanian partner, I imagine this is going to suck for everyone involved. Me, the Albanians, and Talyssa.

PITing is a pretty safe trick if done correctly, but PITing a van, even if executed perfectly, is almost always a terrible idea, because the high center of gravity of the van almost ensures it will end up tipping, or worse, flipping. But the threshold of what I think is acceptable risk for Talyssa is rising by the minute as she gets closer and closer to the moment I lose her and the bad guys have her all to themselves.

Flipping this van might break some bones in the Europol analyst, but I tell myself that if I were her, I’d rather suffer a violent car crash than torture followed by a point-blank gunshot to the back of the head.

It’s all relative, I guess.

There is a counter to the PIT maneuver the targeted driver can implement, but I’m doubting this Albanian gangster will be well versed in high-level defensive driving. But even if he does, there is also a counter-counter PIT maneuver that not many people know. I know it because the CIA taught me everything they could about hurting people and breaking things, and I’ve picked up even more on the subject since officially leaving the Agency.

The CIA taught me everything they knew then, but they didn’t teach me everything I know now.

If the Albanian driver tries to counter my PIT, he’ll fail, and he’ll wreck out just the same.

“C’mon, Gentry,” I repeat. “You got this.”

I can hear the Albanians shouting at one another through the earpiece; they are anxious and frantic, probably because they now notice that the car trailing behind them is coming up their ass. On the right side of me, a row of large houses is all but hidden behind stone walls and heavy foliage, and on the left it’s mostly just trees, with the sea beyond. There’s a wide sidewalk running along next to the road here, making the space for me to work in a little bit larger than just a two-lane road.

This isn’t the perfect place for a PIT, but it’s the best I’m going to get. I decide to go for it, and I move into the left lane as if I’m about to pass.

The driver isn’t an idiot; he knows the headlights that came racing up from behind at two thirty a.m. are attached to a vehicle that poses a threat. He jerks his wheel violently to the left, squeezing me out.

Shit.

I slow a little, fake an attempt to approach on the right, and the van bites on this. He pulls hard to the right, and I think I’ve got an opportunity to get back to his left, but right then gunfire booms out of the van’s rear window, and instantly my windshield spiderwebs.

These fuckers aren’t messing around.

“Put your head down now, Talyssa, and keep it there!”

I’ve got to make this happen before one of their rounds hits me in the fucking forehead, so I accelerate till the nose of my four-door is just past the left rear bumper of the van.

Then I carefully turn the wheel to the right, nudging in.

I make contact; it’s not much, but it’s sufficient, because it pops the rear end of the van to the right just enough to cause the tires to lose traction and the driver to lose control of the vehicle. The nose of the van veers sharply to the left, and I keep my rightward steer going, even after I’ve broken contact, so I can get out of the way of what’s about to happen.

What happens is a lot more violent than I’d hoped for, considering my aim here was to protect one of the people inside the van. The big top-heavy vehicle turns ninety degrees to the road on squealing and smoking tires, and immediately tips over at speed. As I slam on my brakes I look in my driver-side mirror and see the black van crash onto its right side. The rear door flies open with the impact, and a body ejects onto the street.

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