The Silent Sea (2010) - Cussler Clive - Страница 55
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He glanced in the mirror just as the town car careened around the corner one block back. Juan was driving an overloaded Mitsubishi and had no illusions that he could outrun the big American V-8 even if the car was carrying armor, which it probably was.
Juan made two quick turns, and slowed as a police car with lights flashing went streaking past followed closely by another unmarked car.
His confidence evaporated when he saw both cars brake heavily in his mirror. It took them a few moments to turn around on this narrow street, forcing Espinoza to stop completely. Obviously, the General knew someone a lot lower down on the food chain than Cabrillo had estimated. He should have figured a man like Espinoza would know the neighborhood precinct's commander.
In seconds, all three cars would be in pursuit, and the little Mitsubishi's description would be on police radios all across Buenos Aires. He'd been right about one thing. Getting Tamara out of the apartment was the easy part of the night's work.
They turned into a narrow alley, and Juan shouted, Now, to Mark Murphy.
Murph already had his windows down, and he began pulling pins on smoke grenades as fast as he could. These were of the Corporation's own design and produced faster and denser smoke than even those used by the U.S. military. After the third one hit the street, Juan could see nothing behind him but a thick haze that even masked the streetlights and the illumination from second-and third-floor windows.
Enough, Juan said, and he made another series of random turns. His throat felt as dry as dust, but his hands remained loose on the wheel and his focus never wavered.
Just curious, Linc said from the backseat. Does anyone know where we are?
Linda? Cabrillo said.
She had a handheld GPS and studied the screen intently. Yeah, I've got a pretty good idea. We're heading in the general direction of the docks, but up ahead is a maze of streets. We need to cut to our left where there's a pretty big avenue.
The town car emerged from a cross street without warning. It slid neatly behind the sedan, pressing so hard on its suspension and tires that a hubcap came loose and spun across the sidewalk like a Frisbee. The driver knew this neighborhood better than even the police who patrolled it, and had outguessed Cabrillo.
Gunfire spat from the passenger's window, where a bodyguard leaned out with a big pistol in his hand. Linc twisted his considerable bulk and unleashed a full magazine from his machine gun. The rubber bullets were useless against the Caddie, but the psychological impact of a full-auto attack forced the chauffeur to brake hard and crank the wheel over. They scraped against a series of parked cars and set off a chain reaction of shrieking alarms and flashing lights.
Linc dropped the H&K and unholstered his Beretta. If the town car was armored, the pistol would do no more damage than rubber bullets, but it was better than nothing.
What about more smoke? Mark suggested.
This street was too wide to block with the grenades, so Juan said nothing and watched his mirrors. By the time the Cadillac took up the chase again, it was being tailed by the police cruiser. There would be dozens more converging on the elegant streets of the Recoleta District. They needed to ditch the car and find another.
There was a construction site to their left. The street had been torn up by large yellow excavators, and scaffolding spiderwebbed across the fa+oade of a columned building. Juan looked closer and realized it was a large ornamental gateway. He assumed there was a park through the closed gates and turned for it, pushing the little four-cylinder for everything it had.
The car maintained traction across the muddy ground, and Juan lined up the nose.
Brace yourselves!
They flashed through the scaffold latticework, bounced up one low step, and slammed into the gate. Cabrillo had expected a cataclysmic impact, but the gates were being repaired and had been leaned into place at the end of the work shift. The chain holding them together stayed in place, but the ornate wrought-iron panels crashed to the ground, and the Mitsubishi roared over them. The collision didn't even deploy the air bags.
Juan realized his mistake instantly. This wasn't a park, and it took a few seconds to understand what it was. Laid out in neat grids like a Lilliputian city were thousands of beautiful buildings made at about one-fifth scale. They were as ornate as any they had seen all night, with marble columns, bronze statues, steepled roofs, and all manner of religious iconography.
This wasn't a park. It was a cemetery, and those weren't miniature buildings but, rather, grand mausoleums.
After Arlington National in Washington and P+?re Lachaise in Paris, the Cementerio de la Recoleta was perhaps the most famous cemetery in the world. All of the city's most wealthy and prominent figures, including Eva Per+|n, were laid to rest in some of the most decorative and stunning aboveground crypts ever built. It had become a tourist destination almost as soon as it had opened.
It was also a maze too tight for a car and was walled in on all four sides.
Juan had led them into a dead end.
The Silent Sea
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
THEY HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO MAKE THE BEST OF HIS mistake.
Mark, pop smoke! Everything you've got.
As Murph started heaving more smoke grenades in their wake, Juan committed them to one of the wider lanes through the ranks of mausoleums. The cobbled path was tough on the car's overtaxed suspension, and the path was so narrow that a slight miscalculation cost the Mitsubishi its remaining wing mirror.
They had gone no more than fifty feet when the footpath narrowed even further because of an oversized marble crypt. They couldn't turn around. Juan glanced over his shoulder. Another path met this one at a diagonal. He put the car in reverse and backed into it, scraping paint off the doors against the statue of some politician or other. The only saving grace was that the rain was finally letting up a bit. Visibility was still poor, especially with the smoke drifting eerily around the tombs, but it had improved. The other consolation was neither the police car nor the Cadillac would be able to follow them.
He wondered if they would chase after them on foot and decided they probably would. The rage he had seen on Espinoza's face could only be slaked with blood.
The car clipped a marble bust and tore it off its memorial. The stone head rolled across the cobblestones like some misshapen bowling ball. It took all of Juan's defensive driving lessons to keep the car from caroming into the crypt on the opposite side.
He saw the path divide again and backed into the wider-looking route. It narrowed almost instantly, with a mausoleum that looked like a replica of a local church. He pulled forward and then backed down the other way. With so little light, it was next to impossible to keep straight, and again they scraped against one of the decorative monuments. He said a silent apology to the person's ghost and kept going.
To his left flashed a larger alleyway. The turn was so tight that it took him several tries, and a lot of smashed marble and crumpled sheet metal to make it. If they somehow got out of this, Cabrillo promised himself that the Corporation would make an anonymous donation to the cemetery's keepers.
A cat, for which this place was famous, dashed out of its hiding place right in front of the car, its fur soaked to its skin, in the glow of the only functioning headlight. Juan slammed on the brakes instinctively. The feline gave him a contemptuous look and slunk off.
The world suddenly went white. It took a second for Juan's eyes to adjust. Overhead, an unseen helicopter had thrown on its searchlight and created an oasis of daylight in the otherwise stygian cemetery. An amplified voice echoed down from above.
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