Chapter 36 - Highway Intercept
The armored SUVs surged forward, their reinforced bull bars aiming directly for the Aston Martin’s rear quarter-panel. A hatch popped open on the roof of the lead vehicle, and a heavy machine gun opened fire, chewing up the asphalt and peppering the sports car’s reinforced rear glass with starburst cracks.
"Duck!" Naomi commanded, swerving violently across both lanes to disrupt the gunner’s firing solution.
Ethan pressed his body low against the floorboards as rounds sang off the armored body panels like hammer blows. "They're gaining!"
"Not for long," Naomi said. She tapped the brakes suddenly, allowing the lead SUV to scream forward alongside their passenger side, its grill inches from Ethan's door. The gunner swung his heavy barrel toward the side window, grinning under his tactical helmet.
Naomi didn't flinch. She yanked the handbrake with terrifying precision while hitting the throttle, whipping the tail of the Aston Martin in a brutal 180-degree tactical spin. As the car slid backward at seventy miles per hour, Naomi dropped her window two inches and fired three hollow-point rounds through the driver-side glass of the pursuing SUV.
The driver slumped across the wheel. The SUV veered violently off the wet asphalt, flipping over the metal guardrail and tumbling down a sixty-foot embankment in an explosive fireball of fuel and metal.
"One," Naomi stated coldly, spinning the wheel back to snap the car forward, regaining traction with a high-pitched scream of smoking rubber.
The second SUV attempted to ram them from behind, but Naomi engaged the rear-mounted countermeasure pod installed by Julian Whitmore's engineers. A dense cloud of micro-filament tire spikes and blinding chemical smoke blossomed behind them.
The pursuing vehicle hit the spike strip at ninety miles per hour. Both front tires shredded instantly, sending the heavy truck spinning uncontrollably into the center concrete divider, crumpling the engine block like an accordion.
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Ethan slowly lifted his head, his face pale, staring into the rearview mirror at the burning debris on the empty highway. He swallowed hard. "You really were a monster in the dark, weren't you?"
"I was," Naomi agreed, accelerating down the deserted off-ramp toward the coastline. "And before this night is over, Vanessa Sterling will wish I had stayed one."
