Page 178 of Carrick
Rayden stopped with the door open, one foot in the car, and looked back over at us. “It’s not mine. Not really. I didn’t have a vehicle, so Sergei put me in this one so I could get around, run errands, that sort of thing. A company car, I guess you could say.” He chuckled. “Nicest thing I’ve ever driven, outside of Bell’s car, that is. Gotta enjoy the little things, right?”
He shrugged and got into the vehicle.
I said nothing. Couldn’t. My mind was running a thousand miles a second.
Company car. Provided by the Dom Krovi. Why would they give such a nice piece of equipment to a grunt? And one who was barely back on good terms with them, at that? Come on, Come on… what am I missing? Why does this entire thing feel wrong?
Rayden pulled away, flipping his lights back on as he did. Suddenly, my eyes went wide.
It all made sense.
Fuck.
“Quinn! They’re tracking it. They have to be! We gotta go, NOW!” I was moving even as I said it, rushing around the side of my Charger to jump into the driver’s seat. Quinn’s eyes went wide, and he froze for a second as the implications hit him like an anvil between the eyes.
The Dom Krovi never trusted Rayden. They never accepted him back into their ranks. At least, not without making contingency plans. They had expected he would double cross them.
And they’d played us for fools.
A new sound cut through the stillness—tires crunching over gravel, the low rumble of an engine echoing off the surrounding buildings.
Time seemed to slow down.
From around the corner of one of the shipping containers, a sleek, black SUV with no headlights and no plates slid into view like a snake slithering towards its prey. Rayden continued pulling away, oblivious to the danger he was in. The danger he had put us all in.
Something was wrong with the shape of the vehicle. Something sticking out of the top of it. A mounted gun?
No, that didn’t make sense. They couldn’t drive through town like that. What was it then? What?—
A plume of fire and smoke erupted from atop the SUV, illuminating the area and giving me a brief glimpse of what I hadn’t been able to make out before. A man, his upper half sticking out of a moon roof, holding…
“RPG!!!!” Quinn roared.
Too late.
I watched, frozen in a moment in time, as a line of sparks and rocket exhaust streaked across the shipping yard in an instant, painting a perfect line between the SUV and Rayden’s brand new, shiny, oh-so compromised car.
Or should I say, his coffin?
The RPG connected, and the world flashed white. Blinding. White-hot. The kind of flash that erased everything that came before. Like reality had been peeled back to its bones and set on fire.
Heat hit me like a fist, a rolling surge that blistered the air before the sound even reached us. The concussive blast hit me next, knocking me off my feet. I heard Quinn go down as well, on the other side of my car. Purely running on instinct andadrenaline now, I pivoted and turned the fall into a roll, coming up beside the driver’s side door in a crouch.
Then the sound arrived. An ear-shredding roar, a bass note from hell itself. The blast devoured every other noise, sucked oxygen from the air, and turned the world into pure, punishing vibration.
The blast was so intense it lifted Rayden’s car off the ground. For a breathless half-second it hovered in midair, backlit by a fireball like a toy suspended in amber. Then the frame twisted, cracked down the center, and exploded outward like a balloon being popped.
Metal shrieked, a sound too high and sharp to belong in this world. Shrapnel sang as it flew—hot, spinning chunks of death carving through space like they had intent. Something small and white streaked past my face and seared my cheek open. I didn’t feel it yet. My nerves were still frozen.
The smoke was everywhere. Black. Greasy. It poured into my lungs like punishment, thick enough to taste. It carried copper and chemical fire, motor oil and death. My mouth filled with ash and memory. My eyes stung, blurred not from tears but from flame and fallout.
Lit by the glow of what had been a car only seconds ago, I spotted the man in the SUV’s moon roof raising another RPG, fitting it into the launcher—and in that instant, I knew we had only seconds left before we joined Rayden in the fire. My body reacted before my mind could even catch up, even as my ears rang and my muscles screamed in protest. I ripped open the car door and reached into the center console where I had strapped a Military-grade AR-15. I whipped it around, slammed the stock to my shoulder, and opened fire.
Over my shoulder from where I crouched behind the scant protection of my car door, I heard the pop-pop-pop of Quinn’s pistol join the deepercrack!of my rifle as we both sprayed asmuch lead as we could towards the enemy vehicle. Splotches of lighter color appeared along the side of it as bullets cratered the obviously reinforced steel plates, peeling paint as they hit.
I couldn’t be sure who made the shot, but I watched with grim satisfaction as the head of the man sticking out of the moon roof snapped back at an impossible angle before he slumped over the edge of the roof. Someone inside must have pulled him back in, because he quickly disappeared as the SUV peeled out, tires squealing as it tore away from the crime scene as fast as it could while keeping all four tires on the ground.
I didn’t stop firing.
