Brekker looked down at the airport crash tender, but he didn’t have any better view inside the cab. What he did see was the nozzle on the front slewing around.
It was pointing directly at Van Der Waal’s sniper position on the catwalk.
“Get out of there!” was all he could yell before a jet of water rocketed from the nozzle all the way across the warehouse and hit Van Der Waal just as he rose to run away. The powerful stream lifted him off his feet and tossed him over the railing like a rag doll, his rifle tumbling in the air next to him. As Brekker watched in horror, his closest friend plummeted fifty feet to the concrete floor, lethally smacking his head into a ladder truck on the way down.
The détente was gone. “Kill them all!” Locsin shouted. As gunfire erupted throughout the warehouse, he shoved the redheaded woman into the nearest fire truck and started it up.
“Don’t let anyone leave the building!” Brekker yelled into his comm unit.
But it was too late. Despite the furious barrage of rounds pouring into it, Locsin’s truck smashed into the closest garage door and tore through the thin aluminum. That had to be the one carrying the load of meth.
“We can’t let him get away!” Brekker shouted to his team. “Forget the other men and meet me outside. I want Locsin’s head on a pike.”
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to hunt Locsin down. The woman in the airport crash tender revved up the enormous engine and jolted forward, tearing an even bigger hole in the building as she took off in pursuit.
33
Beth held on to the console in front of the fire truck’s passenger seat as it smashed through the front gate and careened onto the road. The terror that had gripped her before was now numbed, replaced by a resolve to get out of her predicament. Locsin, incandescent with anger, was driving so wildly that she had the urge to buckle her seat belt, but she decided she’d rather risk dying in a fiery wreck than go any farther with this madman. At her first opportunity, she’d open the door and jump out no matter how fast the fire truck was going.
Locsin seemed to read her mind.
“Don’t try to escape,” he said, brandishing the pistol in his right hand. “I never miss.”
Beth had no doubt that, even if he did miss, he’d turn the truck around just to run her down. Still, she had to try.
Locsin flicked on the emergency lights but left the siren off. The early-morning streets of Manila were nearly deserted, and the few cars that remained pulled aside for the approaching fire truck. When the cars were going too slowly, Locsin smashed them out of the way.
He thumbed the fingerprint reader on his phone and tossed it to Beth. Then he trained the pistol on her.
“Call the first number in the contact list and put it on speaker.” When she hesitated, he yelled, “Now!”
She did as he demanded.
“Tagaan here.”
“We were ambushed,” Locsin said through gritted teeth. The words almost seemed to pain him. “I’ll try to lose them, but I may not be able to.”
“Cabrillo?”
“Not him. New player. I need to meet the helicopter somewhere else.”
Another helicopter? Beth thought. The last thing she wanted to do was get in a helicopter with this guy, especially after he crashed his last one.
“Where?” Tagaan asked.
“We’re headed toward the Navotas Fish Port Complex. Tell the pilot to track my phone. I’m in the fire truck. He won’t be able to miss me.”
“And the meth?”
Locsin paused, then said, “We’ll make more.”
“But that’s fifty million—”
“I know how much it is!” Locsin screamed, before calming his voice. “Just get the Magellan Sun unloaded, and let me know how the Kuyog test goes. And get that helicopter here now!”
Locsin nodded for Beth to give the phone back to him and she did. He turned on the siren, emitting an ear-piercing wail.
They turned onto a wide road separated by a median. Beth recognized it from their drive to the mall earlier that evening and knew they were near the harbor. There wasn’t much time until they reached the fish complex, where the helicopter was supposed to rendezvous with them.