I hit the rear of the SUV, my ass shattering the window.

  The engine bellows and the vehicle surges forward, and I fall back out. Panic erupts within me like an ice volcano, chilling, freezing my mind and body with the certain knowledge I’m going to die in the next few seconds.

  My right hand has hold of something. It’s keeping me from slipping away, falling to the pavement. I look and see my AR-15 wedged in the window. Grabbing onto it with my other hand, I pull myself through into the wayback of the fourth SUV.

  There’s a lot of shouting in here. Some of it’s even in English.

  The guy on the right in the back here is struggling with the corpse of the gunman that tried to shoot me from the sunroof. The lady in the passenger seat up front is aiming a handgun toward me, trying to line up a shot, but since the driver’s got us going all over the place, I’m okay for now.

  Satisfied that Monica is not in that last SUV, I blast it with whatever remains in my borrowed gun. By the time the hammer falls on an empty chamber, it looks more like an impressionist’s rendition of a vehicle than anything anybody could ever drive. It drifts to the left and into the median, smoking.

  “Monica!” I yell.

  If there’s a response, I can’t hear it over the shouting. The man wrestling with the dead man has gotten him out of the way. He’s craning his neck to look at me, lifting something up. My guess is that it’s a weapon.

  I throw the empty AR-15 at him, scoot forward on my butt, and kick him in the face. It knocks him back into the seat in front of him, fouling the aim of the passenger with the pistol and blocking her shot.

  Reaching into a random ammo pouch for my slingshot, I find a hard rubber ball. I load it, pull the pocket to my ear, and let fly.

  There are satisfying grunts and yelps of pain. My next bullet is shiny metal.

  Lights shine down from above, and for a moment, we all look outside to see the police helicopter, of course. Fine lot of good it’s doing me all the way up there.

  The Sidorovs ahead slow and shift lanes, pulling even with us, windows rolling down, lining up a shot into the wayback. At me.

  Without any cover, I have to think of something else quick. Maybe I can keep my fellow passengers busy, but there’s nothing to do about the neighbors. I have to get out of here.

  Kicking with my legs, I force myself back the way I came. When the balding pate of the man in front of me pops his head up, I fire, and he falls out of sight. Either I hit him, or he’s taking cover. Either’s good with me right now.

  I’m to the window, out through it, and on top of the speeding thing before I allow myself to think much about it. Yeah, there’s the slow beat of rounds pounding through the roof from below, but hitting me is largely a matter of luck, and luck is mine.

  Well, mostly.

  I get hit in the back plate while I’m reloading my slingshot, and it almost throws me off. Not from the impact. Bullets are light and can’t do that, but my flinching away from the blow and the pain after the fact. What keeps me from rolling off is a bullet from the third SUV, which is now even with us. It hits me high on the vest, below my shoulder, and it’s like a big guy just smacked me with a crowbar. When I look for who shot me, I see any number of smoking barrels poking out our neighbor’s windows and a man with a pistol aiming out from the passenger seat.

  Yet another gunman emerges from the sunroof, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the police helicopter, its lights shuddering around us. He pulls a long tube from below. Some kind of rocket launcher? Jesus.

  I cannot allow him to take that shot.

  In order to stop him, I have to make mine. I get up onto one knee and aim with another gleaming steel ball. He’s vested up, but as he brings up the weapon, his left arm rises, and I have a chance at his armpit.

  I let fly, and the man flinches and slumps, the tube of the launcher swinging down and around, as his right hand reflexively seeks to cover the wound I’ve given him.

  All the aethings flash black, and I know what’s about to happen.

  I Push hard and leap even as the bastard fires his rocket, the smoke trail passing beneath me.

  Behind me is a hot whump, and I’m blown up and out, shrapnel buzzing by my ears, stinging into my skin, embedding themselves into my armor.

  The explosion lifts me above and past Mr. Rocket Launcher. I think I’m gone, but the driver swerves back my way, and I reach for him.

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  Fortunately, I must’ve caught something because I jerk to a halt and fall down against the side of the SUV.

  Pressure builds on my fingers through my gloves, almost painfully, and I feel hands grip my wrist. Trying to peel me off of whatever I’ve got hold of.

  Unlike the last one, this vehicle has a luggage rack. I let go of the slingshot, letting it dangle from its strap, grab the beam or strut thingy with my other hand. When I pull myself up, I see I caught Launcher by his upper freaking jaw. The man’s bent over backwards, the backs of his knees hooked on the edge of the sunroof, my freaking fingers in his freaking mouth. If I hadn’t been wearing my reinforced gloves, I’m sure he’d have bitten them all right off. Blood runs down from under his left arm, coating that side of his body. He’s pale and breathing hard.

  Good.

  Monica might be inside here and he’s in my way.

  I get a leg under me and pull him the rest of the way out, then topple him over the side. He screams as he goes, releasing me. I almost go over with him, but catch myself on the rack.

  Once I’m steady, I fire one, then two rubber balls through the sunroof before I poke my head inside.

  “Monica!” I yell.

  She’s not here either.

  There is an Asian looking fellow holding a hand over his eye, trying to bring his assault weapon to bear. I bitch slap his face, which surprises him enough to loosen his grip on his gun, allowing me to take it from him.

  There’s a gunshot as I pull away, and my head jerks forward. Blood sprays, but it’s not mine. It’s from the Asian’s temple.

  The passenger in the front seat has a smoking pistol pointed at me, a horrified expression on his face. He’d shot me in the helmet, the ricochet killing his friend. I’m just glad it wasn’t the driver.

  The wayback is empty.

  No struggling women in the footwells.

  When I look for the back seat’s other occupant, I see his crotch and legs standing in the open doorway. Shit. He’s up to no good with my lower half above.

  I pull away, my head rocking from another shot to the helmet.

  The surviving asshole has a knife coming down at my leg in an underhand grip. I twitch aside and the blade punches through the roof of the SUV, missing me.

  I shoot him with my new gun, and he falls away.

  The back seat’s open now. Empty of bad guys. Maybe I can get in there, take out that head-shooting prick, and force the driver to do something. Tell me where Monica is or bring me to her or hold him for ransom.

  I move toward the sunroof, but my leg won’t come. I look down and see that the Sidorov’s knife went through not only the roof but the leather of my boot, severing the shoelaces, and pinning me by the boot’s tongue.

  That’s when the driver below tries to shake me off. He swerves hard to the left and I go off the side to hang upside down, my back slamming against the rear door. The wind must’ve closed it when the guy fell out.

  A shadow.

  The second of the original five SUVs looms, bristling with guns from every window.

  I panic and spray them with bullets.

  The driver slumps forward, eyes staring, a hole in the middle of his forehead. The weight of his body tugs the wheel hard to the right, making the entire vehicle flip and roll on its side. This close, the sound is deafening, like it’s raining giant aluminum vats full of glass and car parts.

  Monica!

  There’s nothing to tell me she was ever in there. Nothing to show that she wasn’t.

  The bastards!

  My chest hurts. My stomach feels overfull. My ears are roaring — a huge guttural, rasping bellow I realize I’m making but do not recognize.

  A tug on my leg.

  A hand trying to pull me off the knife holding me up.

  I shoot the arm, and it disappears.

  Twisting, I’m able to flop over on my belly. I get my elbow under me and shove myself away so I can send a burst through into the passenger’s door and then another through the window before me. The glass shatters and I haul myself through.

  There’s nobody in here but dead and dying men. The driver, blood fountaining from his neck, grins at me, and sets both hands on the far left of the wheel. He’s going to crash us.

  I poke my gun through the steering wheel, stopping it. All he can do is a slight swerve toward the shoulder of the highway. He tries again and again until he expires.

  We roll to a stop and I watch, helpless, as the one remaining accelerates away at a long line of flashing lights.

  Police have blocked the road ahead with their cruisers.

  The last SUV slows and squeals into a turn, wheels smoking. But I hear sirens from behind now too and the light from the helicopter is stabbing down, the loudspeaker shouting commands I can’t quite make out.

  The SUV stops about a hundred feet from where I’m sitting. Two men and two women exit in concert, professionally bringing their assault weapons to bear on me. None of them are Monica.

  I dive into the footwell as my whole world shakes with incoming rounds. They buzz and slam and shudder through the air overhead, glass and seat stuffing flying around.

  The side door got fucked up and isn’t quite closed, so I kick it all the way open. Yep, no cover to be had except for the guardrail, thirty feet distant. It may as well be on the moon.

  There’s only so far I can Push my luck. Being trapped in an SUV under fire limits my options, and, so long as the probability of escape is zero, there’s nothing to do. The aethings are swirling black around me, growing darker, and I know I’m going to die here. I know it this time. I’m so absolutely sure of it that it pisses me the hell off.

  I mean, what the fuck? After I’ve come this far? Fought a cult of exploding morons and an inter-dimensional dragon made of fatass licorice only get killed in the back seat of a fucked up SUV, shot down by vanilla human traffickers who stole away Monica?

  I want. To know. Why she’s mad at me.

  She can’t do that if I’m dead. Or she is.

  Fuck these guys and fuck me if I let them kill me.

  I do a kind of somersault from my back onto my belly and get the barrel of my rifle pointing at an angle, right at the guardrail. I Push and fire, pulling the trigger again and again. The dull metal sings and sparks until the magazine’s empty.

  Silence.

  Surreal that it’s this quiet all the sudden. After all that.

  I pop my head up above the dash and then tuck it back down. No shots. Nothing. I caught a glance of some dark shapes on the highway, the only movement from the police lights swarming closer.

  I take a longer look.

  All four Sidorovs are lying still on the ground, bonelessly twisted in death or unconsciousness.

  I get out.

  Cops are already working on the wrecks, shining flashlights through them.

  “Amir?”

  “Here.” His voice is hoarse and croaky. “Jesus and Gene Rodenberry, what you did. I think—.”

  “Amir.”

  “No, they haven’t found her. They checked.”

  I hurry to the first SUV, pristine and idling there in the middle of the right lane of Seventy-seven. It’s empty. “She’s not here.”

  I picked the wrong motorcade.