It was a straight stretch of road with not much traffic about. The distant tops of the mountains were yellow in the setting sun and the street was beginning to get blue with the fifteen minutes of dusk when you can’t make up your mind whether to switch on your lights.
They were riding easily along at forty with the low-slung Jaguar right on their tail and the black sedan a block ahead of them. Suddenly, so that Bond pitched forward, Ernie Cureo put his brakes full on and dry-skidded to a stop with a scream of his tyres. There was a shattering splinter of metal and glass as the Jaguar hit their fenders. The cab lurched forward against its brakes and then the driver jammed it into gear and, with a horrible tearing of iron, freed himself from the smashed radiator of the car behind and accelerated away down the road.
“That’s—ed them proper,” said Ernie Cureo with satisfaction. “How they making out?”
“Bust radiator grill,” said Bond, watching out of the rear window. “Both front wings flattened. Fender hanging off. Windshield starred, maybe broken.” He lost the car in the dusk and turned round. “They’re out on the road trying to pull the front wings off the tyres. They may be able to go before long, but it was a good start. Got any more like that?”
“Not so easy now,” grunted the driver. “War’s been declared. Watch it. Better get down. The Chevvy’s pulled up at the side of the road. They may try some shootin’. Here we go.”
Bond felt the car surge forward. Ernie Cureo was half lying along the front seat, driving with one hand and with his eyes watching the road ahead from just above the dash.
There was a clang and two sharp cracks as they flashed past the Chevrolet. A handful of safety glass showered round Bond. Ernie Cureo swore and the car gave a swerve and then got back on its course.
Bond knelt on the back seat and knocked out the glass of the rear window with the butt of his gun. The Chevrolet was coming after them, its eyes blazing.
“Hold it,” said Cureo with an odd muffled voice. “Coin’ to do a sharp turn and stop under cover of the next block. Give y’a a clear shot as they come round after us.”
Bond braced himself as the tyres screamed and the car lurched on two wheels and then righted itself and stopped. Then he was out of the door and crouching with his gun up. The lights of the Chevrolet tore into the side road and there was a squeal of tortured rubber as it made the turn on the wrong side. Now, thought Bond, before he can straighten up.
Crack-a pause. Crack. Crack. Crack. Four bullets, at twenty yards, dead on the target.
The Chevrolet didn’t straighten up. It went over the kerb on the other side of the road, hit a tree broadside, bounced off it and smashed into a lamp standard and turned completely round and slowly toppled over on its side.
As Bond watched it, waiting for the echoes of the smashing metal to stop ringing in his ears, flames started to bleed slowly from the chromium mouth of the car. Someone was scrabbling at a window, trying to get out. At any moment the flames would find the vacuum pump and run the whole length of the chassis to the tank. And then it would be too late for the man inside.
Bond had started across the road when there was a groan from the front seat of the cab and he turned round to see Ernie Cureo slip from under the wheel to the floor. Bond forgot the burning car as he tore open the door of the cab and leant over the driver. There was blood everywhere and the whole of the driver’s left arm was soaked in it. Bond somehow hauled him into a sitting position on the seat and the driver’s eyes opened. “Oh, brother,” he said through clenched teeth. “Get me out of here, Mister, and drive like hell. Next thing that Jag’ll be after us. Then get me to a medic.”