Viper - Michael Morley [154]
They listened while Lorenzo re-angled the metal coiled flex of a desk mic and ordered two pursuit cars to get in front of the Fiat.
‘Rolling block?’ asked Jack.
‘I think so,’ said Sylvia. ‘If we can get two, maybe three cars in front of the Fiat, that will slow him down. Then we can feed another couple behind and alongside and force him to a stop.’
‘Giacomo will shoot his way out,’ said Jack. ‘I’d hate to be in the front cars.’
‘They’re special ops vehicles. Bulletproofed. Not like the tin cans the rest of us drive.’
Lorenzo had headphones on. He slipped off the left cup and turned to face Sylvia and Jack. ‘Word from the street teams, Valsi and Mazerelli are both confirmed dead. Crime Unit medic says it looks like JHP slugs in both bodies.’
Autostrada del Sole
Whatever happened, surrender was not an option. Salvatore Giacomo was not going to lie down and whimper like a dog. He glanced left and right in the wing mirrors. Through the fog he could see the full beams of the approaching carabinieri cars.
They would try to get past him. Try to block him in. And he knew he couldn’t stop them all.
He glanced ahead and spotted an upcoming slip road, an exit just west of Trecasse.
The lights behind him glowed brighter. Engines roared closer.
He was going too fast to make it.
But he did.
The Fiat shed 20,000 kilometres’ worth of rubber as he veered out of the grey haze of fog and headlight glare and off the autostrada.
He couldn’t tell whether any of the pursuit cars had made it after him. He guessed not.
The Fiat clipped a barrier on the winding exit road. Spun sideways off the autostrada. Squealed to a stalled halt in an unlit street.
Sal started her up, found second gear and burned his way east, still parallel to the E45.
The helicopter’s Nightsun was struggling to find him. It glowed in the fuzzy sky like a cobwebbed old light bulb in a vast dark cellar.
He pulled a left into Via Alessandro Manzoni. In his rear-view he could see two white dots in the far distance.
They were still on him.
Still.
But not close enough.
Oncoming headlights reflected in the road spray. It was raining now as well as foggy. He glanced up, squinted out of the driver’s side window. The white belly of the GIS chopper was illuminated for a second, then vanished. They were breathing down his neck.
Sal pulled a hard right, then an even tighter left.
He was on Via Canarde San Pietro, heading north towards the darkness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park.
Soon they would be on his ground.
His sacred ground.
His killing ground.
106
ROS Quartiere Generale
(Anti-Camorra Unit), Napoli
Lorenzo Pisano drove his fist into the surface of the control-room desk, ‘Porco Dio! ’ The mild-mannered Major was in full rage. ‘Porca miseria! Porca puttana! Porca Madonna! ’
He turned and glared at Jack and Sylvia, as though it were their fault that the pursuit team had just found the Fiat abandoned after forking right at the end of Via Marsiglia.
Salvatore Giacomo was gone.
‘The fog is so damn bad out there. I’m going to have to bring the chopper down. Fuck it!’ He hit the desk again. ‘The ground teams can barely see their own hands, let alone find this bastard.’
Lorenzo wheeled away from them and barked orders into desk mics. Slowly his voice settled down and he found his normal level of calmness. A bank of control-room monitors showed a live feed from the helicopter as it landed close to San Sebastiano. Traffic cameras were almost blacked out, picking up only occasional bursts of headlights. Foggy pictures swirled in from the armoured pursuit cars, now parked and awaiting instructions.
On a lower screen a real-time satellite map showed in vivid colours the whole area in which the chase had taken place. And the dead end where Sal had vanished. The dark-green vastness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park dominated the north of the picture. The orange ribbon of the A3/E45 ran west to east. The pale blue of the endless Bay of Naples sagged