Full Black - Brad Thor [7]
Its driver killed the headlamps, but left the marker lights illuminated. Ralston waited, but nothing happened. No one got out. No one got in.
He couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking at some sort of getaway vehicle. Was Larry Salomon’s home being burgled?
It didn’t take him long to get tired of waiting. Removing his cell phone, he decided to call Salomon to see if maybe there was some other explanation.
He depressed the speed dial key for Salomon’s cell phone, but the call failed to connect. Scrolling through his address book, he tried the number again, but the call still didn’t go through. Looking at his signal strength, he saw he wasn’t getting any bars at all. He couldn’t remember ever having trouble getting reception up here before.
That was all it took. He’d been taught not to believe in coincidences. Releasing the parking brake, he put his car in gear, and as he did, a very bad feeling began to overtake him.
CHAPTER 4
It was at times like these that Luke Ralston wanted to throttle the State of California for not being more cooperative when it came to the carrying of firearms. Here it was the middle of the night, a strange van had followed his car onto a private gated estate, and he was unarmed. While the van and its driver might have had a completely legitimate reason for being there, he doubted it, and he would have very much appreciated having a weapon right now.
Knowing that if the van and its driver were up to no good they would very likely be armed, Ralston proceeded accordingly.
Speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence of action had been drilled into the very fiber of his DNA in his military career. While he couldn’t preemptively attack the van and its driver, he could take immediate control of the situation by using both speed and surprise.
Increasing his speed, he turned on his headlights, engaged the high beams, and raced toward the van.
At that moment, the driver leaped from the van with what appeared to be a shotgun. Ralston pinned the accelerator to the floor.
The weapon exploded with a roar and a round slammed into the front of Ralston’s Porsche. The shooter had been aiming at the headlights. Big mistake.
Ralston continued to pick up speed, aiming right for the driver. As the man pumped his weapon to chamber another round, Ralston killed his lights—plunging the man’s dilated eyes into darkness.
All the shooter could do was aim for the sound of the car that was barreling down on him, which is exactly what happened.
Whether the driver of the van was just that good, or just that lucky, Ralston had no idea, but his second shot exploded with another booming roar and tore a hole right through the windshield. Buckshot would have deflected off the glass. Whoever was shooting at him must have been using slugs. Ralston didn’t need to look over to know that the seat next to him was shredded. A few more inches to the left and he would have been shredded as well.
With the 911’s engine screaming, Ralston readied himself for what was about to happen.
Flipping his lights and high beams back on, he once again flooded the shooter’s eyes with light. There was the roar of the shotgun once more, but it was the last thing the man did before the right front quarter of Ralston’s car struck the man’s lower body.
Rather than being thrown clear, the large man was pulled halfway beneath the car. Ralston fought to maintain control. As if guided by some unseen force that wanted to raise the car and snatch the body from underneath the suspension, the Porsche’s right side tilted up, and Ralston thought for sure the car was going to flip. But just as it had begun to rise, it slammed back down.
Ralston maintained a death grip on the Porsche’s steering wheel as he tried to regain control.
It wasn’t until the car spun through the wet grass and slammed into the side of one of the outbuildings that the horror finally came to a stop. But as