Read Online Cloud Castles by Michael Scott Rohan - Free Book Online Page B

drive, and nearing the gate. The gatekeepers sprang up, and I half expected them to leap into my path with machine pistols; but instead they flung the gates open with as much of a flourish as before, so I hardly needed to slow down. I sailed through with a nonchalant wave, half expecting a bullet in the back, and saw their faces stiffen as they registered the crazy cracking on that rear pane. Too late; I was through, away and down towards the village. But it wasn’t till the cobbles of its main street rumbled under the tyres that I slowed down and stopped, shaking, to wonder just who the hell had been after me with a long-range laser gunsight.
    I couldn’t have offended Lutz
that
much; or if I had, there were a hundred easier ways he could have disposed of me, and not on his premises either. And he wouldn’t have let me slip through that gate, not Lutz. But whoever it was had missed. Could it just have been a warning? I reached out and touched the shattered window; another centimetre and that would have been my head. Warnings don’t come that close. Which meant that our sight-wielder was an assassin all right, just not a very good one – lack of practice, maybe, at least in real-world situations.
    I drew breath and started the car up again, heading for the
Autobahn;
these winding little lanes were unnerving now. At every bend I kept expecting to see that green glimmer again, and then – nothing. But on the
Autobahn
I could build up a bit of speed, and be harder to hit, impossible in traffic. The
Einfahrt
sign, which normally made me chuckle, looked like the gate to paradise when I reached it, and the bumpy concrete-block surface, a legacy of the Third Reich, rumbled with safety and security. I’d been shot at more than most people, and if anything I liked it even less now; every miss brought that inevitable hit one statistical notch nearer. I put myfoot down and let the car’s power take over, snatching me up and sweeping me away. I’d have liked the road a bit less empty, for cover’s sake, but at least I could open her up.
    It was the roar from beside me that caught my attention, the sound of a fast car being pushed; and it was too close. I glanced around, saw the dark saloon loom up, the window slide down. The sight of the slingshot almost made me laugh, till I realized its purpose. A bullet in a crashed driver’s head causes comment, but there are a hundred ways a lump of jagged metal or stone could have got there. Frantically I ducked, wrenched at the wheel to swerve away – and screamed aloud.
    The big black truck which had been quietly minding its own business some way ahead had become a roaring, swinging monster right in my path, driving me towards the outer lane, the concrete lip of the road and the blackness beyond. I swung the car, braked, and the truck smashed into the concrete in front of me, rebounded in a spray of chips, and here was that bloody Merc again! I swung right, only to see the truck wheels loom above me like whirling mincers, too close to avoid now. There was a thudding crash, the broken back window exploded – and the Merc, cutting in towards me, burst off them like the ball off a roulette wheel. As I struggled to steer into my long skid I saw it leap the centre and go skidding along the crash barrier, then overturn with a noise like crumpling tin. I pulled the car round as the truck bore down on me, clamped down hard and felt some two hundred and fifty horsepower take hold of the road and heave. Friend or foe, the truck couldn’t even hope to keep up. It fell away behind, and good riddance; there’d been nothing accidental about any of this. The wind from the empty light behind whistled savagely; it would have been my side window, and probably me, if it hadn’t been for that truck. I’d been shaking earlier; now I was just plain and fancy furious.
    It was nearly two when I pulled back into the hotel, causing the sleepy night porter to goggle at the sight of my car, with its side