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Nutsbe didn’t bother to register what the motorcycles were doing—if they, too, had whipped out firearms.
Forward it was.
His brain flipped to its survival mode, slowing time.
The vehicle scraped along the cement, scrubbing the mirrors from the sides, sanding away the paint. The screech of metal stabbed at his eardrums in the momentary darkness of the underpass.
Olivia screamed, throwing her hand over her face as they crashed through the back door of the white car. With the first impact, their SUV bucked and juddered. Nutsbe was afraid that he wouldn’t make it through the front door without momentum.
But he should not have doubted the power of an Iniquus vehicle.
The front door of the ambush car peeled back and popped, dropping to the ground. Nutsbe’s back tires lifted and rolled over it, dropping them back down with a bounce.
“Impact,” Nutsbe said in the rock steady voice he used when Panther Force was in a hot situation—calm was survival.
He kept the pedal down so the abrasion was damaging, but they didn’t get stuck.
They popped out the other side of the underpass.
It felt like it had been going on for long minutes, but mere seconds had passed from observation to action to outcome, and he didn’t see anyone standing in the road, trying to get a bead.
Nutsbe’s next observation was that the motorcycles didn’t follow them past the damaged vehicle.
He’d been narrating this for the communications officer. “We’re through the underpass heading to the campus. Over.”
Yeah, that had been almost impossibly tight. Nutsbe wouldn’t have made it through if the guy had been inches closer to the center. He would have had to crash into the back, hoping to pop the criminals' car out of there like a cork. Had it twisted, Nutsbe would have trapped their SUV, and what came next wouldn’t have been pretty.
He reached out and rubbed Olivia’s knee. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.”
She had her hands knotted into her hair, her eyes wide.
He was going to give her system a second to reset.
The criminals had that strategy down. It looked planned and rehearsed for grace and flow. Ex-military? Ex-FBI? Those men had made tactical shapes in the way they advanced, sitting into their hips, whipping guns to their chests, acquiring a target, and punching their weapons out as they extended their arms. Yeah. Tactical.
He went through it again in his mind’s eye.
Men swarmed from three car doors in a cadence. The front door popped open, and the front passenger ran back. Once he cleared, the back doors opened, and three more men piled out. Foot on the ground, pivot, run.
That left the doors open for a quick exit and the driver ready to peel out. What was the operational goal?
“You’re okay,” he sing-songed, as much for him as for Olivia.
Stealing this vehicle would be a coup. It was worth about eighty-five thousand dollars. If they were coming for the car, would they need to leave the driver in the getaway car? He’d have to think about that strategy and talk it out with his team.
If that crew was coming for either him or Olivia, they’d be pissed that they didn’t catch their mouse in the trap. And possibly more importantly, they’d have to report back. And someone was gonna be enraged that there was a failure because failure gave everyone a heads up, and surprise was now going to be that much harder.
Anger begat pain and violence.
Nutsbe’s foot was still heavy on the gas.
Yes, Iniquus vehicles had bullet-resistant glass. But did he want to test it?
Hell to the no.
“Nutsbe. I am two clicks from the gate. Coming in hot. Over.”
“Received. We will continue to monitor. Over.”