Page 62 of Hang on St. Christopher

Up the New Line Road until it branched left and right. Left was the Carrickfergus Road, right was the Watch Hill Road. Fifty-fifty where they had gone. I took Watch Hill because it looked like the road less traveled.

The Watch Hill Road became something called the Ballyrickard Road, which narrowed to a single lane. We were climbing higher into the Antrim Hills, getting near the village of Kilwaughter.

Wilder country up here, fewer farms, steeper pasture not good for anything but scraggly sheep runs.

Ever ridden a motorbikefastat night through the rain?

You can certainly bloody imagine it. Nerves jangling, adrenaline pumping.

The no helmet was an advantage and disadvantage. No protection from the rain, but no steamy visor either.

Higher the road went, but the sweet little Kawasaki 125 loved it.

I turned a bend with the Irish Sea behind me, and there, suddenly, was the Range Rover. Up ahead about five hundred yards.

I had the bastards.

I dropped back and looked at the Kawasaki’s fuel gauge. About a quarter of a tank left. I did a quick mental calculation. This thing probably had a one-gallon tank. It was a two-stroke 125, so it probably got about ninety miles to the gallon cruising, maybe seventy-five the way I was running it. Let’s say eighty to allow for the little bit of extra the designers always chucked in to save you in a tight spot, and that meant I’d need to catch them in the next twenty miles or so.

Twenty miles was plenty if they were going to Belfast, but if they ran back to Dundalk tonight I’d never be able to follow them there.

The Range Rover turned onto the A8 and began heading south and west toward Belfast.

Yes!

Another thought occurred to me. If they were pros, they’d probably try to ditch the Range Rover in the city and change to another car.

I turned off the full beam on the Kawasaki’s headlights and kept what I hoped was sufficient distance behind them not to attract attention. The fuel gauge hadn’t moved at all, which was odd. I tapped it and the needle fell all the way to zero.

Bollocks!

No need to panic, though.

Probably just the gauge that was busted. I jiggled the tank beneath me, and I could feel fuel sloshing around in there.

Enough to get me into Belfast?

Maybe.

If they didn’t run into a police roadblock, I’d flag down a passing cop car and alert the dozy bugger.

I had thought I was being careful, keeping my distance, not trying to overtake, going easy on the full beam, but they must have made me anyway. The roads were deserted at this time of night, and a solitary motorbike in the rearview just on the very edge of the mirror? Who in their right mind would set out on a journey in this fucking weather? Without a helmet? And hadn’t we just driven past a bike exactly like that at the caravan site?

If they’d been more careful or less bold cleanup men, they might have tried to lose me, but as it was, with no witnesses on a country road, they tried something a bit more destructive.

They slowed the car, wound down the passenger’s-side window, and gave me a burst of the AK.

Tracer lit up the asphalt, and white-hot supersonic bullets screamed all around me.

“Holy shit!”

I throttled back and slipped the bike into third.

The rear passenger window opened now, and a man in a balaclava began shooting at me methodically with a revolver.

Another burst of the Kalashnikov that tore up the road all around me with white fire.

“Shite!” I screamed as a bullet hit the headlight and ricocheted past my face. It missed me by a good nine inches, but I lost control of the bike, skidded, tried to right myself and missed the curve T. E. Lawrence style.