The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

kept checking his mirrors. There was nothing untoward. No tell-tale vehicles. He was torn between keeping a good pace to ensure his own safety, and easing up to see how it would play out. It felt the most unnatural thing to do, but intelligence work had been a far from natural way to live his life. His mentor had once called it a game of cowboys and Indians, and it wasn’t far from the truth.

Ahead of him, the traffic was slowing up. King had driven the A303 many times, and he knew the bottlenecks would soon give way to short overtaking lanes and longer stages of dual carriageway. He slowed down, was about to overtake a lorry, but the lanes were narrowing fast and the lorry was far out from the edge of the road. He tucked in behind, checked his mirrors and noticed a lorry approaching rapidly from behind. It was closing fast. King flicked on his hazard lights and dabbed his foot on the brake to light up his tail lights. He could not do much else. He kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror, waited for the truck behind to slow down, but it was still closing fast.

He swerved to his right to nip around the lorry, but it countered his manoeuvre and drove out. Coincidence? King veered left, but the lorry in front of him mirrored his actions. The approaching lorry had slowed, but not enough. The traffic was moving at fifty-miles-per-hour, but King estimated the lorry behind him to be gaining at about seventy. King slammed on his brakes, but the lorry in front slowed too. He was sandwiched. He looked left. There was a break in the bollards of the roadworks. King dropped down into third gear and floored the accelerator. He made for the break, the lorry behind veering to the curb, but narrowly missing his rear bumper by inches. King braced himself, the Ford clipping the edge of a length of barrier. Behind him, the two heavy vehicles collided with a crunching of metal that he seemed to feel as much as hear. The car lurched into the air and he felt the unsettling weightlessness of falling as he found himself airborne for a moment, then crashed down the embankment and into trees and wooden fencing. The airbags went off and he felt as though he’d been punched square in the face. The seatbelt dug into his chest as the car stopped and a branch cracked the windscreen.

King fumbled with the seatbelt catch. The belt had pulled so tight that he struggled to breathe. He felt for the Glock, but it was gone. The airbags were deflating, a powdery residue covered him and an aroma of rubber overcoming him, making him want to gag. He managed to undo the belt, felt for the door handle, but it was unfamiliar, and he could not get the door open. His ears were ringing from the explosion of the airbag. He could hear shouts from above, his brain telling him to get out, get the gun, get some rounds off and move to better cover. But his brain also told him this was an RTC in southern England, not a roadside ambush in Iraq or Afghanistan. He could hear calls of concern from above. He looked up, saw a man and a woman on the edge of the verge high above him. They looked genuinely concerned, were calling down to him.

King got out and looked at the car. It was a right-off and certainly wasn’t going to get towed out anytime soon either. It would need a crane or a specialist towing vehicle and a lot of specialist knowhow to go with it. He picked up the Glock from where it had ended up near the brake pedal, tucked it into his jacket pocket and retrieved the tracking device. He turned it over in his hand, then dropped it onto the ground. There would be nothing gained by keeping it in play, the damned thing had almost cost him his life. That had been no accident, King was convinced of as much. He reached in for his bag in the rear footwell and didn’t bother closing the door as he stepped out from the brambles and broken saplings and started to climb the embankment.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked. She was young, pierced and tattooed and her hair was dreadlocked. She gently touched King’s shoulder as he stepped up to the top of the grass bank.

King pushed past her and walked up to the lorry that had crashed into the lorry in front of him. He stepped up and peered into the cab.

Empty.

He jumped down and jogged down the length of the other lorry. The driver’s door was open. There were no vehicles in front. The road was clear. The road behind was blocked and vehicles were sounding their horns, some starting to squeeze through the small gap between the lorries and the central reservation.

King turned to the woman. She looked put out. “Where are the drivers?”

She shrugged.

The man who was with her, and by his appearance, King assumed they were together, pointed down the road. “They both got into a car in front,” he paused. “Shot off at speed.”

King stared down the empty road, then looked back at the couple. There were horns sounding and a few motorists were walking towards them. “What kind of car was it?”

The man shrugged. “Silver, loud,” he paused. “I don’t know.”

“Sporty?”

“I guess,” he looked at the woman. “What do you think?”

She shook her head. “Footballer’s car,” she said. “Expensive, kind of gaudy. Tinted windows for sure.”

“Did you see the drivers?”

“Not really,” the man said. “They moved really fast.”

“Hey, do you need a lift?” the woman asked.

King looked at the seventies Volkswagen camper. It was written on, graphitised and stickered. There were surfboards on the roof and bicycles strapped