Free Total Immunity by Robert Ward

bank robber loose down in Orange County; maybe it was the same guy who had knocked over three Wells Fargo branches in Studio City six months ago. He had to drive down to Newport to talk to Agent in Charge Cabot Newsome.
    But first, of course, he reminded himself he had to drop off the laundry at the Laurel Canyon Country Store.
    Blakely saw the steep left-hand turn at Wonderland Avenue coming up and eased his right foot down on the brakes.
    But there was a problem, a rather serious one.
    When he applied the brake pedal, it went all the way to the floor.
    Blakely didn’t panic. Could have just been a fluke. Slowly, he hit them again, trying to pump them, so that the hydraulic would kick in.
    But it didn’t matter how he did it, hard or soft, the results were the same. There were no brakes. Nothing.
    Wonderland Avenue is a steep hill, and usually there is a long slick patch of water, which runs off from a stream, which is situated at the very top of Lookout Mountain. When you hit the water, your tires sometimes skid right and left, and you have to gently pump the brakes again to keep from skidding. Since Blakely didn’t have any brakes, he tried steering his way through the little flood, but his effort was useless.
    He was already going too fast to keep control of the car.
    Now he found himself headed down the street sideways. He swung the steering wheel into the turn, a hard left, so that he could compensate for his right drift.
    The effort seemed to help a little. He managed to straighten out the tires as he headed down the hill. But once the car straightened out, he had another problem. He quickly began to pick up speed.
    Time for the emergency brake. He tried pulling it, but it, too, was detached. Then he knew for sure: This was no accident. Both his brakes were cut.
    He was screaming downhill faster now, and sixty feet in front of him was the stop sign at Laurel Pass. Sitting at the stop sign was a yellow school bus headed for the Wonderland Elementary School. Blakely could see the kids in the school looking out the window, laughing, and daydreaming their kids’ dreams. They had no idea that a ton and a half of metal death was hurtling toward them at 80 miles per hour.
    Frantically, Blakely thought about going through the stop sign straight ahead, but that wasn’t an option, either. For in front of him, walking across the street, was a whole group of kids with their mothers, walking, chatting with the chubby crossing guard dressed in her yellow vest.
    He couldn’t turn left and he couldn’t go forward without hitting the kids. There was only one other option.
    To the right was a parking lot . . . a small one in which the Los Angeles public-school buses parked for a few minutes, so they could let the kids out.
    If he could make a hard right, maybe he could find a parking space available, and just possibly he could slide into it, and if maybe he’d hit the wire mesh fence which surrounded the lot maybe — just maybe — the fence would help break his speed before he crashed into the school’s cafeteria wall.
    That he was going to hit the wall there was no doubt. But maybe, with the mesh fence and his air bag, he’d somehow survive . . .
    Then he thought of something else . . . If this had been Stein- bach’s work . . . well, they wouldn’t miss the air bag, either. No, they’d make certain that it couldn’t be deployed.
    Up until he had that last thought, Zac Blakely hadn’t started to panic. But now he knew . . . knew for certain that he was going to die. Steinbach must have carried out his threat. Even as his car screamed down the hill, Zac Blakely thought of his fellow agents. Hughes and Jack Harper. If only he could warn them somehow . . .
    He saw the bus getting close, closer. He saw the kids and their moms walking across the street. He heard a scream and he saw a mother throw herself over her child, and he turned the wheel hard right.
    The BMW screeched