Free Public Enemy Number Two by Anthony Horowitz Page A

on the left!” Ma Powers called out.
    Tim put his foot down and swung the wheel to the left. The people mover surged forward with fresh power, skidding around the corner. For a horrible moment we were driving on two wheels and I thought the whole thing would topple over. But then it somehow managed to right itself.
    “Lower the bus!” Ma Powers shouted.
    “Lower the bus!” I screamed.
    I’d seen it the moment we’d turned the corner. A road sign in a red triangle: LOW BRIDGE AHEAD, CLEARANCE NINE FEET. About three feet too low. Tim had seen it, too. He took his foot off the accelerator and at once we slowed down. There was a chatter of machine-gun fire from the back of the bus.
    “Keep moving!” Ma Powers yelled.
    She was cradling the machine gun like a bouquet of flowers. Except that I’ve never seen a bouquet with smoke curling out of the end. Looking past her, I saw that the first of the police cars had reached the turn. Despite our souped-up engine, it was gaining on us. And there were four more right behind it.
    “What do I do?” Tim moaned.
    “Just keep going—fast,” Powers said. Tim was about to argue, but there was something in Johnny’s tone of voice that made him think again. He gave a little squeak and stomped down on the accelerator. We rocketed forward.
    The machine gun chattered again. The road was narrow now, hemmed in on both sides by a wire fence. There was only one way to go and that was straight ahead. But there was the bridge. It was looming up at us, a humpback bridge with a railway line on top. I could see the rails. I was actually looking down at them. At the rate we were going, we would hit it in around thirty seconds. The metal box of the people mover would crash right into the brickwork. I didn’t like to think what would happen to the people inside.
    Powers ran back to join his mother—perhaps to warn her. I stood beside Tim, fighting to keep my balance as we bounced over the tarmac, hurtling toward the bridge. He wasn’t even trying to lower the bus. He was too frightened to let go of the steering wheel. Desperately I examined the controls. Why did there have to be so many levers? Ma Powers fired for the third time. And this time she found her target. The siren of the nearest police car died away. There was a screech of tires, a shattering of metal, then an explosion. The bridge glowed red. Twenty seconds until impact.
    I ran my hands over the controls, frantically flicking switches and pulling levers left, right, and center. I turned out the lights, opened and closed the doors, lowered the antenna, and adjusted the mirrors. But I didn’t lower the bus. Behind us, Powers was shooting with the pistol he’d taken from the prison. Mother and son seemed to be having a whale of a time. A second police car had moved up to take the position of the first. And now they were firing, too. I tugged at another lever. The ashtray popped out of the dashboard. Ten seconds until impact.
    The bridge was right in front of me now, filling up the windshield. Tim was whispering something. I think it was a prayer. I slammed my hand down on the controls. My palm hit the black ball at the end of the lever, shifting it forward. I heard a hiss underneath me. The hydraulic arm had come into operation. At the same moment, the whole bus began to sink like the end of a ride in a carnival.
    But would it sink in time? There were only a few seconds left.
    “Brake, Tim!” I shouted.
    We hit the bridge.
    We were just low enough to squeeze through. In fact, the mattresses didn’t make it. I heard them as they were torn free from their bindings and dragged along the roof. Looking back, I saw them plummet into the road behind us, right in the path of the leading police car. It swerved to avoid them, mounted the curb, and crashed through the fence, finally crushing itself against a lamppost. Ma Powers gave a short bray of laughter.
    “Good work, kid,” Johnny called out.
    But it wasn’t over yet. We’d taken