Free Cody's Army by Jim Case Page B

stop.
    Pandemonium reigned, the air filled with the moaning of the dying and the civilian survivors, the street at the foot of the
     Acropolis hill dotted with bodies, the sirens of squad cars arriving too late, noisy above everything else in the white heat
     of midday.
    Rallis went over behind the Christus Imports van to where the surviving detective from the backseat of the unmarked car had
     Christus under cover on the side of the van where Christus had remained during the shooting.
    Rallis saw the van with the terrorists picking up speed as it tore away down the street.
    Christus saw the look in Rallis’s eyes.
    “I’m not armed!” the importer screamed.
    “Where are they going?” Rallis demanded.
    “I don’t know, I swear I don’t know!”
    Rallis had not time to believe or disbelieve that.
    He charged to the police car where Giorgios stood from examining the fallen policeman.
    “Dead, sir.”
    “After them,” snarled Rallis, throwing himself into the passenger seat.
    Giorgios jumped in behind the steering wheel, and tires screeched a burning rubber cloud behind the unmarked car as he piloted
     them away from there in hot pursuit.
    Rallis hurriedly reloaded his pistol as Giorgios rounded the corner from Ermou Street onto Pireos, heading back into the downtown
     district, the street ahead of them well cleared by the crowds that had scurried for cover. Rallis saw the van up ahead, at
     about a block and a half lead, traveling fast.
    At first, back there when they had screamed to a halt, surprising these terrorists in the obvious act of picking up weapons,
     Rallis had thought he’d been lucky enough to catch Farouk Hassan right at the beginning, but the man who had killed one of
     his detectives, who Rallis had plugged through the stomach, was a younger edition of the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World.
     That would make him Ali al-Hassan.
    If Rallis was right, the speeding van they were chasing could lead him and Giorgios straight to the heart of Farouk al-Hassan’s
     headquarters.

CHAPTER

    SIX
    “A re we being followed?” Tahia demanded of Hallah from the rear of the van.
    She cursed the quaver she heard in her own voice, the fear and rising sense of panic she also heard there. She looked down
     at Ali, whose head she cradled in her lap, and her fear caused her to tremor and she realized she feared not so much for herself
     but for this man she held, the one she loved, dying before her eyes.
    Hallah steered the van smoothly through the narrow, winding backstreet toward the Athens waterfront district. The youth kept
     the van well below the legal speed limit, as he had since racing them away from the Acropolis hill area, having taken a zigzag
     course ever deeper into the city. He glanced in the rearview mirror, then chanced a look over his shoulder into the van’s
     interior, where Tahia held Ali.
    “I think we’ll make it. How is he, Tahia?”
    Dark gore bubbled out of the bullet hole in Ali’s stomach. Tahia had peeled back Ali’s shirt and jacket and tried to stop
     the flow of blood with a cloth, but to little avail.
    Ali rasped out in pain.
    “D-don’t concern yourself with me,” he gasped. “Just get us to Farouk.”
    He winced, spasming in agony across the floor of the van, but he did not cry out.
    Tahia pressed the wound harder with the cloth, but the flow of blood continued to puddle beneath them.
    “Ali, you must be still. We will get you medical attention.”
    He reached his arm over his head to touch her face, a trembling finger wiping away a tear from her cheek.
    “It…is too late for me, Tahia. You and the others must continue the mission without me…”
    “Don’t say that!” she cried out. “Please, Ali, you must live. We need you. The movement, the cause, needs you …I need you…”
    Najib Yaqub turned from where he rode in the passenger seat. He had been watching his own outside rearview mirror for any
     sign of pursuit. He gripped his pistol in his lap. “Continue