Columbus Read Online Free PDF

seat.
    The file said he always drove. Always. My two previous visits to the Rue St. Antoine confirmed the veracity of this statement, and my strategy was conceived to exploit it. So why this fucking day? Why right now of all times in the year for him to let his bodyguard drive and he is hunched over a BlackBerry in the passenger seat, punching in God knows what and his bodyguard’s eyes go wide as he spots my pistol just a foot from his window and the wave of bad luck rolls over my head and my second of hesitation is enough.
    The guard jams on the accelerator like he’s trying to kick his heel through the floorboard and the Mercedes jumps like a whipped horse just as I register what is happening and fire my pistol. I only catch the bodyguard’s shoulder through the window, but it might be enough. On any other day, it would probably be enough.
    Instead of crashing, the Mercedes is tearing down the Rue St. Antoine, clipping the sides of parked vehicles as my thumb hits the ignition and I straddle the Honda while one hand holds my Glock and I gun the motorcycle after the fleeing sedan.
    I allowed this to happen, hell I caused this to happen because I took this job lightly. I blinked, I stayed in Rome when I should have been here dissecting an infinite number of preferable ways to kill this target instead of cavalierly choosing this way, this ridiculously flawed, inept way.
    No more. I set my jaw and drop my eyes into slits and pin down the throttle while the heel of my boot hovers over the back brake like a wild ram steeling itself for an attack. I am Columbus, I am a Silver Bear, and when Anton Noel leaves that Mercedes it will be at the hands of a coroner.
    Ahead, the sedan whips into a hard right down a one-way commercial street in the middle of the Jewish quarter and I unleash the ram, slam hard on the rear brake as I lower my center of gravity so the motorcycle almost lays on its side and then springs up again, closing ground like a shark after a wounded swimmer.
    Bad luck can be trumped by an experienced killer and the driver must be bleeding with little way to staunch the flow from his gunshot wound and his arm must be useless now. I can spot the second bodyguard swiveling in the back seat, trying to keep tabs on me while over his shoulder Noel’s face has blanched and his eyes are open and filled with fear.
    I have to force the driver into a mistake.
    Traffic ahead causes the Mercedes to make another clipped right turn down a narrow street and I realize the driver can only make right turns, it is too difficult for him to mount a left with just his good arm to spin the wheel. Maybe with a little practice, but he’s had none, and I don’t think he’s used to driving the boss’s car anyway.
    The frigid weather has kept most pedestrians off the sidewalk, but a few are crossing the street ahead and it is time to make my move. I throttle the motorcycle forward and to the left of the Mercedes, aligning myself with the back bumper, so close to the rear windshield that I can practically smell the breath of the second bodyguard. He has a pistol up, a snub-nosed .38, a show weapon, a gun he has probably never fired and he is afraid, afraid to even take a potshot at me, afraid the gun might kick back and hit him in the face.
    As I suspected, the driver is unable to steer into me. I can hear Noel shouting in French in the front seat, but the second bodyguard ignores his pleas, won’t take aim, is swiveling in his seat trying to keep an eye on me, and I brake quickly and sweep the bike around the backside of the Mercedes so I am now on the right bumper and the intersection is practically on us and the driver thinks I have made a mistake and now he can bump me off my perch.
    He jerks the wheel to the right, oversteering as I believed he would and the front of the car smashes into a parked Peugeot van just shy of the intersection and its inertia keeps it going so it flips wildly and starts tumbling like a pair of dice, smashing