The Genesis Plague (2010)

blinker on, waiting for pedestrians to cross the side street. The Chrysler Concorde’s front bumper practically kissed the duck boat’s rear as Flaherty angled around the bus. The rowdy tourists on board the modified WWII amphibious troop carrier began quacking loudly, just like they’d been told by the driver at the tour’s inception. Having been cheated of a full tour, thanks to the frozen Charles River, their pent-up energy was now fully directed at Flaherty’s Concorde. Under better circumstances, Flaherty might have thought the scene comical.
    An aggressively driven taxi slipped in behind him, one step ahead of the Explorer. Flaherty expected the Explorer to move in behind the taxi, but it didn’t. His eyes darted back to the road. The next opportunity to make a turn would come on Harcourt Street, just ahead on the right. However, he could see that that walkway was also clogged with pedestrians.
    ‘Shit,’ he growled. Staying the course towards the bottleneck at Copley Square was a losing proposition.
    ‘Look out!’ Brooke yelled, pointing out his side window.
    Flaherty turned just as the Explorer swerved into the centre lane and forced the duck boat to fall back with a dissenting blow of its air horn. The Explorer’s passenger window was already down and Flaherty glimpsed the assassin steadying the gun for a clear shot.
    ‘Down!’ Flaherty yelled. He ducked low and jammed on the accelerator just as the assassin fired a triple shot. The rounds blew Flaherty’s window into a thousand pieces. Luckily, Brooke had already squirmed down on to the floor, because the slugs that would have cut through her neck instead pounded through the door handle on the passenger-side door.
    Flaherty popped up again.
    The assassin nearly slammed into a bus that stopped abruptly in the centre lane, but made a hard turn that put the Explorer directly behind the Concorde, in the same spot the alarmed taxi driver had abandoned a split second earlier.
    As Flaherty was about to pass under the enclosed pedestrian bridge that connected Prudential Center to the Copley Place shopping mall he saw nothing but taillights flashing red all the way to the split for Stuart Street. Worse yet, the bus had boxed him in on the left. Even steering up on to the crowded sidewalk and mowing a path through pedestrians would only get him so far.
    If the assassin did manage to push him into the gridlock, things would get very ugly very fast. That left only one possibility - to outrun the Explorer; the worst possible scenario.
    ‘Here we go,’ he grimly warned Brooke.
    Crouched low, Brooke saw the narrow pedestrian bridge sweep overhead, just before Flaherty cut a hard right that threw her up against his legs hard enough to make her see stars.
    The Concorde careened through a line of garbage-can-sized orange construction barricades, giving the Explorer the split second needed to close the gap. The assassin drove full speed into the Concorde’s rear, shattering plastic and snarling metal. The trajectory of the impact nearly sent the Explorer into a spin, but did little to stymie the Concorde’s forward advance. The assassin righted the wheel and got the Explorer back on track.
    The roadway fed into a wide tunnel with tiled walls and began a sharp descent beneath Copley Place. The Concorde’s tyres squealed as Flaherty steered into the bend.
    Brooke was disoriented by what little she could see: ceiling tiles and lights. ‘You turned into a garage? What—?’
    ‘Not a garage. I’m taking a shortcut to the Mass Pike.’
    ‘Shortcut?’ That’s when she realized what he meant. ‘You’re going down into the tunnel?’
    He nodded.
    She’d driven this ramp many times - a main exit for Interstate 90, which the ambitious Big Dig had diverted through massive tunnels snaked deep below the city centre. Problem being that she knew the traffic flow only went up . ‘This tunnel is a one-way exit! You’re going the wrong—’
    ‘I know! I know …’ He checked the mirror and could see the Explorer’s headlights skimming the curved wall behind him. ‘The ramp’s closed for construction. It’s okay.’
    But up ahead, where the ramp merged at a Y, he spotted a contradiction to what he’d just told her - a hulking utility truck mounted with bright lights and workers in hardhats repairing tiles in the tunnel ceiling.
    Not okay, he thought .
    The truck was at a standstill in the centre of the roadway with barely any room to spare to its right. But