The Hunted Read online

  Villanueva must have felt it, too, because he suddenly course-corrected, shifting over toward a row of cars parked along the curb.

  Brent began to lose his breath as both he and Villanueva began sliding even more rapidly, but then the yellow Vette jumped forward, the car’s front end rising as Villanueva accelerated out of his slide, missing the parked cars by a side mirror’s width, Brent estimated.

  With a gasp, Brent shifted his wheel and missed the last car in the row by what could be a hairsbreadth.

  Now Villanueva was squarely in the lead.

  There wasn’t much time. The first driver to cross La Bonita Avenue was the winner, and Brent figured they had only a half mile or less to go.

  But these speeds were ridiculous, the whole idea that he’d succumbed to this insane.

  He should abandon now. Cut his losses. Deal with Villanueva’s crap. Just take his foot off the pedal and go home ... with his tail between his legs.

  But then Brent remembered the look on his prom date’s face, how she, too, had been humiliated by Villanueva, and he considered all those days he’d cycled to school to avoid dealing with the guy. Was he supposed to be a victim all his life?

  He booted the accelerator pedal, and his neck snapped back.

  Villanueva held his position in the right lane as Brent came blasting up beside him, and then, taking in a deep breath and holding it, Brent stomped on the pedal. The engine’s whine lifted, and the tailpipes rumbled even more loudly. He was almost afraid to check the HUD for his speed, and when he did, he thought, This is it, I’ll be arrested.

  131 mph ...

  No one would believe he’d gone that fast down a city street, and everyone would say what an utter fool he was, that he was no better than Villanueva, that he was endangering lives and belonged in jail. But first the police would confiscate his car and make him watch as they put it in the crusher. This was the well-advertised fate of cars used by street racers.

  The string of lights ahead turned yellow.

  Beyond them, a few cars rolled to stops, the drivers waiting for their green lights.

  They would cross into Brent’s path. Their timing was perfectly horrible.

  Brent glanced over at Villanueva, who mouthed a curse and accelerated again.

  Brent’s heart was in his throat and sweat dappled his forehead. He could hardly breathe as one after another the lights turned red and Villanueva streaked toward them, his car blurring into a yellow sun impaled by crimson taillights.

  Cars began to move across the intersection.

  Villanueva would attempt to weave through them.

  Something told Brent to check his rearview mirror, but nothing was back there, no police car or other vehicle, nothing—but then he noticed them: his eyes, bloodshot, heavy, and aching. He did not recognize himself.

  A wide pothole rushed up, and Brent veered so sharply to avoid it that he bumped—ever so slightly—the rear quarter panel of Villanueva’s car. The impact was so light that Brent knew there’d be no damage to his Vette, but at their speeds, the slightest shift of tires could be catastrophic.

  And it was. Brent watched with a horrid fascination as the tap caused Villanueva to slide and lose control. The car broke into a spin that sent him into the oncoming lane.

  Villanueva’s pinwheeling came to a sudden halt as his back tire slammed into the curb and the momentum lifted the entire car into the air.

  The yellow Vette now spiraled like an Indy racer that had just hit the wall.

  Brent gaped as Villanueva’s fate became even more apparent. The car was tumbling toward the massive concrete column of a streetlight.

  And before Brent could pull in his next breath, the Vette struck the pillar, T-boning it so hard and fast that the entire vehicle split in two as glass, plastic, and shattered fiberglass rose in a debris cloud while the heavier sections plunged toward the pavement.

  Before the rear half could hit the ground, it exploded in a fireball that consumed most of the street.

  A half second later, the front end of the car came to a thudding halt and was swept up into the first fireball.

  Three, two, one, and a second explosion tore through the front end, engulfing Villanueva in veils of black smoke backlit by the flames.

  Brent jammed on the brakes, then downshifted to second, rolling up on the scene.

  He was frozen, rapt, unable to fully process what he was seeing.

  But with a chill and shudder, he realized he had to get out of there. He hit the gas ...

  The flames were painfully similar to the ones Brent watched now, at this moment, some seven years later, flashing across the flat-screen TV ...

  Forward Operations Base Cobra

  Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan

  2016

  Brent stood in the base’s rec room, watching with the rest of his Special Forces team as the nuclear explosions detonated in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

  Indeed, those fireballs had just taken him back to that terrible moment when Carlos Villanueva had died on that rainy night. While his fellow Special Forces operators had been voicing their disbelief, Brent had remained there, stunned, reliving his senior year in high school, feeling it all again. That night had changed everything.

  Everything.

  “Hey, Captain? Captain Brent?”

  Someone was yelling for him now, telling him to gather up his people, that the evac choppers were on the way ...

  But Brent was still in 2009, inside his Vette, crying as he sped down a side street, crying because he fervently believed that his life was over.

  What would his parents think? His mother was an elementary school principal, a community leader who also worked for several charities. How would she feel about her only son being involved in a street race in which someone was killed?

  If Brent hadn’t challenged Villanueva, if he’d just continued to dismiss him, the kid would still be alive. He couldn’t just say it was all Villanueva’s fault, that he’d deserved to die ... because Brent had been weak. Brent had, indeed, stooped to the kid’s level. And because of that, the kid was dead.

  The ride home had been the longest one of his life. He’d pulled the Vette into the garage, shut the door, as though he were being followed by someone who’d seen the accident, then dropped to his knees and vomited.

  He remained there for five minutes, just drooling and breathing and trying to explain to the police in his head why he’d been racing and how sorry he was and that now, yes, his life was over ... Take me away . . .

  And his parents would stand there, crying, as he was escorted into the police car, the cop placing a hand on Brent’s head so he wouldn’t bang it as he took a seat inside, behind the wire separating them from him.

  He was a dog. A street-racing dog headed to prison.

  Brent rose and cleaned up the mess, then went to his room and lay there, afraid to shut his eyes because through that darkness would come the fire. Yet after a few more minutes and even with his eyes open, all he saw was the street, the cars, the Vette shattering into a million pieces.

  The next day at school, everyone was talking about the car accident, but there wasn’t a single witness who could—or would—identify the other car.

  In fact, no one was coming forward with information because the media was reporting that Carlos Villanueva had ties to several gangs in the area, and that word gang scared everyone into silence.

  Brent was called into a room at school and questioned with several other students who knew Villanueva. Brent assumed they’d ask him about Villanueva’s bullying and that eventually he’d break down and confess to the race.

  But the detectives seemed bored, going through the motions, and Brent wasn’t the only kid harassed by Villanueva and his brother. Brent learned that other kids with fast cars both in his high school and in neighboring schools had also been challenged to street races. It seemed the police were already chalking this up to another foolish punk who’d been killed doing something stupid. The police had asked Brent wha
t he’d been doing that night. He said he’d gone to a movie and then gone home—a half truth, to be sure. They even did a cursory inspection of his car, as they did with the other kids, but the Vette yielded no evidence about the crash.

  During the weeks that followed, Brent’s sorrow and guilt compelled him to learn more about Villanueva and his family. In moments of utter weakness he saw himself going over to their house and confessing to them what had happened, apologizing for his sins, and begging for their forgiveness. But it would never come to that, he knew.

  And so he’d watched them from afar, and he read the memorial MySpace page set up by Tomas. There Brent learned that Villanueva was going into the Army after high school. Who knew what Villanueva would have done in the military? He might have gone to war and fought valiantly for the United States. He might have done so many better things, smarter things, than racing his stupid car. And for months Brent wondered about that, about the life he had taken from this world. He didn’t have to agree to race. He didn’t. He was smarter than that. But his actions had said he wasn’t.

  Some days he’d argue that Villanueva was a bastard, and he’d curse and tell himself he was a fool for feeling bad.

  Other days he would cry.

  His parents expected him to head off to college. For six months he did nothing but work a part-time job in a local supermarket, come home, and float in his pool like Dustin Hoffman in that old film, The Graduate. Tony, the produce manager, said Brent was one of his best clerks and that there was a real future in the supermarket business if Brent wanted it. A real future.

  Brent would only shrug.

  Brent’s father had long talks with him about ambition and the value of a college education. Brent stayed up late at night, wrestling with the idea that he didn’t deserve to live a good life because Carlos Villanueva would never have one and that Brent had ruined the lives of Carlos’s parents and brother. Brent deserved to be punished—so deliberately ruining his own life was the only path.

  But then one day while Brent was at a gas station, he watched a soldier get out of his car and prepare to fill up. Brent looked at the young man: high-and-tight crew cut, uniform starched to perfection, and right there he realized it wasn’t too late for him.

  “I want to join the Army.”

  His parents were shocked. His father argued that at the very least he should become an officer, that maybe, just maybe he could pull some strings and get Brent into West Point via a congressional appointment.

  “Why do you want this so badly?” his mother had asked.

  “I just do,” he’d said.

  “I wish I could understand this.”

  “Mom, this is what I need to do.”

  “Will you be happy?”

  “Of course ...”

  Brent’s father had come through, and West Point was a culture shock and a hundred times tougher than Brent had ever anticipated. There was the encouragement, camaraderie, and support, to be sure, but there was also the competition that drove his fellow cadets to extreme limits. There were many sleepless nights and moments when Brent was staring into the demonic eyes of an upperclassman and wanting to drop out ...

  But two things kept him there: the thought that he could live Carlos’s life for him and the thought that he deserved to be punished for what he’d done, so when the pain and torment and stress came, he often welcomed them.

  No surprise: Brent graduated at the bottom of his class.

  And when that happens, you don’t get your pick of duty stations.

  He shipped out to Camp Casey, South Korea, and there he became a platoon leader in charge of four M1A1 tank crews and was part of First Tank, the more forward-deployed armor unit in Korea. If the North Koreans decided to invade, they’d be knocking on Brent’s front door. He did that for a few years and made friends with several Special Forces operators who’d convinced him to give SF a try. So he’d applied to the Special Forces school. He was rejected twice before the third time was a charm.

  He still had nightmares about the Robin Sage event that tested everything he’d learned as an SF operator ...

  But ultimately, he’d graduated, been promoted to captain, and been sent to Afghanistan to lead a Special Forces team near the tri-border area between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

  And now, as he finally dragged himself away from the TV to issue orders to his men, he sensed that his life was about to change just as it had on that fateful rainy night, both moments marked by swelling clouds of smoke and fire.

  ONE

  Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

  2021 (Present Day)

  For five years after the nuclear exchange between Iran and Saudi Arabia that killed six million and crippled the world’s oil supply, Manoj Chopra had been having a recurring dream:

  He was five years old, dashing through the slums of Mumbai, and being chased by three men with long, metallic wings extending from their backs and glistening in the sun. They said they were angels, but their skin was translucent, with flickering flames coursing beneath. They seemed to smile, yet their heads were like fire-filled globes devoid of real expressions. They seemed unaware of the heat and flames.

  Their voices came in silky whispers, and they said they wanted to save him, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust them, and he understood that if he got too close, he’d be burned.

  So he ran. And they chased him down the alleys, across the trenches, the sewers, the garbage heaps, and the crowded city streets choked by businesspeople, tourists, and beggars.

  He would turn down another street, and suddenly one would take flight and swoop overhead, then drop in front of him, fold his arms over his chest, and with wings extending, say, “You are a good boy, Manoj. You will always do the right thing. So come with us now.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I want to come with you, but I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to stay here.”

  Chopra charged past the fiery angel and ducked into a small house, the same house that appeared repeatedly in the dream.

  About a dozen women and children sat on the bare floor, all of them making bidis by placing tobacco inside small tendu leaves, then tightly rolling them. They would secure each bidi with thread, then move on to the next one, hoping to make more than a thousand in a single day.

  One of the women was Chopra’s mother. The two teenaged girls who sat beside her were his sisters, and all three were deeply in debt to the bidi contractors who loaned money at ridiculous interest rates in order to keep them enslaved. This had been Chopra’s fate. In his youth, he had rolled thousands of bidis himself.

  “Go away,” his mother said. “I still love you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t stay here. Is this the life you want? Your father would have wanted better.”

  Chopra’s father had been killed in a construction accident, leaving his family with bills and no medical insurance.

  Chopra shook his head at his mother. “He’s gone. He will never know about me and what I do.”

  “Go with them.”

  Chopra glanced back. In the doorway, framed by the afternoon light, stood one of the angels. He glowed in silhouette and extended a hand. For a moment, Chopra thought the angel had his father’s face. He tensed and turned away as now a woman strode from the back of the room, along with an impeccably groomed man in a dark suit.

  “He has, we believe, an eidetic memory,” said the woman, whose face came into the light and whose hands were covered in chalk. She was one of Chopra’s teachers from senior secondary school (high school).

  The man, Mr. Sanjay Deol, was a top executive with Axis Bank and one of Chopra’s mentors who had helped send him to the Judge Business School in Cambridge. Because of his gifts, because of his “value” and talent, Chopra had been able to do something rare in his world: escape his destiny.

  “Yes, we know all about him,” answered Deol. “He is the most remarkab
le mathematician we’ve ever seen—and he’s so young.”

  “But what about them?” Chopra asked. “Can you save my family?”

  Deol shook his head and turned away, metallic wings sprouting from his back.

  And at that moment, as always happened, Chopra snapped awake and lay there in a pool of sweat.

  “The dream is simple to interpret,” said one of the half dozen therapists Chopra had consulted over the years. “You’re feeling guilty about the deaths of all the men who supported you. The men who turned your life around. The men who gave you a life, as it were. They were your angels, and they burned in the Middle East holocaust.”

  Chopra was forty-seven years old now, and he knew better than to dismiss the dream as simple guilt. Something much deeper was simmering in his subconscious, and he was determined to uncover it.

  He’d heard the axiom that all great athletes are always running away from something. So what was it, really? Was he trying to run away from his meager roots?

  Chopra leaned back in his office chair and glanced up through the panoramic windows of his penthouse suite. The city lay before him: the choked streets, the towering buildings—some old and weather-worn, others newly constructed. He was quite literally at the top of his world.

  He wanted for nothing. He could never spend all the money he had earned and saved. His mother and sisters had been rescued—by him, not by those creatures from his dreams.

  And yet at forty-seven he had never married. Could he blame that on his physical appearance? Not solely. He was not an ugly man, he thought, but his short stature and considerable girth would never earn him a star-ring role in the latest Bollywood production. That he couldn’t tolerate contact lenses and wore thick spectacles didn’t help matters, either. However, his unwavering commitment to his work had most often interfered with his personal life. Because he had been taken from such squalor and been trained, educated, and placed in an environment of such ultra wealth, he felt he owed his mentors a remarkable return on their investment.