Ellie saw a muzzle flash from his rifle. She flinched against her seat belt and gripped the wheel even tighter as Guidry fired off a second round. He smoothly picked the rifle off the hood like he was grabbing a suitcase, and then he turned around and brought the rifle up.

Aiming it at her.

Ellie knew Guidry could see her clearly, thanks to the night-vision goggles mounted across his eyes. Every cell in her body screamed for her to turn around, but it was too late to do that. She veered left, into the bumpy terrain full of scrub brush, and as she bounced in her seat, the top of her head slamming into the cab’s ceiling and Grace behind her screaming questions, Ellie wondered what grade of bulletproof glass had been installed in the Rover. She doubted it would withstand a .50-caliber round.

Then she turned the wheel hard right, heading back to the road, Guidry trying to guess where she would turn and trying to compensate. He held the sniper rifle like the trained marksman he was. She kept driving wildly, her foot never letting up on the accelerator, narrowing the distance between them.

Her heart seized in her chest when she saw the muzzle flash leap from his rifle.

The round penetrated the windshield to her right. She turned the wheel again, and in the rearview she caught Grace jumping against her seat belt; but Grace didn’t scream, even when her frightened gaze locked on the golf ball–sized hole left by the round. The hole had splintered, but the cracks hadn’t spread into Ellie’s field of vision. She could see well enough, and she righted the wheel and kept her foot on the gas and charged toward him at full throttle. Guidry lowered his weapon, realizing, maybe for the first time in his life, that he might not live to fight another day. He knew he wouldn’t be able to make it inside his car in time, which left him only one option: running.

The rifle was heavy and cumbersome. He should have dropped it before turning to run, but he held it tight. He was trying to make his way around the front of the Mercedes when the rifle stock slammed against the front side of the SUV and slowed him down. Then he dropped it, but it was too late. Ellie hit him full-on, with the steel bullbar.

Instead of flinging him across the windshield and tossing him over the roof and into the air, the bar slammed him forward. Ellie caught his shocked expression before he disappeared, thrown downward and underneath the Rover. Ellie didn’t slow down, but she did glance in the rearview, and looking past Grace’s horrified expression, she saw the crushed and twisted remains and felt her stomach lurch. Ellie looked away, back to the road in front of her, and as it dipped she saw, through the smoke, both Sebastian and Paul on the ground. Only Paul, though, appeared to be moving.