Seeing the tongue of flame flickering from the car was enough to convince the chopper pilot to back off, much like Espinoza’s chauffeur had done. The searchlight vanished for only a moment before the helo came back again, flying aft of them and at a greater altitude.

The trail through the tombs turned sharply, but Juan managed to scrape the car through without having to stop.

If there was any coordination between the air and ground units, the pilot would be vectoring the cops from the patrol car to their position. Juan kept a sharp eye out, craning his neck left and right, as they sped past narrow passages. He saw nothing, and was moving fast enough that even had an officer been approaching from the side he would only have time for one snap shot that would surely miss.

Then they caught a break. The path branched, and they found themselves driving on the perimeter walkway that bordered the cemetery’s exterior wall. After negotiating such close quarters, it seemed as wide as a highway.

Their second break came almost immediately. As part of the cemetery’s refurbishment on the main gate, a section of wall had also been removed. A temporary barrier of plywood and wooden studs stood in the opening. The angle was all wrong to get any sort of speed, but Juan went for it anyway.

“Brace yourselves,” he warned for the second time in five minutes.

The car hit the barricade with its front fender and splintered the wood but couldn’t punch through. The wheels spun furiously on the slick cobbles, bowing the partition more and more until some critical point was met. The plucky little Mitsubishi tore through the wall and raced across a deserted sidewalk before Cabrillo could throw it into a four-wheel drift.

They had escaped the cemetery but not the chopper, which was doubtlessly radioing their position.

“Linda, get us back to the docks.”

She was hunched over the GPS with her fingers dancing across the screen. “Okay, turn left at the second cross street, then get into the right lane for another sharp turn.”

Juan did as she ordered, but, no matter what they did, they drove in a corona of hard-white light from the chopper. In his mirror, he saw two patrol cars suddenly appear. They were racing hard, their sirens rising and falling like banshee wails. There was no way on earth to outrun them.

Linc smashed out the rear window with the butt of his H&K and sprayed a fusillade of rubber bullets. The cops kept coming. Either they knew about the nonlethal ammo from previous attacks or they just didn’t care.