Chapter 4 - THE SHADOW ON THE EXPRESSWAY
"Down!" Jerry roared.
He lunged forward, slamming his weight against Chidinma and shoving her to the muddy ground just as a suppressed gunshot whispered through the damp air. The bullet smacked into the cinderblock wall right where her head had been, spraying bits of pulverized concrete across her hair.
The woman shrieked, but Jerry’s instincts took over. In the ruthless corridors of Lagos high finance, Jerry hadn't built a multibillion-dollar logistics empire by being soft. He had survived corporate extortion, boardroom coups, and armed hijackings on the high seas.
He grabbed the heavy wooden stool Chidinma had carried and hurled it with all his strength down the narrow corridor. The stool caught the first gunman across the shins, throwing off his aim as he fired a second round into the tin roof.
"The gate!" Jerry yelled, hauling Chidinma to her feet. "Unlock the damn gate!"
Adrenaline surging through her veins, Chidinma slammed the key into the padlock, twisted it until her skin scraped against the iron, and shoved the heavy gate inward.
They tumbled through into a neglected service lane behind the market just as a hail of suppressed gunfire shredded the wooden gateposts behind them. Jerry slammed the gate shut, sliding an abandoned iron pipe through the handles to buy them thirty seconds.
"Run!" Jerry commanded, grabbing her hand.
They sprinted down the winding backstreet, bursting out onto the chaos of the main commercial road where hundreds of vehicles sat trapped in typical Lagos gridlock. Fifty yards away, Jerry spotted his armored black Range Rover Sentinel. Tundai was standing beside the open driver’s door, frantically scanning the crowd with a heavy iron tire wrench in his fist.
"Tundai! Open the doors!" Jerry yelled over the cacophony of blaring horns.
Tundai turned, his eyes bulging as he saw his boss sprinting through traffic holding hands with the dead woman from the market. He threw open the rear passenger door.
Jerry shoved Chidinma into the leather interior, dove in behind her, and slammed the heavy ballistic door shut just as three rounds pinged harmlessly against the reinforced bulletproof glass.
"Drive! Now!" Jerry bellowed.
Tundai didn't ask questions. He dropped the heavy SUV into gear, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and bulldozed through a line of plastic traffic cones, mounting the curb and roaring down the expressway toward the safety of the private bridges leading to Victoria Island.
Inside the cabin, Chidinma was hyperventilating, pressed flat against the door, staring at the spiderweb cracks on the armored glass where the bullets had struck.
"Who was that?!" she cried, her voice rising into hysteria. "Who is trying to kill me?!"
Jerry leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes for two seconds to steady his racing heart. When he opened them, his expression had hardened into pure titanium.
"Those weren't street thugs, Chidinma," Jerry said grimly, looking at the tactical precision of the bullet impacts. "Those were professional clean-up operators. And they weren't trying to kill you."
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He looked at her, the terrible truth finally crystallizing in his mind.
"They were trying to finish the job they thought they completed on the Lekki expressway seven days ago."
