She saw there was no longer time to beat the car to either curb. Veering remorselessly, it would catch her in the gutter.
Useless to attempt a feint and double-back, such as any venturesome child executed a dozen times a day. Her reflexes were too slow.
Polite vacuous laughter came from the car's loudspeaker over the engine's mounting roar.
From her fellow pedestrians lining the curbs came a sigh of horror.
The little old lady dipped into her shopping bag and came up with a big blue-black automatic. She held it in both fists, riding the recoils like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco.
Aiming at the base of the windshield, just as a big-game hunter aims at the vulnerable spine of a charging water buffalo over the horny armor of its lowered head, the little old lady squeezed off three shots before the car chewed her down.
From the right-hand curb a young woman in a wheelchair shrieked an obscenity at the car's occupants.
Smythe-de Winter, the driver, wasn't happy. The little old lady's last shot had taken two members of his car pool. Bursting through the laminated glass, the steel-jacketed slug had traversed the neck of Phipps-McHeath and buried itself in the skull of Horvendile-Harker.
Braking viciously, Smythe-de Winter rammed the car over the right-hand curb. Pedestrians scattered into entries and narrow arcades, among them a youth bounding high on crutches.
But Smythe-de Winter got the girl in the wheelchair.