Gangster State

driver was paralysed with fear.
At this point, the two assassins had had enough. The taller man
pointed his gun at the driver and, without hesitation, fired off a few
shots in quick succession. Tshepo couldn’t see if the bullets hit the
driver, but he somehow knew the man was done for.
The two gunmen headed back to the silver Audi. Tshepo again noted
that their actions contrasted with those of the characters he had seen
making getaways on television. Instead of sprinting back to the car, the
young men simply strolled towards it, their relaxed pace in step with
the nonchalance with which they had just carried out their grim task.
The Audi left the scene in an equally orderly manner. Without the
theatrics of screeching tyres or frantic swerving, it simply slipped up
South Road, vanishing from view.
Tshepo moved towards the Bentley. Peeking inside, he saw blood
gushing from the driver’s head and neck. He didn’t have much time to
assess the gory scene, because the car’s powerful six-litre twin-
turbocharged engine suddenly roared to life. Tshepo jumped back as
the Bentley lunged forward. He would never be sure whether this was
the result of the dying man’s final conscious actions or whether his
death spasms had somehow kicked the car into motion.
The grey sedan accelerated over South Road, careened to the left and
narrowly avoided colliding with the traffic island and robot on the far
side of the intersection. It continued down Bowling Avenue in a
southerly direction, passing a BP fuel station on its left, before finally
smashing into a lamp post on another traffic island. The car’s spooky
last dash had carried it some 135 metres from where the driver was
shot.
A group of people from the fuel station and elsewhere started to gather