What better place to tread water for a bit — and give his pursuers time to get fed up and leave…
Dim lighting, strobes and the flicker of cheap disco-lights in time to the latest girl band music mixed with cigarette smoke and the aroma of Ganja filled the air in the hot stuffy room.
Alix picked up a can of lager from a table and pulled the tab off, taking a long swallow, while all the time his eyes surveyed the room and the group around the front door. Several girls gyrated into his path, bodies writhing in time to the beat of the music.
Alix swiftly sidestepped groping hands, glancing behind to see the group at the front door move aside. Hard faced men, battle scarred, cold eyes displaying their utter professionalism, appeared: dark-haired and well dressed in their Italian designer suits.
Alix stared, lips suddenly dry and the need to leave thumping in his temples.
Who were these people? Shouted his brain, searching the archives of his mind without success. He did not recognise these pursuers; but then, this information was an irrelevant factor…
Alix reacted by pushing his way back through the crowd towards the back living room. Bullets tore through the party, plaster and woodwork exploding as they slammed into the walls; Alix rolled, darted through the doorway and into the other room. The soundtrack had changed to one of panic and hysterical screams. He grabbed his black overcoat and ran through another doorway that opened into a small bedroom.
Trapped! Only a window. He opened it and peered over the edge
— nothing but fresh-air for two floors and then a flat roof.
No thought was required. He stepped up to the window sill and jumped.
He landed heavily, rolled once and crouched on his haunches. Rapid gun-fire rang out from above, and a moment later bullets were screaming past him, slamming into brickwork off to his left. Alix slipped over the edge of the flat roof — released his grip and dropped twenty foot onto a stack of cardboard boxes below. He scrambled out from the crushed stack, and leaped lightly to the ground below.
Ignoring the shocked looks of passers-by, Alix ran up the street, gun in hand, approaching a man sitting astride a shiny black and red Suzuki Hayabusa sports motorbike. Without time for polite niceties, Alix grabbed the man by the collar of his leather jacket and pulled him backwards on to the wet tarmac, jumped aboard the powerful machine and, with the clutch in, he kicked down. The Suzuki screamed, fumes exploding from the exhaust… The bike’s rear tyre spun furiously in the middle of the street, smoke billowing off the hot rubber as it reluctantly tried to grip the tarmac as Alix accelerated up the street. He kept his head down as bullets hailed down from the small window above, that he had just jumped out of, slamming into the bodywork of passing cars as the Suzuki’s rear wheel attempted to grip the wet tarmac.
“Damn these people — whoever they are…” Alix said aloud.
At the end of the street, cars were grid-locked queuing to get out of a junction blocked by road-works. The bike screamed as Alix braked hard and spun the machine around, he let out the clutch and the bike lurched forward, mounted the pavement and started back along the route he’d just come from. He used parked cars for cover as pedestrians screamed and jumped out of the way as the powerful bike accelerated at high speed. Wheels spun, Alix slung the bike to the left, off the pavement and back onto the road again, the suspension dipping as he braked hard again to miss pedestrians who dived for cover.
Alix opened the throttle and the bike surged down the road. He braked hard at the entrance to a large building site, the rear wheel slewed round and a moment later Alix was racing through the gates and over rough ground, churning mud and heading for the exit on the opposite side of the large site. He hit the brakes, ending in a long mudslew skid, and jumped free at the last moment as the Suzuki collided with a large earth moving machine. The fuel tank impacted against the heavy metal and exploded into a fireball. Alix looked around and spotted a black Mercedes Sprinter van parked just outside the exit of the site, ran across and climbed casually in through the side door.
“Step on it, Lola — it’s time to leave.” Bullets slammed into the rear door panel from behind as the Mercedes wheel spun and joined the late evening traffic, and then the glass of the rear windscreen exploded into millions of tiny fragments. In the back of the van Alix ducked low onto the floor as bullets ripped through the side panels. Ragged holes appeared and the hi-tech surveillance equipment and weapons held in the metal racks were being destroyed.
“Fucking hell, Lola! Get this pile of junk moving?” Alix growled, adding. “Get us out of here — now!” Alix eyes were wide, mouth dry as he eyed the bullet holes.
Lola veered the van to the left, mounted the kerb and smashed into oblivion one parking meter after another all the way to the end of the street; the van’s engine roared and the bullets faded behind.
They drove through back streets and through deserted industrial estates.
Alix, sweating now, slumped in his seat and ran a hand over his spiky hair.
“Was I right?” Lola asked bluntly.
Alix met the woman’s intense gaze in the rear view mirror, and nodded. “You were right. They definitely wanted me to lead them to you. Bad enough to kill anyone who got in their way.”
“What now?” asked Lola, her sultry South American tones for once edged with a kind of panic so unlike her usual well-trained stability that it brought a frown to Alix’s youthful face?
He shrugged. “We have to warn the partners of Ferran & Cardini and whoever is running the show at the Ministry of Defence.”
“I can’t use my Scorpion G8 unit — I’d say that’s how the bastards have been tracking us,” said Alix with a snarl. He checked that there was a full clip in the Glock and switched the safety to off on the Heckler & Koch MP5 machine carbine in his hands and grinned — that nasty grin he made just before the shooting started.
“We could of course just try this Pay as You go phone, that I carry around for such emergencies?” Lola called back.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You’re a tricky one.”
“Comes with experience — lots of experience.” Lola said amiably, and then added. “We’ve got no other choice than to use it. I’ll send a message to Ferran & Cardini. Let them know that we’ve got a leak somewhere inside Scorpion HQ or at the Ministry Of Defence, and that they were laying in wait for us.”
“That’ll stir things up. There’s no way they could have just happened upon us. Bastards knew exactly where we were.”
“It’ll be like waving a red rag at a black bull.” Lola said, and laughed.
“Those bastards messed up my trousers andmy new overcoat. The bastards. Lola, get us out of this shit-hole city. Then we’ll see if we can dump this van — it’ll almost certainly be tracked.”
Lola pulled free her phone. Tapped in a number of digits and the device came to life and as quickly it went blank and died. She frowned
— and tried it again.
“Damn thing won’t work, Alix.”
“Let’s take a look at it.”
“Bloody gizmos — never was very good with technology,” complained Lola.