Before they could react, Adams launched himself forward, his full body weight behind a heavy straight right to the first man’s jaw. Adams saw the eyes go, and as the man dropped unconscious to the ground, Adams was already twisting to the other side, throwing a left hook towards the second man. It connected but his timing was off, and the man just staggered back, hurt but still a threat.
Adams saw him instinctively go for the pistol in his belt, and then saw his head twist round from another heavy impact. He turned, and saw Lynn standing there, backpack in her hands, having swung it at the man with all her might.
Adams was impressed, but Lynn had always been a tough one. The man was still conscious but he was down. Adams suddenly remembered the sniper opposite. His vision might be impaired but he was still capable of getting off some shots.
He pulled Lynn to one side, taking shelter behind one of the two huge terracotta plant pots stationed on either side of the main entrance even as his suspicions were confirmed and the rounds hit the sidewalk where they had just been standing. Adams noticed that the impacts left no mark, except for small black smears — rubber bullets. They could still be deadly if the target was unfortunate but it indicated that whoever was after them wanted them alive.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that they were now stuck between a sniper on one side and a team of men in the hotel behind them. The sniper might only have rubber bullets but they would still incapacitate them easily enough. If they ran into the street, they would be shot with these bullets; if they retreated back into the hotel, they would be greeted by the six men who would now doubtless be racing down the stairs to the foyer.
Adams made a quick calculation in his head — from the time he had broken the window and they had jumped, he guessed no more than fifteen seconds had passed. During that time, the team upstairs was probably only just through the door, the team leader putting it all together, deciding what to do. An armed team descending two flights of stairs would take at least thirty seconds.
Adams knew there would be a back entrance to the hotel, probably exiting into a service alley. He should have scoped out the exits as soon as he arrived. Sloppy. And sloppy could easily mean dead against these guys. He would have to raise his game if he and Lynn were going to survive.
As it was, they had thirty seconds to go back into the hotel and find their way out the other side.
It would have to be enough.
8
Eldridge led his men back down the stairs, cursing all the way. How had they known his team was coming? And who would have guessed they would jump out of the window? What a mess!
The latest update from Williams made him feel no better. Apparently his two men outside had been taken out, and the two fugitives had actually turned and run back inside the building!
Eldridge didn’t know what their plan was but he knew it had been a mistake not putting people at the back door. But with such a limited amount of men, what could he do? He couldn’t cover everywhere, and the back entrance had seemed a very unlikely place to need covering when he had drawn up the plans for the arrest.
Still, he considered as he neared the first landing, plans never survive contact with the enemy. The crusty old Master Chief who had led his SEAL training down at Virginia Beach had been right about that, at least.
As they neared the bottom of the stairs and the foyer, he realized the impression they would make, six armed men running full tilt through a cheap city hotel. The op was supposed to go down quietly, and even though they had approval from the Chilean government and the Santiago metropolitan police, Eldridge was aware that the mission was about to overstep the agreed boundaries.
The hotel foyer had been cleared of guests by the hotel staff for the duration of the op — the idea had been to bundle the arrested pair down the stairs and into the van waiting outside — but Eldridge understood what a spectacle was taking place, and how bad it might look for the US government if things continued to get worse. He stopped for a second on the last step — the van! Of course! How could he have forgotten?
‘Renfrew,’ he said into his mic as he took the last stair into the hotel foyer, ‘get the van round to the back! Now!’
Adams and Lynn crashed together out of the metal service door into the narrow alleyway. They had found the exit through the kitchen, after sprinting at full speed through the foyer, reception and dining room.
Adams was surprised that there were no other guests around, and then realized that they must have been confined to their rooms. There were no staff members around either, and he suddenly understood how well-connected the team must be to have secured the hotel so efficiently.
As they ran down the service alley past overflowing refuse bins, towards the wider junction at the end, Adams was relieved that there had been no guard at the door. He began to believe that they might even be able to make their escape, when he saw the ominous black shape cruise across in front of them, its huge metal bulk cutting off the end of the alleyway.
It was a large, black panel van, one Adams had glimpsed only for a brief instant as they had been penned in by the sniper in front of the hotel. The race for the rear exit had obviously been anticipated, and the van had moved to cut off their escape.
The vehicle was fifteen feet away, and Adams saw the door pop open, a man leaning out towards them, submachine gun outstretched. Adams — not so sure that this gun’s bullets would be made of rubber — grabbed the huge wheeled bin next to him and pushed it down the alley with an almighty heave towards the armed man.
The bin hit the van’s door, knocking the man back inside the vehicle, and Adams immediately gestured to Lynn, indicating the fire escape to their left. He heaved her up on top of another bin so she could reach the first rung and she pulled herself up. Then Adams was with her, climbing up towards the roof of the building behind the hotel.
Adams looked down and saw the man below pushing the van door hard, shoving the bin back into the alleyway. The man looked up, enraged, raising his MP5 submachine gun towards them.
But it was too late. They had made it to the roof.
Eldridge was far from happy.
He had not wanted to launch the operation until the rest of his team were there, but then Jacobs had been in contact, telling him to strike now, while they were sure where the pair were. Eldridge could see the logic — strike while the iron was hot, it would be calamitous if the pair escaped again. And yet he had been reluctant to launch the takedown with just nine men. They were all experts of course, but that wasn’t the point — nine men were just too few to control a building, and the area surrounding it. It was asking for trouble, and his operational experience should have caused him to tell Jacobs ‘no’.
But, Eldridge reflected, you didn’t ever tell Jacobs ‘no’. Nobody did. And so he had followed his orders like a good soldier, and now this — a complete mission breakdown.
The two targets had escaped from the hotel, and had managed to make their way past the buildings at the back of the Hostal Americano, emerging on to the Huérfanos, the main road that ran parallel to the Compañia de Jesús. Mercifully, Jacobs had managed to get a direct satellite feed from the NSA, and his own intelligence operators in Nevada were now able to direct the Alpha Brigade team on to the targets via aerial observation.
But it was still a complete screw-up in Eldridge’s eyes. A chase spilling out across the streets of Santiago was just going to involve more and more people — people whom the Alpha Brigade would end up having to silence.
It seemed that Matthew Adams and Evelyn Edwards had again been underestimated. Two teams of Eldridge’s men — men of the fabled Alpha Brigade, the best of the best — had so far failed, and Jacobs had made it more than plain that anything less than outright success would simply not be tolerated.