Another shot rang out, the bullet missing the car, slamming into the right-hand wall of the ramp behind them and ricocheting away somewhere. Bronson guessed they had already moved partly out of sight. For the gunman to get a clear shot at them, he would have to run across the garage from the lift and stairwell to the foot of the ramp itself, and fire up it. That was the only advantage they had, but he guessed that the man would already be moving into position. Within seconds, he would be able to pepper the back of the car with bullets.
The opening door of the garage loomed ever closer, the bottom of the metal frame moving up vertically in front of the car. It didn’t look to Bronson as if there was enough clearance for him to drive underneath it, and he daren’t hit it, in case it stopped the vehicle dead.
At the very last moment, as the nose of the car powered under the slowly opening door, Bronson shifted his right foot from the accelerator to the brake and pushed hard. The nose of the car dipped as the pads hit the discs, the deceleration fierce. Hitting the brakes compressed the suspension, effectively lowering the overall height of the vehicle for that brief split second.
Bronson and Angela were thrown forward against the restraint of the seat belts. There was a grating sound from the car’s roof as the rear section scraped underneath the bottom of the door. Bronson felt the tug as the impact slowed them still further, but then they were under and clear. Again he mashed his foot onto the accelerator, and the car leapt up the last few yards of the garage ramp and out of the building into the brilliant sunshine of the Madrid late afternoon.
Bronson sensed rather than heard another gunshot as the man behind them finally reached the bend in the ramp and fired at them once more. He had no idea where the bullet went, but he was certain it didn’t hit the car. Even an expert will find it difficult to hit a target, especially a moving target, at a distance of much more than about twenty-five yards.
The moment the vehicle cleared the ramp, Bronson swung the wheel hard to the right, tugged on the handbrake to slide the rear of the car sideways, tyres squealing on the tarmac, then continued to accelerate.
Beside him, Angela eased herself upright, her hands clutching at the dashboard and the passenger door, and peered around her, eyes wide with shock.
‘It was that man, wasn’t it?’ she demanded. ‘From the lift?’
Bronson nodded.
‘It was. Now we can see what we’re up against. No discussion, no negotiation.
‘Thank God we got away.’
The road was quiet, and within a few seconds they were travelling at well over seventy kilometres an hour, getting as far away from the hotel as they could.
Every second or two Bronson’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirrors. And then he saw what he’d hoped not to. A white saloon car, rapidly catching up with them. The gunman in the hotel must have had a backup man.
‘Shit! We’re not out of the woods yet,’ Bronson said. ‘They’re following us. It’s that white saloon car. We need to lose them, and quickly. But I don’t know these streets. You’ve got to get us out of this one.’
70
With the rush of adrenalin, Angela recovered rapidly from the shock of being fired at. She opened the glove box and fished out a map of Madrid plus Bronson’s satnav.
‘I’m on it!’ she said as she plugged in the satnav and riffled through the pages of the map.
‘Right, make sure we don’t go anywhere too busy.’
Bronson had no doubt that both men in the car behind them would be armed, and if he was forced to stop the car, they could outflank him and approach him from two sides at the same time. They absolutely needed to keep moving.
The satnav finally got satellite lock, and Angela was able to see exactly where they were. She looked away for a few moments to study the map she was holding, then jabbed her finger at it.
‘Got it,’ she said, ‘take the next turning on the right, then right again.’
‘Done,’ Bronson replied.
Bronson sped round the corner, then drove up to the junction halfway down it just as the lights were turning red. He quickly checked for other traffic before spinning the wheel hard to the right and powering down the street, followed by the blasting of horns. He doubted very much if the red light would hold up the pursuing car for very long, but the crossing traffic might.
‘Where now?’ he asked.
‘Keep going straight. You pass two junctions on your right, and then take the third.’
As they passed the first junction, in his rear-view mirror he saw a white car make the turn at the crossroads. At that distance, he couldn’t be sure that it was the one containing the gunman, but his instinct told him that it was.
‘They’re still behind us,’ he said. ‘About three hundred yards back.’
As they sped towards the second junction, a car pulled out from it, directly in front of them. Bronson twitched the wheel to the left and overtook it, giving the driver a blast on his horn as he did so.
Angela looked down at the map, then pointed.
‘That’s the junction. Turn right here.’
Bronson eased off the accelerator for barely half a second and stabbed at the brakes as he checked that the road ahead was clear. Then he turned the wheel, accelerating the car again.
The road was wide, cars parked haphazardly on both sides. Half a dozen vehicles were heading towards him on the opposite side of the road.
‘Where to next?’ Bronson asked, his tone clipped. ‘A right turn is better than a left, so I don’t have to cross oncoming traffic.’
‘Don’t worry, I do possess a little intelligence,’ Angela replied. ‘So we’ll go for Plan B, which is the same as Plan A, but only turning right. If you can, take the next right.’
The tyres protested audibly as Bronson accelerated hard right.
‘You still know where we are?’ he asked.
‘You just drive, and leave the navigating to me.’
Bronson would have laughed if he hadn’t had to concentrate. Angela was always good in a crisis, and the blow she’d taken to the back of her head now didn’t seem to be troubling her at all.
Angela directed him from one junction to the next, the traffic lessening noticeably the further they drove from the centre of Madrid.
Bronson had been checking his mirrors constantly, and the white car had been getting progressively further and further back as he’d tried to keep up the fastest speed he could possibly achieve on the roads of the capital city. Yet at the last minute it kept reappearing. But there was one simple trick he could use that would almost guarantee to shake off the pursuit. He just needed to find the right road for it.
71
‘Where are you going now?’ Angela asked, as Bronson turned off down the next street on the right.
‘Just watch,’ Bronson said. ‘I’m following a different road sign.’
About fifty yards down the street was a large blue sign with a white letter ‘P’ in it, and without hesitation he swung the car into the wide opening directly below it. He stopped at the barrier at the entrance to the garage, took a ticket from the machine, and then drove inside as soon as the barrier lifted. There were plenty of vacant parking spaces, and he stopped the car on the second floor level.
‘Right,’ Bronson said, switching off the engine. ‘We’ll sit here for a few minutes. Those guys were probably at least one or two minutes behind us, and with any luck we did manage to lose them. But even if we didn’t, and they saw us heading this way, they’ll probably shoot right past here and keep looking for this car out on the streets. What we need to do now is get hold of another vehicle.’