‘Looking for us?’ Ethan asked conversationally.
‘As a matter of fact, no,’ the American said. ‘We’re interested in the other woman.’
Ethan and Lopez exchanged a confused glance as Lopez shrugged. ‘I didn’t see any other woman.’
The American twisted his face into a gruesome smile as he began pacing back toward Ethan. ‘Give her up or this is going to get nasty.’
The American reached beneath his jacket and produced a pistol, his accomplice doing the same.
‘Looks like it already has,’ Lopez observed.
Ethan judged the distance between himself and the two American agents and he knew he could not make it before they were able to draw a bead and fire on him. He looked past them to where the two warehouseman and the truck driver had taken one look at the two guns and immediately turned and fled out of sight. He glanced left and right for any object that he could use to even the odds against the two agents, but he could see nothing and the two Americans knew that he was cornered.
‘Give her up, now,’ the American agent repeated, ‘or you will both vanish forever. Two American losers on foreign soil when they shouldn’t be there and with nobody looking for them.’
‘You talking about us or you?’ Ethan asked with a grim smile.
The American lost patience and raised the pistol to point Ethan. ‘We’re done talking. Where is Lucy Morgan?’
Ethan was about to reply but another voice called out from their right. ‘I’m here.’
The two American agents turned to their left just as Lucy Morgan burst from the racking with a hefty fire extinguisher in her hands. She aimed the extinguisher and a dense blast of thick foam hit the two American agents square in the face.
Ethan rushed forward and drove the knuckles of his right hand deep into the nearest American’s throat to incapacitate him, then grabbed the pistol’s barrel with one hand and cupped the agent’s knuckles with the other before twisting hard and pulling the arm over his shoulder.
The blinded American groaned as he was thrown over Ethan’s shoulder to slam down onto the concrete floor, the pistol simultaneously twisting from his grasp as Ethan turned the weapon in his grip and aimed it down at the American.
He had just enough time to see Lopez’s right boot thud into the other agent’s belly as with one smooth motion she followed through with the other leg and drove her left knee up into the man’s face as he bowed over at the waist. The agent sank to his knees as his consciousness slipped away and Lopez grabbed his pistol and pulled it from his hand.
Ethan looked up at Lucy Morgan, who tossed the fire extinguished to one side with a metallic clang. ‘Now what?’
Ethan and Lopez exchanged a glance and then Ethan gestured with his head towards the open warehouse door. ‘Let’s go.’
Ethan hurried out of the warehouse and peeked left and right before making his way to the cab of the truck. The driver and two warehouseman had fled the vehicle and left its door open and the keys in the ignition. Furthermore, the driver had left his high visibility jacket in his seat. Ethan grabbed the jacket and threw it over his shoulders as he turned to Lopez and Lucy.
‘Get in the back, maybe we can sneak out of here.’
Lopez and Lucy jumped into the narrow interior of the delivery vehicle and Ethan shut the rear doors before hurrying back round to the front and climbing into the cab. He started the engine and yanked the door shut before aiming directly for the exits, neither of which contained anything more blockading his way than a simple barrier striped bright red and white, and a guard post. Being a museum, he figured there was little chance that the guard in the post was armed or would cast anything more than a cursory glance in Ethan’s direction as he let the vehicle out.
Ethan drove down towards the guard post and saw inside a man in a smart uniform looking in his direction. Ethan had no idea of what security protocols might be in place at the museum but he hoped that having already let the delivery vehicle in, the guard would have no problem in lifting the barrier and letting it out again. Ethan raised his right in a cautious wave and waited to see what would happen.
The guard looked at him for several long seconds from within his post just as a series of alarms began blaring out from the museum behind them. The guard leaped from his seat, then he drew a pistol from a holster at his waist and aimed it at the truck.
‘Incoming!’ Ethan yelled into the back.
Ethan slammed the throttle pedal down and ducked to one side to shield himself behind the dashboard as he heard the guard yell something and two sharp cracks of gunfire split the night air. The windscreen of the vehicle shattered as the bullets passed through above where Ethan had sprawled himself across the seats.
Ethan heard truck’s fenders smash through the feeble barrier and he jerked upright and yanked the wheel hard to the right. The truck skidded sideways on the damp asphalt and then shuddered as its tires bounced before finally finding some grip and the vehicle accelerated away from the museum.
Ethan glanced in his mirrors and immediately spotted two large black SUVs accelerate out into the traffic flow from just behind him and begin weaving and passing other vehicles in an attempt to catch the delivery truck.
‘We’ve got company!’ he yelled back at Lopez in the rear of the vehicle. ‘Two SUVs, fifty yards behind!’
Lopez reacted instantly as she gripped the pistol she had taken from the American agent and positioned herself near the rear doors of the truck, ready to hurl them open and return fire if it was needed. Lucy scrambled over a pile of undelivered boxes and poked her head through a small hatch into the cab.
‘Where the hell do we go now?’
‘I’m working on that,’ Ethan shot back.
The road ahead was filled with red brake lights that glowed in the darkness as Berlin’s rush-hour traffic began piling up. Ethan could see no way past the traffic on the main road and he knew that as soon as the truck was brought to a halt the men in the SUVs would be upon them.
Ethan jerked the wheel to the right and the delivery truck mounted the sidewalk with a series of deep thuds as he fought for control and began racing alongside parked vehicles as he approached a series of traffic lights marking a major intersection. The truck’s headlights illuminated the startled faces of pedestrians who threw themselves clear of the onrushing vehicle, Ethan backing off the throttle to give them a chance to get out of the way before he raced past.
He glanced in his mirrors and saw both of the SUVs mount the pavement in pursuit.
Ethan plunged onto the intersection and turned hard right away from the river, thinking hard as he guided the truck down a two-laned highway. The traffic was dense but the wider road allowed him to take a line between the two rows of traffic, vehicles honking and voices hollering as they were forced to move aside from the larger truck as it accelerated between them. The river was to his rear, which meant that Schipol airport was somewhere out to his right to the south-east.
He checked his mirrors again and saw both SUVs likewise forcing their way through the centre line of traffic. Both were modern vehicles, and although Ethan could not tell their age by the numberplates they carried he was pretty damn sure that they would have all of the modern safety features of expensive vehicles of their type.
Ethan accelerated until the throttle was flat to the floor but still the SUVs were closing in on him, their bright headlights flaring and reflecting off the mirrors and into his face. Ethan kept one eye on the road ahead as the truck reached sixty kilometres per hour, the leading SUV barely ten yards behind him. The road ahead was about to open up into three lanes, the traffic breaking up and giving the SUVs the room they would need to pass and block Ethan’s path.