Catching the Sprinter in the corner of her eye, she steered the scooter hard to the left and skirted the artificial lake’s smooth shore. Cutting in and out of tourists enjoying the sunshine, she never took her eye off the fleeing van. She stamped her boot down and floored the accelerator, sending them both lurching backwards as the scooter surged ahead. The tires spun and a cloud of burned rubber smoke streaked out behind them like a jet plane contrail.
“Woo-hoo!” Lea yelled. “This is more like it.”
“Sometimes you’re even crazier than Cairo!”
“Thanks!”
“Where the hell did they go?”
They got their answer when the Sprinter’s nose emerged at speed from a side street and headed straight for them.
They had no need to speak. Hawke knew Lea would swing to the right and she knew he would be on it with the gun. As she steered away, he twisted to his left and raised the gun but it was too late. The impact was inevitable.
The Sprinter’s front fender made contact with the scooter’s rear tire and spun it around like a coin. Hawke clung onto Lea but the force of the impact was too great. He sailed through the air and crashed to the tarmac on the other lane. A dozen high-speed barrel-rolls later he came to a stop in the gutter in a cloud of dust and curses.
He sat up and raised his gun, refusing to be cowed by the electric pulsing he felt all over his battered body. Blood ran into his eye from a cut on his forehead and he realized his hands were trembling as adrenaline coursed through his system.
Everything was spinning — his head, the scooter and the Sprinter. After hitting them, the merc at the wheel had slammed on the brakes and steered hard to the right to avoid crashing into a line of cars parked on the side of the road. He was too slow to avoid his fate and now the Sprinter spun out of control and smashed into the cars side-on.
Turning to the right, he saw Lea was still spinning on the scooter. She steered into the spin and brought the machine under control, kicking down on the asphalt to keep her balance and then steering it back over to him.
She pulled up beside him and let the revs drop. “Talk about sitting down on the job.”
“Funny,” he said, staggering to his feet.
“How are our friends?”
“You tell me.”
The Sprinter was stationary now, steam coming from the radiator grille and the stench of burned rubber drifting around its rear. Lea climbed off the bike and they both approached the vehicle with their guns raised.
The stolen van suddenly burst to life. In a hail of spinning tires, rubber smoke and rattling tailpipes, it made a tight circle and headed back up the road. As it passed them the rear doors burst open to reveal several mercs with guns. They fired on them without mercy, spraying automatic gunfire all over the street and determined to kill them both.
“Cover!” Hawke yelled.
And then they were in the bullet-storm from hell.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They dived for cover behind the parked cars and returned fire on the rapidly disappearing Mercedes van.
“I think they’re still mad because you blew their little toy out of the sky,” Lea said.
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“Just saying it like it is.”
Hawke shook his head as he aimed at the rear tire. He stared straight down the sight and prepared to squeeze his finger when he saw a woman and a young child emerge from a side street further up the road. They were ahead of the Mercedes but hadn’t seen the mercs yet.
“Hold your fire! Civvies!”
The Merc raced on, spitting hellfire out of the rear doors regardless. The woman screamed and dragged the child out of sight but by then it was too late. The mercs spun the Sprinter around the next corner and into another street.
“Get after them!” Lea called out.
They charged down the road and when they turned the corner they saw the Sprinter parked up and doors wide open. Fifty yards ahead, Chumbu was carrying Jazmin into the Capital Circus of Budapest. An odd place to find a circus, but they had expected it thanks to Ryan’s in-flight briefing.
Unique in construction, it had stood on its present site in Városliget city park since the early 1970s and was the only circus in Europe inside a stone building. This allowed it to open in all seasons and entertain all year round and with a capacity of nearly 1500 people, and along with the zoo next to it, it was one of the city’s most popular attractions.
Today, Hawke considered, they were about to get a very different kind of show.
The Glock in his raised right hand provided the one hundred percent discount he needed to get through the turnstiles without any money. As the security guards called in for back-up, he and Lea weaved through the bustling crowd and pursued the mercs into the main ring.
They emerged into a fantasy world of trapeze artists and acrobats, all lit neon-blue by a serious rig of arc lights high above their heads. A woman in a sequin costume was sitting on the head of an elephant as it walked slowly around the outside of the ring and now a burst of applause filled the arena.
Lea turned to Hawke. “Well, this is different.”
“You see them?” Hawke said.
She scanned for any sign of Kashala’s men or Jazmin Benedek. “No, you?”
Bright yellow searchlights swung around and lit the two of them up like a couple of Christmas trees. “This is not good.”
As hundreds of confused faces turned away from the elephant and stared at them, the former SBS man had to agree. “Let’s try back there.”
They crossed the ring and headed for backstage. Pushing their way through one of the side doors, they found themselves in a holding area. A number of performers stared back at them, and standing at the front of the small group were two dressed as mimes. They spoke to them in Hungarian and pointed back at the door.
“I think they want us to go back the way we came,” Lea said.
Hawke pushed them out of the way. “Sorry, can’t oblige.”
Another round of applause emanated from behind then, and now a loud chorus of laughter and the sound of several clown horns.
“Where did they go?”
The mimes got more aggressive. The man stepped up to him, his face moving out of the shadow of one of the broad brass stanchions supporting the roof. He put a white-gloved hand on Hawke’s chest and spoke in stilted English. “No tourists in here.”
The Englishman heard the unmistakable roar of a big cat. Craning his neck to look around the mime he saw two large cages on wheels, each one holding an adult Bengal tiger.
“We’re not tourists,” he said. “We’re looking for our friend. She’s been kidnapped.”
“They’re going to torture her!” Lea said.
Torture.
The word echoed in Hawke’s mind and he had a sudden vision of Lexi in the Zodiac’s torture cell. Strapped down and having her fingernails wrenched out by the man they had called Pig. Once, a long time ago he had been much more than friends with the Chinese assassin. Is that what Jazmin Benedek now faced, simply for agreeing to help them with the lyre?
A series of screams came from somewhere beyond the backstage area. They heard the distinctive crackle of gunfire and then another roar of terrified people.
“Sounds like they’re trying to get people out of the way,” Lea said.
The frustration rose in Hawke’s heart. “Damn it, where’s the rest of the team?”
“They’re doing their best, Joe!”
Gun gripped with both hands and muzzle pointed at the floor, Hawke looked once again at the performers. “Please, which way gets us to those screams?”