by Rob Jones
“What the hell was that?” Holtz yelled.
“Rocket-propelled grenade,” Hawke said. “Fired from over there.” He pointed to another hotel on the other side of the street.
“So I guess we know where Kruger’s other room was,” Maria said, dusting herself down and sliding a round into the chamber of her gun.
“An old trick,” Lea said.
Scarlet cursed and kicked the kerb. “Sod it… how could that have happened?”
“The intel was good!” Holtz insisted, but the others weren’t so sure. Hawke thought it more than likely Kruger had an inside man at the hotel but that was small potatoes when measured up against the mission to retrieve the idol and something local police could deal with later. All that was bothering him was how they knew ECHO were going to be there.
“Any sign of the bastards?” Camacho said staring up at the hotel on the other side of the street.
A second of stillness until Reaper pointed to a side street adjacent to the second hotel. “There they go!”
Across the street Kruger, Mendoza and the other targets were fleeing from their hotel, using the carnage unfolding in the Hotel Sendling for cover. Hawke guessed they had clearly hoped to kill the Qatari with the RPG in what had been a carefully planned action and ECHO had gotten the sharp end instead, but they had failed. Now they turned on their heels and sprinted across the Theresienhohe toward the enormous beer festival in the fairground at the end of the street.
Some of Kruger’s men turned and fired blindly over their shoulders. Their shots rang out in the night but the haphazard and hurried aiming meant the bullets missed their targets and Hawke and the others used the cover of a line of parked cars for protection as they closed in on them.
Lexi took a shot, and her razor-sharp aim hit its target and picked off one of the goons at the rear, but then they were gone – scattering into the fairground and blending into the panicking festival goers, now rattled by the RPG explosion and fearful of a terrorist attack on their city.
“They’re getting away,” Holtz said. “Using the festival crowd for cover.”
Hawke peered into the crowd and saw Kruger and his thugs trying to blend into the crowd. Mendoza and Aurora were nearby with their arms around each other’s waists trying to look casual.
“All right, let’s make sure they don’t get away again.”
They fanned out, with Lea moving to the north. Soto sensed the danger and broke away from Mendoza, opening fire on her. In response, Lea sprinted for the cover of a cab parked up in the north entrance of the park, but it was further than she thought and a close-run thing. She just managed to dive behind the car and was still sliding along the muddy verge as the Mexican woman opened fire on her with the machine pistol for the second time. The rounds punctured the Merc’s front wing and door panel before blasting into the windshield and spraying the inside of the cab with shattered glass.
The terrified driver turned the key and fired up his car, skidding out of the Theresienwiese a moment later leaving Lea totally exposed once again. Aurora Soto grinned and fired at her again. Lea scrambled to her feet, slipping and sliding on the wet mud and fallen leaves in her bid to find more cover. That came in the form of one of the oak trees surrounding the Theresienwiese, and when she got behind the trunk she tried to slow her breathing before spinning around and returning fire. She was surprised to see Soto hadn’t retreated to safer cover but was now thundering toward her with her gun raised.
“She’s like the sodding Terminator!” Lea muttered, squinting into her sights as she prepared to take the kill shot. “And she just will not bloody die!”
“She needs a long kiss with a piece of two-by-four,” Scarlet said. “And I’m just the gal to make it happen.”
But then Soto broke away and retreated. It looked like they had decided to run.
“Look!” Camacho shouted. “They’re splitting up!”
The CIA man was right. Mendoza and Soto were branching off to the left and skipping down the steps to the Theresienwiese U-Bahn station while Kruger, the Van Zyl brothers and their remaining thugs were desperately trying to weave their way further into the Oktoberfest crowd.
“They’re trying to break us up!” Holtz said through the comms.
“Fine with me,” Hawke called back.
“Et moi,” Reaper said. “I’m closest to the Mexicans so I’ll go after them.”
“Right with you,” Hawke said as he and the former legionnaire took off after the fleeing Mexicans.
Hawke felt the cold air in his lungs as he and the French merc pounded along the street and pushed pedestrians out the way as they pursued Mendoza and the idol. In a full-on sprint now to close the gap, Hawke was aware of the dangers to the public if Mendoza felt cornered, but there was no option other than to follow him into the station and down the steps. He descended into the U-Bahn tunnel and readied his weapon for a shootout.
In the beer-soaked heart of the Oktoberfest, Lea, ECHO and the rest of the Munich police were struggling to contain the panic as thousands of people began to stampede to the exits of the festival, bundling out of the beer tents and falling over each other with Pilsner glasses still gripped in their hands.
“What a waste,” Scarlet said
Lea desperately scanned the crowd. The people had been happy – half-cut on the finest range of beers in Europe and a good time was being had by all… but now terror was spreading like floodwater and things were getting out of control. Somewhere among the chaos was Dirk Kruger and the rest of his gang of looters.
And then they saw them.
They rushed forward, weaving in and out of the fleeing crowd and never taking their eyes off Kruger’s gang as they moved deeper into the Theresienwiese fairground. In the lead now alongside Scarlet, Lea saw she had a clear shot and raised her gun into the aim.
Kruger was clear in her sights as he, his Yes Man Van Zyl and a couple of other goons punched their way aggressively through the crowd and headed for the main beer tent.
“He’s over there!” Camacho called out.
“I have him!” Lea cried back, focussing through her gun sights.
“Do try and get the aim right this time, darling,” Scarlet said, raising her own gun.
“Get stuffed, Cairo.”
Gripping the Heckler & Koch MP5 in her hands, Lea unleashed a salvo of bullets into the walkway between two lines of beer tents. She took out one of the men in the rear but the others split and vanished inside one of the giant tents. More screaming now and overhead a police chopper began searching the crowd with a spotlight while someone inside was barking orders to calm down and leave the area calmly.
Lea cursed. Kruger and the Van Zyl brothers were once again lost in the shadows.
CHAPTER TEN
The U-Bahn was busier than Hawke expected, and by the time he and Reaper had run down the steps he was desperately searching over the heads of the travellers for the fleeing figures of Silvio Mendoza and Aurora Soto. He saw some movement to his left and they followed it just in time to see the Mexicans darting into the crowd waiting along the platform.
They weaved further along the amber-colored station, lit from above by a bright strip-light which ran the length of a gracefully curved ceiling. At the far end of the platform Mendoza and Soto were clambering onto a train that was pulling away from the station.
“Freeze!” Hawke yelled.
“They’re gone…” Reaper said.
Hawke’s mind was racing with ideas, but there was only one possible play.
Bloody hell..!
With his options restricted to jumping on the train or losing Mendoza in the Munich underground he started running along the platform. The train was nowhere near full speed and its doors were closing, so he knew he had only one chance, and when there was only one chance the only thing you could do was grab it with both hands and never let go.
He heard a burst of gunshots as Mendoza fired at him from further up the train and one of them nicked Reaper’s shoulder. H
e dived for cover but Hawke ran forward. The Mexican had jammed his foot in the door to give himself a gap through which to fire on the Englishman, but when the train started to slow in response to the open door alert he cut his losses and pulled his boot back in, allowing the door to close and the train began to gain speed again.
Almost level with the rear of the train as it accelerated away from the platform and prepared to vanish into the tunnel, Hawke leaped into the air with all his might and grabbed hold of a steel handle on the rear cab’s door. He felt a violent and powerful jerk on his shoulder as the train pulled away and had seconds to swing himself tight against the side of the carriage before the train blasted into the tunnel.
The stench of ammonia and brake dust blasted in his face as the wind in the tunnel buffeted him and almost forced him to release his grip on the door handle. He clung to the thin bar with all his might as the train gained speed and the noise in the tunnel escalated to a deafening roar.
You’re getting too old for this, sunshine.
To his horror, the train now swung around a sharp right hand bend and was now running at high speed alongside a second set of adjacent tracks where two lines came together.
He blinked the dust out of his eyes and stared down at the tracks while he got his breath back. Who knew hanging on to a moving train required such strength, he thought. At least there wasn’t a train coming on the other line because that would really screw up his day.
And then another train appeared on the adjacent tracks.
He pulled his gun from his belt. A risky move but it was all he had… he turned his face away from the cab’s window and fired three shots into the glass. He looked at his work and saw the pane of glass was still in the frame but it was shattered into thousands of pieces, so he took the butt of the gun and smacked it hard into the window until the force of his strikes bent a hole in the pane and then finally knocked the pane out of the frame.
It landed with a smack on the floor of the driver’s cabin and he had to make a snap decision. The train on the other tracks was racing toward him, so his best chance was to be inside the cab, but that meant heaving himself away from the side of the train in order to swing his legs inside, or diving inside head first and kicking his legs out, leaving them exposed to the other train.
He breathed out hard with the effort of the struggle and wondered exactly what his cut of the ten million dollars would be until he recalled Eden’s words to Ryan… it doesn’t work quite like that, Mr Bale…
The idea of getting hit with a collision force of the combined speeds of the two trains brought him into the moment, and it appealed to him about as much being fed alive to sharks. On the other hand, the idea of clinging to the side of the cab while the other train raced past seemed even less enticing. He took the risk and heaved himself up until his waist was level with the smashed window and then pushed his body out while he raised his legs to slide them inside the opening.
The train driver on the other tracks had seen him now, and slammed on his emergency brakes and sounded the horn but he was too close to stop in time. Something told Hawke this wasn’t the sort of scenario that came up too often in the day to day life of a Munich U-Bahn driver, but he wasted no time and hurled himself into the cab as fast as he could, landing with a hefty crunch on the shattered safety glass all over the floor.
He jumped to his feet just in time to see the horrified face of the other train’s driver and then those of the passengers as they flashed past. He paused to give them a wink and a cheery wave and then opened the driver’s door, heading into the main carriage with his gun raised.
*
In the main hall of the Oktoberfest, Dirk Kruger fired on the police and one of his bullets struck Schmidt in the shoulder and knocked him back as if he’d been punched. He fell down, howling in pain but quickly scuttled away behind one of the upturned beer barrels. He had dropped his weapon and by the look of the bloodstains all over the floor he’d hit an artery. Moments later he died and Holtz ordered a savage onslaught to bring the perpetrators to justice.
But the vicious fire fight didn’t last long. At seven hundred rounds a minute the submachine gun magazines were empty after four seconds if fired on full automatic, and it wasn’t long before things devolved into a desperate fist-fight. Now, in the chaos of the temporary beer halls, the South Africans were heading to the exit in a bid to escape.
Camacho darted after them in pursuit, and immediately felt a heavy blow on the back of his neck that nearly knocked him out. He staggered around and saw one of the younger South Africans. He was pulling his fist back for another go.
The American grabbed the man’s shoulder, spinning him around and then planted a hefty punch in the center of his face. The man tumbled backwards and fell down onto the wet grass. Behind him, Lea and the others were now in pursuit of Kruger, the Van Zyl brothers and the remaining goons but they were already disappearing into the night through another exit behind the bar of an adjoining tent. Kruger slipped through first, but before Willem Van Zyl made his departure he turned and fired blindly all over the tent.
Camacho dived to the floor as Van Zyl continued to fire with the machine pistol, spraying bullets through a line of beer barrels and ripping the tent behind them to shreds. Seconds later great jets of beer burst out of the bullet holes and began spraying high into the air, soaking anyone within their range.
Scarlet rolled behind a long trestle table in the center of the tent, ducking her head down to escape the shower of splinters and lager jets and then leaned around the edge of a chair to fire back. She hit one of the goons in the back but he slipped through the opening after the others who were now all gone.
“Where’d they go?” asked Scarlet.
“Behind the tent,” Camacho replied.
“I think I got one of them,” she said.
*
Outside the tent, everyone had scattered into the chaos. Kruger quickly found the man Scarlet had shot, but there was no sign of anyone else. He looked at the panicking young man from Pretoria, his face now pale and covered in a thin film of sweat. “What happened to you, Joh?” he snapped. Joh Van Zyl, Willem’s younger brother looked stricken as he pulled a blood-drenched hand out from beneath his jacket.
“I got hit, Dirk… the bitch got me.”
All around them now were the sounds of chaos – police sirens, screaming, helicopter rotors – and Kruger was starting to feel like a trapped hyena.
“I got hit…” he said again, starting to cry with fear. “Please… don’t leave me.”
Kruger curled his lip as he looked at him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t carry dead weight.” He fired three shots into his chest and killed him on the spot. Without a second glance at him he stuffed the gun in his belt and began to retreat. Leaving the bloodbath he had created behind him, he began to pull back into the city to the north of the Theresienwiese, but before he got out of the park, he heard someone calling his name.
“Is that you, Dirk?”
The South African turned to see Willem Van Zyl hiding in the trees just beyond the tents. “Yes.”
“Where’s my brother?” he asked. “Did he escape?”
Kruger planted a heavy, gnarled hand on the treasure hunter’s shoulder. “Sorry my friend, but they got him. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Van Zyl’s eyes narrowed. “Who killed him?”
“That English bitch – I saw it with my own eyes.”
Van Zyl’s heart filled with rage and he vowed revenge on the Englishwoman. He and his brother were close. They’d grown up together on their father’s farm and life hadn’t been easy but they had always stuck together. No one was going to take him away and get away with it, least of all the same bunch of bastards who were now hunting him like a jackal.
“Come on, you stupid bastard!” Kruger yelled. “We have to get out of here.”
But Van Zyl was starting to look like he had bitten off more than he could chew. “Where?”
“Into the city – lose them
in the backstreets. We get a car and then we get out of here – to Salzburg. I have a little turboprop parked up there that we can use to get to Serbia.”
Van Zyl watched the ECHO team through the trees, fanning out and making their way toward them. “What the hell’s in Serbia?”
“Never mind about that, Willem – all you need to know is we’re going there.”
“And where the hell are the Mexicans?” Van Zyl asked, desperately searching the chaos for them.
“Who gives a damn?” Kruger said. “We have the idol. Let’s go.”
Kruger and Van Zyl made their way north through the city, pursued for over a mile by the local police before they finally saw their way out at the north end of Albrechtstrasse. Turning their machine pistol on the enormous glass facia, they blasted a man-size hole in the front of Lamborghini München and made their way inside.
“The Aventador,” Kruger said with a smirk. “Just like my baby back in Cape Town.” He stroked the hood adoringly. “I’ll get the keys.”
Kruger searched the office for the keys while Van Zyl blasted the wheels of the other cars to shreds. Seconds later they were inside the luxury Italian sports car and driving at full speed through the remains of the facia window. He skidded the car out into the street in a dazzling shower of smashed safety glass and burned some serious rubber as he took off out of the city.
Several minutes later Lea Donovan and the rest of the ECHO team plus several shattered police officers lumbered up to the garage. Camacho darted inside the garage and paused for a moment to give a gunmetal-gray Lamborghini Veneno an admiring glance before booting open the internal door and searching the office. He returned and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing.”
Holtz barked commands into his palm mic and a chopper thundered over their heads but the young Irishwoman knew immediately the chase was over. The Lambo was long gone and would be out of the city in seconds. “They’ve gone.”
She holstered her gun and closed her eyes for a few seconds, praying Hawke and Reaper were having more luck in their pursuit of Silvio Mendoza and Aurora Soto.
