Fugitive

by Chris Bradford

  ‘Sorry,’ said Zhen, his face a little flushed from running. ‘A few technical issues.’

  ‘Did you get the tickets?’ asked Connor.

  Zhen nodded and surreptitiously passed him four printed slips. A quick glance confirmed the date, time and destination in both Chinese and English: Kowloon. ‘Tickets look good,’ whispered Connor into his concealed mic.

  ‘Let’s move then,’ Colonel Black ordered. Sweeping past them both, he palmed one of the tickets out of Connor’s hand. Bugsy, following the colonel’s lead, covertly collected his too, then headed in the direction of platform eight. Shouldering his Go-bag, Amir scampered over, took his ticket and muttered a hurried thanks to Zhen.

  ‘Yeah, you really came through for us,’ said Connor.

  ‘It was fun,’ their guide replied with a wistful smile. His eyes lingered on Connor. ‘Tour turned out to be more Shanghai Surprise for me than you!’

  Connor laughed. ‘I’d best go. Got a train to catch. But I promise to leave you a good review on TripAdvisor!’

  ‘What about your change?’ Zhen asked, pulling out a thousand yuan in crumpled notes from his pocket.

  Connor blinked, surprised to see any money at all. ‘Keep it as a tip. You deserve it.’

  Leaving behind one stunned and happy guide, he rushed across the busy concourse after Amir and the others. They had less than five minutes to make the train. Fortunately, just one security guard oversaw the ticket barriers to the platform; otherwise the process was automated. All going well, the four of them should pass through unchallenged. Then it was a straight nineteen-hour journey to Hong Kong.

  But, as Colonel Black neared the barrier, Connor spotted a familiar face in the crowd – a stern-looking woman in steel-framed glasses. Like a hawk, her gaze swept across the tide of passengers, though she hadn’t yet seen him. But her eyes soon locked on to Colonel Black, who was a head taller than any other commuter.

  ‘Our cover’s blown!’ hissed Connor into his mic. ‘Colonel, steel-framed glasses to your three o’clock.’

  Colonel Black glanced to his right. Three security guards, acting on the command of Equilibrium’s agent, pushed through the crowd towards him. The colonel had nowhere to hide among the throng of shorter Chinese. Then a flood of newly arrived passengers surged out of platform nine on to the concourse, swallowing up the advancing guards.

  Taking advantage of the confusion, Colonel Black ducked down and doubled back towards Connor.

  ‘Take this!’ he said, shoving the flash drive into Connor’s hand.

  ‘B-but what about you?’ asked Connor as they were buffeted by the crowd.

  ‘I’ll create a diversion while you board the train. You’ve the best chance of smuggling this out –’

  ‘Colonel!’ Bugsy barked into their earpieces. ‘More hostiles approaching.’

  Colonel Black peered over Connor’s shoulder. In the reflection of the colonel’s mirrored shades, Connor caught sight of two mean-looking security guards headed their way. The colonel squeezed Connor’s shoulder, his grip firm and somehow final. ‘Swear to me you’ll deliver the drive to Stella Sinclair.’

  Connor nodded. ‘But how will I –’

  ‘Bugsy, to your left!’ warned Amir into their comms. Connor noticed that his friend had halted by the ticket barrier and was observing a thin man with a bulging jacket as he made a beeline for his mentor.

  ‘Use the codeword Gabriel to gain access to her,’ Colonel Black explained hurriedly to Connor. ‘She’ll know I’ve sent you and trust the information. Now go!’

  He pushed Connor in the direction of platform eight as the two guards closed in on him. Standing up to his full height, the colonel charged at the two men, knocking them down like bowling pins. Then he shouted to the Equilibrium agent in Chinese, ‘Wǒ zài zhè!’ before running in the opposite direction to Connor.

  With the woman distracted by the colonel’s escape, Connor made a dash towards the ticket barrier. But a security guard spotted him and moved to intercept him. Retreat no longer an option, Connor tried to slip past, only for the guard to lunge at him with a baton. As the heavy stick swung towards his head, Connor ducked but knew he had little chance of evading it. Then out of nowhere a wheeled suitcase smashed into the guard’s feet and sent him flying face first into the floor, his baton clattering across the polished tiles.

  For a moment Connor couldn’t believe his luck. Then he saw who’d launched the suitcase at the guard: a young slender boy in a loose T-shirt and red baseball cap.

  ‘Come on!’ Zhen cried, grasping Connor’s arm and pushing through the crush of commuters.

  As they joined Amir at the barrier and scanned their tickets, Bugsy’s voice blurted over their earpieces. ‘Hostiles are armed –’

  His voice was cut off as a gunshot rang out. For a split second the whole train station came to a halt, commuters appearing to be frozen in time as they registered the ear-splitting report. Then Bugsy collapsed to his knees, blood splattering across the shoes of nearby passengers.

  Amir’s eyes widened in horror. ‘BUGSY!’

  A second shot finished off his mentor and sent a shockwave of terror through the crowd. People began screaming, running in all directions, tripping over each other in their mad rush to escape. The shooter – the thin man with the bulging jacket – had pulled out a semi-automatic weapon and now fired randomly into the crowd, killing and maiming commuters left, right and centre.

  As this slaughter was occurring, Colonel Black found himself trapped and surrounded by station guards. He held his hands up in the air. But one of the guards, completely disregarding his surrender, drew a handgun and shot the colonel point-blank.

  ‘NO!’ yelled Connor as Colonel Black crumpled to the ground. The image of the colonel lying in a pool of his own blood was almost too much to comprehend. The former SAS soldier and commander of Buddyguard had somehow seemed indestructible to him.

  Amir appeared just as shaken by Bugsy’s cold-blooded murder. In a daze he turned back to help his fallen mentor. But Connor knew it was futile. Their surveillance instructor was beyond all help. Grabbing his friend, Connor dragged him through the barrier as a shout of ‘ZHÀDÀN!’ triggered even greater panic among the passengers.

  ‘BOMB!’ Zhen translated for Connor and Amir, vaulting over the barrier, his act of fare-dodging going unnoticed amid the chaos. As they fled towards the platform escalator, Connor glanced back one last time to see the thin man place a small cylindrical tube in Bugsy’s dead hand.

  Connor, Amir and Zhen hurtled down the escalator on to the platform. The bullet train was preparing for departure, the doors still open prior to the guard’s final safety checks. The chaos from above had yet to filter down. But the muffled sound of screams and the sudden surge of people on to the platform caused commuters to turn and stare.

  ‘I haven’t heard an explosion,’ gasped Zhen.

  ‘Maybe they disarmed the bomb,’ said Amir.

  Connor shoved a passenger aside. ‘Or it hasn’t gone off yet!’

  Ignoring the protests and irate looks, he fought his way through the throng. If they could just make it on board, they could leave all the mayhem and murder behind.

  ‘Come on!’ urged Connor, sprinting for the nearest carriage.

  But the doors closed a second before they reached them. Connor hammered a fist in frustration on the window. A row of startled faces scowled at him, then disappeared as the train pulled away.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ panted Amir, watching in despair as their planned escape route accelerated down the track.

  Connor looked around in desperation. The platform guard was running towards them, blowing his whistle, while several armed guards descended the escalator from the concourse above. No train waited on the adjacent platform as an alternative getaway and he couldn’t spot any emergency exits nearby. Their options weren’t just limited – they were zero! Alarms started blaring as the station was put into lockdown.

  ‘It appears you missed
your train,’ said a dry pitiless voice from behind.

  Connor spun to confront the last person on earth he wanted to see – Mr Grey. Amir took an instinctive step away from the ashen-faced assassin. Zhen merely stared, frozen like the petrified prey of a cobra.

  ‘We had a deal, Connor, and you broke it.’ Mr Grey’s glacial eyes seemed to express both disappointment and pleasure at the outcome. ‘Charley will suffer for your failure.’

  ‘You can’t threaten me with Charley. Not any more,’ said Connor, standing his ground as the armed guards spread out across the platform and advanced towards them. ‘I know she’s on your side.’

  Mr Grey raised an eyebrow. ‘No one’s on my side. True, Charley has proven useful to Equilibrium. But that doesn’t guarantee her safety. Nor does it mean you no longer have feelings for her.’

  Like a knife in his heart, the assassin’s confirmation of Charley’s involvement with Equilibrium grieved Connor even more than witnessing Colonel Black’s death. Moreover, Connor realized Mr Grey was right. He still cared deeply for Charley, whatever she’d done.

  ‘This is between you and me,’ insisted Connor. ‘There’s no need to involve her.’

  Mr Grey sneered. ‘I’m afraid you’re in no position to negotiate. Now hand over the flash drive Colonel Black just gave you –’

  The platform guard came striding up and seized Mr Grey by the arm. ‘You are under arrest!’ he declared officiously.

  Mr Grey glared at the little man. ‘Bùshì wǒ. Nánhái!’ he snapped in Chinese, pointing to where Connor had been standing.

  However, in the assassin’s moment of distraction, Connor had made a split-second decision and jumped off the platform on to the railway tracks. Amir and Zhen followed his reckless leap like lemmings off a cliff. As they bounded across the first set of rails, a train thundered past, missing them by a hair’s breadth. The clattering roar of carriages and the rush of wind almost knocked them off their feet. Zhen stumbled over a rail, Amir and Connor just catching him before he was dragged under the wheels. At the same time the express train blocked Mr Grey and the armed security guards from pursuing them.

  Crossing over the second set of tracks, Connor clambered on to the opposite platform. He hauled Amir after him, then reached out his hand to Zhen.

  ‘Another train’s coming!’ yelled Amir.

  This time it was on their side of the platform. Tearing along at over a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, the high-speed train had no way of stopping. A horn blasted in warning as Zhen scrabbled like a rat to escape the tracks. Connor grabbed Zhen’s wrist and yanked with all his strength. The train entered the station on a direct collision course, only the boy’s light frame saving him as Connor heaved him out with unexpected ease. He landed beside Amir barely a second before the train shot by, a whooshing blur of windows and steel.

  ‘That’s one train I didn’t want to catch!’ gasped Zhen.

  They lay panting and breathless on the platform, while dumbstruck commuters gaped at the three children with apparent death wishes. Then the train’s last carriage passed and they were exposed once more. Connor scrambled to his feet, pulling Amir and Zhen with him. From the opposite platform Mr Grey – still and deadly as the eye of a storm – glared in silent rage at Connor.

  ‘TÍNG!’ shouted one of the security guards, taking aim with his gun.

  Ignoring the order to stop, Connor shielded Zhen with his body and ran. He heard a crack of gunfire and felt a heavy bruising impact, but the Go-bag’s liquid body-armour panel took the brunt of the blow. More rounds whizzed overhead, one clipping Amir’s Go-bag and reeling him round. They jumped down to the next set of tracks, scurried across and climbed back up to platform level. The growing mass of passengers fleeing the concourse now obstructed the guards’ line of fire.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Zhen, heading down the platform and away from the most obvious exit. Their movements lost amid the crowd, the armed guards struggled to locate the fugitives as a train pulled into the station, further blocking their view. At the end of the platform, Zhen dropped down to the gravel-strewn ground. Connor and Amir followed, sprinting along the tracks before cutting across to a hole in the security fence. They ducked through just before the train set off again.

  Recovering their breath in a deserted side street, Zhen turned to Connor. ‘That was some escape! I can’t believe you jumped in front of that train.’

  ‘To be honest, I had no idea a train was coming,’ admitted Connor.

  ‘What?’ Amir exclaimed, his jaw dropping open. ‘I thought that was part of your escape plan. That’s why we followed you!’

  With a sheepish grin, Connor replied, ‘No escape plan. Just pure luck.’

  ‘Who else shares this room with you?’ asked Connor, looking round the shabby flat and noting a pink T-shirt and leggings among the various items of clothing strewn across the floor. Their guide had taken them back to his lodgings, a cramped one-room affair in an old block of flats in the Putuo district of West Shanghai. The white plasterboard walls were grey with dirt and pockmarked with dents and gouges. The vinyl flooring was worn, its marbled pattern having faded to an off-brown colour. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling and a single-glazed window looked directly across at an identical block of flats. A thin mattress and duvet took up one corner and a battered microwave oven and tiny buzzing fridge another. That was the sum total of the furnishings, apart from an old TV propped up on a wooden crate. It was a sorry-looking room and one that reflected the fortunes of their young guide.

  ‘Err … my cousin,’ Zhen replied with an embarrassed smile, gathering up the clothes and stuffing them into a plastic carrier bag.

  ‘When will she be back?’

  Zhen shrugged as he continued to tidy up. ‘She’s visiting her family in her home town. A few days at least.’

  ‘And your parents?’ asked Amir. ‘Where are they?’

  Zhen put down the bag as if it had suddenly become too heavy. ‘Dead. My mother from lung cancer. My father from heart disease.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Amir, shifting awkwardly on his feet and not knowing where to look.

  ‘Don’t be. Nothing you can do. It was many years ago.’ Zhen found another carrier bag and began stuffing it with discarded noodle cartons and plastic soda bottles, the debris of many TV dinners. Having collected the most obvious bits of rubbish, he dropped the brimming bag in the only empty corner of the room. Then he walked over to the fridge, took out a couple of bottles filled with bright orange soda and offered them a drink.

  Connor gratefully accepted. ‘Thanks for taking us in,’ he said.

  Zhen smiled. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  With no chairs, they all sat down on the floor. Connor took a long swig of the fizzy drink. The taste was sharp and tangy but refreshing and he immediately felt better. Their fraught escape had left them dehydrated and drained of energy. They needed the fluid. But Amir barely touched his.

  ‘You should drink,’ advised Connor.

  ‘They shot Bugsy …’ Amir replied in a murmur, as if he hadn’t heard him. His friend gazed distractedly at the bottle in his hands. ‘And the colonel.’

  Connor nodded. The shock of their deaths was only just beginning to sink in. Until this moment there had been no space to think. Their murders had left a gaping hole not only in the pair’s escape plan but in their hearts too. Bugsy’s demise took its greatest toll on Amir for he’d been his mentor and friend, bonding over their shared love of IT and technology. For Connor, the cruel killing of Colonel Black hit hardest. Tough, strict and unyielding as he was, the colonel had been a father figure to him: showing interest in his developing skills as a buddyguard, always pushing him to improve himself and expressing pride in his achievements – all the support and approval he’d wished his own father could have been around to offer. In fact, Colonel Black had been his last link to his father’s past as a soldier. And, in losing the colonel, Connor felt he’d somehow lost his father again too. The pain cut so de
ep it numbed him.

  ‘How did Equilibrium track us down so quickly?’ asked Amir, glancing up with watery eyes.

  Connor shrugged wearily. ‘They must’ve been monitoring all the train stations as well as the airports.’

  ‘No. I am to blame,’ said Zhen.

  Amir and Connor looked at their guide. ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Connor.

  Their guide lowered his gaze to the floor. ‘Remember I said there were technical issues in getting the tickets? Well, my uncle couldn’t use Chinese names. He said an inspector would notice straight away you weren’t Chinese. So he overrode the system and issued the tickets in English names of recent tourists. The problem was, their visas were out of date and this must have triggered a security alert.’

  Connor laid a hand on their guide’s shoulder. ‘That isn’t your fault. We always knew there’d be a risk.’

  A television began blaring from the flat next door, the plasterboard walls barely damping the noise.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Amir in a plaintive voice. ‘We can’t get to Hong Kong. Bugsy and the colonel are dead. Our friends are being held captive somewhere and Charley’s turned traitor. It’s just us two left!’

  Connor pulled the flash drive from his pocket and held it up. ‘I promised Colonel Black we’d deliver this to Stella Sinclair and that’s what we’re going to do.’

  ‘But how?’

  Connor rubbed his face and held his head in his hands. Exhausted and emotionally burnt-out, he could hardly think straight. Their situation was dire. They had no local contacts, few resources and were up against a powerful international organization they knew little about. Yet he wasn’t willing to give up. They couldn’t give up. Not with so much sacrificed and still so much at stake.

  As he pondered their limited options, Zhen’s attention was caught by the programme blasting from his neighbour’s flat. All of a sudden he jumped to his feet and switched on his own battered TV set. A female news presenter flickered on to the screen. Zhen turned up the volume, drowning out the noise from next door. The report was all in Chinese, but Connor and Amir instantly recognized the image behind the presenter’s head: the concourse at Shanghai Railway Station.