by Rob Aspinall
The final SWAT pairing changed tack. They waited for me to pass through and knelt behind bulletproof shields at the end of the walkway, weapons trained on the space ahead. Unless Philippe had a trick up his sleeve, I couldn’t see a way out of this. I backed up towards the Reichstag guards, watching him arc his way down, the SWAT team ready to cut him to shreds as soon as he made it around the curve. Except he didn’t. He stopped short and took cover around the final bend, back against the barrier, gun up to his chest.
“Got him now,” said one of the Reichstag guards.
“Get to the elevators,” his partner ordered me.
After defusing the bomb and sprinting around the dome, it wasn’t hard to look all sweaty and fainty.
I loosened my tie. “I have a heart condition,” I said, panting hard, my lungs on fire from the run.
I undid the buttons on my shirt and revealed my scar.
“Surrender your weapon,” one of the SWAT team shouted up to Philippe. “You are surrounded. There are more armed units on the way.”
As if to prove he wasn’t bluffing, a police chopper hovered into view over the hole in the roof. I went deliberately weak at the knees and fell backwards. The guard nearest to me caught me halfway down. Lying in his arms, I stole the firearm from his shoulder holster and turned it on the SWAT team dead ahead. I fired in their direction, causing them to break from behind their shields. Philippe emerged from his position at the same time, putting a bullet in each one.
As the spare Reichstag guard reacted, I angled the gun beneath the chin of my knight-in-grey-wool armour. I gave him a sherbet-sweet smile. He put me back on my feet sloooowly.
“Toss it,” I said to the other one, who’d already drawn his weapon.
They were trained soldiers, of course, but their day job involved checking bags and padding down tourists. They weren’t match fit. The guard slid his gun away across the deck.
“Both of you on the floor,” I said. “Hands on your heads.”
Philippe pulled on a SWAT member’s ski mask and helmet, relieving him of his weapon.
“This place is dead,” he said, stepping off the walkway, only his eyes visible beneath the SWAT gear. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Was that a quip?” I asked, staggered.
“Maybe,” Philippe said as we backed out of there and into the left-hand elevator, the doors closing just as the cavalry spilled out of the right. The elevator was all glass on one side, so you could see the bedlam in the main entrance below. MPs, school kids, shell-shocked tourists and overwhelmed Reichstag staff all bottlenecked in a mass scramble out of the door. It was perfect.
Philippe’s deep-brown eyes narrowed and burned laser death beams at me through the holes in his ski mask. I was in a whole heap of shit.
“Jumping onto the baggage train?” he said.
“I know what you’re gonna say. It was stupid, you’re angry—”
“I’m impressed,” he said. “Now look traumatised.”
Philippe scooped me off my feet as the elevator door pinged open. He shouted for people to make way, pushing through the crowds and out through the main entrance. No one questioned it. Why would they? SWAT member carrying out a poor, innocent bystander.
“Clever,” I said, as Philippe carried me out of the door and down the mountain of stone steps up to the building. “Shame you had to kill all those police,” I said.
“Enough to incapacitate. Not enough to get through Kevlar,” he said. “Their bruises will hurt less than their pride.”
Out in front of the Reichstag, it was chaos on the lawns. School kids, tourists, news crews, cops, MPs, you name it. And right in the middle, the girl from the coach, twirling in front of her friends, dressed in the designer clothes I’d left her, delighted with her end of the exchange. Philippe carried me across the lawn, where we melted into the crowds.
“How are you not knackered?” I asked.
“Knackered?”
Poor foreign lamb, he didn’t understand.
“You know,” I said. “Knackered. Cream-crackered. Pooped. We’ve both had transplants,” I said. “I’m half-dead. You’re lemony fresh.”
“You’ll find out when we get to Austria,” he said.
“Why, what’s in Austria?”
Philippe wasn’t listening. He’d spotted something.
He had that look in his eye.
It wasn’t good.
36
A Walk In The Park
We broke out of the terrorised human soup, news helicopters thumping overhead, a convoy of extra cop cars and ambulances wailing their way towards the Reichstag.
“Hey, what’s in Austria?” I asked again.
Philippe put me down. Dropped me, more like.
He swore in German, staring across the busy main road at a parked maintenance van. He looked up into the sky, removing his helmet and mask.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You’ll blow your cover.”
“We’ve already been made,” he said. “The van across the street. The surveillance drones overhead. They’ll already have you on facial recog.”
I glanced up into the grey sky. Two black, bug-shaped objects the size of cats, with twin rotors buzzing either side. They were no more than thirty feet in the air. Clearly spying on us.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Across the road. Into the park,” he said. “Take this.”
Philippe shoved a sidearm in my hand. I held it in front of me, tucked under my sweater. That tantalising splurge of parkland was a short jog over the road. We could lose the drones in there and the van wouldn’t be able to follow.
“Good plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Philippe said, holding me back by the arm. Speaking to me like I was a dog on a lead.
The van, a hundred yards further up the road, revved out of its parking space and cut across the road towards us. We’d either be grabbed or shot or both. What were we waiting for? The answer arrived in a deafening train of ambulances and cop cars. They screeched to a stop, blocking the road both ways, the van having to slam on the brakes.
“Now!” Philippe said.
We ran across the road and into the park, leaving JPAC for dust. The only smidge of a problem was the drones that were tracking us all the way. We ducked off the prim stone path into a thick tree canopy, which gave us the cover we needed from the surveillance drones. We picked our way slowly through the trees, parallel to the path. Yet the drones were happy to follow us in low – buzzing loud like huge, angry insects.
I picked up a sturdy branch and hung back behind a tree trunk. Philippe got the picture and kept on moving. I waited, back against the trunk, the buzzing growing louder. I hated that sound. Like a couple of wasps with megaphones. I was only too happy to jump out of my hiding place and baseball swing the branch at the lead drone. I caught it right on the nose, sending it spinning and crashing to the floor. The other drone pulled back and out over the treetops.
I dropped the branch and tried to catch up with Philippe. But he was gone. He’d left me! The evil shit had left me! And, worse still, I was forced back onto the path by an impenetrable wall of bushes. I heard running and shouting behind me. The agents in the van were catching up fast on foot, no doubt thanks to the remaining drone hovering above. There were three men in all, dressed in dad-wear, but with automatic weapons. Before I could run, they stopped and lined up ready to shoot. They were a little way up the path, but I was well within range. I brought my gun out from beneath my jumper and got ready to return fire, hopelessly outgunned as I was. The sun broke out from behind the clouds. The park smelled of cut grass. It was beautiful. It was cruel. It was the end.
37
U-Turn
The men fanned out as they edged closer, meaning I couldn’t aim at all three at once. I decided to shoot the one in the middle and hope for the best, but I didn’t even get to pull the trigger.
Neither did they.
Philippe ghosted out of the tree li
ne to my left behind the men, three shots within half a second putting them down.
I heard screams. Bystanders running for cover.
“Where the fuck did you go?” I shouted.
“Thanks for saving my life, Philippe,” he muttered sarcastically to himself, stooping to pluck a weapon from the hands of a dead man. “Oh, sure, don’t mention it,” he said.
He moseyed over and held out an automatic weapon. “Here,” he said.
“What do I do with that?” I asked.
“It’s a machine gun. Just pull the trigger and wave it around.”
“And mow down half of Berlin? I’ll stick to the one I’ve got.”
“On second thoughts, maybe you’re right,” Philippe said, blasting the remaining drone with the machine gun in question.
The drone crashed and burned on the grass. Philippe ditched the machine gun in a public bin and we followed the path across the parkland, out on to the main road across from the Brandenburg Gate. I recognised it from all the snore-bore history docs we’d had to watch at school. It was a gigantic stone thing – six columns wide with carvings and a chariot statue on top. A lot of people were hanging around the front, no doubt curious about what was happening at the Reichstag. As we jogged over towards the gate, a black Mercedes people carrier with dark-tint windows squealed to a stop behind us, doors sliding open and fresh JPAC crew jumping out. Nathan. A couple of run-of-the-mill stooges and … oh, crapola. Clarence and Inge hopped out of the van too.
“Oh fab,” I said. “More JPAC-shaped fun.”
We turned and walked, Clarence and Inge striding behind us. I noticed a sign for the U-Bahn, people taking the stairs into a nearby underground station. Philippe must have read my mind. We scampered down the stairs, barging people out of the way, into a slick, clean stop with long, wide platforms and a spanking new bright-yellow tram just in, its doors sliding open. We hopped on and stepped away from the doors as they closed, leaving the chasing pair stranded on the platform. Good old efficient Deutschland. Snappy, punctual and bacon-saving. Clarence and Inge watched the tram pull away into the tunnel ahead. Safe, I thought, following Philippe further towards the front of the tram, from one car to the next. Most of the seats were taken. I looked back over my shoulder. Clarence and Inge had got on somehow.
Philippe noticed too. “They must have jumped on the end carriage,” he said, stopping and turning, as if standing his ground.
“Why are you stopping? Keep going.”
“There are only so many cars,” he said.
“Yeah but we can jump off at another stop.”
“They’ll just follow us,” Philippe said. “By which time they’ll have arranged a welcome party.”
“Okay, well, good luck,” I said, making to leave.
Philippe seized me by the arm as the two Type A’s approached. “You wanted in on the fight,” he said. “This is the fight.”
Aw, thanks, Philippe. Such a gent.
Clarence and Inge squared up to us in the middle of one of the carriages, a set of doors either side that I full well intended bugging out of. As we rattled and rumbled through a tunnel, the bright lights showed up the scars on Clarence’s face. Scars he hadn’t had in the dream. I think we could assume he was a mean fighter who wasn’t afraid of a punch or two. In fact, by the wicked smile in his eyes, it seemed like he was looking forward to it. The pair of them had come dressed for the occasion. Type-A casual. No more silky underwear and flowing ballgowns for Inge. Today, she was sporting black leggings with matching vest and utility jacket. Clarence, just as imaginatively dressed. Inge was as cool and neutral as ever. Now I could see what she and Philippe saw in each other. The same icy indifference, whatever the event. Some people had Netflix or clubbing or mountain biking in common. These two were both missing the same emotional wiring.
“Don’t make things difficult, Philippe. None of us want this,” said Inge.
“Some of us do,” said Clarence, glaring at Philippe.
“So he saved a few poor women from a life of sex slavery,” I said. “Get over it, already.”
Clarence was shocked. “Been sharing secrets, Vasquez?”
“I’ve got all kinds of dirt on the pair of you,” I said.
I was lying, of course. I didn’t. I was trying to rile them up. Get them to take their eye off the Lorna-shaped ball. Keep them talking until we got to the next stop.
“Is she always this problematic?” asked Inge.
Philippe sighed. “Teenagers.”
“Excuse me, I am here,” I said. “And news just in. I’m not the one trying to blow up Berlin.”
“Hush, child,” Inge said, looking down her nose at me. “Let the adults talk.”
“Oh no, you di’n’t, bitch. Right, come on. Let’s dance.”
“Let’s dance?” Clarence said, laughing. “Where did you get this crazy little girl?”
Inge laughed too.
“Long story,” Philippe said. Even he was laughing a little. Unbelievable. Like I was some big fat joke.
Eventually, all three of them stopped laughing.
Inge smiled. Philippe chuckled to himself. Then, suddenly, an explosion of violence.
Clarence and Inge reached for weapons inside their jackets. Philippe disarmed the pair of them in a single move, striking Inge’s weapon from her hand a fraction before manipulating the gun from Clarence’s grip.
As soon as he had it, he lost it, to a blow to the wrist from Clarence, but I was already reaching for the SWAT pistol tucked in the back of Philippe’s pants. No sooner had I drawn it out, Inge had snatched it away and turned it on me. Philippe detached the clip and pushed her arms away; the bullet in the chamber fired straight into a vacated seat behind me.
The speed of movement was dizzying. And it was only following the gunshot that passengers began to react, screaming and shouting and flocking to either end of the carriage. As Philippe took Inge down in a slam to the floor, Clarence grabbed me by the jumper and pulled me towards him, his strength terrifying. He yanked a knife with a six-inch blade out of a sheath attached to his belt. He thrust it at my gut. I chopped his arm away and twisted out of his grip underneath his armpit. I saw Inge pull some fancy technical move on Philippe on the floor, twisting out from under his weight and rolling away. She rose and caught him square in the jaw with a knee as he got to his feet. Clarence turned and came at me again with the knife, spinning it skilfully in his hand, sizing me up, backing me into a corner. Eyes focused on mine. I felt the hard plastic of a pole against my spine.
I waited.
And waited.
My heart telling me the only chance I had was to counter.
He came at me. I reached overhead, gripped the pole in both hands and, as he came slashing, I kicked the knife away with one foot and caught him under the chin with the other. I heard his teeth snap together as he reeled back and fell onto the seat behind him.
I saw the knife on the floor and went for it. Clarence slid and scissored my legs out from under me. I hit the deck, face first. Out of the corner of one eye, I saw the feet of Philippe and Inge dancing around as they traded punches. Philippe was taken down to one knee. Inge kicked out, but he stopped her foot from connecting at the ankle and twisted her into the air. Meanwhile, I was yanked up hard by the neck of my jumper. Clarence had a bicep around my forehead and another around my neck. I knew what was coming next. I fought to stop him getting a proper grip, stringy spit flying out of my mouth, but he had the leverage.
“You know what they call me?” Clarence asked, breath warm and gross in my ear.
“My guess is no one calls you,” I said.
“Snapper,” he said.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“You’re about to find out.”
He was about to break my neck is what he meant. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
38
The Hard Way
Philippe was a blur, his fist skimming the top of my head and making a sickening bone-on-bone s
ound as it connected with Clarence’s face. I’d seen Philippe outfighting Inge and kept Clarence talking for as long as I could. His neck-breaker hold dropped off me and I staggered over for a lean against the tram doors.
Clarence was on his back, but he breakdanced to his feet and went hand-to-hand with Philippe. I turned to see Inge hauling herself off the floor, touching a cut above her right eye for blood. She fixed her attention on me and came forward. I sighed and pushed myself off the doors, wondering where the hell the next stop was. In reality, we’d only been fighting for a matter of seconds, but it felt like years.
As Philippe and Clarence wrestled with some super-kung fu, I repeated the counter-attack trick on Inge. Sucking her in, then, ole! As she swiped a hand at me, I hopped on a row of seats facing inwards beneath the windows and ran along the carriage, giving myself some breathing space. There were people behind me, cowering in a group. One of them was a big guy. Turkish-looking with a razored goatee. He had the look and the form of an off-duty bouncer. He noticed I was in a school uniform and suddenly heroed up, stepping in front of me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said to Inge.
She struck him with a lightning-fast jab in the throat with the flat of her hand. Little more than a touch.
“Don’t worry, you won’t,” she said, as he fell on all fours, spluttering.
“I guess this is where you tell me we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” I said, as she stood over the poor guy who’d tried to protect me.
