The Agent (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 3)

by Mark Dawson

  ‘Pope,’ she said into the microphone. ‘The shooter’s in the Bank of China building. Two-thirds of the way up.’

  What next? Would the sniper be satisfied now that his or her first target had been eliminated? Would they be making an escape, or would they be sighting for a third shot?

  ‘Pope,’ she said again.

  ‘I’m here. Can you see them?’

  ‘I saw the reflection off their sight. If they’re still there, they’ve got you covered.’

  ‘Hold your position, Control,’ the distorted voice said again. ‘I’ll tell you when to move.’

  Isabella noticed something unusual. Most of the men and women who had been in the square were cowering in cover or running away along the Bund to the north and south. Her eye was drawn to one man in particular. Instead of running away from the scene, he was walking purposefully towards it.

  She stared at him: he was wearing a business suit, the kind of attire that meant he could melt into the background in a place like this. He might have done just that, apart from his demeanour and the fact that his hand reached inside his jacket to bring out a submachine gun that he was wearing on a strap.

  ‘Pope – there’s another one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A second shooter.’

  The man kept coming, walking briskly towards the steps that led down into the square.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Coming from your six.’

  She took the Glock from her bag. The man was fifty yards away from her, proceeding north from the other side of the square. It would be a difficult shot for her to make, but she would at least give him something to think about.

  She raised her arm and fired.

  The shot went high and wide.

  The man dropped to a crouch and, before Isabella could fire again, he brought his own gun around and squeezed off a burst.

  She dropped to the ground and rolled to the side.

  The barrage passed close by overhead.

  She scrambled to her hands and feet as she heard a second burst and flung herself behind an outcropping in the wall.

  Her face was stung by a storm of dislodged stone chips.

  ‘Isabella?’

  ‘He’s got a submachine gun,’ she said.

  ‘Stay in cover.’

  ‘If he gets to the steps, he’ll be able to see you.’

  The distorted voice spoke. ‘Hold in place, Control.’

  ‘Where’s your fucking distraction?’

  Isabella was secure behind the bulge in the wall. She turned and looked up over the edge towards the East-1 Zhongshan Road. It was one hundred and fifty feet from the promenade to the street. It seemed like the safest route for her to take. She would have to cross a margin of grass with topiary and neatly ordered hedges. The statue of Chen Yi would provide her with cover from the man with the submachine gun for at least some of the time it would take her to cross. She would have to trust that the sniper had left his eyrie or was concentrating on Pope.

  She closed her eyes and took two deep breaths.

  She opened her eyes again, put both hands on the wall and, with a push from her legs, vaulted easily over it and dropped down on to the other side.

  And then she ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Curry saw everything.

  Jacob Blaine on the Bund, approaching from the south.

  The sun sparking off the aluminium trailer behind which Archangel was still hiding.

  The muzzle flash of Blaine’s submachine gun as he sprayed rounds at a target on the other side of the square.

  A sudden blur of motion as a figure vaulted the wall and started to run through the gardens on the north side.

  He nudged the rifle around, quickly finding the figure in the scope. It was the girl. Angel. She was a target, too. She was moving west, towards him. The gardens offered minimal cover and she had one hundred and fifty feet to cross before she could reach the relative safety of the road. One hundred and fifty feet and no cover. She was moving quickly, but that wouldn’t matter. Curry was an excellent shot. This wouldn’t be difficult.

  He tracked her, leading just a little, and wrapped his finger around the trigger.

  The blare of the alarms was sudden and disorientating. It was everywhere, all at once, and then, almost immediately, the overhead sprinklers opened and sprays of water gushed down.

  He looked up, straight into a torrent of water.

  He looked away, wiping the water from his eyes. ‘This is Curry,’ he reported. ‘I’ve been compromised.’

  He didn’t wait for a response. The protocol was clear and unambiguous. He disassembled the rifle and put it back into the bag he had used to bring it into the office.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The fire alarm has been tripped. The sprinklers have been activated.’

  He stood, checked that he had not left anything that might incriminate himself and started back to the door.

  ‘Understood. Leave the area.’

  ‘On my way.’

  He opened the door and hurried along the corridor to the emergency stairs.

  Blaine’s voice came over the radio. ‘Both targets are running,’ he said. ‘No sign of the police. Am I cleared to pursue?’

  ‘You’re cleared. Take them out. Both of them.’

  Jacob Blaine jogged briskly towards the square.

  His codename within the programme was Morpheus. Pride was not something that mattered to him, but the efficient fulfilment of his orders was something from which he derived satisfaction.

  Two targets. They had known that Archangel was most likely not alone, and now they knew for sure.

  Pope was with the girl. She had been with him in Mumbai, too. All of the targets had been assigned codenames.

  Litivenko was Parasol.

  Wheaton was Angler.

  Pope was Archangel.

  Rose was Angel.

  One down. Curry had seen to that.

  Blaine would account for two more.

  The girl was running, fearful of the spray from his submachine gun. Blaine had authorisation to eliminate her, too, and he would do so without compunction if the opportunity presented itself. But she was hidden beneath the line of the promenade now, and there was no more time for even the briefest of diversions. He and Curry had been given two priorities: Wheaton and Pope.

  He continued along the Bund until he reached the gap in the parapet to his left that allowed access to the steps that led down to the square. Pope was sheltering behind the Airstream trailer that was employed as a cafe. The tables set out around the trailer had been abandoned, many of the chairs overturned in the panicked rush as people fled the area. Wheaton’s body was still at the same table, slumped down and with his arms hanging limply to either side. Curry’s round had made a terrible mess: blood had been splattered across the surface of the table, with one long gout splashed out across the ground for several yards.

  Blaine started down the steps. Pope was penned in. He dared not step out of cover for fear of another shot from Curry’s rifle. But his position did not offer him refuge from Blaine. He could see him crouched down with his back pressed to the side of the Airstream. Blaine was able to shelter behind the stone baluster as he descended the steps to the square. He pressed himself up against the baluster and looked over the top.

  He let the submachine gun rest on its strap, reached into his pocket and took out an M67 frag grenade. He checked back up the steps to the Bund and, satisfied, gripped the pull ring with the fingers of his left hand while maintaining a firm hold on the body of the grenade and the safety lever with his right.

  He started to pull the safety ring away from the grenade, but, before he could do it, he heard the sound of alarms from the other side of Zhongshan Road. More than one alarm; it sounded as if the alarms of every building west of him had started to blare all at once.

  Pope slid out from behind the trailer and ran.

  Blaine put the grenade away and
reached for the MP5.

  He took the steps two at a time and sprinted in pursuit.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Isabella reached the road before Pope. It was busy with traffic and, in the near distance, she could hear the sound of sirens. Both lanes were crawling, the drivers slowing so that they could look at what was happening in the square.

  She took cover behind a bus shelter. The alarms were deafening. It seemed as though the alarm of every single building for fifty metres in each direction had been triggered. Workers from the buildings were beginning to emerge on to the street, quickly creating a melee of confusion and noise. Many of them were wet through. If this was the diversion that had been mentioned, it was a good one.

  Isabella looked back. Pope was running hard, about to reach the steps that would bring him up to her level.

  The man with the submachine gun was behind him and closing fast.

  Isabella stepped out from behind the shelter, aimed the Glock and fired.

  The shots bit into the ground near the shooter, forcing him to take cover behind the trailer that had recently sheltered Pope.

  Pope reached the road. There was a motorcycle courier nearby. He veered towards him and, without ceremony, clotheslined the man off his vehicle.

  Isabella recognised the bike; it was a Kawasaki KLR650. It was perfect for a courier: cheap, nimble and reliable. Pope leaned down and heaved it upright, then slid on to it. He gunned the engine and the bike skidded around and then jerked towards Isabella.

  There was a rattle of gunfire from behind them and then the crashing of glass as two of the big plate windows on the far side of the street were struck, the panes falling in fragments to smash on the path. The detonation of the glass drew loud screams from the workers standing nearby.

  Isabella risked a glance back into the square and saw the shooter again.

  He had come out of cover and now he was aiming another volley at them.

  Isabella heard a new noise – police sirens – and saw flashing blue to the north, the lights pulsing against the sides of the office blocks. Two police motorcycles sped along the pavement towards them.

  Pope stomped on the brake and slid the rear end around again so that Isabella could get on. She jumped on the back and wrapped her arms around his torso.

  She looked back to the square. The man with the submachine gun had ascended the stairs to the road. He was on their level now. Their eyes locked across the queue of traffic for a long moment before he aimed once more.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled.

  Pope cranked the throttle around. The engine burbled, the rubber bit and they leapt ahead. He turned the handlebars and yanked back. Their weight was over the back of the bike and it was easy to lift the front wheel; they lurched forward, bounced up on to the back of an empty car transporter and from there they hopped the concrete divider that separated the southbound and northbound lanes and crashed back down on to the asphalt on the other side.

  Pope turned south and gunned the engine, racing against the flow of the slow-moving traffic.

  The shooter fired another burst. There was too much in between him and them, and the volley blew out the windows of a parked bus just as they accelerated past it.

  Pope picked a path between the cars, their passage heralded by a tumult of outraged horns.

  Isabella saw a flash of motion in the left-hand mirror.

  She turned her head to look back.

  She saw two things that concerned her.

  The first was the two police motorcycles that were now closing on them quickly. They were being ridden along the pavement, the few pedestrians who had not yet fled the scene flinging themselves out of the way as they went by.

  The second was the shooter. He was running hard, at a flat-out sprint. He kept coming, on and on and on, his legs beating a metronomic pace and seemingly without the need to stop and recover.

  Fifty feet.

  A hundred.

  Two hundred.

  He was uncannily fast, but they were faster and they were pulling away.

  He could see that, too, so he changed tactics.

  The first police motorcycle reached him. He grabbed the rider and hauled him off, letting him fall to the ground just as he vaulted on to the saddle, keeping the bike upright. He gunned the throttle and sped up, closing on Isabella and Pope and pulling away from the second police rider.

  Isabella heard the distorted voice in her ear: ‘Go right.’

  Pope heard it, too. He pressed down on the brake, skidding off Zhongshan and accelerating west on to Guangdong Road. The traffic was dense here, too, and he darted in and out of the spaces between the cars, trying to maintain the distance between them and their pursuers.

  Blaine could only just hear the sound of his handler’s voice over the throb of the motorcycle’s engine.

  ‘Report.’

  ‘I’m in pursuit.’

  The police bike he had taken was a Honda ST1300P. It was more powerful than the dual sport bike that Pope and the girl had taken.

  They skidded around to the right, on to Guangdong.

  Blaine followed.

  He started to reel them in.

  Pope braked again and skidded left, accelerating into the narrow passage between buildings. A flight of stairs led up to a short landing and then a dog-leg right-hander.

  Pope ascended, his bike bouncing up the steps, and Blaine followed.

  Chapter Thirty

  A family scattered left and right, the mother muscling a stroller out of the way as the two motorcycles clambered up the steps.

  ‘Follow the path to the right.’

  Pope did as he was told and then paused at the top of another flight of steps that led down to Sichuan Middle Road. The steps were jammed with people. There was no obvious way down.

  Isabella looked back.

  ‘He’s still coming,’ she said.

  ‘Go down, Control.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  The steps had been cut into the side of a steep hill, the slope of which was fenced off to the left and right. Pope gunned the engine and sent the bike through the left-hand fence. He pressed down on the brake, locking the rear wheel, and they slithered down the grass.

  The shooter followed them.

  ‘Turn left.’

  ‘He’s catching us.’

  ‘I’m working on that.’

  Pope opened the throttle again, turning right at the Union Building. He picked up speed towards the river.

  ‘Head for the Waitan Tunnel.’

  The plate window of a noodle shop was blown out of its frame. Glass crashed on to the road and, a fraction of a moment later, Isabella heard the echo of gunfire as it resounded from the walls of the tall buildings around them.

  She craned her neck to look back again.

  The bike was closing.

  ‘Pope—’ she said.

  ‘This is all we’ve got.’

  Another volley of automatic gunfire shredded the car to the right of them, knocking out the rear window and punching through the roof.

  ‘He’s gaining!’

  She remembered the Glock; she had it in her left hand, pressed to the side of Pope’s chest. She turned so that she could aim behind them, raised the pistol and fired. The shot was unaimed, and not helped by the swerving and bouncing of the bike as it bumped up and down the kerbs, and it went high.

  Isabella heard the high-pitched roar of an engine. She looked back. The motorbike had switched position, and now it was on their right, racing along the path towards them at high speed.

  ‘Pope—’

  The shooter was barrelling straight down the pavement, ignoring the pedestrians who were forced into taking frantic evasive action.

  The engine picked up revs. Isabella was forced to grab Pope with both hands to avoid falling off as he swerved left and right, pressed back by the sudden burst of acceleration. The shooter was travelling more quickly than they were and he continued to close. Isabella looked back and saw that he had cau
ght up with them; his bike was adjacent to the rear wheel when the man took one hand off the handlebars and aimed his MP5 at them. He opened fire as Pope swerved to the right; most of the bullets went just wide, but Isabella felt the thud-thud-thud as at least some of them lodged in the padded upholstery of the seat.

  There was nowhere for them to go.

  The shooter closed again, drawing alongside them. He raised the MP5 and . . .

  Nothing happened.

  He must have run dry.

  He tossed the submachine gun behind him, accelerated alongside again and then swerved into them.

  The motorbikes clashed and jammed together. The shooter reached across with his right hand and tried to grab the handlebars of their bike. Pope fended him off. The man tried again.

  Isabella acted instinctively.

  She clambered up on to the saddle, her feet pressed together, and hopped on to the back of the shooter’s Honda.

  Isabella still had the gun. She tried to bring it up so that she could press it against his head.

  The man kicked down on the brake with his right foot. The rear tyre locked, smoke billowing out around the saddlebag and luggage rack.

  Pope raced away.

  The shooter caught Isabella’s wrist and yanked. She dropped the Glock and tried to lock her left arm around his throat even more tightly.

  The shooter pulled down on her right arm, bending her elbow over his shoulder. Bolts of pain lanced into her brain as the joints started to pop. The man pulled harder, but the effort was a distraction and he lost control of the bike.

  The rear tyre slid out and the bike went down on to its side. The man released his grip on Isabella’s wrist and she fell free of him and the bike, sliding along the asphalt on her backside. The man and the machine skidded ahead until their momentum was arrested by a firm bump into the side of a stalled car.

  Isabella got up. She touched her hand to the back of her legs and felt the scrape of road rash. She panted for breath, assessing her surroundings. They had fallen in the middle of a busy junction. Sichuan Middle Road ran into a crossroads with Sichuan South Road. The multiple lanes of Yan’an East Road passed on a flyover above them. The traffic on their level had stopped. A bus sealed the exit to the east and tightly packed cars blocked the way to the south and west. She could hear the sound of Pope’s motorcycle, but he was hidden from view behind the bulk of the bus.