by Allan Folsom
They moved fast toward the entry gates to the train platforms. “RSO’s got a backpack,” White said quietly, his eyes locked on their targeted foursome. “Anne’s got a big purse. Ryder and Marten are carrying nothing. The photographs and the rest will be with the RSO or Anne. Take them down first and recover the goods. Then take out Ryder. I’m guessing Marten’s still armed with whatever he used to kill Branco’s men. I’ll take him. Whatever happens, don’t let any one of them get on a train. When we’re done, split up and take the next train out. Either direction. We’ll meet at the plane.”
Two steps more and they were at the entry gates. A woman in front of them slid her ticket into a receptacle and went through. White, Patrice and Irish Jack followed, shoved past her, and started after their prey.
“Hey! Você três! Batente!” Hey! You three! Stop! A voice called out in Portuguese.
Irish Jack looked to the side. A uniformed Metro guard was coming toward them. Irish Jack smiled, opened his jacket, and took out the M-4 Colt Commando. The guard’s eyes went wide with fear.
“No!” he yelled and tried to turn away. It was too late. Irish Jack fired a short, silent burst. The guard’s body slammed backward into a wall behind him and dropped to the floor, his blood flung everywhere.
“Go!” White commanded, and they started for the platform area. Somewhere a woman screamed. Commuters watched in horror and puzzlement as the three well-dressed men raced past them.
“Here they come!” Grant yelled and shoved Ryder ahead of him toward a Metro car just entering the station. “Everybody back, please!” he yelled at the crowd of commuters. “Everybody back!”
Marten caught a glimpse of Conor White, then saw Patrice rush forward, an M-4 in his hands, shoving people aside. “Look out!” he yelled and raised the Glock to fire. An elderly couple were right in his sights and he had to step away. By then Patrice was gone in the swell of people on the platform—people who were beginning to panic. They’d heard the woman’s scream and there were men rushing through them with guns.
The train stopped and the doors opened. Travelers started to get off. Grant shoved Ryder through them, the backpack tight under his arm, his finger on the MP5K’s trigger.
Now Marten caught sight of Patrice: He was rushing forward toward Grant and Ryder. Then he saw Irish Jack shoving in from the side. He pushed Anne forward after Grant and Ryder, then swung the Glock at Irish Jack. The mercenary saw him and ducked into the crowd. At the same time, Patrice pulled up, raising the M-4. People shrieked. Grant whirled and lifted the backpack. The MP5K’s red laser dot fell on Patrice’s chest a split second too late. There was a burst of silenced M-4 fire and Grant’s head blew apart, his body twisting around wildly to collapse among horrified passengers.
People ran screaming in every direction, some using cell phones trying to call for help. Marten grabbed Anne and rushed her toward the train, stopping only to pick up Grant’s backpack and press it into her arms. “There’s a machine pistol in there. Stay with Ryder. Get him to the plane.”
“No!” she yelled, her eyes locked on his. Love. Fear. Horror. Everything. Before, in the hospital, it had been a parting with hope and without an end. They both knew that if Marten stayed behind now there was every chance he would be dead within seconds.
“Fuck it, Anne! You know what to do! Get Ryder the hell out of here! Now!”
Their eyes locked for the briefest instant; then she bolted into the car, trying to find Ryder. She saw him in the crush just as the doors closed and the train began to pull out. Through the window she glimpsed Irish Jack rushing toward them through the crowd. Then she saw Marten twenty feet away, the Glock up ready to fire. People shrieked, racing to get out of the way. Then Irish Jack disappeared in the melee and Marten was shoving through people trying to find him.
The train picked up speed. Suddenly Patrice stepped out of nowhere only feet from it, his finger closing on the M-4’s trigger.
“Get down!” Anne yelled and shoved Ryder to the floor as a burst of silent automatic-weapon fire raked the windows, obliterating them. She grabbed the backpack and got up. Patrice was gone. A half-dozen or more people were on the floor. Some were dead, others moving. Ryder was trying to help a blood-splattered woman on the floor next to him. They were nearly to the tunnel. Outside she saw Marten looking for Patrice. He didn’t see Irish Jack move in just feet behind him, his M-4 up, readying to fire. In one motion she turned the backpack and squeezed the MP5K’s trigger. The 9 mm slugs ran across the Irishman’s formidable chest; his body danced in a semicircle, then toppled onto the platform to the screams of the terrified people around him. She turned to look for Marten and saw him. Their eyes met. Then the train was in the tunnel and the station disappeared from view.
120
Marten saw the train’s lights vanish as it gained speed inside the tunnel. Glock in hand, he looked back. Faces stared out from every possible hiding place. Under benches, behind decorative sculptures, inside the lone newspaper kiosk. Most of them frozen in some kind of unbearable silence. Every expression raw and filled with fear and unimaginable horror. Each person questioning how much longer he or she had to live. Suddenly two young women rose up and bolted across the platform, dropping down onto the tracks and running into the tunnel after the train.
“Don’t!” Marten yelled. They ignored him. Never mind the trains, there was a live electric third rail there. God only knew how many volts. Touch it with one foot on the ground and you were fried. He looked back. Where the hell was Patrice? Where was Conor White?
In the next second the lights went out.
A universal cry of alarm went up, then everything went deathly silent. Here and there were the sounds of crying or mumbled prayers, but that was all. The only illumination came from battery-powered emergency lights. They lit the stairways, dimly washed the station walls, touched the newspaper kiosk and the entrances to the tunnels at either end of the station.
“THIS IS THE POLICE!” an amplified male voice echoed through the chamber, first in Portuguese, then in English. “EVERYONE FACE DOWN ON THE FLOOR, HANDS SPREAD OUT IN FRONT OF YOU. ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STAND UP WILL BE SHOT!”
Marten could just make out the SWAT team as they fanned out from the stairs to form a line in front of it, a black-armor-suited, helmeted, visor-wearing assault force of about twenty to thirty men. Six of their own had been surprised and cut down only moments before. Whoever had done it was somewhere here, among the terrified commuters. There was no chance they were going to walk out alive.
He had still seen no sign of either Conor White or Patrice since the train had left the station. Things had happened with lightning speed, and there were probably forty or fifty people crowded on the platform, so they could easily be among them.
SWAT would have no idea how many gunmen had been involved in taking down their men. Marten was wanted for murder. If they found him with the Glock, they might very well shoot him on the spot. On the other hand, he wasn’t about to get rid of the pistol and then have Conor White and Patrice find him before the police did. Third rail or not, orders to lie facedown or not, he crept to the edge of the platform in the semidarkness and eased over the side and onto the tracks.
Conor White was just inside the mouth of the tunnel with Patrice directly across. What should have been an easy takedown of the principals and recovery of the photographs and other evidence—most importantly whatever sort of copy of The Memorandum Anne had made in those few minutes when she was alone in the hotel room—had been anything but. In reality it should have been they who were on the train that left the station, not Anne and Ryder. He thought of the dark shadow in the car. Everything that could have gone wrong had. It was Murphy’s Law personified. He had never been superstitious in his life, but he was now, and Marten was at the core of it, the bearer of some kind of demon curse meant to destroy him. In that same moment he realized something else—that no matter how much he had convinced himself that his mission to protect the massive Bioko oil field for the We
st was singularly patriotic, in truth it was the same as it had been from the beginning, to recover the photographs and preserve his dignified place in British history. And by doing so keep alive the soul-wrenching hope that one day Sir Edward Raines, the father who had refused to recognize him for so long, that he so hated and so desperately loved at the same time, might yet step forth and acknowledge him.
White looked back into the dark of the station, a cavernous space lit here and there by the beam and wash of the emergency lights as if it were the set of an abstract play. The police were there in mass, hidden among the terrified, trapped commuters waiting for them to make their move. Marten was somewhere there, too. Destroy him and the shadow would disappear and the curse would be lifted. Afterward he and Patrice would retreat into the Metro tunnels to maneuver and hide and wait for as long as it took—an hour, a day, a month—until the police finally left and they walked out free and alive. They had done it before.
They could do it again.
121
Carlos Branco and the three who had been with him in the Alfa Romeo, the best of his freelance former members of the Batalhão de Comandos, moved quickly down the darkened stairs toward the train platform where the GOE SWAT team had the area sealed off. Branco still wore the tailored black suit he’d begun the day in. The other three were dressed in loose-fitting, lightweight jackets over blue jeans with 9 mm Uzi submachine guns held out of sight under the jackets.
They’d arrived at the Rossio station less than a minute before the GOE force, immediately gone inside, then waited for them to come in. When they did Branco raised his hands and went to meet them. He identified himself and said he knew why they were there and who they were after, and asked to see the brigade commander. Seconds later the man was at his side.
Branco was well known to the GOE command. He’d worked Lisbon’s underground for years and had been instrumental in collecting and passing on information about organized crime, terrorist cells, the African drug trade and more frequently following up with what was required—the dirty, illegal things that had to be done and that law enforcement agencies couldn’t become involved with for fear of political or social blowback. In other words, he did what was viewed in higher circles as “necessary business.” Consequently, when he showed up in instances like these, more often than not he was deferred to.
“His name is Conor White. Former SAS colonel. Victoria Cross,” Branco told the brigade commander directly. “Now a professional mercenary working out of Equatorial Guinea and involved with the civil war there. He’s the one you’re looking for in the murders outside of Madrid. He followed a U.S. congressman here in an attempt to kill him, the man your people were escorting to the U.S. Embassy when they were shot down. If you kill him it will raise all sorts of questions as to why he was here and what he was doing. The inquiry will be public and potentially embarrassing to a number of countries. If we do it, the government can say he was caught by unknown gunmen who shadowed him to Lisbon, killed him, and then disappeared, apparently an act of reprisal that had to do with the situation in Equatorial Guinea. Then it becomes an incident having to do with that country and not Portugal, Spain, or the U.S.”
The commander said he understood but that there were many citizens in harm’s way and he couldn’t stand by while more were killed.
Branco shared his concern then said the public might be better served by a four-man plainclothes team than an overwhelming force of uniformed GOE. “Cut off the power and secure the area,” he said. “Then let me contact White and let us go in.”
“You can get in touch with him now?”
“Yes.”
The commander had studied him and walked off. Branco saw him speak into a microphone at his collar. Thirty seconds later he came back.
“Alright” had been the commander’s one-word response.
“One thing more,” Branco said. “You’re going to have more media crowded outside this station than you’ve ever seen. Clear two stations down the line. Then I want an automated Metro car brought in. White has two men with him. We’re going to take them out in that car. At the end we’ll hand them over to you. No media. No gang of police. Just a handful of your men and a couple of waiting ambulances.”
The commander stared at him, then finally nodded. “Done,” he said.
Conor White was pushed back in the darkness against the tunnel wall, his eyes, his senses, trying to feel out where Marten was, when he felt his cell phone vibrate. That the phone system worked this far underground startled him, and for a moment he did nothing. Finally he slid it from his belt and looked at it. In an instant he knew who was calling and clicked on.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“I’m with GOE,” Branco said. “Where are the rabbits?”
“Anne and Ryder got away on the last train out. The RSO is dead. So is Irish Jack. Patrice is with me.”
“Where is Marten?”
“Somewhere here in the dark.”
“I’ve made a deal with the police. I’m going to get you out. But I can’t do that with all the people there. I want you to let them go.”
“Branco, they’re our protection. Hostages if we need them.”
“The police know we’re in touch. Once the people are out, they’ll send in an automated Metro car. They’re clearing two stations. They’re expecting I’ll bring you out at the second. We’ll go out at the first. I want to tell them you’ve agreed to let the people go. Once they see they are out they’ll pull back. We’ll come in and they’ll send the rail car.”
“Just you.”
“Yes. Altogether there are four of us.”
“What about the lights?”
“What do you want?”
“Marten’s here. I want him myself. You understand? I want him. Not you, not your men. Not even Patrice. Turn the lights on, get the people out, then turn them back off. ”
“I understand.”
“No! Not just understand. I want your word on it.”
“You have it.”
“Tell the GOE they can have their citizens.”
122
Marten was crouched by the rails near the platform when the lights suddenly came back on. The unexpected brightness startled him, the same as it startled the others. A wave of nervous cries swept through the station. He stepped carefully over the third rail and slipped under the platform overhang, hopefully out of sight from above. Suddenly came the sound of a bullhorn.
“THIS IS THE POLICE.” The amplified male voice echoed through the cavernous station as it had before, first in Portuguese and then English. “EVERYONE WILL STAND UP AND RAISE YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD, THEN WALK SLOWLY TOWARD THE EXIT AT THE FAR END OF THE STATION. LEAVE ANY PERSONAL BELONGINGS BEHIND. DO IT NOW!”
Marten was stunned. What tactic was this? What was going on? They couldn’t have captured White and Patrice without his hearing. And neither man was about to walk out with his hands over his head. Instead they would take hostages, and the GOE would know that. His hand slid over the Glock and he crouched further down. The best he could do was stay where he was. He could hear people starting to move and assumed they were doing as they had been told, the GOE screening them as they came out.
Maybe White and Patrice were already gone and the police knew it. Escaped through the tunnels and out through a maintenance shaft. They knew Anne and Ryder had made it onto the train and assumed they would be going to Ryder’s plane, the same place White and Patrice would go. And there would be nothing he could do about it because he would be trapped there with GOE sweeping the area the moment the people had left. He took a deep breath and waited, wholly unsure what to do.
Suddenly the station went dark again and the emergency lights came back on.
Christ, he thought. Now what?
“It’s just us now, Mr. Marten.” Conor White’s British-accented voice suddenly came through the radio earpiece he had forgotten he still wore. His manner was calm, even gentle. “I’d like to know who you are. Complex chap, I
think. English landscape architect with an American accent. Quite the expert with a handgun. Killing people is relatively easy, but far different when they are trying to kill you first, like Branco’s men in the Jaguar.”
Marten came alert. Who was Branco? Then he thought of the man in the Hotel Lisboa Chiado who’d been playing Anne’s brother just before White came in. Clearly one of his team.
“Carlos Branco. The bearded fellow driving the Alfa Romeo. One of two cars pursuing the ambulance before the incident with the fire truck.”
Marten took out the earpiece and listened in the dark, hoping he could hear White speaking and get some sense of where he was.
“You arranged for the fire alarm to be pulled just after you left the hospital. You nearly had Anne and Congressman Ryder killed in the process. Clever but foolish. You are not perfect.”
Marten could hear White’s voice through the earpiece but that was all. There was nothing else to suggest he was close by. Nevertheless, he was here somewhere. The business with the lights and letting the people go free meant he’d made some sort of deal with the police. Though it was hard to believe after he had just killed six of their men. On the other hand, he had to remember there was a strong possibility White was CIA. Meaning a dark political hand might well be maneuvering behind the scenes. There was something else he dared not forget. White hadn’t received the Victoria Cross and his string of combat medals because he was timid. There was every reason to believe he had gotten out of worse situations than this on guile and guts alone. And then there was Patrice, who would be every bit as dangerous as White himself.
“Marten, why don’t you come out and we can have a little chat about all this.”
