The gunshot jolted Eddie back to full awareness. Wincing, he started to rise — only to see Rasche and his men charge into the square less than twenty feet away. He had dropped his gun during the fall, leaving him defenceless…
But none of them looked in his direction. Instead, they all ran around a corner, heading north. He felt a moment of relief…
Until he realised who they were chasing.
He stood. His impromptu crash mat was sprawled at his feet. Blood bubbled from the young man’s mouth with every feeble breath; he had punctured a lung.
Eddie had no sympathy. He collected his MPX-K from the ground and started after Nina and her pursuers.
Nina hurried through another narrow maze, every step a flat slap as the sculpture’s weight passed down to her feet. The last time she had stood on a set of scales, she had been around a hundred and twenty pounds; the figure of Bucephalus probably added a quarter of her entire bodyweight. And she was already feeling the strain of carrying it, each breath like sandpaper inside her throat.
But she couldn’t stop. Fear drove her on; the sure knowledge that if the Nazis caught her, they would kill her. She could hear them closing in. Her breathing grew harsher, more desperate…
She rounded a turn and saw a busy street at the alley’s end, a blue-and-white tram clanking past. A major road; there could be cops there, even soldiers.
‘Dr Wilde, this is your last chance!’ Rasche shouted as she pounded towards it. ‘Surrender or die!’ He fired a single shot over her head for emphasis.
Nina kept going, ducking around the corner — just as another bullet cracked against the wall, concrete fragments stinging the back of her neck. People nearby ran. She went with them, searching for help.
She was on one of Alexandria’s main thoroughfares. Several lanes of traffic ran in each direction, tramlines down the centre of the road. Keeping low, she ducked between parked cars and ran alongside the line of empty vehicles, looking for somewhere to hide—
A siren wailed behind her.
Nina looked over her shoulder. A police car was weaving through the lanes in her direction. The cops were responding to the gunshots; Egypt’s recent political turmoil had left the authorities on high alert. If she could attract their attention, she had a chance…
She put the statue down on a car’s trunk and waved her arms. ‘Hey, police! Help me! Over here!’
Rasche and his men emerged from the alley. The Nazi looked towards Nina, then the source of the siren. He shouted an order and the group split up, two men pursuing the archaeologist as the rest raised their guns—
More screams filled the street as gunfire echoed across it. Bullets ripped into the police car and the two men inside. It crashed into an oncoming taxi and spun to a standstill across the tramlines.
Horrified, Nina grabbed the statue and ran once more. People hurriedly abandoned their vehicles and fled. She scurried between the stalled cars.
The two Nazis came after her. She tried to run faster, but the statue’s weight had exhausted her reserves.
A loud bang from behind as one of her pursuers jumped up on to a car roof and vaulted on to the next. Bang, bang, and he was upon Nina, about to leap down and tackle her—
More gunshots — but from ahead, not behind.
The Nazi hit the road behind her with a nerveless thump. The second man hurriedly dived for cover as more shots cracked past. Rasche and the rest of his team scrambled back into the alley. ‘Dr Wilde!’ a man shouted. ‘Over here, keep down!’
She followed her saviour’s advice, scuttling onwards until she caught sight of him. It was Falk, the Mossad agent.
He smiled at her, the expression incongruous amongst the chaos. ‘Here, quick!’ he called, signalling for her to join him behind a white Toyota 4x4.
Another roar of gunfire. Falk’s younger associate, Zane, was on the SUV’s other side. He sent two more bursts from a sub-machine gun at Rasche’s position, then slapped it down on the hood and took a grenade from his jacket, pulling the pin and hurling the bomb in a single smooth movement. The gun was back in his hand before the grenade reached the end of its arc. Nina flinched, expecting an explosion, but instead there was a flat thud. Thick smoke gushed from where it had landed, swirling around the abandoned cars and blocking her attackers from view.
Sightlessness did not deter them, however. Glass cracked and metal cratered as more shots ripped into the traffic, the Nazis firing blind through the grey cloud. Nina shrieked as a round clanked off a van behind her. Falk responded by sending a couple of pistol shots back at its source. ‘Good to see you again, Dr Wilde,’ he said, as amiably as if they were chatting over coffee. ‘I told you we’d be ready if you needed us.’
‘That’s great, thanks,’ she replied, ‘but any chance you could get me the hell out of here before half of Alexandria gets killed in the crossfire?’
‘I will. Although first…’ He peered out from behind the Toyota, calling in Hebrew to his partner, then moved past Nina. ‘Stay behind me.’
‘You think?’
Falk shrugged off the sarcasm with another smile — then his expression suddenly became intense. He advanced to the car ahead of the SUV, crouching to peer underneath it — and abruptly snapped up to fire a single shot. The second of the Nazis chasing Nina slumped to the asphalt in front of the car, a gory starburst surrounding a bullet hole in his forehead.
Another Hebrew command, and Zane resumed his suppressing fire, sending bullets into the smoke cloud. Falk hurried to the dead man and frisked him, taking a wallet and cell phone before returning to Nina. ‘Okay, now it is time to go!’
‘No arguments there,’ Nina replied. She hefted the statue and moved to the SUV’s rear door—
One of the Toyota’s windows exploded, spraying them with glinting fragments.
‘Ben!’ yelled Zane, ducking in response to a new threat. ‘More of them — corner, seven o’clock! It’s Walther!’
The hulking Nazi and his men had reached the main street, emerging from an alley half a block behind the Israelis’ SUV. They spread out, using cars and street furniture for cover as they fired on the Mossad agents. ‘Dr Wilde, we’ll have to move,’ Falk snapped. ‘Get to the buildings over there.’ He pointed across the street, then glanced at the statue. ‘You’ll go much faster if you leave that behind.’
Even under attack, Nina was unwilling to be patronised. ‘No shit, Sherlock. This is what they came here to steal; after all the people they’ve killed, I’m not going to let them waltz away with it.’
Zane rounded the SUV. ‘Ben, if we don’t leave now, they’ll box us in.’ The smoke was clearing, revealing Rasche’s group resuming their advance.
Falk regarded the statue, then looked back at Nina. ‘Okay. Bring it. But you will have to carry it — we need to shoot!’
‘Fine by me,’ Nina said, though with a weary sigh as she shifted the sculpture’s weight in her arms. ‘Which way?’
‘Behind the van, then cross the tramlines and go around that red car. Stay low and head for the building with the yellow awning. Are you ready?’
‘As I’ll ever be.’
‘Good. We’ll get you out of here, Dr Wilde.’ He smiled again. ‘Okay, now—’
‘Grenade!’ cried Zane, diving on top of them.
A metal egg clunked off the roof of a nearby car — and exploded.
Every window within fifty feet of the detonation blew out, shrapnel punching thousands of holes through steel. The SUV rocked on its suspension with the force of the blast.
Ears aching, Nina raised her head. Zane’s face was tight with pain from several cuts on the back of his head and neck, but the wounds did not slow him; he was already back on his feet as he searched for their attackers. ‘They’re coming,’ he warned. ‘From ahead and behind.’