Calvary looked past him because beyond the startled yells of the scattered passengers there was something happening at the front of the tram. The doors adjacent to the driver hissed open and men, their heads obscured by stocking masks, began to pour aboard.
SIX
‘What the hell’s going on...’
The explosion of static and noise made Krupina flinch and knock a pile of papers off the desk with her flailing arm. Down the line there was shouting, female screams.
Oleg yelled one word, that didn’t make sense – hijacking – and then he was drowned out.
Krupina snarled, ‘Everyone. Find that tram. Go, go.’
*
There were three of them. Tracksuits, black stockings like cauls across their faces. Handguns drawn.
The driver cowered, arms raised across his face. The screaming spread through the tram like flames. The crowd was beginning to turn, to press towards the back. Away from the guns.
Gaines was blinking, dazed. One of the invaders grabbed him by the shoulder, jammed the gun against the side of his head.
The surge of the crowd was going to reach critical mass in a moment, creating a wave Calvary wouldn’t be able to breach.
With his right hand he jerked the nylon of the umbrella downwards so that the honed tip of the shaft burst through the gauze and flashed beneath the internal lighting of the tram. With his left he seized the horizontal handrail overhead. He contracted his abdominal muscles and jackknifed his legs and launched himself forwards, treading on the hunched backs of the passengers in front as they crawled towards the rear of the tram, using them as stepping stones. He brought the umbrella shaft down in a stabbing motion as the nearest of the invaders began bringing his gun hand up.
The point caught the man in the shoulder, pinning him off-centre like a butterfly mounted by a clumsy novice collector. He shrieked and stumbled backwards, the gun whipping out of his splayed hand and against the windscreen. The shaft hadn’t gone in far enough to include the barbs, and Calvary pulled it back as his feet landed on the floor of the tram. His kick sent the wounded man slamming back against the windscreen, which cracked and starred under the impact.
The nearer of the other two men brought his gun so close Calvary could stare into the black of the barrel, smell the oil. He ducked and at the same time chopped the side of his hand against the wrist, knocking it aside. He thrust the umbrella shaft at the exposed torso but the man was quick and danced aside.
Behind him, the third man was backing down the steps through the open doors, one arm across Gaines’s throat, the pistol still pressed against his head. Gaines’s heels dragged, his arms flailing.
The second man hadn’t dropped his gun and was taking a bead again in the confined space, even as the first man sat against the dashboard, clutching his bloody shoulder and roaring.
Calvary rammed the umbrella shaft upwards, at an angle, pivoting from the hip. The point pierced the gunman’s throat at the angle of the cartilage and the soft underside of the jaw. Calvary’s fist felt the resistance as the tip jarred against bone.
At the same moment the man fired.
*
She grabbed her sparse hair in both fists, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples.
The gunshot had been loud. The scream was louder. As though from some beast living in Krupina’s ear.
‘Oleg.’
Something horrible was coming across the line now. A noise, made by something that didn’t sound human. A staccato sucking, like a hog’s snort.
Then a wheeze.
‘Shot.’
‘Oleg. Talk to me.’
‘Tovarischch.’
Even the background screaming was muffled, after that.
*
Something flicked against Calvary’s face, something hot and wet. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw it was blood. He glanced at his shoulder, but there was nothing there. No wound. And he felt no pain.
Disregard it.
The second man had fallen back through the door and his upended legs jerked on the steps. Gouts from his throat had sprayed the walls and the seats in arterial crimson.
Beyond the throat-stabbed man, through the doors, the third one was dragging Gaines along the pavement.
Calvary glanced once behind him. Saw, as well as the moaning man with the shoulder wound, a body on the floor of the tram. The passengers, their yelling having subsided into shocked whimpering, were drawing back from the body like a tide from a beached boat. The face was tilted towards him. It was Squat, the Russian. Eyes glazed.
He’d taken the gunman’s bullet, in the chest, by the look of it.
Calvary leaped over the dead man supine on the steps and his feet hit the pavement, where passersby had left a huge bare crescent. He saw immediately the reason for the driver’s having braked. A large car, a Mercedes station wagon, had pulled across the road into the tram’s path. Behind the wheel was another masked figure. The third invader was at the rear door, bundling Gaines in, planting a hand on his head and shoving down like a cop in an American film.
By Calvary’s foot was Gaines’s trilby, looking forlorn on the pavement.
The driver gunned the engine. Gaines was already in, his door still open. The man who’d pushed him in leaped aside and the car rocked up on to the kerb. Calvary rolled on the pavement, to the right, rolling and rolling to take himself out of the path of the vehicle. It veered past him and continued along the pavement, sending pedestrians spinning and tumbling in terror. For a second Calvary caught sight of Gaines through the flapping rear door, his bewildered white face turned towards Calvary. Then the car was fishtailing round the back of the tram and U-turning back on to the road in a flood of horns.
The car arced round and appeared at the front of the tram again. Calvary was already sprinting towards it as it slowed by the kerb to let the other man climb in. He took a flying leap at an acute angle from behind and got his torso across the windscreen just after the man slammed the passenger door shut.
The Mercedes took off into the traffic, causing cars to slew aside, jarring against the side panel of one vehicle that didn’t escape in time. The impact nearly shook Calvary off but he clung on, hauling himself across the bonnet so that he covered the entire windscreen. Through the glass he could see frantic movement as the driver tried to peer round him.
There’d be guns – yes, there was the man in the passenger seat, not aiming through the windscreen but instead cracking his door open and hooking his gun arm out and around. A mistake. Calvary lashed out with his boot, his heel connecting with the wrist and sending the gun spinning into the slipstream. The car lurched, the driver trying to keep to a straight path as he craned to see round. Buffeting Calvary were torrents of sensation and noise: cold, blasting air, the roar of traffic.
The front passenger wheel rocked over something solid, possibly a kerb, and Calvary’s right hand was shaken free. For an instant he almost cartwheeled away from the bonnet but he managed to brace the toes of one boot against the edge where the windscreen met its metal frame. He pivoted up so that he was kneeling on the bonnet facing through the windscreen, left hand sliding up to grip the end of one side of the car’s roof rack, right hand punching the windscreen in front of the driver’s face to try and star it.
The driver slammed on the brakes.
Calvary was flung up and across the roof, tumbling in a semi-somersault. His free hand scrabbled for purchase but there was none. He bounced off the raised back of the station wagon and smashed into the road surface, the impact winding him. He rolled twice on the tarmac, wondering vaguely why he was on fire, realising the stinking plumes of rubbery smoke were from the car’s tyres.