“She’s like the sodding Terminator!” Lea muttered, squinting into her sights as she prepared to take the kill shot. “And she just will not bloody die!”
“She needs a long kiss with a piece of two-by-four,” Scarlet said. “And I’m just the gal to make it happen.”
But then Soto broke away and retreated. It looked like they had decided to run.
“Look!” Camacho shouted. “They’re splitting up!”
The CIA man was right. Mendoza and Soto were branching off to the left and skipping down the steps to the Theresienwiese U-Bahn station while Kruger, the Van Zyl brothers and their remaining thugs were desperately trying to weave their way further into the Oktoberfest crowd.
“They’re trying to break us up!” Holtz said through the comms.
“Fine with me,” Hawke called back.
“Et moi,” Reaper said. “I’m closest to the Mexicans so I’ll go after them.”
“Right with you,” Hawke said as he and the former legionnaire took off after the fleeing Mexicans.
Hawke felt the cold air in his lungs as he and the French merc pounded along the street and pushed pedestrians out the way as they pursued Mendoza and the idol. In a full-on sprint now to close the gap, Hawke was aware of the dangers to the public if Mendoza felt cornered, but there was no option other than to follow him into the station and down the steps. He descended into the U-Bahn tunnel and readied his weapon for a shootout.
In the beer-soaked heart of the Oktoberfest, Lea, ECHO and the rest of the Munich police were struggling to contain the panic as thousands of people began to stampede to the exits of the festival, bundling out of the beer tents and falling over each other with Pilsner glasses still gripped in their hands.
“What a waste,” Scarlet said
Lea desperately scanned the crowd. The people had been happy — half-cut on the finest range of beers in Europe and a good time was being had by all… but now terror was spreading like floodwater and things were getting out of control. Somewhere among the chaos was Dirk Kruger and the rest of his gang of looters.
And then they saw them.
They rushed forward, weaving in and out of the fleeing crowd and never taking their eyes off Kruger’s gang as they moved deeper into the Theresienwiese fairground. In the lead now alongside Scarlet, Lea saw she had a clear shot and raised her gun into the aim.
Kruger was clear in her sights as he, his Yes Man Van Zyl and a couple of other goons punched their way aggressively through the crowd and headed for the main beer tent.
“He’s over there!” Camacho called out.
“I have him!” Lea cried back, focussing through her gun sights.
“Do try and get the aim right this time, darling,” Scarlet said, raising her own gun.
“Get stuffed, Cairo.”
Gripping the Heckler & Koch MP5 in her hands, Lea unleashed a salvo of bullets into the walkway between two lines of beer tents. She took out one of the men in the rear but the others split and vanished inside one of the giant tents. More screaming now and overhead a police chopper began searching the crowd with a spotlight while someone inside was barking orders to calm down and leave the area calmly.
Lea cursed. Kruger and the Van Zyl brothers were once again lost in the shadows.
CHAPTER TEN
The U-Bahn was busier than Hawke expected, and by the time he and Reaper had run down the steps he was desperately searching over the heads of the travellers for the fleeing figures of Silvio Mendoza and Aurora Soto. He saw some movement to his left and they followed it just in time to see the Mexicans darting into the crowd waiting along the platform.
They weaved further along the amber-colored station, lit from above by a bright strip-light which ran the length of a gracefully curved ceiling. At the far end of the platform Mendoza and Soto were clambering onto a train that was pulling away from the station.
“Freeze!” Hawke yelled.
“They’re gone…” Reaper said.
Hawke’s mind was racing with ideas, but there was only one possible play.
Bloody hell..!
With his options restricted to jumping on the train or losing Mendoza in the Munich underground he started running along the platform. The train was nowhere near full speed and its doors were closing, so he knew he had only one chance, and when there was only one chance the only thing you could do was grab it with both hands and never let go.
He heard a burst of gunshots as Mendoza fired at him from further up the train and one of them nicked Reaper’s shoulder. He dived for cover but Hawke ran forward. The Mexican had jammed his foot in the door to give himself a gap through which to fire on the Englishman, but when the train started to slow in response to the open door alert he cut his losses and pulled his boot back in, allowing the door to close and the train began to gain speed again.
Almost level with the rear of the train as it accelerated away from the platform and prepared to vanish into the tunnel, Hawke leaped into the air with all his might and grabbed hold of a steel handle on the rear cab’s door. He felt a violent and powerful jerk on his shoulder as the train pulled away and had seconds to swing himself tight against the side of the carriage before the train blasted into the tunnel.
The stench of ammonia and brake dust blasted in his face as the wind in the tunnel buffeted him and almost forced him to release his grip on the door handle. He clung to the thin bar with all his might as the train gained speed and the noise in the tunnel escalated to a deafening roar.
You’re getting too old for this, sunshine.
To his horror, the train now swung around a sharp right hand bend and was now running at high speed alongside a second set of adjacent tracks where two lines came together.
He blinked the dust out of his eyes and stared down at the tracks while he got his breath back. Who knew hanging on to a moving train required such strength, he thought. At least there wasn’t a train coming on the other line because that would really screw up his day.
And then another train appeared on the adjacent tracks.
He pulled his gun from his belt. A risky move but it was all he had… he turned his face away from the cab’s window and fired three shots into the glass. He looked at his work and saw the pane of glass was still in the frame but it was shattered into thousands of pieces, so he took the butt of the gun and smacked it hard into the window until the force of his strikes bent a hole in the pane and then finally knocked the pane out of the frame.
It landed with a smack on the floor of the driver’s cabin and he had to make a snap decision. The train on the other tracks was racing toward him, so his best chance was to be inside the cab, but that meant heaving himself away from the side of the train in order to swing his legs inside, or diving inside head first and kicking his legs out, leaving them exposed to the other train.
He breathed out hard with the effort of the struggle and wondered exactly what his cut of the ten million dollars would be until he recalled Eden’s words to Ryan… it doesn’t work quite like that, Mr Bale…
The idea of getting hit with a collision force of the combined speeds of the two trains brought him into the moment, and it appealed to him about as much being fed alive to sharks. On the other hand, the idea of clinging to the side of the cab while the other train raced past seemed even less enticing. He took the risk and heaved himself up until his waist was level with the smashed window and then pushed his body out while he raised his legs to slide them inside the opening.