by Rob Jones
A few moments later the door opened a crack and they heard a man whispering something in Greek. The guard turned his head to his right to face the whispering man. He looked torn for a moment, but then the scent of fresh coffee wafting through the open door explained everything.
“So what now?” Jodie said.
“Now we wait,” Amy said. “I’ve called Jim and he’ll pull strings at the embassy.”
Hope flooded into Hunter’s eyes. “He can do that?”
“Jim?” Jodie said. “He can pull more strings than a banjo band. We’ll be out of here in minutes.”
When Papademos returned it was for the briefest of moments. “I’m sorry to tell you that the US Embassy cannot help you. Their role here tonight is to ensure your civil liberties and rights are not broken, and they will not be. Beyond that, they have little influence. At the end of the day, you have been arrested for murder and we have the eye witness testimony of several highly trusted counter-terrorist officers. The Italian authorities also want to speak with you. The Marquis was a very powerful and important man.”
“You have no idea,” Amy mumbled.
“I’m sorry?” said Papademos.
“Nothing.”
“And it was self-defence!” Quinn said.
He looked unfazed. “This is why we have courts, Agent Mosley. You will make your defense in the courts, not here and not tonight.”
“So much for Jim Gates and his Banjo Band,” Hunter said.
“Give him time, Max,” Blanco said. “These things can be sensitive.”
“And in the meantime, we’re screwed,” Jodie said. “Damn, I wish I had a smoke. Hey, Mr Papademos, you got a cigarette?”
He looked down at her, his face shaded by shock mixed with a grudging respect at her bravery. “Yes, but not for you, Agent Priest.”
“So what now?” Amy asked. “What happens to us now?”
“Tonight you will be transferred to Korydallos Prison where you will await trial for your crimes. You will, of course, have access to legal advice.”
“Is that a men’s prison?” Quinn asked. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Korydallos houses men and women, Agent Mosley. It’s on the western outskirts of the city, not far from here.” He checked his watch. “You will be there in less than an hour, after processing at both ends.”
Papademos left the team behind, firmly clicking the door behind him. Moments later, the young guard skipped out to grab his coffee.
Quinn was first to speak. “This is what they call a bad development, Amy.”
“I get that, Quinn,” she said impatiently. “But what else can we do? Besides, he’s right. Yes, it was self-defense, but we still shot those men. That means a trial. Damn it all!”
Hunter shook his head, a look of disappointment on his face. “O, ye of little faith.”
Amy felt her heart quicken. “What is it, Max? What’s in that devious mind of yours?”
“Matthew 8:26 by the sound of it,” Lewis said with a shrug.
“What’s on my mind is that in a few minutes, we’re getting processed out of here. Korydallos might be a prison for men and women but obviously it’s going to have a men’s section and a woman’s section. When we get there, we get split by sex. Then, we’ll get split up again individually and given separate cells.”
“You are so damned good at lifting my mood, Hunter,” Jodie said. “Please, go on.”
He ignored her, but couldn’t resist a smile. “None of that has happened yet and we’re in here on our own.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Here being an underground interview room in an Athens police station, surrounded by armed guards.”
“Underground, but not completely.” Without turning away from them, he raised his hand above his head and pointed to a grille on the ceiling behind him. A broad smile appeared on his face. “See that? That’s a ventilation shaft. All subterranean spaces must have them. It’s basic civil engineering.”
“An airshaft!” Quinn said. “We can get out in the airshaft! I think I love you, Max.”
“Not so fast,” Amy said. “We’re not doing any of your crazy Indiana Jones stunts that end up with us getting trapped in an aircon duct, Max. This is my team, and we’re not winding up in tomorrow’s headlines.”
“I can see it now,” Quinn said. “Acropolis Killers Shot Dead in Bungled Vent Shaft Escape Attempt.”
“Thanks, Quinn!” Amy said. “The image really enhances my fears.”
“Welcome.”
Amy wasn’t placated. “And another thing. If we do this then we’re outlaws, at least in Greece.”
“So?” Jodie said.
“Think it through, Jodie. First, our line of work makes Greece somewhere we might need to visit again. Second, it’s not going to take Captain Papademos very long to have our flight cancelled and third, he has our passports.”
Jodie shrugged. “So get Jim to issue new passports and we’ll pick them up someplace on the way.”
“We could do that,” Amy said, thinking things through more carefully now. “And the second we get out of here, we need to have him contact the pilots of the Gulfstream and change the flight plan – get us off the manifest. That way when Papademos finds out how we entered the country there won’t be any reason to impound the jet. It’s US Government property anyway. He’ll never go there.”
“We’re still not getting into an airport without passports,” Quinn said. “Think that through.”
“So how the hell do we get to Patmos?” Lewis asked. “Quinn’s right – we can’t exactly shoot our way into Athens International Airport and burn out of here in a jet. That’s terrorist stuff. They’d probably send fighters up to shoot us down or something. Without the jet, we’re screwed.”
“Not necessarily,” Blanco said. “There’s a ferry that sails to Patmos.” All heads swivelled to him and he gave a self-effacing shrug in response. “I looked it up on my phone when Kostas told us about the Cave of the Apocalypse. Hell of a lot easier sneaking on board a ferry than getting into an airport, especially with our skillset.”
Jodie nodded with approval. “Why didn’t you think of that, Hunter?”
“We don’t have time for this, is what I think,” said the Englishman. “We need to get these cuffs off.”
“Easy,” Jodie said, removing a hairpin. “I wear these for a reason.”
The team watched in amazement as the young thief bent the pin into a hook and carefully picked open the cuffs with nimble, fast-working fingers.
“That was incredible,” Lewis said, rubbing his wrist.
“Not my first time,” she said with a wink. “What about you, Hunter? Aren’t you going to thank me?”
Hunter said nothing. He was already scraping the table over the floor and positioning it beneath the plastic grille embedded in the ceiling tiles.
“Didn’t think so,” she said, shrugging and replacing the hairpin.
He wasn’t listening. He had already climbed onto the table, gently punched the grille out of the ceiling tiles and was manipulating it out of the way. He pulled himself up into the shaft, holding himself up with some considerable arm strength for a few seconds and then returned with a smile on his face. “We can get through here. Sal, take one of the chairs and wedge it under the door handle. That should buy us a few more seconds when they try and get in here.”
“Sure thing, Max.”
Amy heard a noise at the door. She spun around and saw the handle move down. Someone was opening the door. She lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “Sal!”
Blanco was already at the door, hand curled into a meaty fist. It opened to reveal the face of one of the younger guards. He looked tired and bored, forced to deal with a bunch of foreigners on the midnight shift. Blanco didn’t care. He piled his fist into the young man’s face and sent him tumbling back outside into the corridor.
Quinn screamed.
Amy gasped and slammed the door shut.
Blanco slid the
chair’s top rail under the handle and dusted his hands off. “I might be wrong, but I think we just crossed a line.”
“What are we working with up there, Max?” Amy asked.
“It’s big enough to crawl in,” he called back. “Horizontal for a few meters and then a bigger vertical shaft with a ladder fixed to the wall. Probably some sort of utility shaft to access any problems with the air-conditioning system, by the looks of it. Must go up to the roof.”
“It’ll do,” she said.
Then they all heard someone hammering on the door. Loud, aggressive shouting in Greek was followed by the sound of someone kicking the door. Then it went quiet.
“Maybe they got bored and gave up?” Quinn asked.
A gunshot ripped through the door’s top panel and buried itself in the clock on the wall. Amy stared up at the shattered face and felt her stomach turn. “Yeah, I don’t think so, Quinn.” Turning to see Hunter’s legs disappearing up into the shaft, she ran over to the table and looked up as his head appeared upside down in the vent.
“Are you coming with me, or are you just going to leave me hanging around?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Quinn first,” Amy said.
Hunter’s hand now appeared. “C’mon, Quinn!”
He helped her up and with no more room in the shaft, they crawled out of sight toward the bigger vertical shaft.
“You next, Jodie,” Amy said.
Behind them, Lewis and Blanco were holding the chair up against the door with their boots while keeping their heads out of the line of fire. Another round burst through the door, showering them with a misty cloud of wood dust and splinters.
“You want to draw straws for who goes up next?” Lewis said.
“No,” said Blanco. “Amy goes up next, and then you do.”
Amy knew there was no point in arguing, and pulled herself up into the shaft.
Blanco squinted as another round blasted what was left of the top panel into powdery matchwood. The chair they had wedged up under the handle was too heavy and in too tight. The more they pushed against the door, the more they pushed its legs into the floor and strengthened it, but both men knew it would eventually give way. “We need something else.” Blanco said, pointing to a spare table beside the door. He and Lewis muscled the table over and wedged it up against the chair blocking the door. “That should help. Time to go, Ben.”
“You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”
“How well you know me, young man.”
Lewis scrambled onto the other table and climbed up into the shaft.
On his own in the interview room, Blanco leaned his head around the obliterated door panel and counted three guards. Turning, he saw the angle was too acute for them to get a clear shot at the vent. From the way the chair was still wedged under the handle, it looked like he had maybe twenty seconds to get to the end of the room and up into the shaft before they could get a lethal shot off.
Away he went, sprinting across the room and vaulting up onto the interview table. He heard the door crash open and men shouting in Greek. Arms up into the shaft and fingers gripping the wooden beams running around the vent opening, he heaved himself up into the conduit. Bullets traced past his vanishing boots but he was already inside and crawling along the metal shaft.
“How’s it going, Sal?”
He craned his head up and saw Amy at the end of the shaft. She was clinging to the metal ladder Hunter had described. There was no sign of the others. “Get going, Amy! They’re right behind me.”
She took the hint and climbed up out of sight on the ladder. Blanco was right behind her, pulling himself out of the horizontal shaft and swinging up onto the ladder. Behind him, one of the Greek police officers was scrambling along the tunnel.
“Hurry, Sal!”
He was just out of sight of the police now, with his boots just above the level of the horizontal shaft. “Keep going! I have an idea.”
As Hunter led the rest of the team up out of sight toward the roof, Blanco waited for the Greek man’s head to appear. Then, he booted him in the face and knocked him out. “Sorry,” he said, and meant it. “But that stops any of your buddies coming through the shaft until they can drag you back out of the way.”
He reached down and took his gun, an eight-shot Ruger GP100 revolver. He smelled it and knew it had been recently fired. No surprises there. Popping open the cylinder he counted six shots. Looking up, he saw Lewis reach the top of the ladder and step out of sight. After a few moments climbing, he reached the top of the ladder and found himself standing inside a concrete bulkhead. The small, boxlike utility room gave access to the roof via a fire door, which Lewis was holding open.
“Nice of you to join us,” Amy said. “What happened?”
“I needed a kickstart.”
She frowned. “On second thoughts, I don’t want to know.”
He turned and slammed the door shut. “Won’t take them long to get through and open it,” he said. “And they’ll know the shaft leads up here anyway, so they’ll be all over us in seconds.”
With the sights and sounds of downtown Athens buzzing around the police station, Hunter was scouting the outer edge of the roof to find an escape route. Then, they all heard someone pounding on the bulkhead door.
“Faster than I thought,” Blanco said.
“We need a way out of here, Max!” Amy shouted. “And fast.”
The police in the bulkhead tried to shoulder-barge the door, but Blanco and Lewis were leaning hard against it.
“Metal door,” Blanco said. “Not shooting through this one.”
“It’s not going to be long before they get up here another way,” Amy muttered.
“The only way is over the roof,” Jodie said. She had been quietly studying the layout of the buildings and now she knew what to do. “The police station is part of a long terrace of buildings running along the road below us to our left. We go over the roofs to the end of the terrace and climb down. It’s a nightclub with a balcony halfway down. I remember from the drive in.”
“Only a thief remembers things like that,” Quinn said.
Jodie turned to her. “Then it’s a good job I’m here, egghead.”
They heard several police officers out in the street below them. They were shouting at them, probably orders to give themselves up, Amy thought. “Arguments later,” she said. “We do what Jodie says – get going!”
“And stay down!” Jodie said, turning away from the them.
She and Hunter led the way, climbing up over a concrete wall and then jumping down onto the roof of the next building along. The rest of the team followed below them, with Blanco at the rear. Running up a gable, the big man from Brooklyn heard a bullet trace past him and vanish in the night. He dropped into a crouch and turned, firing over the heads of the police. It was a deliberate warning shot and it worked, driving the men back inside the building to regroup and think again.
“We don’t have long,” he called out. “And when they come back they’re going to be armed like a SWAT team.”
Jodie was already climbing down the nightclub’s façade. Quinn, Lewis and Amy joined her on the second floor balcony. When Hunter and Blanco swung down onto it, they found the others mingling with dozens of people holding drinks. Red and purple lighting from inside the building strobed over their faces in rhythm with a deep bass beat.
Wrapping his arms around Amy’s waist, Hunter said, “Can we stay for just one song?”
She rolled her eyes. “Go down!”
“All I wanted was a dance!” he said.
“To the next balcony, Max!”
But he was already leaning over the wrought iron balustrade and scanning for the next way down to the sidewalk. Finding a solid iron drainpipe bolted to the wall beside the balcony, he found what he was looking for and started climbing. Jodie, Quinn and Lewis followed him and then Amy and Blanco at the rear. Reacquainted with terra firma, the HARPA team searched for a vehicle.
&nbs
p; Jodie spied a BMW SUV parked up over the road, but Quinn had a better idea. Seeing a seven-seater taxi outside the nightclub, she hailed it over to them and then they were away, driving nice and slowly. Lost in the traffic and with no sign of the police behind them, Amy finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where do you need to go?” the driver asked.
“The Acropolis,” Amy said.
The driver turned, making the vinyl seat squeak. “It will be closed.”
“We need to go a house nearby.”
Jodie looked at her. “Huh?”
“I need to get my bag,” Quinn said. “I left it in the Nitro before we went into Kostas’s villa. No bag, no computer.”
They swung by Venizelos’s place, grateful for Jodie’s advice to leave the SUV parked in the street behind the villa. Police had cordoned off the road leading to the dead professor’s house and there was a marked car parked up outside it, but the next road along was untouched. The cab driver cruised past and pulled up at Amy’s instructions some distance from the Nitro. Far enough away not to see the blown-out tires.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Quinn said.
When she returned, she had her bag over shoulder. Hopping back into the Mercedes, she buckled her seatbelt and blew a lock of hair away from her eyes. “We can go.”
“But where?” asked the driver.
“Head out of town,” Blanco said. “West.”
“This is…” the driver searched for the right English word. “Vague.”
“West,” Blanco repeated.
They drove out of the city, using the quiet, subdued half hour to get their thoughts back together. Deep in the labyrinth of back streets in Neo Faliro, Blanco put the policeman’s revolver to the driver’s head. “Pull over and get out.”
Genuine shock flashed over the man’s face as he complied with the order. Blanco didn’t enjoy doing it, but there was no other way. Sooner or later, the driver would work out he had shuttled foreign fugitives to the ferry port and would give the information to the police. Then, they would go through CCTV and if they found them on the ferry, they would make the next step: that they had gone to Patmos – and as Venizelos had told them before his murder, it was not a big place.