He broke off to shout at the staff and customers of the café to stay down. He looked around, searching for the pair, and saw one of the waitresses pointing towards the kitchen. He peered through the access hatch, saw the door swinging at the other end.
‘Where does it go?’ he barked at the waitress.
‘S-service corridor,’ the waitress stammered.
Santana cursed again, getting back on his radio. ‘Team members to enter eastern service corridor,’ he shouted as he ran through the kitchen, kicking the door open at the other end.
He turned into the passage and saw the man and woman racing away, footsteps echoing off the concrete. Immediately he opened fire again, spraying the corridor with bullets.
Alyssa heard the door opening behind them and instinctively grabbed Jack and dived for the floor. Keeping low, they started to crawl. She heard boots pounding behind them. Then another sound echoed from in front, and she looked up to see three more men enter the corridor ahead of them, rifles up and aimed.
She tried to resist as Jack pulled her up off the floor, flinching as the soldier behind and the three in front opened fire, concrete erupting around her as the high-powered rounds chewed up the passageway.
Santana watched as Murray managed to pull the woman up, narrowly avoiding the gunfire as they slammed through another access door. Dammit! Where the hell did that door lead?
‘Louis,’ he spoke over his radio, ‘do we have CCTV feeds through here?’
‘Negative,’ Louis reported. ‘No surveillance in the service areas.’
‘Schematics?’ he asked as he ran down the corridor, meeting his colleagues at the access door. ‘Blueprints?’ He signalled his men to get after the targets.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ came the reply.
His men kicked through the door into the room beyond, guns at the ready. There was a yell as the first man to enter the dark chamber tumbled down a flight of stairs. The second man flicked on a torch and shone it down the narrow staircase.
When the soldier came to rest at the bottom, Santana had no sympathy. ‘Joe,’ he called down after him. ‘Can you see anything down there?’
Joe got unsteadily to his feet, turned on his torch and scanned the area. ‘Nothing,’ he called back up. ‘There’s nothing down here.’
Damn. Santana took out his cell phone and called Colonel Anderson.
Idiot. What was Santana doing? Anderson cursed to himself. He wasn’t even airborne yet, still on his way to commandeer the fast jet stationed at the airport which would get him to the city in a little over three hours, and he had to rely on men like this? Santana had been a proven combat vet, once upon a time. Obviously, his time in the reserves had made him soft. The man had lost his edge. Tomkin had wanted to keep things low-key if they could – the less people involved the better, it was felt, which was why Anderson had contacted some of his own people in the city to deal with Durham and Murray. But now he got on to the terminal’s chief of security, a civilian but nominally in charge of all of the units currently on patrol in his building – over a hundred armed men and women. It was time to activate them.
In the dark, Jack and Alyssa had also fallen head over heels down the concrete staircase.
Alyssa had fallen right on top of Jack and bounced off the other side, bursting through another door they may never otherwise have seen. Jack groaned in pain but managed to pull himself to his feet and haul himself through the narrow opening. Once through, he wedged the door shut tight.
This corridor was narrow, and Alyssa could feel both walls with her hands. There was still no light, and she felt her way by touch, ignoring the sounds coming from the room behind them. Ahead she could see a very faint, hazy light. Was it another door? She edged forward cautiously, but no more light came through; it just remained a vague fuzz. Then she bumped into something hard. Her hands went up, feeling ahead of her. Metal. It was another door.
Her fingers quickly scoured the surface for a handle, her hands sweaty now as she heard the door behind her being forced. They’d be trapped like rats if they didn’t get out quickly.
And then she found it, a metal lever. She yanked it up and spilled out through the door, instantly blinded by lights and deafened by the sound of a blasting horn.
Jack grabbed her as the subway train shot past, just inches from her face. Her whole body shook, rippling in Jack’s hands as the high-speed vehicle blasted through the tunnel.
And then it was gone, leaving her reeling. Jack pulled her round, slapping her face lightly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to go. Now!’
Alyssa nodded her head, forcing herself to regain control. Jack pulled the metal door shut behind them and they raced over the tracks, careful not to touch the electrified rails, heading for the door on the other side of the illuminated tunnel. As they reached it, they saw the lights of another train barrelling towards them, the scream of its engines filling the enclosed space.
Alyssa tugged at the door lever but it wouldn’t move. She felt Jack’s body pressing against her, squashing her against the door, and then the train was going past them. Jack’s body was buffeted by the train’s slipstream, threatening to rip him from the door frame, but he hung on for dear life, protecting her, until the train was gone.
She tugged the lever one more time with every ounce of strength she had left, and at last it opened, on to another narrow access corridor.
They pushed through, running for their lives.
‘We’ve lost them.’
Santana’s words came through to Anderson over the satellite phone, and he clenched his fists in rage. ‘You’ve lost them?’ He struggled to control himself. ‘Could you please explain to me how one hundred armed, trained professionals can lose two untrained civilians?’
‘They got into the subway system,’ Santana explained. ‘There’s no surveillance down there, no way to track them.’
Anderson was disgusted. But he also felt something else – fear. The consequences of the pair escaping were too much to handle. If they got word out about Spectrum Nine, he, Jeffries, Tomkin, Breisner – they’d all be sent to jail. And Anderson was not going to allow himself to be put in jail.
‘Do I have to do your job for you?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘If you can’t find them in the tunnels, you monitor the CCTV coverage at the stations and you post your people on the exits for when the pair finally emerge, which they will have to do at some stage. Can you do that?’
Santana replied in the affirmative, and Anderson grunted as he cut the connection. Amateurs. He was counting down the minutes until he could land in the city and take over the manhunt himself.
17
JACK AND ALYSSA emerged back on to the city streets less than an hour after they’d entered the tunnel system.
For almost thirty minutes they had wandered the concrete service corridors – some lit, others pitch black; some wide, others barely big enough to push through side on. There was no way to navigate and soon they had become hopelessly lost. So when they had stumbled out of a door on to another track, they decided to trace their way down it until it met a platform. Luckily the timing had been good, and they hadn’t had to dive out of the way of any oncoming trains.
As they neared the platform, they heard human voices, dozens of them, raised in anger. A small-scale riot seemed to have broken out. As they emerged from the tunnel they saw people armed with knives and bottles trying to attack a cordon of riot police, who pushed back against them with their shields and batons.
Jack and Alyssa both saw the cameras mounted on the platform walls and instinctively lowered their heads. A train came along then and stopped at the platform. Those who were going to get off here thought better of it and backed away inside as scared commuters pushed and shoved their way on to the train, Jack and Alyssa among them. The doors closed and the train pulled away, leaving the violence and chaos behind.
Feeling safe at last within the crush of other passengers, Alyssa took Jack’s hand and squeezed it.
>
The next station was much quieter, and there were no armed guards on the platform; perhaps all personnel near the scene of the riot had been called on to help quell it.
Jack and Alyssa stepped off the train and made straight for the ticket barriers. They were stopped by a ticket officer, but Alyssa told him they’d come from the riot on the next platform and had lost their tickets in the confusion. The officer, obviously used to such stories over the past few days, simply sighed and buzzed them through. There were more important things to worry about, it seemed.
‘Where are we?’ asked Jack as they emerged into the bright light of day. Alyssa just turned and pointed across the main road. There, opposite them, was the central park, famous around the world. ‘Well, how’d I miss that?’ he asked brightly, trying to dispel the fear and desperation that had been filling him.
‘So what now?’ Alyssa asked, looking around for cops or soldiers.
‘Right now, we stop a taxi and get the hell out of the city,’ Jack said.
Alyssa nodded. A taxi wouldn’t be monitored in the same way as buses or trains – you didn’t need to buy tickets, for one thing – and the only person who would see you was the taxi driver.
‘A taxi’s fine for now,’ Alyssa said, raising her arm to flag one down, ‘but we might need to ditch it before we leave the city. There are roadblocks and security checks everywhere, and taxis are bound to get stopped.’ She lowered her arm as a yellow cab stopped in front of them. ‘We’ll take it as far as the city limits, then we may have to get past the security checks on foot.’
Jack nodded as he opened the door for her. Alyssa got in the back, and Jack slid in next to her.
The driver turned round in his seat. ‘Where to?’ he asked in a strong local accent. ‘Just so long as wherever it is, you ain’t gotta be there anytime soon, know what I mean?’
Alyssa and Jack smiled. ‘No problem,’ Alyssa said. ‘We can see how crazy things are. Just to the bridge will be fine, thanks.’ She would have liked to go further, but she realized that all choke points such as bridges would be monitored. Damn. How were they going to get out of the city?
The driver turned back to face the road ahead. ‘Damn shame what’s happening to this city if you ask me,’ he said as he indicated to turn into the heavy traffic. ‘But it’s not the first time. I remember when—’
But Jack and Alyssa would never hear what the man was going to say, as the back of his head exploded towards them, his brain spraying through the chicken wire grill and covering their faces with greasy, bright-red blood.
It was a shame he’d had to kill the cab driver, Santana thought as he raced with four of his men towards the car; but he couldn’t afford for the man to pull out and his prey to escape. Not after it had taken him so long to find them.
But now, trapped in an immobile vehicle, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel; he’d simply run over and empty his magazine into the two fugitives through the window.
The pair had been picked up by CCTV footage as they emerged from the tunnel on to the station platform – Anderson had arranged for facial recognition software to be connected to the city’s system in order to quickly identify them. They had tried to hide their faces after they’d spotted the cameras, but by then it was too late.
They were tracked getting on to the train, and then cameras were monitored at the next platform along the route, where they were seen exiting. The station personnel had been sent over to help control the riot, but Santana was there with some of his men on foot in a matter of minutes.
He ignored the screams from fearful bystanders, who threw themselves for cover behind parked cars, and just kept his attention on the taxi, its windscreen now shattered and smeared with blood. His men were close behind him, their own weapons raised.
But then he heard the sound of the vehicle’s engine gunning, and the taxi was moving, not waiting for a gap in the traffic but smashing its way out, knocking another car sideways as it accelerated towards him.
Santana couldn’t help the cry of panic that escaped his lips as he dived to the side, the taxi’s fender missing him by an inch.
Jack cried out he was thrown back into his seat, Alyssa wrenching up on the handbrake as she violently twisted the wheel all the way round.
The taxi slid across the road, oncoming vehicles having to jam on their brakes, as the cab made a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Now pointing in the opposite direction, Alyssa gunned the engine again and accelerated off down the busy city street, towards the oncoming traffic. She kept her hand on the horn, gratified that the cars, vans and bikes were all moving out of her way. She wasn’t going fast, but it was fast enough to get them away from the armed soldiers behind them.
‘Where are you going?’ Jack asked. He pulled the dead cab driver back through the broken grille to the rear seats and climbed over into the front passenger seat.
It was a good question. Where the hell was she going? She could already hear sirens behind her. How far could they hope to get in a stolen taxi without a windshield and with a corpse in the back, in a city that was on full military lockdown?
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said through gritted teeth as she forced the cab onwards, weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic, one hand glued to the horn. ‘But anywhere’s better than here.’
There was a break in the traffic, a slight easing in the number of vehicles coming towards them, and for a time Alyssa managed to surge forwards, travelling parallel to the park. But then the reason for the break became all too clear, and Jack and Alyssa watched in horror as a sixty-ton main battle tank turned a corner on to the wide boulevard in front of them.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Jack asked quietly.
18
THE TANKS HAD recently been brought into the city because of the growing unrest, more as a visual deterrent than anything else. It was never anticipated that they would be used but the sight of a sixty-ton hunk of armoured metal with a gun on top that looked as if could take out a small army on its own did wonders for crowd control.
Santana and his men were running down the street after the out-of-control taxi when the regular army M-251 main battle tank trundled on to the parkway ahead of them, its huge 120mm smoothbore cannon aimed down the street at the yellow cab.
Well, Santana had to admit, Colonel Anderson had certainly come through in spectacular style. Anderson was monitoring the situation and acting as the main point of liaison between the different security forces. Santana understood that General Tomkin had given the colonel temporary field command, and he was now authorized to do anything in his power to bring the two terrorists to justice.
Santana had seen what these tanks could do when he’d served in the Gulf. An armour-piercing flechette round had been fired at an enemy personnel carrier, and when Santana had arrived on the scene to arrest any survivors, he had been sickened by what he’d seen. The round had pierced the hull and created a vacuum inside the personnel compartment which instantly vaporized everything organic within it, air pressure sucking it back out of the vehicle. The image of the charred, burnt and bloody remains of the enemy soldiers that were scattered around the carrier had been forever imprinted on his memory. But – despite the devastation he knew such a weapon could create – he now wanted such a result. His eyes opened wide in anticipation.
Alyssa, too, had seen the devastation caused by such weapons during her own time in the Gulf; and she had also seen how the front end of the tanks gave a telltale lift a fraction of a second before they fired.
She kept on driving straight for the tank, even as its barrel swivelled towards them, locking on to its target. Closer, ever closer she drove, waiting for the front end to lift. If she missed it, she’d never know – they would both be dead instantly.
The cab was just four hundred feet away now, then three hundred, then—
The front end lifted and she yanked the wheel hard left. The gun fired, the ground shook with the sonic boom, and the cab mounted the kerb and smashed through a
thick row of bushes into the park beyond.
Santana watched in disbelief and horror as the taxi swerved left and disappeared into the park, and the tank’s 120mm high-velocity projectile streaked up the road towards him.
With a yell, he and his men dived for cover, heads down. Santana heard the explosion – could feel the heat from the blast – and when he looked up, all he could see were the smoking, devastated remains of a haulage truck.
He keyed his cellphone to speak to Anderson, unsure what to say, but the colonel spoke first.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘I already know. I want you and your men to locate transportation and be mobile in case the cab leaves the park. I’ve notified other units as well.’
‘Yes, sir. And the tank?’ Santana asked.
‘The crew has its orders,’ Anderson replied.
‘It’s following us!’ Jack yelled at Alyssa, twisting in his seat to look through the rear windscreen.
‘I know, I can hear it!’ Alyssa yelled back, swerving to avoid a family, then swerving again to avoid a teenager riding a bike.
The sound of the tank trampling bushes, trees and benches was tremendous. Day-trippers, alarmed by the sight of the yellow cab careening through the park, now scattered in every direction as the tank bore down on them.
Alyssa pushed the car hard, jumping hills and tearing through underbrush, all the while struggling to avoid people who still hadn’t fled the park. She gunned it between a gap in a row of high trees, gasping as she emerged on to a softball pitch. There were screams from all over as the players scrambled to safety, spectators dropping down behind their seats.
‘What the hell are people doing out playing softball?’ Jack yelled. ‘Don’t they know the city’s on lockdown?’ He grunted as the car hit a hillock on the far side of the pitch and he was tossed painfully in his seat.
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