by James Becker
‘What?’
‘We’ve got problems. That wasn’t just a blow-out on that tyre. There’s a sniper somewhere on that hill over to our left, and I’m guessing we’re his target. Now he’s got a clear shot at us and there’s nowhere we can go.’
Angela stared at him.
‘Dear God,’ she murmured. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Hold on and hope for the best,’ Bronson snapped.
Bronson hit the brakes hard, dropping the speed of the car dramatically, then floored the accelerator pedal again.
‘What are you doing?’ Angela asked, her voice high with tension.
‘If I keep going at a steady speed, that’ll make us an easy target. If I’m erratic, he won’t know how much lead to allow.’
He braked again, and at the moment he did so there was a crack from directly in front of the car, and a small spray of disturbed tarmac rose into the air as a bullet impacted with the road surface a short distance over to their right.
Immediately Bronson accelerated hard.
‘That was another bullet,’ he said.
He braked again, and swerved from side to side, swinging the car into the centre lane before diving back over towards the hard shoulder and accelerating.
In his concealed perch on the hillside to the west of the autovia, Miguel cursed again as he watched the Renault saloon dance and jiggle around through the magnified optics of his telescopic sight. Obviously the driver had realized what was going on, and was doing his best to make the car as difficult a target as possible. And he was, the Spaniard had to concede, making a pretty good job of it.
One of the most difficult shots for any sniper is a fast moving target crossing at right angles to the line of fire, and the degree of difficulty is enormously magnified if that target isn’t moving at a steady speed.
Miguel picked his moment and fired again, but even as he squeezed the trigger he knew the bullet would miss, because again the car braked unexpectedly. He worked the bolt again, chambering the last cartridge from the four-round magazine, and adjusted his aim once more.
As the weaving Renault loomed in his telescopic sight again, Miguel came to a decision. His chances of hitting one of the tyres while the driver was actively trying to avoid proceeding at anything approaching a steady speed were almost nil. It was time to forget about the ‘accident’ scenario and simply take out the two occupants of the car. His people would just have to sort out the resulting mess as best they could.
He shifted his aim, lifting the barrel of the rifle slightly so that the graticule of his telescopic sight was pointing directly at the middle of the driver’s side window, and at the shadowy figure behind the glass. Miguel allowed what he thought was the right lead, and squeezed the trigger.
And that shot, he knew, was a good one.
98
Bronson braked heavily, still continuing his erratic evasive action. As he did so, there was a loud bang. The car shuddered as the bullet from the sniper’s rifle ripped into the thin metal of the bonnet and ploughed its way out through the right front wing.
Angela squealed in fear and clutched at Bronson’s right arm as she saw the metal tear open just inches in front of the windscreen.
‘Are you OK?’ Bronson asked anxiously, glancing at her as he again started to weave and accelerate.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. God, he’s going to get us!’
Bronson checked the instruments, in case the bullet had ruptured a hydraulic line or torn apart a section of the electrical system, but saw no abnormal readings.
He braked firmly, then accelerated again, keeping his foot hard down on the pedal, and swung the car over to the left, almost into the southbound, left-hand lane of the road and drove straight towards the oncoming traffic.
‘What are you doing now?’ Angela demanded, stifling a gasp, her eyes wide and staring as a maroon-coloured saloon car swept past them in the opposite direction, the driver’s hand pressed firmly on the horn.
‘Trying to save our lives,’ Bronson said. ‘Hang on.’
He braked hard again, twitched the steering wheel to the right, and then accelerated as hard as he could.
Miguel knew that his last shot had hit the car, but he didn’t know where. He’d been expecting to see the side window shatter, but that hadn’t happened. It was possible the bullet had dropped further than he’d expected, but the car was continuing with undiminished speed, so presumably the round hadn’t hit the engine or any other vital component. He still had to stop it, somehow.
Miguel shook another four rounds out of the box of ammunition on the ground beside him, fed all of them into the magazine as quickly as he could, loaded the first cartridge and immediately brought the rifle back to the aim. In under half a second, the now familiar shape of the Renault saloon filled his telescopic sight and again he concentrated on nothing but the sight picture.
And now, it looked as if the driver was trying to rely just on speed to get away from the ambush, because the car seemed to be accelerating steadily, no sign of braking or even weaving.
Miguel smiled slightly. That, he knew, was definitely a big mistake. He didn’t care how fast the car was travelling: there was no way it could outrun a bullet from his rifle. He allowed a little more lead to account for the increased speed of the target, took a breath, released about half of it to still his breathing, checked the sight picture once more, and squeezed the trigger.
Then the nose of the Renault dipped again under braking, but Miguel knew the driver had reacted too late.
99
Bronson transferred his foot from the brake to the accelerator pedal, slammed the gear lever into third, and continued to drive the car as fast as he possibly could. He’d seen their possible salvation.
‘I thought you needed to brake and weave,’ Angela asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘Why are you going so fast?’
Bronson kept both hands on the steering wheel, and gestured with his chin.
‘To get alongside them,’ he replied, ‘as quickly as possible. He won’t be able to shoot through them.’
Angela stared through the windscreen as realization dawned.
‘And I never even saw them coming,’ she said.
Miguel recoiled involuntarily from the rifle. Something totally unexpected had just happened. He’d been expecting to see the impact of the bullet on the driver’s door – he had no doubt that that last shot would end the matter – but instead his sight picture had suddenly filled with a flat white object moving across his field of vision with a blur of speed.
He looked up, away from the telescopic sight and realized in that instant precisely why the driver of the car had been travelling so fast and with minimal evasion. Heading south, down the western side of the autovia, was a long line of articulated lorries, a rolling bulletproof shield that would protect the target vehicle until it was almost certainly out of range. With the trucks doing perhaps seventy to eighty kilometres an hour downhill and heading south, and with the car on the other side of the autovia heading north at – probably – by now well over 120 kilometres an hour, Miguel knew he had no chance of hitting it in the split second gaps when the car might be fleetingly visible to him.
For a moment, he wondered where his last bullet had hit, but in a few moments it became perfectly obvious. The driver of the leading truck switched on his hazard warning lights and began braking the vehicle to a halt on the hard shoulder just off the carriageway. Miguel swung his rifle around so that he could take a look at it through the telescopic sight, and the hole in the right-hand side of the truck’s engine compartment was immediately obvious. His shot had been good, he knew that, but in that fraction of a second before it should have hit the Renault saloon, the lorry had simply driven into the bullet’s path.
Miguel didn’t hesitate. As soon as the driver of the truck saw the bullet hole, he would know exactly what had happened and would immediately call the police. It would take them time to get there, but he needed to be long gone from the hillside before
that happened. The car was by now out of range and invulnerable. Cursing, he unloaded the rifle and slipped it into the carrying case, picked up the ammunition and all of the spent cartridges that had been ejected from the weapon, and made his way as quickly as he could off the hill.
He’d have to make the call straight away. Now it would all depend on what forces they would have time to mobilize against this man and woman in France. But that wasn’t his problem.
100
The posted speed limit at the entrance to the Somport Tunnel was 80 kilometres per hour. As Bronson turned on the headlamps and swung the Renault around the gentle left-hand curve that led into the tunnel entrance, the car was travelling at almost double that, well over 140 kilometres an hour. He applied the brakes and the Renault immediately began to slow.
‘Are we safe now?’ Angela asked.
‘I hope so,’ Bronson replied. ‘This tunnel crosses the mountains and comes out north of the Pyrenees. We should be out before they can get people there. Unless there’s someone posted there already …’
A little under six minutes after Bronson had driven the Renault into the southern end of the tunnel, they drove out into bright late-afternoon sunshine in France with a total lack of drama or excitement. Nobody shot at them, and no cars followed them, a situation which continued all the way down the valley until they reached Oloron-Sainte-Marie, where Bronson finally began to feel safe.
‘They won’t find us now,’ he said, ‘unless we’re really unlucky. There are just too many roads that we could take – there’s no possible way they can cover every one.’
‘So what now?’ Angela asked. ‘Do you want to stop somewhere here?’
Bronson shook his head.
‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘We’ll drive on for a while and get to the north of Pau and Tarbes, deep into the countryside. Then we’ll find a small hotel and stop for the night. These days, you don’t have to show a passport or any form of identification at French hotels, and we’ll pay cash, so as long as the car isn’t visible from the road we should be safe enough.’
About two hours later, Bronson drove into a layby just outside Cadours and did what he could to conceal the damage the sniper’s bullet had done to the car, knocking the twisted metal more or less back into shape and smearing mud over it.
Then they drove on, continuing north-east into the countryside, finally finding a room in a quiet chambre d’hôte not far from Carmaux. It was approached by a long drive, and not even the house was visible from the road.
The room was a large double with a tiny balcony facing west, and they enjoyed the luxury of sitting on it to watch the last rays of the sun sink below the horizon while they ate the baguette and blue cheese Bronson had bought in a garage en route. It wasn’t a gourmet dinner by any standard, but it tasted as good as anything either of them had ever eaten before.
Then they fell into bed together and made love with the kind of desperation that only comes when both parties realize that it might be for the very last time.
101
Early that evening, Antonio Morini again left the Vatican, his mobile phone in one pocket of his civilian jacket. He had followed his usual timetable earlier that afternoon, and sat in a café for half an hour, waiting and hoping for a call from Tobí in Madrid, but had heard nothing.
When he’d finally tried calling the Spaniard’s mobile, the system told him that it was unavailable. That in itself could have been encouraging, because it might mean that they’d found and stopped Bronson and Lewis in some remote area of the Pyrenees. On the other hand, it could also mean that Tobí had nothing to report, and had turned off his phone to avoid having to talk to him. Or it could mean something much worse …
And that was why the Italian had decided to make one further call, later in the day than his timetable dictated, to try to find out what was going on.
This time, Tobí answered almost immediately, but what he had to report was exactly what Morini hadn’t wanted to hear.
‘They’re in France,’ the Spaniard said immediately they were connected. ‘I’d positioned a team on the road to stop them close to the border, but they were lucky and got through. My shooter is certain he hit the car, but he obviously didn’t do enough damage to stop it.’
Morini felt sick to his stomach. Another failure. ‘Where did they cross the border?’
‘North of a place called Jaca. The closest city in France to that location is Pau. But to save you asking the question, I have no idea where they might be now. From Pau there are autoroutes and fast roads going north, east and west and they could easily have reached Toulouse or Bordeaux within an hour or so of crossing the border, or taken some of the minor roads and lost themselves in the depths of the French countryside. I hope you have some surveillance teams in place already in France, because if you haven’t I think the only way you’ll be able to catch up with these people now is to intercept them when they try to cross the Channel.’
‘We were relying on you and your men to stop them,’ Morini said tightly, his anger and irritation showing.
‘We did our best,’ Tobí replied, ‘and we very nearly had them. They just got lucky.’ He paused for a moment, then continued. ‘When you do catch up with these two, let me take care of Bronson. You owe me that much.’
‘You had your chance and you failed.’
‘Somebody is going to pay for that, so if I can’t get to Bronson, I promise I’ll get to you instead.’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Morini snapped, ‘and do not contact me again,’ he finished, and ended the call.
And then he knew he had no option. He had to call the Englishman.
As always, his call was answered in a matter of seconds, and he quickly relayed what the Spaniard had told him, finishing with the unwelcome news that the fugitives were now somewhere in France, and almost certainly safe from detection, at least until they tried to cross the Channel.
The Englishman’s voice was cold and hard when he replied.
‘I will ensure that suitable retribution follows this fiasco,’ he snapped. ‘Now, we know they’re in France. I will alert three of our operatives there and then you can call each in turn with my orders. Even we don’t have the manpower to cover France, but it will be a different matter when they try to cross the Channel. And if they do manage to get across to England, I have another plan. Anything else?’
‘Only that your man in Spain threatened me if he wasn’t allowed to take care of the male fugitive. Apparently one of the casualties in Madrid was his brother.’
The Englishman snorted.
‘I’ll handle that,’ he said, and ended the call.
Within half an hour, Morini had received the text and made the calls, passing on the orders he’d been given. He’d received assurances from each of the three French members of P2 that surveillance operations would be put in place to cover all modes of transport leaving France.
Morini finished by talking to the P2 man in Paris, François.
‘The one thing you haven’t told me is what you want to happen to these two people if and when we manage to find them,’ François said.
Morini didn’t hesitate this time.
‘They are expendable. But the most important thing is the relic. That must either be recovered and handed to me or utterly destroyed, with proof. There are no acceptable alternatives.’
François appeared unsurprised at the Italian’s instructions.
‘That’s very clear, but you must also be aware that the price will be higher because of the greater risks involved.’
Morini hadn’t expected that question, but there was really only one possible answer.
‘The budget is effectively unlimited, as long as you succeed.’
102
Breakfast was exactly what they needed – a choice of strong coffee or hot chocolate, croissants and a couple of small pains au raisin, fruit and yoghurt – and they cleared the lot. Bronson paid the bill in cash, and they were back on the road by just before
eight in the morning.
After travelling slowly for four hours on minor roads, weaving through village after village, they stopped for lunch: another selection of sandwiches purchased in a cafeteria attached to a small service area, washed down by moderately suspect coffee.
‘God knows what this service station food is doing to my complexion,’ Angela muttered as she swallowed the last of her chicken sandwich. ‘I’d kill for a nice crisp salad. I’ll be really glad to get home, I can tell you that. How are we going to get across the Channel?’
‘Probably a ferry. The danger with the Tunnel is that it’s an entirely closed environment. If we’re spotted when we drive onto the train, or even when we’re waiting to embark in the car park, there’s nowhere for us to go. At least on a ferry I’ll have room to manoeuvre. The problem is that the Channel is a choke point, just like the Pyrenees, but even more restricted. And we have to cross it and get back to Britain, somehow.’
‘I did have one idea that I thought might work,’ Angela said.
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘As I see it, the trick really is to convince anybody who’s following us that we’ll be in one particular place at a certain time, while we’re actually somewhere else.’
She glanced at Bronson, who nodded slowly, lifting an eyebrow.
‘So here’s an idea. Later on today, when we’re north of Rouen, say, why don’t you ring up the ferry company on your mobile and use one of your credit cards to book a particular crossing for this evening. If you’re right and these people are able to track our credit card transactions, that will tell them precisely when we’ll be arriving at Calais, and so that’s where they’ll turn up to intercept us. In the meantime, suppose we don’t go to Calais or Dunkirk or any other port, but instead head for Le Touquet.’