The Armageddon Protocol

TWENTY-TWO

As they walked towards the trucks, Petit went ahead of them, lit his cigarette with a sigh of relief, and began to talk with the driver. They were standing in what looked like a loading bay, but was in fact a covered area used specifically to move prisoners into vans in order to transfer them to other facilities.

Harry scanned the area for any escape routes, but it had been designed with one thing in mind, and that was keeping prisoners in custody until they were someone else’s responsibility. Up ahead, Petit’s conversation with the driver was getting a little heated.

Zoey moved in closer to him and lowered her voice. “Do you speak French?”

“A little,” he said. “I think they’re having a disagreement.”

“Well, duh,” Zoey said. “An Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog could work that out just by sniffing the air.”

Harry gave her a weary glance, but before he could reply, Lucia said, “It’s about the paperwork. The driver hasn’t got the correct documents for our transfer.”

“Thanks,” Zoey said, flashing at glance at Harry.

Now Barbier stepped out of the station and trotted down the concrete steps with his hands in his pockets. He was whistling a tune, but the music stopped when he approached the van and joined the conversation with Petit and the driver. At the same time, the rear doors of the van swung open and two men in navy blue boilers suits hopped out and walked around to the front. Harry noticed they were both wearing gun holsters on their belts.

“This is getting interesting,” he said. “Was that something about uniforms?”

Lucia gave a nervous, shallow nod. “Yes, the French police are saying they’re not in the correct uniform for prison officers and he’s going to report them to their superior.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Andrej said.

“All right,” Harry said flatly as he glanced over each of his shoulders. “Get ready.”

“Get ready for what, exactly?” Zoey said, and took a step back from the van.

The answer was rapid and violent, as all of the men in boiler suits drew their pistols and gunned down Petit and Barbier. The two Frenchmen tumbled to the floor, their shirts turning red with blood as the men in the van turned their guns on a young officer standing to the side of the prisoners and shot him down like a dog.

Zoey gasped. “Jesus Christ on ice skates!”

“Down!” Harry yelled, shoulder-barging Lucia to the floor and tumbling down on top of her. With Zoey and Andrej right behind them, they rolled behind a low, chipped wall supporting the concrete steps they had used to enter the van area. As they tucked themselves into the cover of the wall, several armed police officers burst into the transfer area and fired on the men in the boiler suits. The men took cover behind the van and returned fire.

“They’ve got ‘em now!” Zoey said. “Woo-hoo!”

“I don’t think so,” Andrej said, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“That’s a Mercedes Sprinter specially designed for prisoner transport,” Harry said. “It’s bulletproof, so they’re safe for the time being.”

“So what now, Chief?” Zoey asked, gasping for breath and struggling with her cuffs.

“We get out of here.”

“With these on?” Lucia said, holding her cuffed hands up to his face.

“Always think ahead of time,” he said with a grin and a wink. He raised his cuffed hands and reached into the base of his tie, pulling the tiny object he had manipulated earlier from the lining. Lucia glanced over and saw it was a paperclip he had bent into a specific shape, and now she knew why.

Always thinking ahead.

Harry took the paperclip in between his third and fourth fingers and gently pushed the head of the clip into the keyhole of the double-locking handcuffs. They were hinged, which made it harder because this allowed less flexibility than a regular chain-cuff, and they were double-locked to stop them getting too tight and causing the prisoners nerve-damage. This meant he had to turn the clip clockwise first until he heard a shallow click. Then he turned the clip anticlockwise for the main event as he pushed the ratchets down and a heartbeat later the first cuff popped open. With this done, he opened the second cuff which was always easier as his other hand was now free and that was it — out of both cuffs in less than ten seconds.

“Stay here,” he said, and got up to his feet to scan the firefight unfolding in front of them.

Lucia looked up at him, her eyes widening with fear. “Where are you going?”

“We need a weapon.”

Before she could respond, he scrambled out of the cover of the steps and darted across the asphalt toward the dead officer who had been standing beside them. At first the men were too occupied with each other to notice him as he ripped the keys from the dead man’s belt, but as he wrenched the SIG Sauer SP 2022 from the holster one of the police officers saw him. After screaming a warning to raise his hands he opened fire on him.

The bullets went low, smashing into the asphalt and spitting up shards of bituminous pitch and gravel dust as he sprinted back to the cover of the steps. As he slid into safety he checked the magazine and seeing it was full he smacked it back into the grip and took aim of the men taking cover behind the Sprinter.

He also fired low, beneath the vehicle, and his first shot struck one of the men in the ankle. The man howled and crashed to the floor, curling into a ball as he reached down to grip the smashed bone, which was probably the tibia by Harry’s estimation.

“Woah,” Zoey said. “I guess you’re not a librarian.”

“He’s not a librarian,” Lucia said.

“I worked for the government,” he said. “And before that I was in the army.”

“As what?”

“In the Catering Corp.”

“No shit?”

Harry’s response was to toss Lucia the keys he’d taken from the officer’s belt. “Free yourself,” he said. “And then unlock Andrej.”

“What about me?!” Zoey said.

Before he could reply, one of the police officers crashed down on top of him and wrestled him to the ground. Screams of French commands burst from a huddle of men just inside the double doors a few yards above them as the chaos spilled out everywhere.

Lucia screamed, and Andrej covered his mouth in horror as the Englishman rolled out into the transfer area with the French policeman, each pummelling the other with all they had to gain some advantage.

Harry dodged the first blow, and the officer’s fist smashed into the asphalt an inch from his right ear, but he didn’t flinch. Pumped with adrenalin and devoted to his duty he simple pulled his bloodied fist back ready for a second shot.

Harry saw it coming, and brought the pistol up, striking him in the jaw with the grip and knocking him backwards. Harry had zero inclination to kill this man. He was no killer, and he wasn’t about to add a genuine murder charge to the long list of false accusations now following him like a dusk shadow.

The man crashed onto the steps, smashing his spine into one of the concrete risers and causing him to grunt in agony as the pain shot through his body. Harry knew this man thought he was a cop killer, responsible for the murder of the police officers in Madrid, and that meant he wanted him dead but would settle for life imprisonment. Either way he was going to fight tooth and claw to bring him and the others to what he saw was justice, and Harry was not surprised when the wounded man staggered to his feet and pulled his gun on him.

Harry reacted in a heartbeat, leaping forward before the man had a chance to bring the weapon into the aim. He rammed into him with his shoulder, smashing him into the wall and then brought his fist up into the man’s face, knocking him out. He collapsed onto the yard’s asphalt with a smack, out cold.

Harry dusted his hands off and turned to Lucia. “That’s sorted th…”

Another officer launched himself at the Englishman. “Fils de pute!”

Harry ran into the fight as the man pulled a baton and swung it at him. He sidestepped and dodged his head back to miss the blow, grabbing hold of the man’s other wrist and twisting it around hard. The young man was made of sterner stuff than he thought and his resistance was impressive, but the wrist snapped all the same and then his opponent howled in pain.

“Woo-hoo!” Zoey called out. “Give ’em hell, Scooter!”

Harry glanced at her. “I’m glad you find this so entertaining.”

The men behind the van threw a grenade into the double doors at the bottom of the main building and the men inside scrambled for survival. Three seconds later a phenomenal explosion roared out of the building, channelled by the narrow corridor and launched an impressive fireball a dozen metres into the loading bay.

Harry and the others ducked as the fire burned a metre above their heads, and then when it was safe he scanned the area. He saw that the men in the van were now sprinting from the car park and heading out into the side street beside the battered station. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said trying to get his breath back.

“Them’s some pretty nifty moves, Tex,” Zoey said. “You wanna rescue this damsel in distress and throw me those keys?”

“Why should we?” Lucia said, suspiciously.

“Because you said you needed a car.” She looked at them, the cynical expression on her face was now one of desperate vulnerability. “I can you get one of those — honest.”

“We can take the van!” Lucia said, pointing at the Sprinter.

“No, it’s too obvious,” Harry said, “and I don’t have time to find something easy to steal. I say we trust her.”

“I don’t know,” Liška said. “She could be anyone — she could be one of them placed here to spy on us, or to lead us to our deaths.”

“I think your tin foil hat’s a little crooked there, Chekov,” Zoey said. “I don’t work for anyone besides myself.” She looked at Harry once more, the smart-ass smile now gone completely. “Please man, this is my only chance. If you don’t help me out they’re gonna deport me to the States.”

Harry didn’t have to think it through. His instinct was to let her out. He stepped over to her and unlocked the cuffs. They slipped off her wrists and she rubbed them with her hands, sighing with relief.

“You were saying something about a car?” Harry said.

Zoey took a step back and sighed again. “You’re going to hold me to that, really?”

“I told you she was trouble!” Liška said.

“Woah there, Tin Foil! I never said I wasn’t gonna help you. I’m a girl who sticks to her word. If you need a car then I’ll get you a car. I know just the asshole who can help. He owes me… believe me.”