The Armageddon Protocol

SEVEN

With the sound of the gunshot still in the air, Harry leaped at Lucia and rugby-tackled her to the ground behind one of the couches. She took the brunt of the powerful fall as she slammed back-first into the old, hardwood floorboards. She screamed out in shock but the air was pushed out of her a second later when Harry landed on top of her. The assassin had shot one of the policemen and Harry had anticipated the response in just enough time to save their lives.

Before either could speak, the police raised their guns and fired back, raking the plush apartment with nine mil bullets and blasting the furniture and bookshelves to smithereens. The bullets shredded through the couch above their heads and slammed into the bookcase behind them. Harry strained to see a way out but then realized they weren’t far from the door leading through into the kitchen and the back of the apartment.

“Think you can make it?” he asked, nudging his chin at the kitchen door.

Lucia nodded and struggled up to her elbows. “This is not what a physicist expects out of life!”

They crawled into the kitchen and slammed the door shut, then the guns fell silent and a woman’s voice called over from the door leading to the hall.

“She wants us to give ourselves up,” Lucia said. “Maybe this is a good idea?”

Harry considered Pablo’s corpse and the now the dead policeman. “I don’t think so.”

He caught some movement in his peripheral vision and saw the assassin clambering onto a small balcony outside the kitchen window. They ran over to the window just as the police began shredding the kitchen door with hot lead.

Harry winced and pulled his head in instinctively as the bullets drilled through the kitchen door and smashed it to pieces. “It’s now or never!” he said, and wrenched Lucia by the arm out of the doors and onto the balcony.

He looked below but knew it was no good — they were three storeys up and it was a straight drop to the pavement below. He thought he might just be able to make it down the drainpipe but one look at Lucia in the red dress and heels and he knew she stood no chance at all.

Looking up, the future got brighter. A sloping roof was reachable if they stood on the balcony rail and pulled themselves up, which thanks to a solid-looking cast-iron gutter looked like it might be possible.

“We’re going up there.”

“Where the killer went?” Lucia took one look at the roof and shook her head, wide-eyed with fear. “You have to be joking!”

“No joke, sorry.” As if to underline his point, his words were followed by another furious volley of gunfire which reduced the remaining parts of the kitchen door to nothing more than a thin lattice-work. “Unless you think they’re joking as well?”

“This is a nightmare!”

He helped Lucia onto the balcony railing and then pushed her up onto the roof. She slipped on the tiles for a moment and kicked out for a second to steady herself, almost taking his eye out with the heel of one of her stilettos, but then she was safe on the apex of the roof.

Harry followed her up and then led her by the hand along the roofline. There was no sign of the killer. “Hurry — they’ll be behind us in a second.”

It was less than a second, and now a woman with a bullet-roof jacket over her suit was clambering over the iron gutter and trying to haul herself onto the roof in pursuit of them. Halfway on the roof now and three shots cracked out in the night. They slammed into the woman’s throat and she immediately released her grip on the roof tiles and fell back over the gutter.

Her screams lasted the full four seconds it took until she smashed dead into the pavement below the apartment block.

Lucia stared in horror, her torn red evening dress blowing in the chilly night air. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’re being set up by whoever killed Pablo,” Harry said, scouring the roofline ahead of him. From his new vantage point on the roof the view was much clearer now, and it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for — the assassin was sprinting along the roof. “There — look!”

With the yells of the officers in the apartment beneath them, and a second wave of police vehicles filling the street below, Harry knew time was running out. As far as the Madrid police were concerned he and Lucia were not only responsible for the savage murders of Pablo Reyes and Mariana Vidal, but also for the deaths of two police officers. To say they would throw away the key was an understatement.

The chaotic blue lights strobing wildly in his periphery made it hard to track his target, but now the killer broke cover from behind an air-conditioning unit on the roof ahead and made another dash for it. Harry knew he was well-built from the fight in the apartment, but judging from the way he sprinted across the roof and vaulted across a narrow gap to the roof of an adjoining building, it looked like he knew how to use a gym as well.

The sound of police moving around in Pablo’s apartment echoed below them and snapped Harry back into the moment. This was one way to sober up, he thought.

He knew for a fact he had one chance only if he wanted to get himself out of this and that was to get hold of the shooter, but he also knew he couldn’t leave Lucia behind to face the police.

“All right, from this moment on we’re on the run!”

“But where are we running?”

“Away from the police and towards that bastard over there!”

She looked over her shoulder and then turned to face him. “Let me kick these off!”

She flicked her stilettos off and they tumbled over the edge of the roof.

A man in a helmet and Kevlar vest peered over the roofline. “Pare! Policía!”

Harry didn’t need to search Google Translate to know it was time to go. He yanked Lucia’s arm and pulled her along the apex of the roof.

The policeman clambered onto the roof behind them and took up a defensive position behind an aircon unit. “Manos arriba!”

“He wants us to put our hands up!” Lucia shouted, the cold wind blowing in her hair. Behind her, a heavy yellow moon rose lethargically above the highrises of Hortaleza.

Harry looked at her mischievously. “Put our hands up what?”

She looked at him confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Forget it — this is our stop.”

A burst of police gunfire punctuated his last words and missed by inches, slamming into another aircon unit on the southern edge of the apartment block roof. The rounds punctured the sheet metal housing and struck the refrigeration system, blasting a cloud of freon into the air.

Lucia screamed and jumped in fear. “That nearly killed me!”

“So let’s get out of here then!”

They ran along a few more yards before jumping down onto the roof of a small bistro. After climbing back up the other side onto the next apartment block they found themselves looking out onto another street leading into the city center. He scanned the area and cursed as he realized there was no sign of the assassin. “Looks like it’s time for us to hitch a ride.”

“To where?”

“There!”

“I don’t see what you mean, unless you’re talking about… oh no!”

Harry grimaced. “Sorry, but yes I do mean the bus.”

Trundling along the street was one of the famous Madrid tour buses. It was a double-decker with an open top deck and in a few seconds their only chance would be gone.

“You are a crazy Englishman! We cannot make this jump.”

“Of course we can,” Harry said, dodging a second burst of bullets from the police who were now advancing closer to them along the roof. “We simply jump with everything we’ve got and drop down into the top deck.”

“Simply!?”

He grabbed Lucia by the shoulders. “When I say jump, then you jump, all right?”

She nodded, but her eyes were full of uncertainty.

He held her hand and they linked fingers as he watched the bus trundle ever closer. Then he saw the police running out into the street. They were everywhere now.

“Jump!”

Without wasting another moment they leaped through the night and crashed down into the top deck of the bus.

Lucia landed like a cat, but Harry got his foot caught in the back of one of the seats and stumbled over, only just managing to stop himself smashing face-first into the floor.

The handful of tourists making the late tour of the city screamed and leaped to their feet, unsure of what to make of a man in an impeccable suit and a woman in a red evening dress leaping into the top deck of a tour bus in the middle of the night.

“Don’t mind us,” Harry said, straightening his tie. “We just dropped in to say hi.”

A woman screamed and pulled some mace from her bag before taking a few steps away from the new arrivals.

“Smooth,” he muttered, dusting himself down.

“I’m sorry?” Lucia said, trying to slow her breathing.

“I said it’s a bloody good job these babies run till midnight.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, glancing at a graze on his chin.

“Sure, just caught my face on the side of the bus.”

“It’s bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.” Now, the sound of police cars firing up and swerving out in pursuit of the bus filled the air behind them. “We have bigger problems — the police are going to stop this bus in about sixty seconds.”