The Lost Testament

69

He had barely a second to react.

‘Get down!’ he shouted.

At the same moment, he lifted the clutch and powered the car up the exit ramp towards the garage door, which was still opening, agonizingly slowly.

He heard a sharp crack from behind, the unmistakable sound of a pistol shot, and the car rocked with a sudden impact. The window directly behind Bronson shattered, glittering fragments of safety glass flying everywhere inside the car, and the window beside Angela exploded outwards as the bullet passed through that as well.

Angela screamed in terror at the sudden noise and the shock of the flying glass. The car was gathering speed as it progressed up the ramp towards the door, the front tyres smoking and howling as they scrabbled for grip under full acceleration in first gear, Bronson keeping the accelerator flat to the floor. The vehicle was weaving slightly from side to side as well, but all he cared about was covering the ground as quickly as possible.

Another shot rang out, the bullet missing the car, slamming into the right-hand wall of the ramp behind them and ricocheting away somewhere. Bronson guessed they had already moved partly out of sight. For the gunman to get a clear shot at them, he would have to run across the garage from the lift and stairwell to the foot of the ramp itself, and fire up it. That was the only advantage they had, but he guessed that the man would already be moving into position. Within seconds, he would be able to pepper the back of the car with bullets.

The opening door of the garage loomed ever closer, the bottom of the metal frame moving up vertically in front of the car. It didn’t look to Bronson as if there was enough clearance for him to drive underneath it, and he daren’t hit it, in case it stopped the vehicle dead.

At the very last moment, as the nose of the car powered under the slowly opening door, Bronson shifted his right foot from the accelerator to the brake and pushed hard. The nose of the car dipped as the pads hit the discs, the deceleration fierce. Hitting the brakes compressed the suspension, effectively lowering the overall height of the vehicle for that brief split second.

Bronson and Angela were thrown forward against the restraint of the seat belts. There was a grating sound from the car’s roof as the rear section scraped underneath the bottom of the door. Bronson felt the tug as the impact slowed them still further, but then they were under and clear. Again he mashed his foot onto the accelerator, and the car leapt up the last few yards of the garage ramp and out of the building into the brilliant sunshine of the Madrid late afternoon.

Bronson sensed rather than heard another gunshot as the man behind them finally reached the bend in the ramp and fired at them once more. He had no idea where the bullet went, but he was certain it didn’t hit the car. Even an expert will find it difficult to hit a target, especially a moving target, at a distance of much more than about twenty-five yards.

The moment the vehicle cleared the ramp, Bronson swung the wheel hard to the right, tugged on the handbrake to slide the rear of the car sideways, tyres squealing on the tarmac, then continued to accelerate.

Beside him, Angela eased herself upright, her hands clutching at the dashboard and the passenger door, and peered around her, eyes wide with shock.

‘It was that man, wasn’t it?’ she demanded. ‘From the lift?’

Bronson nodded.

‘It was. Now we can see what we’re up against. No discussion, no negotiation.

‘Thank God we got away.’

The road was quiet, and within a few seconds they were travelling at well over seventy kilometres an hour, getting as far away from the hotel as they could.

Every second or two Bronson’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirrors. And then he saw what he’d hoped not to. A white saloon car, rapidly catching up with them. The gunman in the hotel must have had a backup man.

‘Shit! We’re not out of the woods yet,’ Bronson said. ‘They’re following us. It’s that white saloon car. We need to lose them, and quickly. But I don’t know these streets. You’ve got to get us out of this one.’