The Sword of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Hawke fired into the air to disperse the crowd. With the sound of the gunshot still echoing off the buildings around Stationsplein, hundreds of people scattered in all directions and a flock of fat pigeons took to the air.

The men holding the girl now released her and hauled Kloos away to the station as fast as they could go. Hawke gave a sigh of relief as the girl ran screaming back to her mother.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at them. “Get as far away as you can!”

Scarlet and Reaper opened fire on Zito and his men, and Zito fired back. Reaper was the target but the bullet found its way into the neck of a man trying to flee while dragging his wheeled luggage behind him. He spun around in the street as a cloud of blood-mist burst from his jugular and he collapsed like a bar of lead over the tramlines.

His violent death triggered more screaming and hysteria but most people had now scattered, with some going to the sides of the station and others hiding behind the trams. Others were lucky enough to make it down into one of the entrances to the Metro. Their howls of terror boomed up from the tiled steps as they descended underground to escape the madness.

Hawke had taken cover with the rest of the team inside the lobby of the Amsterdam Visitor Centre, but now he stepped out behind one of the entance pillars and brought his Glock into the aim. He fired — this time not a single shot but a controlled burst of five rounds. The bullets struck Toscano in the chest and abdomen, puncturing his lungs and tearing into his stomach. The Italian gunman staggered backwards a few paces and crumpled to the stony ground outside the station’s main entrance.

Lea, Ryan and Scarlet joined Hawke outside the Visitor Centre, and across the square, Reaper led Kim and Devlin forward from the trams to the cover of a Renault van parked closer to the entrance.

“I do hope your man Devlin isn’t going to do anything stupid again,” Hawke said.

“He’s not my man,” she protested. “And I’m not responsible for what he does.”

Hawke reloaded the Glock as Zito and his men continued to make their way to the train station’s entrance. They were going slower because two of them had stopped to drag Toscano to safety, but when he died in their arms they lowered him to the ground. His corpse now lay cooling at the head of a long trail of blood where they had hauled his fatally wounded body. Driven by a sense of mad revenge, Bruno fired an entire magazine indiscriminately across the square, wildly swinging his weapon from Hawke’s team in the Visitor Centre to Reaper and the others behind the Renault.

The vicious fusillade echoed around the empty square but was drowned out by the sound of approaching sirens. It sounded like they were coming from the east — probably Prins Hendrikkade which was now bereft of all traffic and Hawke presumed sealed off by anti-terror police. It wouldn’t be long before the Dutch authorities took control of the situation, and he knew they had to move fast if they were to rescue Kloos; the former SBS man was confident that Zito would use the professor as a human shield if M-Squadron backed him into a corner.

A VW Beetle with police markings skidded into the scene. The men inside tried to get out and fire on Zito but he and his men overwhelmed them with their firepower and they tried to reverse. Bullets shredded the glass and killed the men inside in seconds as the Beetle spun out of control and veered to the right.

“They’re not slowing down,” Ryan said.

Hawke knew what was coming next and frowned. “Foot must be wedged on the throttle.”

Gaining speed the dead driver slumped forward and pulled the wheel down hard to the right. This caused the car to turn sharply and tip over on its side in a cloud of sparks and burned rubber smoke.

Devlin made a move. Breaking free of the group, he darted across ten meters of open ground. He was heading for the cover of the crashed police car but Bruno chased him down with a spray of gunfire from his machine pistol. Devlin dived for the cover of the upturned Beetle with a second to spare but Bruno continued to pepper the bottom of the car.

Hawke cursed but reacted in a split-second: he put Bruno under heavy fire, emptying his entire magazine at the Italian with the idea of driving him back into cover.

But it was too late: Bruno’s rounds had hit the VW’s exposed gas tank and caused the battered police car to explode in a monumental fireball. Chunks of contorted, deformed car parts hurtled through the air, transforming the Beetle into a colossal fragmentation grenade. A twisted car door slammed down into the ground a few meters from Reaper and his sub-unit. It was still on fire from the blast and left a trail of black smoke arcing through the sky behind it.

“Where’s Danny?” Lea said. “Do you see him?”

Hawke strained to see through the smoke and detritus of the burning Beetle wreckage. Devlin was undoubtedly brave, but he was starting to become too unpredictable. He guessed too many years at Flynn’s had taken a toll on the former Commandant and now he was just a shadow of his former self. “I see him,” he said. “He’s over there behind the wall to the left of the main entrance.”

“He must have made a break for it when you were firing on Bruno.”

“He’s causing more bloody problems than he’s solving right now,” Hawke said.

“He just risked his life, Joe!”

Hawke said nothing, but reloaded his Glock and swung the gun up for a second go at Bruno. The Italians were now well inside the station and receding into the shadows beneath the Amsterdam Centraal sign hanging above the main entrance.

Hawke heard Reaper’s voice in his earpiece. “Are we chasing the rabbits down the hole?”

“We have no choice,” the Englishman said. “They still have Kloos.”

Thanks to the gun battle outside, the vast station interior was now as empty and silent as the square out the front. With the rest of the team fanning out behind him and taking up an offensive formation, Hawke crossed the beautiful Main Hallway, gun raised into the aim and sweeping it from side to side to cover all angles. Somewhere in here Zito and his men were getting away with Kloos.

“Any sign of them?” Scarlet said through her palm mic.

“Not yet,” Hawke said.

A flock of pigeons flew up from the end of the platform and disappeared into the vast roof of the station above their heads. Hawke spun around and aimed the gun in their original location, certain the other men had startled the birds, and he was right.

Zito and his men were at the far end of the southern platform now. He was leading them off the platform and along the rails leading out to the station’s eastern exit. Hawke watched the small group of men through the sights of his Glock as he fired on them once again. The sound of bullets roared in the cavernous space and Zito’s response was to dash behind a filthy blue and yellow commuter diesel.

Seconds later they were all hidden by the train except for one straggler. Hawke fired again and struck the man. He collapsed onto the rails while a grisly bloom of brain matter and blood was illuminated by the light flooding into the opening at the eastern end of the station.

Hawke lowered his gun. Zito and his men still had Kloos and now they had cover as well. He heard them as they ran along the rails behind the stationary diesel train. “Sounds like they’re trying to get out along the rails.”

They hopped off the platform and used the parked train for cover as they closed in on Zito’s snatch squad. Approaching the engine at the front of the train, they heard the sound of another kind of engine — a speedboat was roaring into life somewhere to their left.

A look of confusion crossed Hawke’s face. “What the hell?”

“The IJ,” Ryan said.

“Explain in two seconds, dorkmeister,” Scarlet said.

“It’s the main body of water in Amstersdam and it runs just north of this station.”

They sprinted to the end of the rails and emerged into the daylight to see Zito and his men hauling Dr Kloos into a speedboat parked up on the south bank of the IJ.

“Where does it go, mate?” Hawke said, squeezing the grip of his Glock out of frustration.

“Right out into the North Sea.”

The boat ripped away from the bank, and Zito waved at them cheerily with his gun hand as they pushed out into the middle of the massive river.

Knowing the chase was over, Ryan fired up a cigarette. “They could rendezvous with anyone at any number of locations in the city or the plan might be to go straight out to sea and hook up with a boat or something.”

“This day is just turning into a massive pile of fuckery,” Scarlet said, snatching the cigarette from the young man’s lips and taking a long drag.

“Hey!” Ryan said.

Hawke sighed as he watched the boat slip away. “You can say that again, Cairo.”