The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [180]
“Christ!” White lifted the MP5. “Gun it, Jack, gun it!”
Irish Jack turned the ignition key. The Mercedes’s 510 horsepower V12 roared to life. A split second later he fishtailed it out of the parking spot after the laundry truck that was accelerating away.
“6-4, 6-2,” White said into the microphone at his sleeve. “Marten’s using the truck as a decoy. Anne and Ryder will be coming out in some other vehicle. Watch for it. We’re in pursuit of Marten! Copy.”
“6-4. Roger, Control.”
“6-2. Roger, Control.”
Marten rode in the shotgun seat watching the truck’s outside mirror. “Here they come. Black Mercedes.” He clicked on the power to the team radio unit he had taken from Moses and pressed the earpiece into his left ear.
Agent Grant was right behind him. He looked to the bookkeeper playing Anne and the anesthesiologist who had the part of Agent Birns. “Get down, flat on the floor!” he ordered, then opened his backpack and slid the MP5K submachine gun from it.
“Santos.” Marten looked to Mário’s brother at the wheel. “Take us into the Baixa, the shortest route you know.”
Twenty yards ahead, Rua Serpa Pinto ended at the bottom of the hill. Santos touched the brakes, then leaned on the horn and took a sharp left, the top-heavy truck leaning dangerously to one side as it went. Marten could see the Mercedes slide through the same turn seconds behind them. His hand went to the Glock in his belt. He looked at Santos.
“They’re coming hard. What can you do?”
To his great surprise, Santos grinned, almost as if he were enjoying it. “I have been an ambulance driver for twenty-two years. This is no ambulance, but—” Abruptly he swung the wheel right and turned the laundry truck down a narrow cobblestone alley that was almost impossible to see from the street. Marten saw the Mercedes fly past, then slide to a stop, back up in a cloud of burning rubber, and come down the alley after them. Then Santos was taking another right, then a sharp left. The Mercedes disappeared from view.
“How far is the Baixa?” Marten pressed.
“Three minutes.”
“Get me on a street where I can drive to it myself. Then pull over and stop. I want you people out of here.”
Santos grinned again. “Out of here? This is fun!”
“Fun, hell, those guys will kill all of us!”
Suddenly a sharp communication came through Marten’s earpiece. “Control, this is 6-4.”
The men in the Mercedes heard Carlos Branco as well. “A fire alarm was pulled in the hospital seconds after you left. I’m monitoring Lisbon Fire. They’ve got five vehicles rolling now. They’ll probably ring a second alarm and double that. Every street in the area will be filled with fire apparat—Christ!” Branco blurted suddenly and then there was silence.
“Christ! What?” Conor White spat into his microphone as Irish Jack slid the Mercedes through a corner and accelerated off. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Hospital ambulance just shot past us in the alley. RSO Special Agent Birns was in the shotgun seat! Go!” they heard him yell to his driver in Portuguese. “We’re in pursuit now! Am assuming Anne and Ryder are with him, maybe the other RSO, too, if he didn’t decoy with Marten!”
“Stay on him! Stay on him! 6-2, back up 6-4. Copy.”
“6-4. Roger. 6-2, copy.”
“6-2. Roger.”
“I see him. I see him!” Irish Jack glimpsed the laundry truck. There was a massive whine as he touched the accelerator and the Mercedes shot forward. In seconds they were on top of a lumbering vintage streetcar. Irish Jack cut left, started to pass it, then found himself in the path of an oncoming bus. He swore out loud and dropped back, letting the bus go by. In the next instant he pulled left. There was a scream of engine and then they were around the streetcar and cutting back in front of it. Ahead they could see the laundry truck turn down a side street. At the same time, an aging white Opel pulled out of a parking space in front of them.
“Get out of the fucking way!” Irish Jack slammed on the brakes, then jumped on the accelerator and fishtailed around it, barely missing