Agent 21 (27 page)

Moments later a second shot. The whole window crumbled and shattered. Zak slipped down lower in his seat to protect his head. The back of the vehicle was totally exposed now. All they needed was one lucky shot and he’d be history.

The road ahead was straight again. Straight and dark. Zak wished with all his being that he could see something that suggested people – house lights, a gas station, anything. But all he saw was darkness up ahead and the lights of Calaca’s convoy behind him, no more than twenty metres back now.

Another bullet ricocheted off the chassis of his vehicle; he felt the truck swerve to the right slightly, but managed to keep hold of it. He swerved the vehicle left then right, so that he was a more difficult target. That just slowed him down, though, and Calaca’s men gained ground. So he continued to drive straight, and two more bullets hit the vehicle: one shattered his side mirror; the other ripped into the passenger seat, passing straight through it and into the dashboard.

That’s it
, Zak told himself.
They’re too close. You can’t
get away. Any second now you’re going to feel a round in your back
. . .

Sure enough, the air was filled with a deafening thunder of gunfire. Zak braced himself.

But then he frowned.

The gunfire hadn’t come from behind. It had come from above.

He checked the mirror. Calaca’s convoy was suddenly lagging behind. He saw a searchlight beaming down to his right, and heard the low judder of rotary blades.

A chopper
.

Another burst of fire, and Zak realized that a gunner in the helicopter was firing on Calaca’s men again.
The guardian angels. It was Gabs and Raf and their unit. It had to be
. . .

The chopper zoomed away, following the line of the road while Zak kept his foot on the accelerator. About a hundred metres ahead, it lowered to the ground, coming to rest at right angles to the road.

Zak gritted his teeth and kept his foot to the floor. A round pinged into the vehicle from behind. It missed Zak’s head by no more than an inch and slammed into the front windscreen, which splintered, making it impossible for Zak to see clearly through it. He wound down the side window and looked out. The chopper was fifty metres away.

He kept his foot hard on the gas.

More impact from behind. The vehicle swerved and Zak had to pull it back on track.

Thirty metres to safety. Twenty metres.

Zak slammed his foot on the brakes, just as a round from Calaca’s men burst one of his rear tyres. The car spun round ninety degrees, and for a horrible moment Zak thought he would collide with the chopper. He skidded to a halt, though, just metres from where it was waiting, its side door open and two figures waiting for him.

Zak opened the driver’s door and heard a voice.

‘
RUN! GET IN THE CHOPPER – NOW!
’ shouted Gabs.

Zak didn’t need telling twice. He jumped out of the car, leaving the MP5 in the passenger seat, lunged towards the chopper and hurled himself inside. He didn’t even have his legs fully inside as the chopper lifted into the air. Gabs was pulling him in; Raf was operating a Minigun, which peppered its 7.62 mm rounds towards Calaca and his men as the chopper veered sharply away from the road. From the corner of his eye, he saw two men jump from the side of the vehicle. It was the last thing they ever did. The rounds from the Minigun slammed into their bodies and sent them flying to the ground, dead.

Zak lay flat out on the floor of the aircraft, trying to
catch his breath. He was aware of other people around him. They all wore dark helmets cut away around the ear, blue body armour and carried M16 assault rifles.

‘Zak?’ she shouted over the noise of the chopper. ‘
Zak, are you OK?
’

It was Gabs. She kneeled down beside him, her face etched with worry.

Zak frowned. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m OK. But do me a favour, would you?’

‘What?’

He gave her a weak smile. ‘Next time someone’s trying to kill me, don’t wait quite so long, huh?’

Gabs smiled. ‘We’re getting you to safety now, sweetie,’ she said. ‘The operation’s over.’

Zak sat up.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The plan was to grab Martinez. Michael’s got his evidence. I uploaded it from a cocaine lab in southern Mexico.’

‘I know. He got it.’

‘But if we don’t get Martinez now, he’ll go to ground. He knows we’re on to him. This is our only chance.’

Raf crouched down beside Gabs. ‘It’s too dangerous, Zak,’ he said. ‘His men have probably already called through to the compound. They’ll be expecting us.’

‘Then we’ll just have to be smarter than them, right? Calaca’s his head of security. With him and the guards he had with him out of the picture, Martinez is vulnerable.’ Zak looked at his two guardian angels. They didn’t seem convinced. He lowered his eyes. ‘Martinez killed my parents,’ he said.

Gabs looked astonished. ‘
What?
How do you know?’

‘I just do, OK. And if we let him get away now, who knows if I’ll ever have a chance to bring him to justice?’ He looked around everyone in the chopper. ‘This is the best chance we’ll ever get, and I
can’t
let him get away. You’ve
got
to help me do this.’

Gabs’s eyes were uncertain as she exchanged a glance with Raf. ‘Michael wants us back at base,’ she said.

Raf raised one eyebrow. ‘Michael’s not here.’

Something seemed to pass between them. They nodded at each other.

‘The body doubles,’ Raf said. ‘You think you can tell the difference between them?’

Zak thought of the doubles – perfect replicas of his enemy. Indistinguishable in every way. Even Cruz didn’t know which was which.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I think I can.’

‘And you know the layout of the compound?’

He nodded.

‘All right, then. We’ll do it. But Zak?’

‘What.’

‘No heroics, OK. We’ve already nearly lost you once today. Let’s not have a repeat performance.’

‘
Three minutes out
,’ Gabs shouted at the unit. She handed Zak a set of body armour and a helmet. ‘Put this on.’

As he strapped the gear to his body, Gabs looked around the aircraft slightly guiltily. She pulled something out of her black ops waistcoat. A small pistol. ‘Self-defence only, right?’

‘Right.’ Zak checked the safety and lodged it in his belt.

‘OK, everyone,’ Raf shouted over the noise of the chopper. ‘Listen up. The target is Cesar Martinez Toledo and we want to take him alive. He has five identical body doubles, so we need to make sure we have the right one. As you know, Agent 21 has been inside the compound, so he can give us a rundown of what to expect.’ He nodded at Zak.

‘Er . . . right,’ said Zak. ‘The compound is surrounded by a circular wall, about six metres high
and about two hundred metres in diameter. There’s only one entrance, on the northernmost edge. Either side of the entrance are two observation posts with armed guards. There are seven more OPs set at thirtymetre intervals around the wall, all manned. From the entrance there’s a long road – about a hundred metres – leading up to the house which is in the middle of the compound. Armed guards at the entrance. Behind the house there’s a swimming pool and a helipad. Oh, and a shooting range. The rest of the place is laid to lawn. Nowhere to hide in the grounds.’

Raf took over. ‘We need to make the main exit impassable,’ he shouted. ‘Then deal with the OPs. This is going to go noisy.’

‘
One minute out!
’ shouted Gabs.

Raf turned to Zak. ‘You see the webbing on the side of the aircraft?’ he shouted.

Zak nodded.

‘Hold onto it. Things are going to shake up a bit before we land.’

Zak edged to one side of the chopper and grabbed hold of the criss-cross of ropes fixed to it. He looked down through the window. Below him, in the distance, he could just see Martinez’s compound: searchlights shone from the observation posts around the perimeter wall and the house itself, bang in the centre of the circle, glowed in the night.

The chopper swooped down, like a hawk closing in on its prey. In only a few seconds, it was cruising over the house and heading towards the perimeter wall. It hovered about ten metres from one of the observation posts and the Minigun operators opened fire.

Rounds thundered into the thick stone wall and Zak couldn’t stop himself from letting go of the webbing and moving himself so that he could see through the front window of the chopper. He just caught a glimpse of two guards jumping from the OP out of the compound – the only way they could stop themselves being minced by the powerful Miniguns – before the chopper swung round and started blasting the next OP.

‘Two down,’ Raf shouted. ‘Seven to go. Once we’ve neutralized the OPs, we can go in. Hold on tight!’

Zak did just that.

Cesar Martinez Toledo woke with a start. His mobile phone was ringing and only one person had the number: Calaca. He sat up in the darkness of his bedroom and answered.

‘What is it, Adan?’

‘Harry Gold, señor. He has escaped.’

Martinez blinked in the darkness. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He got away from us, señor. He had back-up. A
helicopter. It fired on us. Three of my men are dead.’

Martinez didn’t care about that. ‘How could you let this happen, you fool?’

‘You need to leave the compound. Remember, our source said the British were trying to abduct you. You need to go now. I will call our contacts in the Mexico City police force. I’ll instruct them to send a helicopter to extract you.’

Martinez was already out of bed and getting dressed. ‘Do that,’ he said, and hung up his phone, too angry to talk any more to his head of security. He made for the door, stopping only to grab a loaded pistol from his table. Two guards stood outside. They looked surprised at his sudden appearance.

‘Get me the body doubles. In the atrium. Now.’

The guards stared at him.

‘
Now!
’

Immediately one of them ran off. ‘Follow me,’ Martinez told the remaining guard, and he hurried down the corridor until he reached another door. He didn’t knock, but just burst straight on through it into Cruz’s bedroom. ‘Wake up,’ he shouted, but he needn’t have. Cruz was already sitting up. ‘Get dressed and get down to the atrium.’

‘Why, Father?’

‘Don’t argue. Just
do it
.’

Sixty seconds later, Martinez was in the atrium with
his five body doubles and two guards. He pointed at the guards. ‘You and you. We’re leaving the compound, now.’

‘
Si
, señor. Where to, señor?’ one of them asked.

Martinez saw red. He placed his pistol up against the guard’s head. ‘Interrupt me again,’ he shouted, ‘and I’ll kill you.’

The guard gulped.

Martinez turned to the body doubles. ‘You will all stay here. Spread yourself around the house. Someone might come looking for me. If a single one of you reveals that you are not the true Cesar Martinez Toledo, the families of every man in this room will die a painful and lingering death. Do you understand?’

The body doubles looked anxiously at each other.

‘
Do you understand?
’

‘
Si
, señor,’ they said in unison.

There was a noise from outside – faint at first, but it grew louder very quickly. It was mechanical. Juddering. Like . . .

‘A helicopter,’ Martinez whispered. The Mexican police?

He heard short, sharp bursts of gunfire.

The birds in the birdcage started screeching. Martinez’s face went white. He ran to the back of the atrium and out towards the swimming pool. There he saw it: a Black Hawk, hovering over his land,
pumping bullets towards an observation post on the western side of the perimeter. He watched in anger and shock as the guards on the observation post jumped outwards from the wall to save themselves, before the chopper moved onto the next post. This was not Calaca’s police helicopter. But where was it?

Martinez spun round. One of his guards was standing there, gaping. ‘Give me that,’ Martinez instructed, and pulled the guard’s M16 from his hands. He aimed it towards the chopper and fired two rounds. The chopper’s guns fell silent for a moment; but then it turned and, with a deafening noise, started spraying rounds in an arc, blowing the skull-like head off one of the
La Catrina
statues round the pool, and forcing Martinez and his men to sprint back inside.

Cruz was waiting for him, alarmed but steely-eyed; and so was Raul, who looked terrified. The noise of gunfire continued outside, moving round the perimeter. ‘They are taking out all the observation posts, señor!’ shouted a guard.

‘I know that, you idiot. Is there a vehicle out front?’

‘Yes, señor.’

‘Go and get it started.’ He turned to the body doubles. ‘Spread around the house and remember what I told you. I will start with your children.’