‘Affirmative. Pursuing,’ was the hunters’ terse reply.
‘There are quite a few civilians on that bus,’ warned Waterford. ‘And Chase has a gun. This could get out of control very quickly.’
‘I’ll call Transport for London,’ said Staite, picking up a phone, ‘and tell them to slow the bus down until our teams catch up. If the driver fakes a malfunction, we can get everyone off – right where we want them.’
The bus continued southwards, leaving West Kensington and entering the more downmarket area of Fulham. Eddie kept watch for pursuers, while Nina checked on Roy’s progress. ‘Please tell me it’s almost at one hundred per cent,’ she said.
Roy shook his head. ‘Afraid not. But it’s getting there. Ninety-three.’
‘Great. Once it’s done, it might be best if you copy the file on to—’
She broke off as Eddie tensed in his seat, leaning forward to listen in on a radio discussion between the driver and his depot. ‘Buggeration and fuckery.’
‘What is it?’
‘I didn’t catch all of it, but it sounded like they want him to tell the passengers the bus’s broken down so they can get everyone off.’
Roy raised his head to listen. ‘Seems fine to me.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Nina realised. ‘They know we’re aboard. What do we do? Get out and run?’
Eddie looked outside. He didn’t know the area, but MI6 would have every escape route mapped in detail. ‘If we’re on foot, they’ll catch up with us in no time. We need to go faster.’
‘I think we’ve picked the wrong vehicle for that,’ said Roy.
‘I dunno – didn’t you see Speed?’ He jumped to his feet and drew the gun. ‘All right! Everyone listen – I’m hijacking this bus!’
‘You’re what?’ Nina yelped, but she was drowned out by sounds of alarm from the passengers when they saw he was armed.
Eddie grabbed a handrail in case the driver braked suddenly, then pointed the gun at him. ‘Stop the bus and open the doors!’ When there was no immediate response from the stunned man, he fired a single shot at the floor. ‘I’m not fucking joking – everybody off!’
The terrified driver stamped on the brake, the bus lurching to a standstill in the middle of the road. He opened the doors. The passengers on the lower floor scrambled in panic towards the central and rear exits, more stumbling down the two steep flights of stairs from the top deck. Small screens above the windscreen showed CCTV images of the interior; Eddie waited until both decks were clear before pulling the driver from his compartment. ‘All right, bugger off. Nina, take over.’
‘What?’ she protested. ‘You’re the one who knows how to drive a bus, not me!’
‘Roy’s on the computer, I might need to shoot, so that just leaves you. Sorry, love.’ He ushered her into the empty seat. ‘It’s a hybrid, so it should be a piece of piss to drive – like a big Prius!’
‘A very big Prius.’ She reluctantly took her place at the wheel as Eddie ran to the rear. ‘Okay, what do I do?’
‘If it’s like the bus I learned on in the army,’ he called to her, ‘there should be buttons for the gears and a lever for the airbrake.’
‘Buttons, buttons . . . yeah, we got buttons!’ There were several banks on the dash, but the three marked D, N and R were the most obvious in function. The squat grey lever beside her right knee was also helpfully labelled ‘handbrake’. She put her foot on the brake pedal and pushed the drive button, then fumbled with the lever until it released and pushed it forward. The bus jolted, but remained stationary.
Horns sounded behind her as angry drivers expressed their displeasure at being held up. ‘All right, Jeez, give me a chance,’ she said, nervously switching her foot from the brake to the accelerator.
The bus crept forward. ‘That’s it!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Go faster!’
‘Ah . . . I still think it’d be better if you drove!’ The huge wing mirrors were convex, giving her a wider view but at the same time distorting it. She tried to compensate for what she thought was a drift to the right only to find herself instead swinging towards the left kerb. ‘Whoa! Okay, this is weird.’
‘Never mind weird, we need fast!’ He saw cars in their wake pull over as something bore down behind them – a black Range Rover. ‘They’re coming!’
Through the open front door, Nina heard a siren. ‘So are the cops!’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ said Roy testily. ‘You just hijacked a bus at gunpoint! Every armed woodentop in London’s probably on the way.’
‘You just keep watching numbers go up,’ Eddie fired back. ‘Nina, put your bloody foot down!’
With deep apprehension, she did so. The bus’s unscheduled halt had opened up a space ahead – but it shrank with alarming speed as the speedometer rose. ‘Okay, problem – there’s a traffic jam!’
Their side of the road was occupied by waiting cars – but the other side was relatively clear. ‘Then go around ’em!’
‘We’ll hit someone coming the other way!’
‘They’ll move, trust me!’
Nina was almost out of room to manoeuvre. No choice. She threw the wheel to the right to overtake the traffic – and the bus swerved alarmingly, centrifugal force tilting its tall body steeply to the left. She yelled as it veered towards the pavement on the road’s right side, pedestrians scattering as she swung back the other way—
A lamp post swept past just inches from the Routemaster’s front corner. Nina gasped in relief as she brought the bus back towards the road’s centre – only for her to be almost pitched from her seat as the rear corner, extending out far beyond the back wheels, clipped the obstacle. Metal crunched, a window shattering.
‘Jesus!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Mirrors, use the mirrors!’
‘I’m just trying to use the steering!’ she cried. The long front and rear overhangs made the bus’s handling very different from a car’s; each hard turn felt as if she was sweeping sideways rather than forwards. She finally brought the vehicle parallel to the stationary traffic and powered onwards – only for her heart to sink. ‘Oh, crap! There isn’t enough room!’ Even though oncoming drivers had swerved on to the pavement to get clear, the gap between them and the vehicles on the other side of the road seemed much too narrow to traverse.
‘Yeah, there is!’ Eddie shouted. ‘You’ve got loads of room on the left! Mirrors! Mirrors, mirrors! Use the bloody mirrors!’
‘You know where you can put your frickin’ mirrors?’ Nina growled – but a glance at the left mirror told her that he was correct. She was much farther over than she had thought, the combination of her seating position and the Routemaster’s size throwing off her spatial perception. A more precise turn of the wheel brought her closer in, just in time to whisk through the gap.
She saw that the road forked ahead. ‘We’re coming to an intersection! Which way?’
‘We’re on Fulham Broadway, so . . . right, go right!’ Roy told her. ‘It’ll take us towards the river – we can cross on Battersea Bridge. If we can reach it in one piece,’ he added.
‘I’ll try not to hit anything else!’ Nina sounded the horn in a warning blast as she tore through a set of red lights into the junction. Cars scattered like frightened mice as she accelerated on to the new road. ‘Roy, what about the laptop?’
‘Ninety-five per cent,’ he replied.
‘Seriously? Can’t you speed it up? My parents had a computer with a “turbo” button on it back in the damn Nineties!’
Roy sounded offended. ‘It’s working as fast as it can!’
Eddie had other concerns. The siren’s source had just appeared, a police car sweeping out from the left-hand fork – but rather than follow them, it stopped in the middle of the junction, blocking the confused traffic. The Range Rover entered the other side of the intersection and bullied its way through the chaos.
>
He thought the police car was waiting for their pursuers to take the lead. But when the Range Rover finally cleared the knot of cars and accelerated after the bus, the cops remained stationary.
There was only one reason why the police would have been instructed to leave the hunt to the Removal Men. Brice and those working with him wanted no official witnesses to their actions when they caught up.
‘Nina,’ he said, readying the gun, ‘you need to get away from these arseholes – or we’re going to die!’
36
Nina knew the urgency in her husband’s voice from far too much prior experience. She pulled out to overtake the vehicles ahead, tearing down the wrong side of the road at forty, forty-five, fifty miles per hour.
The street was broad enough for oncoming cars to swerve clear of the thundering Routemaster, but beyond them she saw buildings blocking her path at a T-junction. ‘Crap!’ she said. ‘Roy, which way?’
Roy looked up from the laptop. ‘Left!’
The intersection was controlled by lights, cars starting to come around the corner. ‘Hold on!’ she cried, releasing the accelerator and curving right – before throwing the bus hard to the left.
The Routemaster tipped alarmingly. The first oncoming car skidded to a stop as the bus tore past – only for a van behind to ram into it and knock it forward. The bus’s tail ripped off its front bumper and sent it spinning across the junction.
Nina gripped the shuddering wheel. The speedo was falling, but it still felt as if the double-decker was about to topple over. She braked. To her horror, the bus’s list became worse, the street rolling before her—
‘Don’t brake!’ Eddie yelled. ‘Go faster!’
She trusted him to be right. Foot back on the accelerator, hard. The bus lurched, still teetering on the brink of disaster . . . and then the extra power propelled it through the turn.
It swung back upright as she straightened out, straddling the middle of the road between the lines of traffic. ‘Glad you remembered your driving lessons!’ she called back to Eddie, heart pounding. ‘Where are we, and how do we get to the river?’
The bus’s drunken reel had almost thrown Roy from his seat. He hurriedly checked that the damaged hard drive hadn’t been disconnected before answering. ‘The King’s Road. Keep going, and there’s a turn that takes us to Battersea Bridge.’
‘How’s the computer doing?’
‘Ninety-seven per cent!’
‘It’s always the last little bit that takes for ever, isn’t it?’ said Eddie, looking back. Their pursuers had been forced to slow to round the wrecked car, but they wouldn’t be delayed for long.
The bus raced on. Bangs and screeches of metal punctuated its journey as it swiped off wing mirrors and scraped against cars that had not given it enough space. ‘Ninety-eight per cent!’ Roy announced as they hurtled through another set of lights. ‘Okay, next right for the bridge.’
Nina heard more sirens. ‘Cops are getting closer!’
‘So are the goon squad,’ Eddie warned. The Range Rover was gaining fast.
Roy pointed ahead. ‘Here, go right!’
Nina started to turn – then hurriedly abandoned the move and swerved back on to the King’s Road. ‘Roadblock!’ A police car had stopped across both lanes of the southbound street.
‘Why didn’t they block this road?’ Roy asked.
Eddie had the unwelcome answer. ‘Because Brice doesn’t want the cops to catch us. He wants the Removal Men to get us first – so they can shoot us without anyone asking questions!’
Nina saw a sign ahead. ‘Thank God!’
‘What is it?’ Eddie asked.
‘A bus lane!’ She found a gap in the traffic she was overtaking, which was comprised almost exclusively of big and expensive SUVs, and darted left into the empty section of road. ‘Maybe now we can get somewhere – oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!’ What she had hoped would be an escape route came to a sudden end not far ahead. ‘It’s like two hundred feet long! That’s it? London, you suck!’ There were no spaces in the line of 4x4s to her right, and even with repeated shrills of the horn, none of the drivers were willing to clear one for her. ‘Come on, someone get out of my way!’
‘Welcome to Chelsea,’ said Roy acerbically.
‘Don’t stop!’ Eddie shouted. The Range Rover was gaining.
Nina grimaced, then spun the wheel. The bus scythed into the traffic, sideswiping an Audi Q7 driven by a rail-thin blonde in oversized sunglasses. ‘Comin’ through! Yeah, I learned to drive in New York, lady. Don’t try to block me.’
The Range Rover closed in, its front passenger leaning out of his window. ‘They’re gonna shoot!’ Eddie cried. ‘Roy, get down!’
Roy hurriedly ducked – as the man opened fire with a handgun. Shots tore across the gap, the Routemaster’s back window shattering.
Eddie dived through the open rear doors to land flat on the boarding platform. The Removal Man’s gun swung towards him—
The Yorkshireman had already lined up his sights and pulled the trigger. The other man jerked back as blood burst from his shoulder, his gun falling to the road.
Eddie had no time for relief. The bus jolted with an impact, the shrill of metal on metal rising behind him—
He rolled back inside – as they whipped past another bus, the two double-deckers scraping noisily against each other. Pieces of both vehicles’ mirrors showered over him. ‘Christ! Could you get any closer?’
‘I could try,’ Nina snarked. ‘Roy, are you okay?’
Roy looked up from the floor. ‘Yah, yah,’ he gasped.
‘And the laptop?’
‘What? Wait – you care more about the laptop than me, don’t you!’
‘What I care about most of all is not getting killed! Is it still working?’
He retrieved the machine. ‘Yah, it is. And it’s still on ninety-eight per cent, since I’m sure you want to know!’
‘Just keep it running!’ Nina glanced at the left-side mirror, only to find nothing there. That would make judging her manoeuvring room even harder – but a quick look in the other mirror revealed a more urgent danger. A man was leaning out of the Range Rover’s rear window, holding something larger than a pistol. ‘Eddie, gun! Bigger gun!’
Eddie pulled himself upright to see the Removal Man readying an MP5K, a compact – but still deadly – sub-machine gun. He took aim again, this time at the Range Rover’s driver. Time to end the pursuit—
He fired – but the round glanced off the windscreen. The glass was bulletproof.
The Routemaster’s was not. ‘Roy, get upstairs!’ Eddie yelled, running back up the central aisle. Roy hurriedly scrambled to the forward staircase as the Yorkshireman dived flat—
The SMG blazed, the gunman hosing the bus with gunfire. Bullets ripped through the cabin. Roy shrieked as a round burst through the panel behind him and cracked against the stairs between his legs. He flung himself up the last few steps on to the top deck, clutching the laptop.
Nina heard the bullet strike behind the driver’s compartment. She ducked, but knew she was hopelessly exposed in her elevated position. Her pursuers had realised this as well, the Range Rover reappearing in the surviving mirror and pulling out to overtake.
She threw the wheel to the right. The bus tipped again as it crossed on to the wrong side of the road. The Range Rover dropped back. She straightened – but not quickly enough, clipping a car. The windscreen cracked.
‘Nina!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah!’ Where were their attackers? No sign of them in the mirror—
Another burst of gunfire blew out the left-side windows. Eddie lunged under a seat as glass cascaded around him. Nina gasped and hunched down again. The Range Rover drew level with the Routemaster’s tail. If she swung left again, she could force it to crash—
A thump from behind – and she caught movement on one of the CCTV monitors. To her shock, she saw that the bus had a new passenger. The man in the Range Rover’s back seat had thrown himself on to the rear platform.
He still had his sub-machine gun. Eddie snapped up his own weapon—
The man rushed up the curving staircase. The Yorkshireman fired, but hit only metal as his target ran out of sight. ‘Roy!’ he cried, rising and pounding up the forward stairs. ‘He’s coming after you! He wants the laptop!’
He reached the stairwell’s top, looking over the banister – and hurriedly ducked as the Removal Man saw him and unleashed a burst of bullets. Panels splintered above him. He popped his gun arm around the corner at floor level, sending two rounds down the upper deck. The other man hurled himself on to one of the rear seats, disappearing from sight. Eddie tracked him and fired again, but the bullet didn’t have enough power to penetrate all the intervening seat backs.
And now he was out of ammo—
The MP5K rose above the seats and swung in his direction, the Removal Man blind-firing – but only a few rounds lanced up the bus before the clamour of gunfire was replaced by a dry click.
Eddie knew he only had moments before his opponent reloaded. He charged down the aisle. The Removal Man had already ejected the magazine and inserted a new one, springing up to fire—
The Yorkshireman hurled his empty pistol at him. The MP5K snapped up to deflect it, metal clanking off metal – then the savage little gun came around—
Eddie dived over the seats to hit the other man in a flying tackle, knocking his gun arm away. The MP5K went off, a spray of bullets tearing through the bus’s side and shattering a shop window on the street beyond.
‘Roy, get downstairs!’ he yelled. The younger man hurriedly retreated as Eddie prepared to unleash a headbutt—
His adversary beat him to it.
A piercing pain drove through Eddie’s upper jaw as a tooth cracked. ‘You fucker!’ he roared, anger powering his fist into the other man’s nose. Cartilage crunched, blood spurting. The younger man grunted . . . but didn’t go down.