Authors: Sarah Alderson
I peered round the wall. Four men on the roof of the first building were taking running leaps to clear the distance onto the next roof.
‘Lila, can you open the door?’
Oh God. I looked at it. It was a metal fire door. Plain, with no handle on this side. I normally needed to see something in order to move it. I tried visualising the handle on the other side.
Nothing happened.
‘You might want to hurry.’
‘I’m trying,’ I hissed.
‘Try harder,’ Alex said through gritted teeth. He had his back flat to the wall, his gun cradled in both hands. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to visualise the handle again. Imagined how it would feel to push it down.
The door popped with a clang and swung open. I grinned at Alex. He grinned back and we darted through into a dark, musty stairwell. I slammed the door shut behind us. We hit the ground floor at a run and paused, breathless, before the final door onto the street. I nodded at Alex. He pushed the door a fraction with his foot and glanced out.
‘OK, it’s clear. I’ll go first. Keep against the wall, we’re going left. Move fast, keep down.’
The alley we came onto was a rat run, just a few metres wide. I glanced up. We were in partial shadow. A ledge jutted out above our heads, giving us about fifteen centimetres of cover. A stone or something fell from the roof, throwing up some trash by my foot.
‘Watch out!’ Alex yelled, as I realised it wasn’t a stone but a bullet. The Unit were on the roof, firing down on us. Alex’s arm was pinning me back against the wall, just in case I felt like playing dare with a semi-automatic.
‘They’re not real bullets. They’re rubber,’ he said. ‘They don’t want to kill us. They want to take us alive.’
I glanced at him. Was he trying to make me feel better?
Just then we heard shouts coming from around the corner. They were closing in on us from every direction. I peered over Alex’s shoulder and fixed my gaze on the metal dumpster at the end of the alley. I imagined pushing it across the uneven ground, and suddenly I felt the shunt of it as it rolled slowly across the alley. When I felt it meet the wall opposite, I pushed harder, wedging it firmly between both sides of the alley, creating a metal barrier between us and the Unit. I smiled widely at Alex as the dull thud of bullets began to ricochet off the metal.
‘Run!’ I shouted, grabbing Alex by the hand. And we did, trying to stick as close to the wall as possible, bullets dancing around our heels, spitting up dirt and gravel.
We rounded a corner into another alleyway, this one wider than the last. After thirty metres Alex shouted at me to stop, and threw his weight against a wooden door which splintered open with a loud crash. I stumbled through the doorway, my mouth falling open. Two half-naked men, with towels slung round their waists, were standing in front of a row of battered metal lockers. A wooden bench ran down the centre of what was obviously some kind of changing room. Clouds of steam billowed overhead, but I barely noticed. Alex had stopped in the middle of the room to look back at me and was now yelling at me to move. I dodged past the two men, muttering an apology as I went, skipped round a pile of dirty towels and grabbed Alex’s hand.
We burst through a door into a long service hallway, sprinted past several people wearing what looked like maids’ uniforms, and then finally crashed through another door, spilling out into the luxurious hush of a grand hotel lobby. Several guests sitting in the adjacent bar area glanced at us, and the concierge yelled out a warning for us to stop. Out of nowhere a security man appeared, blocking our way. I glanced over my shoulder, close to tears, panic taking root, but Alex gripped my hand tighter, nodded at the gun he was holding, and the security man jumped aside.
We shoved our way through the revolving door, exiting onto a street that was flooded with tourists, all heading towards the Zócolo – the giant square in front of the cathedral.
‘Walk ahead of me,’ Alex murmured, dropping his pace instantly to a stroll and ducking his head. ‘Keep next to those people.’ He nodded at a group of tourists just ahead of us who were following a guide with a yellow umbrella. I slipped into their midst, keeping my head down, my ears pricked for any shouting or gunfire.
Once we broke into the wide cathedral square, Alex caught up with me. I felt him just behind me, his breath scorching the back of my neck. ‘Keep walking, keep walking,’ he said quietly. ‘Follow the group inside the cathedral.’
It took all my willpower not to run. The square was too bright, too exposed; we stood out too conspicuously amongst this band of camera-wielding, guidebook-clutching tourists. I wanted to slip down one of the darkened streets and disappear into the chaos of the city, but I listened to Alex, keeping my pace steady as we moved in a pack towards the cathedral.
The light was murky inside, and it was cold enough to make me shiver. It felt like being trapped in an underwater cave. My eyes were still adjusting to the dimness when Alex slipped his hand under my elbow and started steering me down a side aisle towards a chapel at the far end. Without a word, he pushed me into a curtained confessional.
We stood facing each other in the latticed gloom. I pressed myself against his chest and felt his arm come round my back, his hand flatten against my spine.
‘You OK?’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ I nodded.
‘I can’t believe you made that jump.’
‘I can’t believe they found us. What are we going to do?’
He didn’t answer, he just held me tighter. We stood there for a few seconds in silence. My heart was pounding so loudly I almost didn’t hear him at first.
‘It must be one of us,’ he murmured.
‘What?’ I looked up at him, not understanding.
‘They tracked us all the way here. They knew exactly where we were. Exactly. Down to the room we were in. They stopped at the fourth floor.’
I shook my head, pulling out of his arms. I wasn’t sure what he meant.
‘It’s got to be one of us.’ He was thinking, his eyes scanning me from top to toe. ‘It can’t be you. They didn’t have a chance to plant anything on you.’ He stopped talking then and we stared at each other. I caught up with his thinking. He meant a tracking device.
‘It’s not on my clothes.’ His clothes and watch were new, bought two days ago at a border town. ‘It’s not in the bag. The bag was in Jack’s car. It was unauthorised. The Unit didn’t know he had it in there. It was just for emergencies. I checked everything.’
Alex stopped for a second, thinking, then he handed me his gun, and in one quick move, pulled his T-shirt off over his head. We both turned our heads to stare at his upper arm. In the darkness we could just about make out the tattoo of crossed swords, the words
Semper Fi
inked indelibly above. He ran his fingers over it. I followed suit.
‘Are you serious? You think they planted a tracking device on you? I mean,
in
you?’
‘Here, here, feel this.’ He grabbed my fingers and pressed them into the muscle. There was a tiny bump under the skin, almost imperceptible, like a raised scar. My eyes went wide.
‘I’ve seen this done,’ Alex whispered, tracing the tiny bump again with his fingertips. ‘Not on us, but when someone goes undercover. They plant a device just under the skin so they can track them. It’s almost undetectable. I just didn’t think for a second—’ He shook his head, pulling his T-shirt back on.
‘But if they’ve been able to track you this whole time, why didn’t they come after us from the start?’ I asked. ‘When they thought Demos had caught us, when we both disappeared, why didn’t they just follow the tracker then? Why wait until we were in a different country?’
It didn’t make sense.
‘I don’t know.’ Alex shook his head, frowning at his arm.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, running my hand under his sleeve and over the minuscule bump.
He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled a switchblade from his back pocket. I took a step backwards, my shoulders bumping the grille behind me. Alex rolled the sleeve of his T-shirt up and lifted the blade to his arm. And then the door flew open.
A priest in black robes was standing there, his mouth gaping as he took in the scene before him – Alex holding a knife and me clutching a gun. He grabbed the rosary hanging around his neck and started squawking loudly in Spanish, his eyes rolling heavenwards. I glanced at the chapel behind him. Several people had turned to stare.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered to the priest as we barged past him out of the booth. The priest shouted something to our backs as we slipped out of the chapel and made our way towards the central aisle of the cathedral, which was now heaving with people. I clutched the gun against my thigh and tried to look inconspicuous, but I could feel the ripple of eyes and the swivel of heads as we passed.
Alex skidded to a sudden stop in front of me, almost yanking my arm out of its socket. He spun us a hundred and eighty degrees and started heading back the way we’d just come, towards the angry priest. I glanced over my shoulder at the entrance. Six men in black combats had burst through the crowd gathered there. They stopped to let their eyes adjust to the gloom and we took the opportunity to hustle our way down a length of pew and disappear into a pack of tourists standing and admiring the altar. I risked another backwards glance over my shoulder. Two of the men from the Unit had headed off to the chapels on either side of the entrance, two more were heading to the other side of the church away from us, and the last two were moving down the central aisle straight towards us. One of them was holding a small palm-sized device which he kept glancing down at.
With a final push, we shouldered our way through the crowd towards a little side door behind the altar. Alex reached for the handle and I took a final glance round the cathedral. I spied what I was looking for in a chapel on the far side, away from where the crowds were gathered. A statue of a saint stood in a little alcove high above the entrance. There was no one below it so I said a little prayer then tipped the statue off its plinth. It fell with a splintering crash that rocked through the muttering quiet of the church like a tidal wave. Instantly people started screaming, and running towards the exits and, in the blur of noise and chaos, Alex and I slipped silently through the little door.
The room we came into was some kind of dressing room. A giant crucifix dominated one wall and choir robes hung from hooks on two other walls. Several candles were burning beneath the crucifix.
‘I’m so going to hell,’ I said, looking around.
‘Well, I’m going with you,’ Alex replied.
He pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up once more and I watched in horror as he ran the blade quickly through a candle flame before pressing the tip of it into the skin of his arm.
‘Oh God.’ I leaned against the door, feeling suddenly woozy, but unable to take my eyes off the knife.
Blood started to trickle down Alex’s arm. He grimaced, and I grabbed a long scarf thing hanging on a hook behind me and handed it to him. Alex held the knife out towards me. On its bloody tip was a tiny metal ball.
‘That’s it?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ he said, flipping the knife and letting the ball fall to the flagstones at his feet. He crushed it underfoot before grabbing the cloth out of my hands and wrapping it round his arm, tying it in a knot.
‘Right, let’s go,’ he said when he was done.
We ran again, through doorways, beneath arches and through empty rooms, until we reached a heavy wooden door that came out at the side of the cathedral. The sun was starting to go down and the shadows were lengthening, spiking the square with oblongs and pyramids of dark.
We hung there, in the shadows, waiting. Alex pressed against me, sheltering me against the wall. After a minute he shifted position. ‘Here they come,’ he said under his breath.
I peered out from under his arm, spotting the men from the Unit as they came running out of the cathedral, like spiders disgorged from a nest. They scanned the square, searching for us, people scattering in panic out of their path. The one holding the black device in his hand was frowning and shaking his head.
We watched as they headed over to a black van that had pulled up on the far side of the square, and climbed inside. After another minute it drove off and disappeared into the flow of traffic.
‘Where to now?’ I asked Alex, feeling suddenly like I needed to lie down.
‘Back to the hotel. We need that bag. It’s got all our money in it.’
Technically it wasn’t really
our
money. It was the money we’d got from selling Jack’s car back in California. But it was all we had and we were going to need every cent of what was left to get ourselves out of here to somewhere the Unit couldn’t find us.
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to go back to the hotel? Won’t they look for us there?’
He shook his head. ‘They’d assume we wouldn’t be that stupid. It’s probably the safest place to go right now.’
I sighed. ‘OK. So we go back and get the bag and then what? Find somewhere else to sleep?’
‘No. No sleeping. We have one more thing to do tonight.’
I studied his face. He looked grim. I was guessing the
one more thing
wasn’t a candlelit dinner and a movie.
We’d retrieved the bag from the cleaning closet and broken into an empty room on the top floor of the hotel, with a view of the street below. Alex was now busy sorting through the bag, laying everything out on the bed next to me. I was watching him. There was about fifty thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand; three guns; several clips of bullets; our passports; and a change of clothes for both of us. Alex repacked everything, emptying a pile of dollars into his wallet. We’d fixed up his arm with some surgical tape and a bandage. I reached out a hand and stroked up his arm. He stopped what he was doing and looked down at me. Then he pushed the bag aside and lay down on the bed, putting his uninjured arm round me. I curled into him.
‘How are you doing?’
I didn’t answer. How was I doing? I wasn’t sure. I tried prodding my brain like it was flesh and I could feel where the bruises were, but it didn’t work like that. It just shut down like a clam wherever I poked it. I was trying not to think about anything else other than Alex right here, next to me, holding me.