Berlin Reload

Chapter One-2

“Well, it happens more and more to the elderly,” she teased.

Grant groaned and made his way inside, asking for the bill from the waiter. He walked down the stairs to the rest rooms, took a left past the kitchens and made his way into the men's room. The urinals were empty and only one of the cubicles was in use. He stood at the urinal furthest away and let nature take its course. Finished, he turned to wash his hands in the sink and that's when it happened.

No subtlety, just an explosion of size and aggression from the cubicle that barely gave him time to react, but react he did, just! Because coming at him, at close quarters, was one mean-looking Italian in a leather jacket, who was wielding one of the sharpest-looking switchblades that Jack Grant had ever seen in his life…

The 'knifer' made the mistake of going low, aiming for the guts, a thrust that Grant was able to block easily with the meat of his left forearm. While he was blocking, he was able enough and experienced enough to know that a good, forceful right hook to the jaw can end all kinds of altercations. The fist connected solidly with the knifeman's jaw, sending him reeling onto the tiled floor, the kick from Grant's foot finishing him off.

Still got it, old man, he thought, still got it. It was so fast, so quick, everything speeded up. He knew age was working against him. He had a moment to compose himself and then from upstairs, from the trattoria, he could hear gunfire… and screams.

Katy!

He did what he knew; he ran towards the danger.

He was just in time to see two men, dressed in black, fighting their way through the scattering crowd. They seemed to be heading directly towards Katy, who was cowering under a table. But it was the third man who interested him, the man that seemed to be in charge and was barking the orders. And what he was looking at was a young man; he was blond, muscular, fit, familiar-looking even? The young man's face was partly concealed by a pair of Aviator sunglasses, but what there was visible was a mask of concentration that could barely contain its eagerness. His clothes were uniformly black and baggy, as was the style. Grant had been aware of him for only a few moments, so either this young man was good at staying hidden, or Jack Grant was losing his touch. Maybe a bit of both.

Their eyes locked even through the subterfuge of the sunglasses and Grant turned his head casually towards his daughter and said, in a matter-of-fact undertone, “Katy, when I grab you, I want you to run as fast as you can with me… okay?”

Katy smiled for a moment, unsure. Then she saw Grant's face and realised that her dear old dad wasn't pulling her leg. Her dad was a man with lots of past life experiences and his face was set in that mode that he went into when he was preparing to have to do terrible things. She had seen that look once before when she was a child in Scotland; when a man had broken into their house and dad had been forced to 'deal with' the intruder.

“Dad… what…?” she whispered, the words caught hoarse in her throat.

Grant took his eyes away from her and moved them back to the blond man across the street. A bread delivery wagon had pulled up to the side of where the blond man stood. Grant saw the driver and the blond lock eyes and then the blond nodded. A sign of a mutually agreed upon plan. A kidnap van, perhaps? Was there a team of men in the back ready to snatch him? It was funny how his old skills had never left him.

Grant thought the young man had the look of a soldier about him; and this was confirmed when the blond made an aggressive sweeping motion with one arm and, reaching inside his long black coat, drew out a medium-sized black tube that Jack Grant immediately recognised as an Uzi. It was fitted with a barrel-shaped suppressor to keep the noise down. He saw the man raise the weapon and fire, a sputtering noise coming from the weapon.

The man must have fired too high because the bullets impacted above their heads, shattering the glass of the restaurant window. Grant didn't even pause. He had all the information he needed about what was happening. He grabbed Katy by the arm and shouted, “RUN!” And even as he was pulling and dragging her away from their outside table, through the body of the trattoria and out through the kitchens to the rear exit, Grant could hear the familiar clatter of gunfire and the screams and panic and terror that he knew from a former life. A life that he had thought he had left behind for good.

They ran, pushing their way through the clutter of the kitchen, ignoring the staff and heading towards the exit. It was chaos behind them, but Jack Grant wasn't looking backwards to see the details. He had Katy tucked in front of him and, in the manner of the bodyguard, he was giving her valuable body cover in case an assassin's bullet should take her. They made it to the rear exit and a hefty kick from Grant sent the door flying open and they exited onto a dirty alleyway that ran parallel to the main street.

“This way,” ordered Grant. “We need to find a car. Now, move!”

He didn't wait for her response; the time for talking was over and the time for forward action was very much here! They pounded up the alleyway, their feet clacking against the cobbles, and just as they reached the corner that led onto the main street, Grant became aware of the impact of rounds hitting the wall above their heads. He turned in a crouch and saw at the other end of the alleyway the blond assassin who seemed to be hunting him, the Uzi clutched in one hand and a fresh magazine in the other. The assassin completed the reload and pointed the Uzi back at his target of Grant and his daughter.

Grant pushed Katy in front of him. “Just keep running,” he roared. Another twenty feet and another corner, but behind him he could still hear the stomping footsteps of their would-be kidnapper or killer. Grant turned the corner first and… there it was, their saviour; a clapped-out and beat-up Fiat Panda.

He looked in through the dusty driver's window. It was a shell, poorly maintained, but he could hot-wire it in seconds. It was all they had and they would have to make it work. Good fortune was on their side as the door opened easily in his hand and, in seconds, they were both in. A quick fumble underneath the steering column, a spark of wires and the engine coughed into life. Grant put his foot to the floor and the car lurched forward at speed, its tyres squealing. Katy screamed and held onto the seat tightly and then… the squeal of brakes as the car halted.

A bread delivery van had blocked their way. Grant stared about him, thinking at lightning speed. Ramming it would only slow them down and would achieve very little. The side door opened and two men in black clothes and masks exited, ready to launch themselves at the Fiat's flimsy doors. A quick glance in his mirror and Grant saw the blond running up the hill behind them; whoever he was, he was fit and powerful, the g*n ready in his hands.

Grant threw the car into reverse and aimed it back down the hill, towards an escape route and towards the blond gunman. If he aimed it right, he would probably take him out as well. Two birds with one stone. The engine whined as the speed increased, the steering wheel wobbling in his hand as it became unwieldy. They hit the apex of the narrow entryway and then…

The blond jumped, missing the potential impact of the rear of the car. Grant heard a thunk and, for a brief, happy moment, he thought he had hit him and killed him. It was an illusion. Fingers grasped the side of the window and the blond was half on, half off the roof, but he was still holding on, not letting his quarry disappear. Christ, thought Grant, he's like a b****y super-soldier.

The car continued to reverse at speed, the blond killer hanging on for dear life, but when they reached the natural curve in the road, Grant spun the wheel and the car completed a perfect J-turn. That lost the blond his Uzi, as it clattered away into the street.

And then a face appeared in front of Jack Grant through the prism of the windscreen. The man was half hanging off the roof of the car! For a perfect moment, Jack Grant got to see up close the face of the man who was trying to kill him and his daughter. The sunglasses had been lost in the turmoil of the car reversing and now, instead, he saw a strong, solid face, handsome even. The blond hair, almost white, was streaked with sweat that gave it an almost translucent quality. But it was the eyes that held Jack Grant. For while the face was composed in concentration, it was the eyes that blazed with a barely contained fury. The eyes were the eyes of the zealot.

Grant noticed that the man had on SAP gloves, sand-filled knuckles, and he was starting to punch the windscreen to get to his targets and slow down the car. Grant pressed his foot to the accelerator but it was on the third punch that the glass shattered over them and a hand reached through the hole to grab Grant's jacket. Grant sped up even more. He knew exactly what he was going to do.

“Die Zeit der Abrechnung ist hier, Gorilla Grant!” growled the blond man, his face now contorted in rage, as he spat the words through the aperture in the glass. Their eyes locked for one moment more and then Grant stomped down hard on the brakes of the Fiat. The effect was instantaneous. The blond assassin was thrown like a rag doll into a pile of boxes, bins and garbage; he hit the wall and then lay still, not moving.

Inside the car was a mixture of crying and panting. He looked in the rear view mirror. The kidnap team were heading back to the van in the hope that they could catch them. Grant didn't even wait. He threw the little car into first gear and roared off out of the alleyway and out onto the main road. Unless they had an extensive search team or surveillance group, the little Fiat would be lost in moments in the bustle of a busy Rome day.

“Katy. Katy – are you okay? Have you been hit?” He had one hand on the wheel and one hand on her shoulder, to comfort her. “Katy, sweetheart, talk to me.”

She was crying, she was shaking, she was in shock, but Grant could tell just by looking at her that she hadn't been hit by a stray bullet. He turned his concentration back to the road, dodging the traffic, speeding up and slowing down as and when he had to and trying to put as much distance as he could between them and the attack at the trattoria. There was so much to process, so much confusion. But above all else, the thing that terrified him was the look of the blond assassin and the words that he had spat out, in German, through the windscreen.

“The time of reckoning is here, Gorilla Grant.”

The Blond stood and dusted himself off. By the time he had focused his eyes, the Fiat was just a plume of smoke in the distance. He smiled to himself and then reached for the compact two-way radio inside his jacket. He turned it on and heard the bleep-bleep tone of the signal. He smiled. The tracker that a member of his team had deftly slipped inside the girl's clutch bag earlier that day on her way to the trattoria would lead him – eventually – to his target.