and as Jon continued to steady it climbed. She saw Peter extend his head over the roof parapet to make sure she followed safely. He touched his forehead in salute and vanished, his teeth white in a Cheshire cat grin. She climbed harder, faster, worried because Jon was exposed where he stood alone on the balcony, but it could not be helped.
Meanwhile, as Jon held the rope, he surveyed carefully all around for trouble. His Sig Sauer seemed very far away, although it was simply tucked into his holster. He looked up, noting Randi's rapid progress. His chest tight, he saw what an easy target she was for anyone who spotted her. As he was thinking that, footsteps sounded: They were searching the rooms on the floor directly above him. They would be down to this floor any moment. And now the undulating wail of police cars had begun. Yes, they were heading in this direction.
With relief he saw Randi had disappeared onto the roof. He jumped up and climbed, hand over hand as fast as he could, his fingers and palms burning on the corded nylon. He had been lucky so far, but now he must be on the roof before the terrorists discovered their dead comrade, and before the police arrived. Second only to staying alive was not being caught by the police.
Alarmed oaths in Arabic came from inside the house below as the terrorists found the body of their comrade and the destroyed laptop. At that moment, Jon reached the roof. He gave a powerful final pull, surged over the edge, and flopped onto the shallow slope of red tiles, still holding to the rope to keep from sliding backward. With a tug, the rope moved, dragging him up toward the ridge line. He could see the top of Peter's head. As he slid over headfirst and started to fall, Randi grabbed his shoulders to keep him from nose-diving onto flagstones, He shoulder-rolled up onto his feet and looked around. They were in a small, rooftop garden.
'Nice job.' Peter sliced through the rope, and the cut end rushed back over the rooftop. A shout of rage rose from below, followed by a despairing shriek and crash.
Without another word, the three agents leaped, grabbed the peak of the rooftop, and pulled themselves up to their feet Straddling it, they ran carefully, one after the other, Jon in the lead, jumping gaps and dodging birds' nests as fast as they could without slipping and falling the six stories to the ground. They were five attached roofs away from the safe house when their pursuers burst up and out to the rooftop garden behind them.
As a fusillade of shots buzzed, whined, and ricocheted around them, they dropped flat on the other side of the incline, only their fingers exposed to the gunfire as they gripped the rough tiles that crowned the peak. Below, police cars were roaring onto Calle Dominguin There were angry Spanish shouts and running feet.
'?Cuidado!'
'?Vamos a sondear el ambiente!'
As the police consulted below, Jon was thinking about their attackers. 'They'll try to get ahead of us, break into any building they can, and find a way to get up here and cut us off.'
Randi said nothing. The street lamps had been shot out, and the two police cars were parked side by side in the middle of the street, their headlights on bright, doors wide open. 'It's the Policia Municipal,'' she decided as the men ran behind the cars for protection, shotguns pointing out and around like porcupine quills, while one grabbed his radio phone and shouted into it. 'He's probably summoning shock units of the Nacionals or the Guardia Civil antiterrorist units. We should be out of here when they arrive. They'll have too much firepower, and too many inconvenient questions.'
'I'll second that,' Peter agreed.
Randi listened. 'They say they've got a witness who saw our attackers, and the police have deduced terrorists may be behind the trouble tonight.'
'That'll take some of the heat off us.'
Jon saw a head pop up above the balcony railing on the safe house five buildings back. The terrorist fired a burst from an Uzi. Jon quickly pulled himself up so that his armpits were caught on the ridge, aimed carefully, and returned fire. There was a yelp and a curse as the terrorist pulled back inside the safe house, his arm bloody.
'They'll try to hold us here until their buddies get ahead of us,' Jon said.
'Then we best be on our way.' Peter's pale gaze swept the area. 'You see that taller apartment building at the end of this row? If we can reach it and climb up to the roof, it looks as if it leads to those two other apartment buildings. We may be able to get to the next street from there, where it'll be easier to lose them.'
The heads of two terrorists rose above the wall that rimmed the safe house's roof garden. Jon, Randi, and Peter immediately dropped back behind the ridge, and the terrorists laid down a line of withering fire. But as soon as there was a pause, the trio rose again, returned fire, and when the terrorists ducked, the agents jumped up and ran. They had almost reached the taller apartment building that was their goal when another hail of bullets and polyglot shouts burst out from the rear. Gunshots slammed into the building's wall, shattered windows, and raised shouts of terror from within the apartments.
'Inside!' Jon made a headlong dive through a shattered apartment window. Two terrified women in nightgowns sat bolt upright in twin beds and screamed, sheets pulled tight against their throats, eyes wide in horror.
Randi and Peter dove in after him, and as Peter rolled to his feet, he bowed to the frightened women and apologized in flawless Castilian, 'Lo siento,' as he rushed after Randi and Jon, through the apartment, and out into a broad corridor. One of them was leaving a trail of blood drops.
They passed the elevator and ran up the fire stairs, not pausing to check for wounds until they reached a fire exit that opened onto a wide, flat roof.
'Who's hurt?' Jon puffed. 'Randi?'
'It looks like all of us, especially you.' She pointed.
There were long, bloody furrows on Jon's left arm and shoulder under his ripped shirt and a narrower slash on his left cheek where he had gone headfirst through the shattered window with its jagged wedges of glass. Randi and Peter had lesser cuts, a few bruises, and a couple of bloody creases from the gunfire.
While Jon ripped the left sleeve off his shirt and Randi used it to bind the deeper gashes on his arm, Peter was scrutinizing the street below where it intersected with Calle Dominguin.
Randi studied the long, broad roof behind them as she bandaged. 'We could hold off an attack from where we are, but there's no point. Our situation would only get worse, especially once more police arrive.'
Peter spoke from the parapet, still looking down: 'It's going to be a dicey thing, one way or the other. Looks like the buggers are circling the block to head us off, and there appears to be enough of them to cover all exits.'
Randi cocked her head, listening. 'We'd better do something quick. They're starting up after us.'
Randi finished wrapping Jon's wounds, and Peter ran from the parapet to join them. Randi pulled open the roof door. Three masked terrorists armed with an Uzi, an AK-74, and what looked like an old Luger pistol were halfway up the stairs. In the lead was a burly ruffian with a black beard so great that it sprouted out from beneath his black balaclava.
Without hesitation, Randi squeezed off a short burst of her MP5K, sending the fellow falling back onto the two behind him. One of them, in baggy jeans and a T-shirt as black as his balaclava, leaped over his fallen comrade, firing up as he climbed. Randi cut him down, too, while the third tripped over his own feet as he frantically escaped.
Peter broke into a run. 'The next roof!'
They sprinted across the building, jumped the short space to the next one, and ran on. A series of shots sounded far behind from the third terrorist, who had braved coming out onto the roof and was now blazing away with the old Luger with little chance to hit them at this distance even if they had been standing still.
'Damn!' Randi skidded to a stop, staring ahead.
Three roofs away, on a building on the street that paralleled Calle Domingum, four figures had emerged. Their silhouettes, rifles cradled in their arms, stood out against the stars.
'Listen!' Jon said.
Behind them on Calle Dominguin, heavy vehicles had arrived. Now there was the clatter of booted feet jumping down to the pavement, of officers bawling orders in Spanish. The antiterrorist units were on site. Seconds later, that soft sighing whistle seemed to come from nowhere and hang suspended in the night air. Before the signal had faded, the four silhouettes on the distant roof spun around, ran back to the door, and were gone.
Peter looked behind. The terrorist with the Luger had retreated, too. 'The bloody thugs are bunking,' he said, relieved. 'Now all we have to do is get past the police. Which, I'm afraid, will not be easy, especially if they really are the antiterrorist Guardia Civil units.'
