The journalist was stepping off the escalator at the bottom. Gabriel pushed through the crowd trying to run down the escalator but it was covered in a sea of passengers who were more than reluctant to move and appreciate his urgency. She was getting away. He checked the small curved form of the journalist once more thinking how much thinner and fragile she looked compared to the photograph he had been shown of her. He liked her with a little more weight on those curves but then what did he expect after she’d spent the summer living undercover in Europe’s notorious refugee camp. He’d been told she was suffering from malnutrition and nervous exhaustion yet here she was still carrying on, putting her life at risk.
He glanced to the right. Two men in dark cheap suits unlike the quality of his designer tailor-made one emerged from one of the tunnel walkways and started following her. They were closer to her than Gabriel. If he didn’t reach her soon there would be a bullet in her back and he would have failed to protect the witness.
Appearing blissfully unaware of the men pursuing her the young pretty blonde journalist walked towards the platform, Gabriel stepped off the escalator and picked up his pace becoming a little rougher, pushing passengers out of the way to reach her. A tinny disembodied voice announced the imminent arrival of a tube. Too late, the damn train was coming in and the suits were just about on top of her.
Gabriel barged through a couple holding hands praying he would take hold of her before the train arrived. But his luck was running out fast. Just before he reached the end of the tunnel walkway, a third suit stepped in front of him and swung a punch at Gabriel’s face. He quickly raised his arm to block it and deliver a hard blow to the man’s stomach. The man groaned loudly and bent double. The crowd of passengers were in an uproar and panic. They scattered and ran out, clearing a path for the other two assailants to reach the platform where she waited for the train.
The suit came back at Gabriel grabbing him by the shoulders to push him back against the platform wall between two running, screaming, female French students. As his back hit the tiled wall, Gabriel lifted his arms with lightning speed and dislodged the man’s hold to aim a punch to the man’s jaw and then stomach in a succession of fast staccato movements, the older man tried in vain to match and counter as Gabriel heard the train arrive. Automatically, Gabriel’s attention diverted for a brief second to the platform to see if he could find the woman he had been assigned to protect. She was pushing her way onto the tube. His lapse of attention was a mistake.
The suit’s fist made hard contact with his jaw forcing Gabriel’s head sideways. It gave his attacker enough time to draw his weapon and aim it at him. Malinov quickly renewed his concentration ignoring the ache in his jaw. He spun his body around and executed a perfect roundhouse kick to knock the man’s weapon away before he was able to fire and took out his own Glock 17 before the man could retrieve it and recover. Without hesitation, he coldly discharged his weapon and shot the man square in the chest. The assailant dropped to the floor dead. Running towards the tube, Gabriel put his gun away and looked for the witness.
Everyone was running past him screaming after hearing the shot. The woman was half on the tube when she turned and looked backwards to see the men in suits making their way towards her through the scattering passengers. Finally, she had seen that she was being followed. Gabriel watched her look down the platform to the entrance to the walkway as the rest of the passengers swarmed and pushed to get on the train behind her to escape the danger forcing her onto the train. Gabriel could see her mentally consider escape options as he battled with the sea of passengers to get to her.
“Get on the train, Antonia,” he called out to her, his voice betraying only a light lilt of his Russian accent.
Startled at the sound of her name being shouted, she looked down the platform and made contact with his eyes.
“Get on the train,” he repeated.
Confused but clearly seeing something in his handsome face and black eyes she could trust, she obeyed and stopped resisting the push of the crowd behind her and got on. Gabriel saw her force her way through the heaving mass on the carriage and move through the connecting door into the next one to reach him as he headed for the nearest carriage three away from her but as he got there a loud beeping sound echoed around the underground platform and he was warned to stand clear of the doors as they closed on him. Growling with frustration he tried to prise them apart but the damn train started moving up past him into the tunnel. He banged the door with the side of his fist in frustration. He stood back defeated as her carriage passed. He saw the men move into the next carriage gaining ground on her. She stared at him out of the window briefly ceasing her movement up the train.
“Get off at the next station and keep running. I will find you,” he shouted watching her glassy green eyes stare at him from her beautiful haunted
