Wolf Angel, Mark Hobson [best free ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗

blared angrily, but Pieter ignored them and prayed for a miracle. Just ahead the figure had made it over and was running along the opposite pavement, turning his head to see how close his pursuer was.

Seconds later, having made it in one piece, Pieter sprinted down the narrow path with the oncoming traffic just inches from his right shoulder. He watched the gunman twist and disappear around the wall, and moments later he did likewise.

A long flight of steps climbed up the gentle sloping roof of the science museum, leading to the rooftop café terrace, and the man was all but sprinting up them like he was the bionic man or something. Already near to exhaustion, Pieter watched him in dismay.

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” he gasped and panted to himself. This man was relentless.

Pieter started to climb.

                                                      Steps leading to

                                                       rooftop terrace

He’d only been here once before, with his then wife, to spend a pleasant couple of hours drinking beer. Under normal circumstances it was a fantastic location with probably the best views out across Amsterdam’s skyline. Yet this was anything but normal, and as he hauled himself up the steps he knew in the back of his mind that the gunman had made a bad mistake. For once at the top, with the only way back down being via these same steps, he would be corned with nowhere to go. He could take a hostage of course, a situation that Pieter fervently hoped did not happen, but ultimately he was trapped. It was this thought, this end result – taking him down and arresting him – that drove Pieter on for the last few strides.

Finally reaching the top, he looked around.

The rooftop terrace was built in a series of wooden stages, each higher than the previous one, like wide, ascending platforms. It was meant to represent the deck of an old sailing ship. The café itself was right at the top. Around the edges were a number of viewing spots with observation binoculars, and beyond them some handrails. And beyond that, a two-hundred foot drop straight down to the water below.

The man he’d been chasing was standing by the handrail, staring out as though admiring the view. He was alone. Anybody else up here had had the good sense to run once they saw his firearm. Behind the man, far off in the distance, Pieter could see Schreierstoren tower shrouded in smoke. The sound of the helicopter from earlier was louder now, and glancing up he saw it swing into view, hovering just above them. Its side-door was open, and a police marksman was leaning out with his sniper’s rifle pointing at the gunman.

Raising his Walter P5 and pointing it at the man’s back, Pieter approached slowly, hesitantly.

When he was a dozen or so feet away he stopped.

“It’s over you fucker!” he shouted. “You’ve nowhere to go! Put the gun down and turn slowly around!”

The man did not move or reply.

“Do It! Or that guy in the chopper will blow your fucking brains out!!”

Slowly the head turned.

To reveal not the face of a hardened criminal or terrorist, but that of a young teenage youth, a boy of perhaps fourteen or fifteen.

Pieter gawped at him, completely thrown by the revelation and what it meant. A child! They’d been using a child to gun people down!

Then the boy smiled at him, a menacing grin that seemed to taunt Pieter.

Turning back to the handrail, the youth climbed up and dropped away into the abyss.

CHAPTER 12

DYATLOV

Pieter staggered, partly from the downdraft from the helicopter, but mostly from shock. He reached out and grabbed a hold of the handrail where moments before the boy had been standing.

Raising himself up he leaned over and looked down but all he could see was the grey water far below. Twisting about he raised his arm and signalled the crew on board the chopper, which then spiralled out and downwards, where it hovered a few metres above the surface of the dock. The rotor blades pushed at the water in a circular pattern, creating a mini squall, and it commenced gliding back and forth as they began a search.

Pieter moved away and slumped down onto one of the wooden benches. In his mind he saw once again the boy’s face and his ugly smirk, and he cast his mind back to the night the intruder had broken into his home, and the brief moment their eyes had made contact. He knew, he was absolutely sure they were one and the same people. But this time, instead of making good his escape, rather than be captured he had made the terrible decision to jump to his death.

                                           View from the rooftop terrace

                                       showing Oosterdok and footbridge

God, what kind of people were they dealing with here? Had the boy been so brainwashed that dying like that was preferable to imprisonment? And could he, Pieter, have done something to prevent it? If he’d known how young he was, he might have held back, maybe not even pursued him so determinedly. Yet the ruthless nature of these people was apparent from the gun battle back at the tower. He doubted if any of them were willing to be captured alive. And did they deserve to be, considering what they had done, to Mira and Monroe… and maybe to Daan! Jesus, in all of the