The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,19

and take out the new mag . . .

Khattak had retrieved his own pistol.

The wood and wire of the pigeon loft would not stop a bullet, and the cover of the stairwell was too far to reach in time. But the roof’s edge was just a few strides away.

The agent ran for it. Khattak turned, gun raised—

Adam plunged off the roof as the terrorist fired, the bullet whipping above his head.

Khattak stared in amazement before a brief, disbelieving ‘Hah!’ escaped his mouth. Toradze, or whatever his real name was, had just committed suicide. Even if the four-storey fall hadn’t killed him, the landing would have broken his legs, leaving him a helpless and immobile target below.

He swaggered to the edge and looked down.

The other man was on the ground. But he was neither dead nor crippled. He was standing, the open umbrella a discarded black flower at his feet as he slapped a new magazine into his SIG-Sauer and took aim—

The bullet went through Khattak’s right eye, punching out of the top of his skull in a spray of blood and fragmented bone.

He collapsed, toppling forwards and falling. His body hit the ground with a horrific crunch, limbs splayed at unnatural angles. Blood oozed out from his head.

A good shot. A good kill.

Adam returned his gun to his coat, then dragged the broken corpse against a wall beside a pile of trash, using a flattened cardboard box to conceal it as much as possible. ‘Holly Jo?’

Her reply was hesitant. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’ He glanced down at his chest. There was blood on his shirt, but not enough to concern him. ‘Tag this location. There’s another body for Imran’s people to clean up. It’s next to a pile of garbage under some cardboard. Tell Tony that you can start packing up your gear. I’ll make my own way to the airport. Out.’

Before Holly Jo could say anything else, he tapped a spot behind his right ear. There was a small bulge beneath the skin – a control for the implanted radio. The touch switched it off. He fastened his coat to conceal the blood and picked up the umbrella. The shaft was made from kevlar and steel, the spokes ultra-strong carbon fibre able to support his weight on parachute-grade nylon. The device, which could slow a person enough to survive a thirty-foot fall unharmed, had inevitably acquired the nickname ‘Mary Poppins’.

Adam’s landing from a greater height had not been painless, but training had taught him how to roll to absorb most of the impact. He raised the umbrella over his head, then set off down the back street, limping slightly. Behind him, the rain slowly washed the splattered blood into the gutter.

‘Hey, hello? Can you hear me?’

Malik Syed slowly opened his eyes to see people looking down at him with concern. The closest, a man, patted his cheek a few times. ‘Can you hear me? Are you okay?’

‘He’s waking up,’ said a woman behind him, relieved.

Hands helped him to his feet. Syed looked around in bewilderment, his neck aching. Where was he? An alleyway – he had been lying amongst plastic sacks of garbage at its end. ‘What . . . what happened?’

‘I think you were mugged,’ the man said. ‘I saw someone run out of here and came to see what was going on.’

Syed hurriedly checked his pockets. His phone had gone, as had his wallet. The latter was only a minor inconvenience, as the identity card in it was a fake and he could easily get hold of a replacement as well as more money, but the phone was more of a worry. While he didn’t keep the numbers of any of his al-Qaeda contacts in its memory, it still held a record of its most recent calls, which the authorities might be able to use against the group. ‘Did you see who did it?’

‘I didn’t get a good look, but he was just a kid. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. He had a spanner or something in his hand – he must have hit you with it and pulled you down here.’

That was, oddly, a relief; it was unlikely that the police or counterterrorism agents would use street urchins to do their dirty work. He checked the rest of his belongings. His mugger had left his watch, a cheap Casio. Several minutes had passed since he last remembered checking the time . . .

What was the last thing he remembered? Thanking his benefactors, he stepped out on to the street.