“What the hell are you doing?” Mandino screamed at the pilot.
“Saving your life, that’s what. If that jeep had hit us, we’d all be dead.”
“He was playing chicken. He’d have swerved at the last moment.”
“I wasn’t going to take that chance. I’ve seen what’s left after helicopter crashes,” the pilot snapped, as he turned the chopper toward the main road, again following the plume of dust kicked up by the Toyota.
As the Toyota roared underneath the helicopter, Bronson accelerated even harder and turned back onto the rough track.
“Jesus Christ,” Angela muttered. “I really thought you were going to hit it.”
“It was close,” Bronson conceded. “If he hadn’t pulled up, I was going to try to swerve around the front of him.”
“Why not the back?” Angela asked. “There was more room behind him.”
“Not a good idea. There’s a tail rotor there. If you hit that, you end up looking like sliced salami. By the way,” he added jokingly, “I hope you chose the fully comprehensive insurance option when you hired this. There seem to be a few holes in it now.”
Angela smiled briefly at him, then peered behind them. “The helicopter’s heading straight for us again.”
“I see it,” Bronson said, looking in the external rearview mirror. “But now we’re only a couple of hundred yards from the road.”
“And we’ll be safe then?” Angela didn’t sound convinced.
“I don’t know, but I hope so. The last thing these guys need is publicity, and shooting up a car on a public road from a helicopter is a pretty good way of guaranteeing plenty of media interest. I’m hoping they’ll just follow us and try to take us down when we finally stop. In any case, there’s nowhere else we can go.”
At the end of the track, Bronson glanced both ways, then swung the Toyota onto the road and floored the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the turbo kicked in and the big jeep hurtled down the road toward Piglio.
Mandino was hoarse from shouting instructions.
“Thanks to your total incompetence,” he yelled at the pilot, “they’ve reached the road.”
“I can take them there,” the gunman said. “They’ll have to drive in a straight line, and they’ll be an easy target.”
“This is supposed to be a covert operation,” Mandino snapped. “We can’t start blasting away with automatic weapons at a vehicle on the public roads.” He tapped the pilot on the arm. “How much fuel have you got?”
The man checked his instruments. “Enough for about another ninety minutes in the air,” he said.
“Good. We’ll slow down and follow them. Sooner or later they’ll have to stop somewhere, and then we’ll take them.”
“I can’t see the helicopter,” Angela said, craning her neck at the window of the Toyota. “Perhaps they’ve given up.”
Bronson shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “It’s somewhere behind us.”
“Can we outrun it?”
“Not even in a Ferrari,” he replied, “but I hope we won’t have to. If we can just make it to Piglio, that should be enough.”
Traffic was light on the country roads, but there were enough vehicles around, Bronson hoped, to deny their pursuers any opportunity to drop the helicopter down to the road to try to stop them. Then he looked ahead and pointed at a road sign.
“Piglio,” he said. “We’re here.”
The helicopter was holding at five hundred feet. As the Toyota entered the town below them, Mandino instructed the pilot to descend farther.
“Where is this?” Mandino asked.
“A place called Piglio,” Rogan said. He was tracking their location on the topographical chart, in case they needed to summon help from the ground.
It was a small town, but they couldn’t risk losing their quarry in the side streets. The Toyota had been forced to slow down in the heavier local traffic, and the helicopter was almost in a hover as the men watched carefully.
“Keep your eyes on it,” Mandino ordered.
“Nearly there,” Bronson said, as he turned the Toyota down the side street, following the signs for the supermarket. Seconds later he swung the jeep into the parking lot, found a vacant parking bay, stopped the vehicle and climbed out.
“Don’t forget the relics,” he said, as Angela followed him.
She tucked the towel and its precious contents carefully into a carrier bag. “Got the camera?” she asked.
“Yes. Come on.” Bronson led the way to the main entrance of the supermarket, where several shoppers were staring up at the helicopter, now in a hover about a hundred yards away.
“Land as close as you can,” Mandino told the pilot.
“I can’t put it down in the parking lot—there’s not enough open space—but there’s a patch of wasteland over there.”
“Be as quick as you can. Once we’re out, get back into the air. Rogan, stay in the aircraft and keep your mobile close.”
The pilot swung the helicopter around to the right and descended toward the area of grass that adjoined the supermarket parking lot.
“The Nissan’s right there, isn’t it?” Angela said.
“Yes, but we can’t just climb in it and drive away. That would be a dead giveaway. We’ll wait here.”
Bronson pulled Angela to the left-hand side of the entrance hall and carefully watched the helicopter.
“They’ll have to land to let someone out to follow us on foot,” he said, “and they can’t put the chopper down out there in the parking lot—it’s too crowded. Right, there he goes.” He watched the helicopter move away and start to descend.
“We walk, not run,” he said, squeezing Angela’s hand. Without even a glance at the aircraft, they crossed to where Bronson had parked the Nissan. He unlocked it, climbed in and started the engine, then reversed out of the parking bay and drove the old sedan car unhurriedly away from the building.
Thirty seconds later Mandino and his two men ran into the parking lot, heading toward the Toyota, the helicopter hovering above them.
But Bronson was already driving away, heading for Via Prenestina and Rome.
An hour later, after a careful search of the parking lot and the supermarket, Gregori Mandino was forced to face the unpalatable truth: Bronson and the Lewis woman had obviously escaped. The Toyota had been abandoned in the parking lot, and was already attracting attention because of the very obvious bullet holes in its windshield and bodywork. They’d peered in the back window and seen the tools and equipment that were still there. One of the men had stuck his knife blade into both front tires to ensure that their quarry definitely wouldn’t be able to drive it away.
The three men had checked everywhere inside the supermarket, then extended their search to the surrounding streets and shops—and even the few cafe’s, restaurants and hotels—but without result.
“They could have had an accomplice waiting here for them,” one of the men suggested. “So what do we do now?”
“It’s not over yet,” Mandino growled. “They’re still somewhere here in Italy, in my territory. I’m going to find them and kill them both, if it’s the last thing I do.”
25
I
“We have to get an expert to look at these,” Angela said.
They’d driven back to the Italian west coast and booked a twin room in a tiny hotel near Livorno. After a couple of drinks in the bar, and a very late dinner, they’d gone back up to their room. Bronson had plugged in his laptop and transferred the photographs to it from the data card in his camera.
He burned copies of the pictures he’d taken in the tomb onto four CDs. He gave one to Angela, put two of the others into envelopes to post back to his and Angela’s addresses in Britain the next day, and kept one himself.
Only then did they unwrap the three relics Bronson had pulled out of the tomb. Angela spread towels on the small table in their bedroom, pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves and carefully transferred the three objects to the table.