-1Author's Notes:

The title of this chapter was inspired by the Space song, "Avenging Angels" (album "Tin Planet"). Something about the line "kick-ass angels" just fit Eames and Tanya very well.

As they ran towards the screaming hell that the City of London stadium had turned into, Alex Eames tried frantically to keep her mind on the job, not allowing herself to think about the risks or about what might be happening to Bobby and Sienna, deep inside the melee. Beside her, Tanya's long legs kept up with her effortlessly.

"Which way?" she asked. They were running along the edges of the stadium now, trying not to attract attention. It was as noisy outside as in. The men who had been thrown out of the stadium earlier had started fighting with a nearby group of angry German fans. They were trying to avoid getting caught in it, ducking flying plastic glasses and other missiles and dodging angry, drunken men who were pushing and shoving each other. Punches were starting to be thrown. She recognised the man who had accosted Tanya earlier, and hoped like hell he didn't recognise them back.

Some way back in the distance behind the brawlers, she could see and hear the rhythmic tramping of riot police, recognise the universal silhouette of helmets and body armour, shields held out in front of them. She hoped desperatey that they got there in time to stop the riot, and, more importantly, stop anyone bothering them.

"Best way is to try the entrance right at the end of the west end of the south side of the stadium," Tanya panted out between breaths. "In corner, so least affected... by roof collapsing." They were running fast along the side of the stadium now.

She nodded agreement, then her adrenaline spiked as the one thing she wanted to hear least was shouted behind them. "There they are, that's the bitches!"

Shit. They'd recognised Tanya, and with every police officer distracted by the chaos inside the ground and the riots outside, there would be no rescue. By mutual consent, they picked up the pace as heavy footsteps echoed behind them. They reached the entrance, which was dark and littered with abandoned drinks cans and fast food wrappers.

"In here!" Tanya yelled. They began to run up the steps. The staircase was empty, and she had a nasty suspicion that was because it was blocked by the fallen roof, but there was no other way into the stadium except up these stairs. The yells from behind were getting distinctly ugly. Shit, shit, shit! She had her gun, but using it would be a method of extreme last resort; she really did not want to shoot and possibly kill an ordinary citizen unless she absolutely had to.

They ran on, up and up, both women drawing on every ounce of their strength and stamina and determination. Each, in her own way, had been trained for conflict, and whilst Eames wished like hell that Bobby was here, she knew that she could depend on the tough ex-soldier. Together, they would find the sniper and kill him. Alex Eames had fired her sidearm during the course of her job before, and knew beyond any doubt that this was another occasion when she would do so with no hesitation. She felt no joy at the prospect, and no fear. This was the only possible solution, and despite all their efforts to prevent it coming down to this, the forces ranged against them had left them no choice but lethal force.

"Oh fuck." Tanya's words echoed her thoughts. They had reached the top of the staircase. There were a few feet of the original passageway out into the seating area left, but the way was blocked by a fallen sheet of metal. Behind them, footsteps echoed, a howling voice screamed "Wait for us there!" and mocking jeers and howls echoed after it.

They tried frantically to shove the metal out of the way, Tanya's sheer bulk and Eames' desperation combining to move it a few feet. Beyond it, they could see some daylight, and the wreckage of seating. They were at the top of the stadium. Somewhere up there was the sniper, and somewhere up there too was Davenport. Assuming the sniper hasn't shot him too.

Tanya bent down and picked up a long metal pole that had fallen from the roof, then dropped into the same stance Eames had seen her use in the dojo, only four days ago. "Get going."

"What?"

The big woman spoke very calmly and very forcefully. "You have a gun. I don't. You can get through there. I can't. I'll hold them off; you get out there and kill that bastard, help Drew." The first of their potential attackers appeared at the top of the stairs, a hefty, pot-bellied man with huge hands grasping out for them, face ugly and distorted into an animal growl.

Eames took one last look at Tanya's face, and saw fear there, fear she had not expected to see, then watched, for just one second before she turned and began to scramble out of the gap, as it was replaced by rage. She could almost sense this, the fighter's readiness, adrenal glands dumping vast quantities of hormones into the bloodstream, heart racing, lungs drawing in oxygen. Tanya held the pipe out, pointing it towards the first of their attackers, and planted herself between Eames and the gang of men.

"You get one warning: back the fuck away and we don't have to do this." Tanya's eyes had narrowed to slits, lips drawn back to show her teeth.

"Ooh, we don't have to do this, lads!" The man grinned mockingly and grabbed for the end of the pipe. "Shut up, bitch, and..."

He never finished his sentence, as, instead of pulling back on the pipe, Tanya shoved it forwards, ramming the end into his solar plexus and launching herself off her back foot into a lunging kick that planted her boot firmly into her would-be attacker's groin, bellowing "GO!" at the same time. As the man collapsed, she pulled the pipe back and looked around to pick her next target, screaming "FUCKING GO!" at the same time.

As Eames scrambled through the space the two of them had cleared and out into the stadium, heedless of the damage done to her clothes, the scratches of metal, Tanya howled with anger. "Come on then, I'll fucking kill you all!" .

She dragged herself out and up, forcing herself to ignore the sounds of pitched battle below. Tanya was managing to keep the attackers from following her, and she hid quickly behind a row of seats, disciplining herself not to think about what she'd just left her companion to deal with. Even with Tanya's training and skills and the metal pole, you would not expect someone to walk away from that unscathed. Suddenly, she had an icy feeling, a sudden intuition... oh dear God. She knew now why Tanya had looked afraid. Dear God, don't let them hurt her too badly.

She could not go back. She had to do her duty as a police officer. Eames stuck her head up above the seats very briefly, and looked around quickly, getting her bearings. She was at the very top of the stadium, the pitch a massive blur of shrieking humanity far below her. In front of her lay the concrete walkway around the top of the ground. To her left, the wrecked seating area, collapsed roof blocking it off don't look at it, don't even think that there might be people dying under there. To her right, the remains of the stadium wall. A flying piece of roof had punched a hole through it.

She glanced around again, and suddenly caught a glimpse of motion. A lanky figure was cautiously creeping its way towards her along the same walkway she was crouching near. She recognised it. Davenport. He was around thirty feet away, near enough to be seen. He waved urgently, put a finger to his lips and pointed up and to his right, then mimed someone holding a rifle. Oh shit. He'd found the sniper. She could just see the man was crouched in one of the roof supports – one which hadn't collapsed. It gave him a perfect vantage point over the entire stadium.

She thought bitterly that whoever had sabotaged the roofing plans, be it Jane Collins or someone else, some anonymous figure on Andropov's payroll, had almost certainly designed it that way. Somewhere at the back of her head, a voice marvelled at the sheer complexity of Andropov's plan, at the sense of being caught up in something much bigger than she was, and thought plaintively: Jesus Christ, I'm a cop, not a spy.

Davenport was still waving and signing. He pulled out his cellphone and pointed to it. She got the idea and reached for hers, held it up and set it to silent, then pointed to it and put her hands over her ears, hoping he'd get the idea. He nodded. A message flashed onto the screen. We move as close as we can. Then I'll distract him, you shoot. Shoot to kill. If he spots us, the same plan.

She took a deep breath, crawled to the end of the row of seats, and began creeping down the concrete stairway. The roof damage was lesser here, most of the debris having obeyed gravity and fallen further down onto the lower seating. Up here, the noise from the chaos below was simply noisy, not unbearable, providing them with some cover. So far, so good, but she felt very exposed.

Suddenly, a voice shouted loudly behind her. She reflexively ducked, and a bullet flew over her head, just missing the top of her skull. A police officer in one of the nearby seats was shouting loudly in a foreign language. She just had time to think That's no police officer, not waiting up here instead of being down there helping, as she threw herself to one side and the man fired again. Oh shit. The sniper hadn't been alone.

Another gunshot, and she looked around frantically, expecting any minute to feel the sickening thud of a bullet hitting her, but there was no sound or sign of one anywhere near her. She took a deep breath, then sprung up slightly, gaining a snapshot view of the scene in front of her before bobbing back down again and throwing herself to the side to avoid giving away her position.

As if everything were happening in slow motion, her brain frantically processed the image; the fake police officer collapsing, clutching his chest, Davenport rising out of the stairway he'd been creeping down, gun in both hands in front of him, recoiling slightly from the shot. She heard him yell, urgently, as he started to bring his gun up towards the sniper, "I've shot your friend and I'll shoot you too!"

This was it, and she sprung onto her feet, drawing a line on the sniper, and seeing with horror as she did so that she was already too late. The sniper had turned and fired, and Davenport was collapsing back into the seating, howling with pain, still trying to fire his own gun as the rifle slug knocked him backwards. The sniper fired again, and she couldn't get him, couldn't quite make the shot with him having turned round and crouched down to aim at Davenport...

From behind her, a familiar voice screamed "You bastard!" The startled sniper jumped up, exposing his head and chest, a perfect silhouetted target.

She fired five times, aiming for the head. The third shot caught the man in the side of the neck, and he slumped sideways and fell out of his perch. She fired again and again, determined to be sure that he was dead. As she ran towards them, she kept her eye on the man's body. It didn't move, didn't twitch, and as she came level with it she saw that she'd killed him with her first shot. Later that would hit her, she knew, and she have to sit in a quiet room with Bobby somewhere and talk through it until the reaction went away. For now, though, she turned and saw Tanya, her face battered and her clothing torn, leading two riot police towards them. She didn't look too badly damaged, and Eames guessed that the police officers had gotten there only a few seconds after she herself had left Tanya.

"They saw us being chased, came after us, rescued me," Tanya got out between breaths, as the two police officers moved swiftly to check the sniper's corpse. Their radios were crackling, and she heard one of them say: "This is Officer Deans, Unit Two. I can confirm that the sniper is dead and his accomplice also. Verification code..." and he rattled off a string of what sounded like gibberish and was really, Eames knew, a pre-arranged code for verifying someone's identify. Apparently someone somewhere had gotten the radios working and managed to inform the police – the real police – about what was going on. Thank God. Beside her, she saw Tanya's hand begin to spread protectively over her lower belly, a gesture unmistakable to any woman, and knew that her intuition had been correct.

"Shit! Drew!" Tanya's voice was anguished as she caught sight of Davenport, unconscious and bleeding profusely. She ran across to him, and screamed at one of the police: "Get medical help up here quickly, he's been shot!" The man began speaking urgently into his radio. As Tanya began to try to stem the blood loss, Eames yelled at the man: "And tell them there's an injured pregnant woman up here too!" He nodded.

The other officer, having checked that both the sniper and his accomplice were dead, ran over to them and took over treating Davenport's injuries. Mercifully, the sniper had just missed his head, probably because Davenport had been falling backwards when he took his second shot, but Eames took one look at the bloody mess that had been his left forearm, and felt slightly faint. She had seen gunshot wounds before, but it when it happened to a colleague, no matter what you thought of them, you always felt sick. Davenport would be lucky if he could ever use that arm properly again.

As they tried frantically to stem the bleeding whilst the other officer began to clear a path towards them for the medical team, Tanya muttered: "When did you guess?"

"Only today."

"I've only known that long myself, did the test this morning. Maybe shouldn't have done this... but what could I do? Couldn't refuse to help... too many people down there... had to do my duty. Just hope I haven't damaged the kid with all this. Lost one already... not Jack's though, long time ago."

If she had had a hand free, she would have reached across and taken Tanya's. As she was, she caught her new friend's eye, and smiled as reassuringly as possible. "You'll be okay." I just hope Bobby and Sienna will be too. For the first time in a long while, Alex Eames found herself praying.