One Minute Out

A group of six men surround the Europol analyst directly below me, and they are only twenty-five yards away from entering the large square with the fountain where I first saw the police surveilling Talyssa earlier in the evening. They are moving at a reasonable pace, but I can tell the girl is making things difficult for them.

Still, they will be through the square and out the eastern gate in under two minutes at their current speed, so there’s no time for me to focus on hashing out a brilliant plan. I start to reach for my pistol but stop when I recognize it will be too dangerous for Talyssa if I fire into the group from here.

Nope, I’ve got to get my ass down on top of them, where I can take them on up close.

I see multiple sets of clotheslines on the building outside the windows on the other side of the passage, one floor down from my position. Towels and clothing hang from them, and the line is about fifteen feet long before it loops into a pulley and then doubles back, making it thirty feet in all. An idea forms quickly, and I turn and head higher on the roof, yanking on gloves as I go. I then turn around, facing the passage.

I say, “Talyssa, count silently to five, then pull away from the men and run. Scream and shout while you do it. You have to do this for me in five seconds.”

I don’t expect a response from her; I can only pray she complies.

After a quick breath to ready myself, I begin running down the roof as fast as I can, counting as I go.

I leap off the building, kicking my legs as I drop down, and I cover the entire passageway with my bound. I hear Talyssa scream below and to my left just as I crash into the clotheslines affixed to the metal bars and pulley system, running alongside two second-story windows. As I hit, both of my gloved hands grab on to a towel hanging there and the line under it and, as expected, the clothesline absorbs the majority of my momentum, but my weight causes the pulley system to snap off the wall behind me. Hanging on with both hands now, I begin swinging down, alongside the building towards the backs of the seven people dead ahead, knowing good and well there isn’t enough clothesline to get me all the way down to the stairs, and the other pulley bar is going to snap right off once I swing down and it’s forced to endure my momentum and body weight.

I’m along for the ride now, but soon I’ll be flying on my own.

I wrap the line around my right hand so I don’t fall; the towel and gloves keep it from ripping my hand to shreds, but even hanging on as tightly as I can, I feel the towel slide down, and I know I won’t be able to hang on for long.

I am making noise, the pulleys sticking out from the wall above bend and creak, and my backpack scuffs the stone wall before I swing out farther away from the building. But everyone below me is shouting as one as they lunge for their prisoner, who herself is screaming and shouting.

She doesn’t manage to get very far before they grab her, but she does manage to cause an excellent distraction.

And if these motherfuckers think she is distracting, just wait till they get a load of me.

As the line whips me down to the lowest point I unwrap my hand, still ten or twelve feet in the air and arcing through the dark, and I shoot forward with all the momentum of my long swing. Landing on the cobblestones or steps would be painful at best, but I have no plans to hit the ground.

I’m instead aiming for that cluster of people right in front of me.

I fly out of the night air towards the backs of the tight group, and I slam into them from behind like they are bowling pins. I know Talyssa is in this crowd, and I’m sure I’m knocking her stupid like the others, but when you are fighting six versus one, a little collateral damage is difficult to avoid.

Everyone falls hard, slamming into one another and then hitting the ground, bodies tumbling out into the northern edge of the square. Talyssa ends up on the bottom of the pile, but I manage to roll over it all and am propelled up to my feet beyond the rest of them. I spin back around while drawing my weapon, and I aim at the first target I see: an Albanian in a black tracksuit on his knees right in front of me.

I fire twice into his chest at eight feet, shift aim, then fire once into the face of a man still on his back ten feet beyond. The noise from the shots pounds off stone all around us. A third man, this one also up to his knees, pulls his pistol and spins towards the fire, but I shoot him twice center mass, then shift my weapon to the left to drop another man, who has risen to a crouch and is just now reaching for his waistband.

But before I can press the trigger, another shooter opens up to my left, the boom of a pistol is close, and a shower of sparks blasts off the awning of a café just behind me. Whoever is firing is the larger threat now, so I drop to one knee and aim up the east-west street where the noise is coming from, scanning for a target.

I’m sure it’s the two men who peeled off from the group to come after me, but they must be behind some cover because I can’t see them anywhere.

While this is going on I know the men closer to me—the three still alive—are all pulling their guns, so I spin around to the window of the café and dive through. Glass shatters and I crash to the ground inside, roll behind the wall, and reload my weapon.

Fresh incoming fire breaks out the rest of the glass in my window as well as other windows to my right, and from the sounds I can tell there are four or five guns targeting my position now. All I can do is hunker down and try to ride this out.

After ten seconds the gunfire stops. I chance a look out the lower corner of the window, and I see two men dragging Talyssa towards the Ploce Gate on the eastern side of the Old Town. But when I lean out with my weapon to aim at them, I immediately catch fire from two or three positions.

I fall flat to the floor underneath the window as dust, bits of stone, and shards of glass fall over me.

I’m pinned down here so I can’t go forward, but I sure as shit can run out the back of this café, and from there I can head to the west. That will, eventually, get me out through the western Pile Gate of the Old Town, near where my car is parked.

It means losing sight of Talyssa, but at this point, that’s going to happen anyway.

I climb to my feet and run through the restaurant and, as I do, I shout over a barrage of gunfire from out in the square, hoping she can still hear me in her earpiece. “I’m going for the car. You need to find a way to tell me about the vehicle they put you in. Be clever, Talyssa, or else they’ll figure out you’re tipping someone off.”

I hear her speak a single word in a tearful voice—“Please”—but I don’t know if that was for me or for them. I feel helpless right now as I run in the opposite direction, but I tell myself I’m going to get this shit back under control on the road.

TWENTY-ONE

   I’m still a minute away from my car, my right knee and right elbow are throbbing for some reason, and my lungs are screaming from the all-out exertion of my sprint, when I hear the side door of a van slide open through my commo link. Breathlessly I say, “It’s a van. I hear that. I just need to know the color. Then I need to know which direction you’re traveling. Do it carefully.”