by S L Shelton
Adina looked at Kathrin, who nodded her agreement. Adina reluctantly walked over and repositioned the dish, standing ready to hit the “signal send” test sequence. Kathrin and I watched the monitors for him to show up. At exactly the predicted time, he came into view.
“Now,” I said quietly.
She hit send on the keyboard and then immediately pulled the power cord from the dish, killing the signal. The van showed no sign of altering speed or direction for a few seconds, but then it slowed, backed up, and stopped.
I nodded to Adina, who closed her eyes in a silent swear…he was monitoring for signals. After a few moments, the van pulled forward again, moving more slowly down the street. We waited for it to pass and go around the corner before making any noise.
“Okay. We know he’s got detection equipment. The radio and TV station are probably making it hard for him to isolate anything. That’s a plus.”
“And the bad news?” Kathrin asked.
“We don’t know how long he’s been out there,” I said. “He may have planted cameras along the route, and he might also be using a directional mic.”
“So any action would be acting on a guess,” Adina stated plainly.
I thought for a moment.
“Do you have transportation?” I asked Kathrin.
“Yes. A minivan in the garage downstairs. It opens to the alley,” she replied.
“I need to borrow it,” I stated. Not requested.
Kathrin thought for a moment and looked at Adina. “I’m going with him,” she said.
“Kathrin! Wenn Du das machst, sitzt Du aber tief in der Scheiße!” Adina hissed at her as if I weren’t in the room. I understood that: there would be trouble if Kathrin went with me.
“I don’t care,” Kathrin replied. “I brought him here. I’m getting him out.”
“I can’t wait,” I muttered as I turned and left.
I went downstairs while the girls continued to argue. My duffel bag was already half packed by the time Kathrin appeared in the doorway.
“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” I said sincerely as I pulled the slide back on my Glock to confirm there was a round in the chamber.
“Since when have you ever not gotten me into trouble, Monkey Wrench?” she asked, her devilish grin spreading across her beautiful face.
I could tell it would do no good telling her to stay. And to be honest, I wanted her to come.
“Where are we going?” she asked as she slipped a subcompact 9mm into her waistband.
“Do you know anyone in Switzerland?” I asked.
She smiled. “I do. In Basel…and it’s on the way to just about everywhere in Switzerland from here.”
“Okay then. Basel it is. You need to drive at least until we get on the highway. There are too many cameras in the city.”
She nodded as she slipped her jacket on and shouldered her bag.
“Are we saying good-bye to Adina?” I asked as we left the bedroom.
She looked up. “Auf Wiedersehen, Adina,” she yelled at the ceiling in the living room. “We are leaving!”
I followed Kathrin out the door and downstairs to the garage entrance. Once there, I climbed into the backseat and lay down, covering my head with my hoodie. Kathrin opened the garage door and then got in. She pulled out of the garage and was about to speed away, but I stopped her.
“Wait!” I said from behind her. “People in a rush leave garage doors open.”
She backed up a bit before she hopped out and closed the door. As she jumped back in, she looked down over the seat at me. “You want a pizza or anything on the way? You know…so we don’t look like we’re in a rush?”
“Go,” I said with a grin.
She was darting through the alley, riding the clutch and brake, stopping and starting as we hit the cross streets.
“Don’t hurry. We don’t want to look like we are trying to get away,” I said.
“This is how I always drive,” she replied. I could hear the smile on her face. “I’m sorry, but I removed the backseat steering wheel last week.”
“A little slower today, please. At least until we get to the highway,” I replied.
“So hard to please,” she muttered.
Suddenly, the all-too-familiar sound of small arms fire and concussion grenades sounded just behind us. Kathrin slammed on the brakes, sending me rolling to the floor. She spun around and looked back over the seat toward the house we had just fled. She looked at me, her eyes pleading.
“Turn us around,” I said without pause as I climbed out of the backseat and into the front passenger seat.
She U-turned in the street and pressed down on the accelerator, speeding down the alley in the direction we had just fled from. Within seconds, we were back at the house, skidding to a halt by the back entrance. Smoke was billowing from the third-story window.
“Smash and grab,” I whispered to Kathrin as we jumped from the van, leaving the engine running. We drew our weapons as soon as we were off the street and hurried through the garage, pistols raised in front of us as we crossed back into the house as quietly as we could. At the base of the stairs, we paused, alerted by heavy footsteps two floors above.
I smelled smoke. It wasn’t the acrid, heavy smell of burning wood, but the smell of chemical and metal. They had used “flash bang” grenades to enter the upper rooms.
They’re looking for prisoners, not bodies, I realized.
I nodded up the stairs at the open apartment door…Kathrin’s apartment. She jerked her head down sharply in acknowledgment and covered me as I silently ran up. I looked around the railing and waited for her to arrive behind me before I peeked my head quickly into the apartment and then back again; it was empty.
Nodding my head toward the door, she entered the apartment with her pistol raised as I aimed up toward the sound of the footsteps above us. A tap on my shoulder from Kathrin signaled me it was clear to enter behind her.
“How do you want to do this?” she whispered.
I opened my mouth, about to speak, when footsteps sounded in the hallway above us. I peered around the edge of the door to see two men dragging Adina’s limp body between them on the landing above us. A black bag covered her head, cinched tight at the neck. I felt the warmth of Kathrin’s hand on my back, letting me know that whatever I did, she would be right there with me. I looked back at her and saw that intensity—that “controlled crazy” I had seen in her eyes yesterday. She was ready to fight.
As the two intruders reached the edge of the stairs and started to clamber down, I nodded to Kathrin. I indicated to her with hand signals that she should take the left and I would take the right. She nodded stiffly as she raised her gun rigidly in front of her.
They were halfway down when it dawned on me she had no silencer on her weapon. Quickly deciding silence was most important, so as not to alert the men who were still upstairs to our presence, I handed her my silenced Glock.
She shot me a concerned look as she holstered her own weapon but took mine anyway, holding it high as she leaned against the wall just behind me, inside the apartment. As I inched toward the edge of the doorway at the bottom of the steps, I used my fingers behind my back to count down so Kathrin could see them.
As they passed the apartment door, my count hit one and I sprang forward, wrapping my hands around the closest man’s mouth and throat. With all my might, I squeezed and then wrenched my hands in opposite directions. I felt bone grinding against bone as his hands flailed briefly, then dropped. I hadn’t intended to kill him, but the loss wasn’t heartbreaking; I would have shot him if I’d had a weapon.
Kathrin didn’t seem to have a problem with her task. Two quick pops to the back of the second man’s head from behind dropped him to the floor before he could even turn to see what had happened to his comrade.
Adina dropped limply on the hardwood landing before I could scoop her up in my arms. Kathrin, walking backward, covered us from behind as I made my way back to the first floor and the
n to the garage.
As I came around the corner of the garage entrance, a man in tactical gear turned around the doorway, his barrel up at eye level. I jumped up, Adina still in my arms, and kicked the barrel of his assault rifle to the side as I ascended. Before he had time to call out, my other foot lashed out, catching him squarely in the throat with the side of my boot.
Crack! He got one shot off that impacted in the wall of the garage. The alarm, however, had been raised.
“Hurry,” I whispered over my shoulder.
Kathrin strode behind me as I climbed into the back of the minivan with Adina’s limp body, sliding the door closed behind me. Without a hitch in her stride, she popped two silenced rounds into the head of the man I had knocked unconscious.
Damn! This girl is impressive, I thought.
As she slid into the driver’s seat, she dropped my pistol in the passenger seat and jammed the gas down, sending the van backward down the alley. The Italian-made minivan whined as she hooked her arm over the back of the seat and steered us backward at high-speed. As soon as she found an open area wide enough perform the maneuver, she whipped the steering wheel around hard, spinning the van around in a half circle, headed away from the apartment.
“Is she alive?” Kathrin asked over her shoulder as she accelerated through the alleyway.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s breathing and her pulse is strong,”
A sudden dip in the alley sent me and Adina flying into the air. I smacked my head on the ceiling of the van and then fell back down on top of her.
“Turn left here, then take your immediate right,” I said as I righted myself. “—and slow down as soon as you get around the turn. We don’t want to make it look like a getaway.”
When we reached the turn, I looked back—the alley was clear.
“I think we got away clean,” I said. “Take one more left and then slow down.”
Kathrin complied, whipping us around to the left and tipping the van up on two wheels in the turn.
“Easy!” I said after instinctively leaning the opposite way to shift the weight in the back.
“I’m trying,” she replied evenly.
“It would have been nice if Mossad could have afforded to buy you some decent transportation,” I joked.
Her eyes flashed up to the mirror. “I run a safe house and do surveillance,” she snapped. “They only have so many Aston Martins to go around.”
“Still,” I muttered. “Something that handles corners would be nice.”
As if on cue, she whipped the van around the corner, pulling the parking brake to drag the rear into position for the high-speed maneuver. I rolled against the sidewall of the van.
“You were saying?” Kathrin asked with a smile crinkling the corner of her eyes.
“Protest withdrawn,” I replied as I pushed myself up and looked back down the street. She downshifted and let the drag on the engine bleed our speed out before continuing at a slower pace. At the corner where we had just turned, a black Range Rover flashed across the street before continuing down the alley on the other side.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Get ready to go right,” I said as I watched the corner we had just come around. We were halfway down the next block when the Rover backed into the street, cutting the corner hard.
“Go! Go! Go!” I yelled. “Right then right again…double back on them.”
She turned a hard right, sending me into the door of the van. The SUV had not cleared the building. I’d thought we might be able to evade them. She took the second right before the SUV could reach the previous intersection. Hope was growing.
“Good!” I exclaimed. “Turn right onto Jordaenskaai.”
“I’ve done this before,” she said with a bite in her tone.
She slowed at the corner and I looked back. No sign of them. The combination of fast/slow/turn/turn/turn might have had them going in the wrong direction. Kathrin turned us onto the main street running along the river, and we still appeared to be in the clear. But they knew what we were driving now… We had to get out of sight.
“Take a left into the parking area up there and park behind that construction trailer.”
She began to comply, but as she was making her turn, a second SUV emerged from a side street, two blocks down. They immediately turned and headed toward us.
“Shit!” we both blurted out at the same time.
She stomped the gas and turned harder. Instead of going into the parking lot, she performed a high-speed U-turn, speeding back down the way we had come. As we were passing the side street we had originally emerged from, the first SUV pulled out, clipping the back of the minivan, sending Adina and me flying to the side again.
Kathrin managed to maintain control of the van, quickly straightening us out of our spin before speeding down the street. The larger, heavier SUV had to back up to make its turn, allowing the second Rover to speed past in pursuit of us.
“Here,” Kathrin yelled, tossing my weapon back to me. I quickly removed the silencer and tucked it into my jacket pocket. I checked Adina. She was coughing and gagging.
“Stay down,” I said. “We aren’t clear yet.”
We had one, and only one, advantage that came to mind. Though the Rovers were faster and heavier, they were also wider.
“Find the first tight spot we can slip through that those bastards won’t fit,” I yelled.
She sped down the street, passing the few cars out on an early Sunday morning. About three blocks from the collision, there was an open-air market, closed on Sunday, with crash barriers around the front perimeter. “There!” I yelled, but she was already turning toward them.
She turned hard and slipped between two of the heavy concrete barriers; the right side of the van scraped the edge of one and buckled in. She sped up once in the open and turned the van toward some parked trailers.
Behind us, I heard a crash as one of the SUVs smashed into a barrier trying to squeeze through.
“That’s it,” I said. “Now find a way out.”
The second SUV sped past the first toward the parking entry area…the only paved way in or out. The chain stretching across the entrance dug deeply into the grill and fender of the heavier vehicle, but it snapped before even slowing it down.
“Damn it,” I said. “He’s on us.”
“Give me a second,” Kathrin said as she dodged around the building to the back of the open-air market. It was similarly chained as the front. There was no way our minivan would break the chain as easily as the Range Rover had.
I looked back as the Rover turned around the building in pursuit.
“Put something between us and them,” I said calmly despite the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
“What would you suggest?” Kathrin screamed at me.
“There!” I said pointing at the construction equipment and trailers at the back corner of the lot. “Get those between us. They’re slower on the turns.”
She nodded and cut hard, aiming us toward the equipment and construction trailers on the backside of the lot. The SUV broke to the right to go around.
“They’re trying to box us in,” I said with warning in my tone.
“Do you want to drive?” she asked as she turned around the trailer. “I can stop if you’d li—”
Her sentence ended mid-word as she slammed on the brakes.
“No!” I yelled, but looked forward to see a pile of sand blocking our forward path.
On the other side of the pile, the Rover was accelerating toward us with the intent of going over it.
“Back up!” I yelled.
Kathrin threw the van into reverse and peeled rubber, backing us out of the way just as the Rover hit the bank of sand in an explosion of flying debris. As it came crashing over the pile, the side brushed the edge of a tractor, turning the Rover sideways in midair. It slammed into the ground on its side and slid several yards before running into a storage container.
“T
hat was lucky,” Kathrin said.
“I’ll take that kind of luck all day,” I replied. “Get us out of here.”
The occupants of the Rover rolled out, firing automatic weapons. But Kathrin was already backing around the trailer. She straightened up and aimed the minivan at the entrance with the broken chain. The first SUV was pulling away from the concrete barrier it had been stuck on. The front tire was bent and the hood, fender, and bumper were caved in, but they were still rolling.
I fired at them as we drove through the entrance barriers, striking the windshield and possibly one of the passengers, but the SUV still advanced. Behind us, the passengers from the crashed SUV were still firing at us. The back window of the van exploded into shards and I slouched down, covering Adina before rising, returning fire through the broken window.
“Are you hit?” I asked.
“No. Are you?”
“I’m fine,” I replied as Kathrin pulled out onto the street and set off in high gear, smoke filling the air behind us. The other SUV was in pursuit, but it was going much slower than before. It wouldn’t be able to catch up with us.
I watched as the Range Rover slowed and started spewing smoke.
“Get us off this road as soon as you can,” I said, shaking glass off of me. “We need to find alternate transportation.”
Kathrin pulled us off the road and down another street. After making several erratic turns, she came to a halt near the back of a grocery. She backed the van up to the loading dock, nestled between two short-haul trailers.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said before hopping out and disappearing around the trailer.
I helped Adina sit up and removed her hood. She winced at the movement. “Where are you hit?” I asked, but her hand flashed to her hip, answering my question.
I pulled her hand away. There was dark stain growing at the joint at the top of her leg. “Open that up,” I said as I leaned over the seat and opened my duffel bag, pulling a T-shirt from near the top. She pulled her sweat pants down past the wound, moaning in distress at the sight.
“Hold this. Press hard,” I said as I pressed the T-shirt to the bullet hole.