by Mark Greaney
She knew she needed to do something, so she tried the only thing she could think of. On her next step down, she purposefully turned her ankle and fell onto the cobblestones, shouting in pain.
“My leg!”
She spoke for Harry’s benefit, letting him know that she was trying to delay her kidnappers. She didn’t know if it would be enough, but it was all she could think of.
One of the men grabbed her, pulled her upright while shouting at her in his native tongue. She knew almost instantly he was Albanian. He then switched to English. “Walk!”
She took a step and then started to collapse again, as if she really had injured herself, but two of the men lifted her off the ground and began all but carrying her with their hands under her shoulders.
“Put me down. Let go!” she shouted, this time to let Harry know her plan had bought her a little time, as the men carrying her would be forced to move slower now, and the others surrounding her would be forced to wait for them.
* * *
• • •
I hear Talyssa while I’m in midair, making the desperate kicking leap over the first of the two north-south staired passageways between me and her. I land on the roof to the west, my hands and my feet striking the tile, and then I climb up, running diagonally along the pitched surface so that I am still heading in the right direction to get to the woman, or even to get back in front of her.
A few seconds later I make the crest of the roof, then run down the other side, picking up speed, and I launch myself off again, then land again, one block over. Unless the Albanians have changed direction, they should be three stories down on the other side of the roof I’m now on, so I move more quietly. At the peak I lower to my butt and crab-walk down towards the edge, then look over the side.
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.”
I hear no reply, only the sounds of Talyssa being placed in the vehicle roughly, men all around her speaking in a foreign language, and then the sound of the van door sliding shut. The engine was already running, obviously, because screeching tires come next.
I’m climbing into the Vauxhall when I finally hear Talyssa’s voice. “I . . . who are you people? I see your black hair, your black beards. Are you Turkish? Moroccan?”
A black van. I nod and softly say, “Black van, got it. Good job. Now, be subtle . . . tell me the direction.”
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Be quiet!” a man shouts in English.
“To the Hilton? I see the Hilton. Are we going to the—”
“Be quiet!”
I look down at my phone’s GPS, move the map around, and find the Hilton hotel just west of Old Town.
This is good news, as I am to the west of her, or at least I was when her van began moving. They could be right on top of me by now, since a minute or two has passed since then.
I launch the four-door out of the parking lot, jack the wheel hard to the left, and drive off, slowing only as I pass oncoming police vehicles responding to the sound of gunfire in the Old Town. They pay no attention to me, and soon I’m flooring it again, scanning each intersection to my left and right, desperately trying to find a black van.
And it doesn’t take long. Other than the oncoming first responders there is little traffic out this time of night, so when I turn onto Anice Boskovic I see headlights behind me, approaching fast. I slow to match the speed limit, and soon a black van rushes by me on my left, then makes a left turn at an intersection. I continue straight, not wanting to get too close behind it, and then I one-hand my steering wheel while I hold the phone up to check the GPS, unsure how to link back up with my target vehicle. All the while I keep speaking softly into Talyssa’s ear. “I see you. I’m right here with you. Don’t worry.”
There’s a lot to worry about—I’m worried as shit, as a matter of fact—but keeping her as calm as possible seems like a good idea to me right now.
I see the van a minute later, one block south of me and still heading to the west, along the Adriatic coast and farther from the Old Town. It is speeding, almost recklessly, which tells me that long gone are the Albanians’ mission discipline and the swagger I saw in their demeanor when they approached Talyssa’s building.
The fact that several of their number are now lying dead on the cobblestones a couple of kilometers behind us has caused them to doubt themselves, so while shooting those guys thinned out the herd and was the right call for me to make, the assholes remaining are only going to be more dangerous to the woman from Europol.
I’m still forming a plan as I turn to head towards the road they’re on, and still working on it when I fall in to follow them, a couple hundred yards behind. Traffic is light at two something in the morning, and I realize I may have a tough time remaining covert if they start driving around on random streets, trying to see if they’ve picked up a tail.
I also realize I may not get a better opportunity than I have now.
By my count there were eight men involved with Talyssa’s capture. At least three are dead or wounded, and I don’t think the two who engaged me from the east-west street would have had time to make it to the van before it drove off, so they are somewhere behind us, probably securing transportation for themselves. Assuming the snatch team left a driver in the van, which would have been the prudent move, then there are probably four men around Talyssa now up ahead of me.
That’s bad, but it could be worse. And it will probably get worse, because, wherever the hell they are going, one thing’s for sure.
There won’t be fewer than four around her when they get there.
Plus, now I have them close together. They are close to Talyssa, as well, which is suboptimal, but I’m a guy who takes the best shot possible and doesn’t wait for the perfect shot.
I floor the Vauxhall as soon as I decide on a plan. I’m going to take this van down and all the opposition in it.
Now, before they get to their destination.
It takes me a full minute to arrive to within two car lengths behind them, and now we are on a winding road heading northwest, with the moonlit sea off to our left. I cinch my seat belt tighter, put my hand on the gun on my hip for reassurance, and then speak to Talyssa.
“I’m right behind you. I need you to hold on to something, anything. I’m going to wreck the vehicle you’re in, and it’s going to be bad, but I have to do it.”
She immediately replies to me, right in front of the Albanians, with utter dread in her voice. “What? No . . . no . . . please, no.”
“Stop talking!” a man shouts, and then she screams in surprise and pain as if she’s just been struck.
I say, “It’s your best chance, Talyssa. You have to trust me. When the vehicle loses control, I want you to put your head in your lap and keep holding on till it comes to a stop. When it does, lie perfectly still, covering your head as best you can. I’ll get you out of the van, don’t worry. Just ride out the crash and this will all be over.”
“Oh, God, no. Please,” she says, and I imagine the Albanians are starting to wonder who the hell she’s talking to.
Flooring it now, I say, “C’mon, Gentry. You got this.”
I’m going to attempt a PIT maneuver, a Pursuit Intervention Technique, a standard tactic used by law enforcement around the globe to stop a vehicle, much better than shooting out tires or some bullshit like that.
That said, despite my comforting words to my Romanian partner, I imagine this is going to suck for everyone involved. Me, the Albanians, and Talyssa.
PITing is a pretty safe trick if done correctly, but PITing a van, even if executed perfectly, is almost always a terrible idea, because the high center of gravity of the van almost ensures it will end up tipping, or worse, flipping. But the threshold of what I think is acceptable risk for Talyssa is rising by the minute as she gets closer and closer to the moment I lose her and the bad guys have her all to themselves.
Flipping this van might break some bones in the Europol analyst, but I tell myself that if I were her, I’d rather suffer a violent car crash than torture followed by a point-blank gunshot to the back of the head.
It’s all relative, I guess.
There is a counter to the PIT maneuver the targeted driver can implement, but I’m doubting this Albanian gangster will be well versed in high-level defensive driving. But even if he does, there is also a counter-counter PIT maneuver that not many people know. I know it because the CIA taught me everything they could about hurting people and breaking things, and I’ve picked up even more on the subject since officially leaving the Agency.
The CIA taught me everything they knew then, but they didn’t teach me everything I know now.
If the Albanian driver tries to counter my PIT, he’ll fail, and he’ll wreck out just the same.
“C’mon, Gentry,” I repeat. “You got this.”
I can hear the Albanians shouting at one another through the earpiece; they are anxious and frantic, probably because they now notice that the car trailing behind them is coming up their ass. On the right side of me, a row of large houses is all but hidden behind stone walls and heavy foliage, and on the left it’s mostly just trees, with the sea beyond. There’s a wide sidewalk running along next to the road here, making the space for me to work in a little bit larger than just a two-lane road.
This isn’t the perfect place for a PIT, but it’s the best I’m going to get. I decide to go for it, and I move into the left lane as if I’m about to pass.
The driver isn’t an idiot; he knows the headlights that came racing up from behind at two thirty a.m. are attached to a vehicle that poses a threat. He jerks his wheel violently to the left, squeezing me out.
Shit.
I slow a little, fake an attempt to approach on the right, and the van bites on this. He pulls hard to the right, and I think I’ve got an opportunity to get back to his left, but right then gunfire booms out of the van’s rear window, and instantly my windshield spiderwebs.
These fuckers aren’t messing around.
“Put your head down now, Talyssa, and keep it there!”
I’ve got to make this happen before one of their rounds hits me in the fucking forehead, so I accelerate till the nose of my four-door is just past the left rear bumper of the van.
Then I carefully turn the wheel to the right, nudging in.
I make contact; it’s not much, but it’s sufficient, because it pops the rear end of the van to the right just enough to cause the tires to lose traction and the driver to lose control of the vehicle. The nose of the van veers sharply to the left, and I keep my rightward steer going, even after I’ve broken contact, so I can get out of the way of what’s about to happen.