He worked through the escape routes in his head as he took the stairs three at a time.
Crosby Stills and Nash were done with their tune. Another classic, this one by Jethro Tull, started up between his ears. It was a long song. That didn't bode well. Did the DJ in his head know something about the next six minutes and 34 seconds? Preacher reached the ground floor lobby of the apartment building and kicked open the door without hesitation. No time to look for anyone waiting out there.
Turns out, someone was. A police officer stood across the street behind the open door of his small Fiat police car. The officer's gun pulled and aimed up at the top of the building. He turned his aim on Preacher as he burst out the door.
Approximately 65 feet separated the two humans but Preacher was a moving target. He thought about stopping, dropping and firing at the officer but didn't want that on him right now. This silly little trip didn't need anything along the body count lines Preacher left behind in Juarez two months earlier. That little vacation turned into a human carnage tornado that bordered on mass murder.
He had strict, very strict, don't even think about it, orders from Marta to abandon this thing the instant any shooting started. Elena and the remnant network Marta built for Smelinski and the KGB here in Trieste mattered not an iota in the grand scheme of things. Especially with a tiny little Lance or Marta set to join the world within the month.
So Lance did not stop and take aim at the cop's legs across the street. He stayed low and ran the other way down the street until reaching the end of the next building where he turned right. The officer took aim and shouted after him but did not fire. That was good.
Around the corner, Preacher was into an alley that opened onto the street behind the buildings. But that would put him square in the sightline of the rooftop shooter who'd already taken a few shots at him. So he stopped, checked the clip of the Kalashnikov and took a deep breath.
He burst out of the alley headed directly across the street. He was in clear view of the police officer now approximately 85-feet away. He held the Beretta in his left hand and had it aimed in the direction of the officer if he chose to squeeze his trigger. Halfway across the street, the first shots came his way. He glanced to his left and saw it wasn't the police officer firing. The shots came from further up the street and they were fired from an automatic rifle.
Preacher is fast, faster than most humans, but still no match for a bullet or hurl of explosive-propelled lead traveling 3,200-feet per second. So he did his usual, which of course, is the unusual. He stopped in the middle of the street, dove, rolled and ended flat on his stomach where he could fire the AK at the individual shooting at him. It took him about a second to nail down the location of the muzzle flashes in the darkness. He fired three bursts of three shots at that spot and waited.
He glanced over at the cop who had dove to the far side of his police car. Jethro Tull was into the second verse of their disturbing classic tune. Preacher shot up 400 feet into the night sky and looked down on the living map filled out with visual cues. He spotted the location of this new shooter, the sightlines from the vantage point, returned to his multiple escape routes and selected a new option.
He rolled to the right and then again. No shots came so he bolted to his feet and completed the crossing of the street into a space between two buildings.
He was just two blocks off the promenade next to the water and the wide avenue next to the sea. He needed to stay away from any open space and chose to take the tiny alley walkway between a set of buildings. He saw from above that this location would allow him to go west two blocks. In the gathering distance, he heard the approaching whine of Italian police cars.
In the nearer distance, he heard shouts. Some in Italian. Others in Slovene. He kicked himself for not grabbing the radio off the shooter knocked out cold. Not that it would have helped that much. He knew less than a hundred Slovene words.
As he moved across a small alley behind the next block of buildings, the phone in his pocket rang. Marta calling. His initial inclination was to let it ring or silence it and call her back later. But this was one of the world's premier planners, detailers and killers. Maybe the best, certainly better than him. He shoved the Beretta into a jacket pocket and answered the phone in Chinese.
"Yes?"
"You're running?" She knew.
"Yes."
"Status?"
"Guns on roofs, police, set up." He filtered through the words in Mandarin before finding the next one. "Ambush."
"Location?"
"Three blocks from water near center." He said, panting and looking back behind him. The Chinese words were tough to come up with while navigating dark allies.
"Get to safety. Twelve. Now." And she hung up.
He turned left into the next alley and then right. He was in a dark space behind buildings fronting the beautiful harbor. He squatted in the dark and heaved for breath. Up ahead, a group of men were huddled together smoking outside and down the steps from a building. Restaurant workers. Anywhere in the world, restaurant workers always looked the same.
A chameleon changes color in a matter of moments.
He stepped over and stashed the AK behind a row of garbage cans. By his count there were only five rounds left in the clip anyway. He stuffed the Beretta in a jacket pocket, unzipped it and threw it behind the cans as well. The stress and hurry and being shot at were erased from his face as he stepped forward in perhaps the most casual walk possible. He smiled at the group of four men.
Bad Italian with a thick German accent, "What's happening?" He turned back in the direction of the sirens. "I thought I heard gunshots."
The closest worker replied, "We don't know, definitely shooting a minute ago. Now the police are coming."
"Can I get one of those?" Lance pointed at the cigarette in the guy's fingers. "I spotted you guys back here and left my girl. I promised her I'd quit."
"No problem," the next closest worker stepped up and shook a pack of cigarettes to bring one of the cancer sticks up for Lance to grab. "Sound's like you're German?"
"Danka, ya." He replied, taking the cig from the pack. This second man held up a lighter to light the cigarette in Lance's mouth.
"Me too," the guy continued. "Me and Peter," he pointed to the fourth man in the group. "We're both from outside Munich."
"I thought so, what town?" Lance's German perfect.
"Germering."
"Ah, I know it. I had relatives in Augsburg not far from there. What street in Germering did you grow up on?" One of the benefits of photographic memory with a deep, deep passion for maps is detail.
"Shillerstrasse," the dude smiled at someone knowing his hometown.
"Yes," from his cranial repository, Lance pulled up the map of Germering, a tiny town just west of Munich. He'd memorized it nearly six years earlier while stationed in Augsburg for the first fake cover of his CIA career. "Not far from the train station. Love that Schmitt's Bakery. Wonderful."
"Cool." The man turned to Peter and laughed. "I'm Jens."
"Cool, I'm Heinrich." Lance lied and slipped closer into the group as engines roared and sirens came closer. In the near distance, shouting voices. Lance turned in the direction of the rising racket. "They're getting closer. Wonder what happened. We came down here for vacation, I've never heard of shooting in Trieste."
Jens nodded, taking a drag off his cigarette. "Happens every now and then, maybe once or twice a year. That stupid war over in Bosnia and Croatia is just an hour or two away.
The Italian worker added in broken German, "Still a little mafia action here. And smugglers bringing in drugs. If there are drugs around, you find guns too."
Lance read the body makeup, dress, facial hair, hair length, teeth, fingernails and shoes of the group of four and took the next step. "Nothing wrong with a little drugs. Especially some smoke." He smiled as he said the words with a chuckle.
"You got that right." Jens and Peter said in unison. The Italians smiled as well.
> "I was hoping you guys might have something a little better than a cigarette, but didn't want to be offensive." Lance continued to smile. "And I'm not sure this is the time to light up with the Polizei buzzing around."
He took in the smiles on the faces of the group and knew he'd incorporated them into his cover. Drugs, well pot at least, were a staple of restaurant workers around the globe. This assemblage was no different. In less than two minutes, Lance became one of them.
When a police car stopped at the end of the alley and an officer stepped out of the vehicle with his flashlight trained on the group 70-feet away, Lance simply looked like one of them. The only prop missing was a dishwashing apron.
The officer stepped forward hurriedly and shouted in Italian. "You see anyone run through here? White male, brown coat, hat?" This officer's right hand rested on the handgun holstered in his belt.
The five restaurant workers in the spill of his flashlight all raised their hands in a submissive manner.
Leo, the Italian nearest the officer replied for the group. "No. We heard the shots a few minutes ago, but haven't seen anyone run by."
"Okay, keep your eyes open and call us if you see anyone. This guy shot several people." The officer turned and sprinted back to his car, jumped in and squealed the tires taking off again.
The five of them looked at each other and then down the alley each way. Lance broke the silence. "Damn, that makes a vacation a little more interesting. My girl is going to be freaked out by this."
Jens slapped him on the back, "I think this calls for a smoke, a real smoke." And all of them laughed as Jens pulled out a doobie and lit up. Each took a hit off the joint while cracking jokes about the situation and the comical cop shining his flashlight at them. A couple of them pantomimed the guy, shouting out absurd statements and questions.
Preacher played along and inhaled deeply when handed the joint. The feeling of calm that came over him within seconds was a wicked relief, and just a little too good. He hadn't had as much as a sip of alcohol since returning to America after that dark year with heroin his only friend.
When the joint was down to a few cinders he slapped Jens on the back. "I need to make a call, does anyone have a cell phone?" He knew none of them did.
"No, but we have a phone just inside the door you can use. We need to get back to work in the kitchen anyway. Break over."
The five of them climbed the stairs to the restaurant's back door. The others moved on into the steamy kitchen, Jens stopped by the phone, picked up the handset and handed it to Lance. "Here you go brother. Good luck on the rest of your vacation. Swing back around later to join us for another smoke if you want." The two of them shook hands, bro-style.
"Thanks man. I'll see you all back here tomorrow. And I'll bring the beers." Lance took the phone and waited for Jens to walk into the kitchen and a sink to wash his hands before returning to the cook line. He turned back to the phone and dialed a number. It was number 12 from the list of 13.
After four rings, a male voice answered with a curt greeting. "Ciao."
"Govorit' po-Russki?" Lance asked if the person at the end of the line spoke Russian.
"Da. Malen'kiy." A little.
"I need a ride." Lance continued in the Russian tongue.
"Where?"
Lance scanned the take-out menu taped to the wall above the phone. He read off the name of the restaurant.
"I'll pick you up in back."
"Grazie."
"Seven minutes." The line was severed.
Lance hung the phone up and stepped back outside, down the steps and down the alley to his jacket stuffed behind trashcans. He grabbed it up, but left the AK-47. He walked back to the restaurant back stairs, up and into the kitchen and down the hallway until he found the men's room.
He stepped in to find it empty, moved into the stall and closed the door behind. He sat on the commode and pulled the cell phone out of the jacket pocket and hit redial.
Nearly half way around the world, eight time zones to the west, Marta picked up on the first ring.
"Status."
"Safe."
"Location."
"Restaurant."
"Twelve?"
"Called. Arranged."
"Target?"
"No."
"Thirty-seven. No more."
"Yes."
"Home." The line severed. He was down to 37 hours in Trieste to find Elena and complete this mission.
Lance put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his scalp; lifted his head and rubbed his beard. Marta said she liked it, but she was an excellent liar. With eyes closed, he worked through the last 18 minutes, from stepping out on the roof of that building, through the shooting, the escape, the chase and the cop. He looked down on the map of the action. Went through it three more times looking for details captured by a photographic memory.
He couldn't see it. Couldn't see the answer, the catalyst for the action.
Lance reviewed it all, back to the bar and the words the woman in the corner whispered into his ear. She sent him to the building. Told him this was where he may find Elena. He knew that was erroneous from the location, just from looking down on it from 1,500-feet in the air. It was wrong. Too close to the city center and the water. Not right. Elena would never have operations set up in a three-story building out in the open.
So why did the woman send him there?
And why did the police show up minutes after Lance did?
And most important, who the hell were the shooters on the rooftops?
Definitely a whole lot more going on in the mystery surrounding the elusive Elena. And Lance had 36 hours and 47 minutes to figure it out before hightailing it out of town and back to Colorado.
He opened his eyes and looked at the juvenile scribbled words and images on the wall of the bathroom stall. The riddles were like those he needed to solve. No reward awaited the correct answer. Marta sent him here because her instincts dictated a response to the message recorded on her most secret phone service. Hell, Lance didn't even have that number. The fact that Marta kept a relay from the message service active told of the level of importance she gave the phone number.
He hadn't asked her about it. We all need some secrets in this world. He still held a few thousand that Marta, and the world, did not need to know.
Chapter 9
The Ukrainian was torqued, really pissed off. He showed his displeasure by flipping the tray of food placed in front of him a few minutes earlier by the nice nurse. The recipient of the tray's contents was one of the two gents from the bar who didn't quite come to Voloshyn's aid. It was the tough guy Preacher only disabled. The other fella was still down in the ER. He had come to, but was going to need surgery to repair his badly damaged nose and ruptured nasal cavity.
"Idiots, both of you," Voloshyn was in a hospital bed with his injured foot resting on a pillow. A surgeon cleaned the wound and stitched up the top and bottom of the smuggling kingpin's foot. "I pay you for one thing - to be there when I need you. That's it. You let that Russian bastard shoot me and did nothing."
"Sorry sir, we should have acted sooner, but he had the gun to your head." The rather large man wiped stewed tomatoes from his face and potatoes off his jacket.
"You should have acted when he came in. But you were both too busy ogling the waitress like normal. I should have you two shot and rocks chained to your feet so you'll sink to the bottom of the Adriatic to make excellent fish food." Voloshyn grimaced. His outburst caused him to lift his leg. The bandaged appendage was going to be a source of pain for a few weeks. "What do we know now?" He brought his watch up, "Four and a half hours later. Do we know any more about this man?"
"No sir, not yet. But a man matching the description was involved in a shooting on top of a building less than an hour after our incident."
"Our incident? I don't see you shot through your foot." Voloshyn looked away from the hulk standing at the foot of the bed. After a few seconds he cooled down. "Where? Where was the shooti
ng?"
"On via Vittorio Locchi."
"Vittorio Locchi? Near the Via Bellosguardo?" Voloshyn's procerus went to work tugging at his eyebrows and flaring nostrils.
"Yes, you know the place?" The messy hulk of a bodyguard asked.
But Voloshyn was off someplace else. He knew a building over there and knew that rumors placed Elena there on occasion. The woman in the corner who screamed and then whispered in the Russian's ear would have only heard the rumors about the building being a location Elena worked from. Her business location had never been confirmed and Voloshyn, like everyone else, was forced to do business with her at places of her choosing. Always been this way since Elena burst on the scene almost five years ago after the network in place basically collapsed overnight. She and her sophisticated secret network were the single best kept secret in Trieste. They were fanatical about secrecy.
Whoever this Russian bastard was and whomever he worked for were soon to learn that messing with Elena would only stir up a snake, a nest of snakes.
He didn't need that right now. Not with everything so close to coming together.
Chapter 10
Bojan Petrovic preferred to ride in silence. Always has, ever since he was a boy riding in his great grandfather's horse-drawn cart. He didn't care for small talk at any time, but especially while on the road. They had a bumpy 12-hour ride ahead of them through some dangerous territory and likely several security stops.
The troupe traveling with him would cross into Croatia and then down into and through Slovenia. It was a route he knew well, had traveled hundreds of times over the years. He would occasionally vary the roadways along the journey, but this general transport route had proven effective and valuable to Bojan and his family of smugglers for generations.
He rested his chin in his palm. His elbow on the door panel of the bouncy as hell truck. They were just coming onto paved road after traveling the previous two and a half hours on a dirt and rock and mud road coming down from the mountain hills outside Banja Luka, down through the pastoral loveliness of Prijedor. Next stop Novi Grad.
The Perfect Instinct Page 4