Escape
Raphael Mirabaud
“Two qualities are indispensable:
first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour,
retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth;
and second, the courage to follow this faint light
wherever it may lead.”
—Carl von Clausewitz
The inside of the handgun’s barrel was a silver tunnel into the darkness of the Geneva warehouseat midnight.
5.
Above the silver tube, Piotr Ilyin glared at Raphael, his eyes wide and his teeth bared. Piotr Ilyin was the head of the Ilyin Bratva, the Russian version of a Mafia Godfather. His organized crime syndicate had imported fifteen young girls to be sold for slavery, sexual abuse, and murder.
They had been standing behind Raphael just a few minutes ago.
Now, they were gone in apuff of wintry wind and snowflakes, like a magic trick.
Raphael drew a breath, ready to deny that he knew what had happened to the “shipment.”
He did know, though. While Flicka had marched out of the warehouse carrying Raphael’s daughter, Alina, and surrounded by the Monegasque army, the fifteen young girls had quietly been spirited away to safety.
He assumed they had been rescued. He wasn’tsure, exactly. He hadn’t been watching them.
But he had a verygoodsuspicion that they were safer now than they had been for weeks.
Something metallic clattered on the cement floor behind him.
Ticking.
4.
That clicky-tock had punctuated Raphael’s dreams and nightmares for a decade or longer.
Piotr was lifting his head to look at what had fallen to the ground back there, and his gun roseinto the air with his gaze, pointing above Raphael’s forehead.
3.
Raphael tensed.
2.
He tucked his toes under his feet.
1.
Raphael grabbed his ears an instant before the first flash-bang grenade blasted the air out of the warehouse and rolled on his side. A bullet buzzed by his head.
Russian and French shouts ricocheted around the Geneva warehouse, louder even than the high whine in Raphael’sears.
He leaped to his feet, yanked the handgun from his pocket, and aimed the pistol behind himself as he sprinted for cover. He poked the air with the gun as he squeezed the trigger, taking some of the recoil out of the shots. The first trigger pull was stiffer than the rest, but now the trigger needed only a fraction of an inch to fire another bullet into the frenzy of running men and flyingbullets that pushed vapor trails through the air and sparked on the metal walls and containers in the warehouse.
