take a piece of fractured glass and saw at the zip tie around my wrists, grinding the edge against the tiny grooves in the plastic until it snaps in half. With both hands free, I squirm out through the shattered sunroof window. I land on the ground with a thump.
“Fahişe!”
Spinning around, I see Munich Jacket watching me. He unbuckles his seat belt and drops onto his shoulder. Recovering, he reaches for the sunroof and exits clumsily through it. Making it to his feet, he lurches toward me.
I can’t move fast enough. With my ankles still bound, I crawl backward like a crippled spider.
Frantically, I stretch my fingers across the snow for a weapon—another piece of glass, metal, a pipe …
Munich Jacket reaches me in seconds. He punches my throat with his fist. I gasp for air. He puts his left knee on my thigh and pushes down hard on my chest. My elbows collapse under his weight. Straddling me, he puts his left hand on my neck and lifts his right to strike me again—
Abruptly, his whole body is jerked violently backward.
I blink. Munich Jacket is dangling eight inches off the ground, his toes scraping for earth. He is being held aloft by a figure who, in the misty gray light of dawn, is no more than a silhouette.
“You think you can hurt my daughter?” my father growls viciously under his breath. Wearing neither a coat nor a hat, holding the man in the air by his collar, he looks like a Siberian tiger.
Munich Jacket spits in his face.
Unflinching, my father bends Munich Jacket’s forefinger so far in the wrong direction the bone snaps in two.
“Where are you meeting him?” my father snarls menacingly.
Munich Jacket howls.
My father breaks a second finger, sideways. “Every time you don’t answer, I’ll break a limb. Where. Are. You. Meeting. Him?”
When Munich Jacket still doesn’t answer, my father takes his wrist and bends it until it snaps and hangs limply against his forearm.
Munich Jacket falls to the ground, hunching over, clutching his wrist, and wailing.
My father unholsters his Heckler & Koch pistol and shoots Munich Jacket in the thigh. “Where?”
Hysterically, Munich Jacket starts to blubber words in Chechen. “He told me to drive east until I get more instructions. He told me I would be … rewarded …”
“Where?” my father asks. He fires another round into his leg.
“I don’t know,” the man whimpers.
With a swift swipe of his HK, my father breaks Munich Jacket’s skull.
My father reaches forward to pull me up, but a spray of red ink bursts from his skin, splattering us both.
Several cars shriek in our direction, firing at us.
He claps a hand to his bleeding neck and yells, “Cover!”
We dive to the ground beside the overturned Mercedes.
Bullets dent the hood of the car.
My legs are still tied together. My father holds a handkerchief up to his wound to stem the bleeding. “Here”—he motions to his boot. I remove his Kabar knife and cut the zip tie binding my ankles with a single swipe.
Bullets ricochet off the undercarriage, pinging against metal.
Inside the Mercedes, the driver is alive, coming to; until a bullet enters through the front windshield and plunges into his cheek.
Under a barrage of gunfire, I reach through the shattered window and fumble around the interior to reach my backpack.
Twenty meters away, the first car stops. Then a second, and a third.
I touch the smooth nylon fabric of my Longchamp bag. I wind my finger around the leather strap and pull. It doesn’t budge. I stretch my arm farther, cutting my shoulder on the window frame’s jagged glass.
Through the broken windshield I see men exiting three black Mercedes sedans—men wearing black jackets and black knit caps, and with black scarves concealing their faces.
I tug harder—nothing.
“We have to get into the woods,” my father says to me in a low voice, “… reach a clearing for exfil.”
I tug again as hard as I can. The strap breaks free. I swing my backpack toward me and reach my hand inside. My fingers meet solid polymer.
“You take north flank, I’ll cover south. Reconverge in forty-five meters,” he commands.
I nod, pulling out my FN 5-7 pistol.
“In three.”
I release the safety.
“Two.”
I rack the slide.
“One.”
CHAPTER 55
My father launches from our cover, shooting.
Five men duck behind their cars. Two others fall to the ground.
More men emerge—several have AK-47s and one has an MP5.
Following, I stay beside my father as we back toward the woods, firing.
At the tree line, under a staccato gunfire barrage, we pivot forward and run.