Am I the sort of person willing to risk everything on luck?
He didn’t think so. Not with those type of odds. Better to take his chance with the police and a murder trial than almost certain suicide. He turned, ready to give himself up to the polizia, raising his hands upward in submission.
And the sniper began firing at him.
Presented with an impossible choice, the man accepted his fate, turned toward the ledge — and jumped.
Chapter Five
The free fall seemed longer than he expected.
He waited for his back to burn with the pain of bullets ripping through his skin. He dropped feet first all the way to the black water below.
The water jarred him, like landing on concrete from a great height. The surface-tension broke, and he dipped into the deep water below.
His entire body stung with the pain of the impact.
His feet hurt and chest throbbed — but he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
He opened his eyes.
The saltwater stung at his eyes, but he could make out the hazy blur of light coming from the surface — nothing more — but it was enough. He kicked with his legs and swam with his arms, all the time promising himself that he wouldn’t stop until he reached the surface and was able to take a breath.
After what was probably only a few seconds, his head broached the surface.
He took a couple quick, deep breaths.
Before his ears filled with the rat-a-tat-tat sound of machine gun fire. The surface nearby became sprayed with bullets, sending small jets of water shooting upward.
He took one more quick gulp of air and dived downward. He reached a depth of eight or nine feet and began to swim horizontally outward, into deep water. Bullets whizzed past him — their velocity immediately stunted by the friction of the water.
He held his breath and swam as long as he could. When his chest burned so hard that another second would have forced him to take a breath underwater, he finally allowed himself to surface with a gasp.
He glanced around.
He’d probably swum fifty or more yards out.
The towering rocky peak that formed the point to the natural harbor now formed a sinister shadow, where it had blocked the moonlight from reaching him. The water was dark and his head made only the smallest streak on the landscape, allowing him to blend in with the swell coming off the harbor’s point.
In the distance, he heard the report of more shots being fired, but none of them landed anywhere near him. If he had to guess, the sniper didn’t know where he was. Instead, the sniper was merely firing random shots into the water to keep him scared — because frightened people make mistakes.
The shots soon went silent, replaced with the sound of shouting and recriminations.
His head whirled with a thousand questions. Was the sniper connected to the police? Or was he working on his own? Had his execution been sanctioned by the government or not? If so, which one? Was he the hero in this thriller or was he the culprit? Maybe he deserved to die? The people who had tried to hold him prisoner certainly thought so.
Am I a good person?
He didn’t linger on the thought. There was time to work out all of it. But he’d never get to find answers if he was caught or killed beforehand.
He took another deep breath and swam beneath the surface, heading out around the point of the harbor. He reached the point, and headed south, back into a small alcove-like bay on the southern side of the Mediterranean village.
More than eighty feet below the vibrant houses of Vernazza, he cast a small outline on the dark beach, but in a few hours the sun would rise and the place would be searched until he or his body was found.
He considered following the coast, but there didn’t seem like there were too many places to hide if he needed to along the way. The city looked like it was more of an outcrop along a coast filled with terraced olive groves and vineyards.
His eyes narrowed and he thought about which way to go. He stared at the houses perched more than eighty feet above him, overlooking the cliff. If he could get there, he might find somewhere to hide for a few days until things settled down. Maybe the polizia might even assume he’d died in the sea.
He turned his gaze to the cliff face.
There was something familiar about the sight. He had the uncanny, and vivid feeling of déjà vu. More than that. Maybe somewhere he’d grown up, or at least visited regularly as a child? He kept studying the landscape, searching for clues about his past. He stopped and smiled.
A small trail was etched into the jagged cliff face. As the angle of the cliff rose to vertical, the trail petered out and was replaced by a forty-foot steel ladder, which draped from the last house in the row of colorful terraces.
He was certain he’d climbed the ladder before.
But that didn’t necessarily mean that he should climb it again. Even if he had visited the place as a child, how would that help him escape his current situation?
He paused for a moment, trying to rationalize whether or not to climb the ladder.
And then heard the loud thump-thump of a police search and rescue helicopter, followed by its powerful spotlight beam.
It was searching the coastal waters, but would soon return to search the shores.
He ran toward the jagged trail and climbed to the top of the vertical ladder. It brought him out onto the top of the flat roofs, which nearly touched at varying heights. He glanced over his shoulder, back at the dark swell of the sea below. The helicopter was below him now, hovering, but its tail rotor was turning, and the pilot was bringing the Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin round to commence its coastal search pattern.
He stared at the helicopter for a moment and grinned. He didn’t just recognize it as a helicopter. He’d recognized it at a glance as a Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin. That sort of certainty meant only one of two things. He was either a helicopter mechanic or a pilot.
The thought gave him some hope. An hour ago, he was certain he was nothing more than a good for nothing thug. A murderer of women and heaven forbid, a possible rapist. But now, he had reason to believe he was either a pilot or a mechanic. Either option meant he was smart enough to be more than hired muscle or an enforcer to a drug cartel. But neither absolved him from the facts he knew, which included that he was carrying a Russian handgun, was being hunted by men from the Russian mafia, and had most likely killed a beautiful woman only hours earlier…
But still, it meant there was hope that he was better than all of that…
The Eurocopter banked and came around for a second run along the coast. It snapped him out of his reverie. The time for working out who he was, where he’d come from, and where he should head could all be determined later. Right now he needed to find somewhere to hunker down for a while until the heat blew over.
There was no longer any uncertainty in his mind. He needed to get out of sight and that meant he needed to get off the roof. He ran north, along the gradually descending roof tops, until he reached a blue one. This was what he was after. He knew it without hesitation, although he couldn’t say why.
He dropped over the side of the roof onto a balcony that overlooked the sea more than eighty feet below. Everything about the balcony felt familiar. It had terracotta tile flooring, with a glass balustrade that was at a jarring contrast to the rest of the building, which was abundantly medieval.
He turned around and looked into the apartment. The door was open and a beaded fly screen draped from the frame. Whoever lived there clearly wasn’t worried about intruders, and with the warm Mediterranean breeze, they had little use for the glass door.
His eyes glanced inside. The lights were off, but being the middle of the night, that didn’t necessarily mean the place was empty. He cringed at the thought of the occupant’s reactions when they woke up to find a stranger in their house.