“They don’t seem to mind,” he fired back without slowing down. He would have taken the risk — maybe — had the Parliament building’s soldiers been within reach, but by the time he’d spotted the two men chasing them, they were already between them and the soldiers, and there was no way he and Evelyn could circle back to get to them.
Something suddenly caught his eye in the crowd ahead of them. Another man, same tightly drawn mouth, same icy stare in his eyes. Walking calmly towards him and Evelyn, his hand moving to the inside of his jacket where Farouk was sure he glimpsed the handle of a holstered gun.
Farouk saw a side street open up to the left and dived into it. It ran uphill for a hundred yards or so and led to a mosque that was at the edge of the pedestrian area.
Evelyn stumbled through the turn and righted herself quickly. Her breathing was now labored, her legs were already hurting, and it was clear she couldn’t keep this up much longer. She was in reasonably good shape for someone her age, but she hadn’t run like that for, well, ever.
They kept going, leaving behind the bustle and bright lights of the piazza, their footfalls echoing in the tunnel of darkness that now surrounded them. A thought suddenly struck her. Farouk didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know Beirut well, if at all, and it didn’t make sense that he should be leading her. Evelyn knew the downtown area pretty well, but she wasn’t familiar with that alley, and surely it made more sense to stay with the crowd. Plus, going uphill, even up a soft incline such as the one they were now on, wasn’t helping.
“Farouk, listen to me,” she called out, breathless, “we need to find some cops, someone who can protect you—”
“No one can protect us,” Farouk snapped, his voice cracking with desperation, “not from them, don’t you see? We’ve got to find a taxi, a car, something—”
His voice cut off as, from behind them, the staccato claps of three sets of urgent footsteps sliced through the night and bounced off the walls around them. The man with the holstered gun had joined his two buddies, and the three of them were reeling Farouk and Evelyn in now that they didn’t have to worry about drawing attention to themselves.
Evelyn was finding it harder and harder to keep going with every step and was just about ready to give up when a narrow side street opened up to their right, running alongside the rear wall of the mosque. It led down to Rue Weygand, a major avenue that was busy with evening traffic — and taxis.
The sight invigorated her and seemed to have the same effect on Farouk. “Come on,” he screamed out, as they cut right and hastened down the deserted alley, gasping for breath as they rushed towards the bright lights and possible salvation up ahead.
They were halfway down the street when Evelyn saw a lone car turn into it and head for them.
It was a black BMW.
Farouk beelined for the car and started waving at it frantically, yelling out the local equivalent of “Help!” but Evelyn slowed right down, suddenly fearful. She could make out a man silhouetted inside the car, backlit by the bright street behind him. He looked as if he was holding up a phone to his ear.
Something told her he wasn’t there by chance.
“Farouk,” she cried out to him, “wait.”
Farouk lurched to a halt and turned to her, out of breath and confused. Evelyn was still eyeing the car suspiciously when it suddenly stopped in the middle of the alley, its engine still running ominously. Then the driver flicked the high beams on, flooding the street with harsh, cold light.
Evelyn took a couple of steps backwards, shielding her eyes from the blinding light, then the noise behind her drew her attention. She turned to see the three men who were chasing them burst into the alley, clearly lit by the car’s headlights. They stopped when they saw her. One of them had a phone in his hand, the clamshell type, and he snapped it shut and pocketed it. He looked around to make sure they were clear and nodded to his buddies. Evelyn heard the car’s doors click open. She spun around and saw the driver emerge from the car.
She looked at Farouk. He was standing there, as frozen in fear as she was, while the four predators closed in on them, the black BMW with its door wide open purring in the background like a hungry wraith waiting to be fed.
She started to scream.
Chapter 8
Mia heard her mother’s screams just as she reached the mosque wall. She looked down the backstreet and saw two men struggling with Evelyn. They were halfway down the alley, about sixty yards from Mia. She squinted from the car’s headlights, and she thought she recognized its distinctive BMW grille.
Evelyn was kicking and screaming as the android’s buddy tried to muzzle her with his hand. She bit him, then lashed out at him with her handbag, which only fired him up even more. He grabbed hold of it and tore it out of her hand, flinging it to the ground before striking her with a ferocious backslap that sent her reeling back.
Nearer to Mia, Farouk had his back against the outside wall of the mosque that ran down the alley. He looked like a cornered, proverbial deer, all lit up by the car’s headlights. Two other men — the android and another she hadn’t seen before — were converging on him. The android’s hand was up in front of his face, his finger extended in a harsh, threatening gesture.
Mia’s entire body went rigid. Her flight instinct wanted her to duck back behind the safety of the wall and keep out of it. Any fight instinct she might have had was pummeled into submission by common sense: The odds were overwhelmingly against her, and given that she wasn’t Batgirl, there was nothing she could think of to do.
Well, maybe one thing.
Basic. Primal. Not particularly creative or adventurous.
Maybe dangerous.
Definitely dangerous, come to think of it, but she had to do something.
So she screamed her head off.
First, “Mom,” then, “Help.”
The frenzy halfway down the alley suddenly froze as if some great TiVo in the sky had its cosmic pause button hit. All the heads turned to Mia, the kidnappers glaring at her with expressions of angry surprise on their faces, the man Evelyn was with dropping his jaw in bewilderment, and Evelyn’s eyes locking with Mia’s in a brief glance of desperation and gratitude Mia would never forget.
The freeze-frame didn’t last long, and springing back to life, the two men on Evelyn doubled their efforts to get her into the backseat of the car, the android leaving Farouk to his buddy and rushing towards Mia.
She took a few hesitant steps back before the flight instinct kicked in big-time. She bolted back towards the mosque, summoning every last atom of energy from her burning legs, still screaming her lungs out. Darting a quick glance over her shoulder, she spotted Evelyn’s friend slipping away from the thug who was coming at him and pushing him aside before breaking off in the opposite direction, cutting to the unguarded passenger side of the car.
The android angrily yelled something at her in Arabic that chilled her veins, and she could hear his crisp footsteps closing in behind her as she rounded the mosque’s wall and almost crashed into two Lebanese army soldiers who came tearing around the bend. They seemed to be coming from the mosque’s main entrance, where Mia could see a small sentry box. She grabbed one of them and, struggling to catch her breath, pointed back towards the android, who suddenly appeared at the alley’s mouth.
The android lurched to a stop, startled, at the sight of the soldiers.
“My mother. They’re kidnapping her. Please, help her,” Mia blurted, scouring the soldier’s eyes for any sign of comprehension. He stared at her suspiciously before coldly motioning for her to move aside and, with one hand already reaching for his handgun, shouted something out to the android that sounded like an order. The android raised a firm but calming hand and yelled back at him in a tone that threw Mia — the guy was almost berating the soldier as if he were his drill sergeant. More alarmingly, she noticed his other hand going behind his back. Mia turned to the soldier in confused panic and was relieved to see that the soldier wasn’t having any of it. He shouted back at the android as he raised his gun — then his chest opened up in an explosion of blood and he was thrown back against the mosque’s wall just as two deafening gunshots reverberated in Mia’s ears.