More bullets struck the pavement and Jake felt a stinging sensation in his left temple.
Returning fire, Jake aimed a little higher into the windows this time, most hitting the back window as the car tires screeched and the Mercedes sped away.
Traffic halted in all directions. Jake jumped to his feet, his gun still drawn, and he aimed it now toward the ground as he continued across the road.
The street cameras would have him on film. People would’ve probably captured him on their cell phones.
The gun at the side of his leg, Jake hurried toward the hotel. Just as he got to the edge of the buildings he heard a car’s tires squeal around the corner, so he turned his head quickly and saw it was Alexandra. She squeaked to a stop at the curb and Jake jumped into the front passenger seat.
“What the hell just happened?” she yelled as she jammed the gas down and pulled past the front of their hotel.
Jake changed magazines in his gun. “I don’t know. I crossed the street and this Mercedes rounded the corner. Two guys opened fire, the driver and a man in the back seat, who I think I hit.”
“I was coming out of the parking ramp and heard gunfire. Then I saw the flashes. But the cars stopped and jammed me up. I couldn’t get around them. Which way did they go?”
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “I was too busy looking for a second set of shooters.”
“Do we try to find them?”
Thinking quickly, Jake said, “No. Head out of town.”
“Where to?”
That was the problem. The two of them had discussed how they wanted to proceed, but they hadn’t really come to any consensus. Jake didn’t want her to get hurt, even though he understood that danger was more a part of her work than it had been for Anna. How had the shooters found him? He’d used a Visa for the hotel associated only with his Canadian persona, which wasn’t traceable to him in any way. Yet somehow these men had tracked him down. Less than a handful of people knew he had a Luxembourg bank account, and none of those knew which bank.
“Jake. Which direction?”
They approached the Autobahn that led to Germany to the east and Belgium to the northwest.
“Take a right.”
Alexandra jammed the wheel and hit the gas. As she entered the Autobahn her eyes traced back behind them. “We might have a tail.”
Jake turned and saw the silver Mercedes enter the Autobahn ramp and quickly make up time toward them. “Damn it. They must have pulled over and waited for us to pass. Crap. Take the exit ahead. Toward Metz.”
She did as he said. In less than fifteen kilometers they would be in France.
“They’re closing in,” Jake said.
She moved into the fast lane and flew past those in the two right lanes. The Mercedes was still half a kilometer back, paced with them. He needed to talk with these guys and gather some intel.
“Just after you cross into France,” Jake said, “pull off onto the first exit.”
A minute later and they crossed into France. The first exit was five kilometers ahead. She punched it and the BMW surged forward.
Jake saw the exit ahead.
“What’s the plan?” She pulled into the far right lane and slowed for the off-ramp.
“Stop at the top and let me out. You take a right, do a U-turn, and come back and pick me up.”
“No. Let me help.”
They approached the stop sign at the top of the ramp and Jake saw the Mercedes approaching. “No!”
The car stopped for a second and Jake jumped out, slamming the door behind him. She pulled away and he pulled both of his guns, directing them at the car as it closed in on him.
The driver of the Mercedes screeched to a halt twenty feet from Jake. A man came out of the front passenger door, using the door as cover, his gun through the open window.
Jake’s first shot struck the man in the calf and he tumbled to the ground before he got a shot off. As Jake vectored to his left, he saw another gun appear over the driver’s mirror, followed by three flashes and blasts. Jake ran forward firing as he went, his bullets smashing through the windshield toward the driver.
The man on the ground held his leg with his left hand and tried to lift his gun with his right, but Jake was now only a few feet away and easily shot the man’s right forearm, making him drop the gun.
Rounding the car, Jake prepared to shoot again at the driver. But as his vision of the inside of the car cleared, he saw the man slumped behind the wheel.
Jake checked the back seat. There was a man shot, laying on the seat. Okay, there had been three.
The man on the ground writhed in pain as Jake kicked away his gun. He tried to reach into his jacket but Jake slammed his heel into the man’s jaw, knocking him out. Damn it.
Suddenly, Alexandra rounded the corner and entered the ramp in the wrong direction, coming to an abrupt halt and jumping out, her gun aimed at the car.
“Jake, are you all right?” she yelled.
“Yeah, grab the IDs from those two in the car.”
As she did that, Jake holstered his guns and grasped the injured man by the collar and dragged him toward Alexandra’s BMW. He wasn’t bleeding too bad, Jake saw, since the first bullet had shattered the man’s shin, and the second shot had likely bounced off the man’s wrist bone.
“Got ‘em,” she said. “We taking him?”
“Yeah. For a while.”
She released her trunk remotely. “I don’t want blood on my leather seats.”
Jake removed their bags from the trunk and threw them into the back seat. Then he saw the duct tape. He ripped off a couple of feet and wrapped it around the man’s leg wound. Then he did the same for the guy’s wrist, before taping his hands behind his back. Satisfied, the two of them hoisted the man into the trunk and slammed him inside.
They got in and she pulled away, entering the Autobahn again toward Metz.
“Duct tape?” Jake asked.
“You never know when you might need some,” she said, smiling. “Where now?”
Jake had an idea where they needed to go next. “Head toward Nancy and we’ll decide from there.”
“All right.” She glanced at him and smiled. But that smile quickly turned to concern. “Jake, you have blood on your left temple.”
He felt the left side of his head and felt wet, sticky moisture. Looking into the sun visor mirror, he saw that the blood was a dark patch in his thick hair. The bleeding had already stopped. Thinking back, he remembered feeling pain during the shooting outside his hotel.
“It must have been a piece of the road chipped up with the shooting in Luxembourg,” Jake said, flipping the visor back to the windshield. He found some tissues in the glove box and held them against his temple.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “It could have been the actual bullet.”
“I’m all right,” he stressed. “Whatever it was just glanced off my thick skull. I think my long hair might have actually been good for something.”
She still had an expression of shock in her eyes.
“I’m all right,” he assured her. “I’ve had worse injuries playing football. And I’m not talking about German Soccer, where the players trip over a blade of grass and fall to the ground like they just had their leg blown off by a landmine.”
“I know about American football,” she said, her accent coming through on the last word. “I used to watch NFL Europe before they cancelled the teams.”
Jake checked the tissues, which had very little blood on them. He’d have a headache. Another close call. He had to get a handle on this. He was playing defense, back on his heels. Time to shift to the offense.
Back in Luxembourg, Toni Contardo pulled over to the curb a block from the Grand Hotel Cravat. She and Franz had gotten into town on Sunday night, and both had asked their respective organizations for help finding Jake and Alexandra. Yet, Toni knew that Jake wouldn’t be using his own name if he used a Visa. Although she knew a few of his personas, he could’ve easily made up a few more in the past couple of years. He could’ve also been staying in a smaller hotel or gasthaus with cash. Toni also knew Jake had a bank account in Luxembourg, but didn’t know which bank. Her and Franz had been traveling from bank to bank all morning flashing Jake’s picture, when they’d heard on the radio about a shooting on Roosevelt near the Grand Hotel Cravat. By the time they got to the hotel, though, the Police Grand-Ducale had most of the area cordoned off.