Parallax View Excerpt

She might still get out of this.

“What’s your hurry?” the man said, his weapon trained on Tracie. She said nothing and he took a couple of aggressive steps toward her. She willed him to take a couple more.

A loopy grin spread across her face and Tracie wobbled unsteadily forward a step, then back. She allowed her eyes to glaze over. “What’rr you doing in the ladies room?” she said, intentionally slurring her words. “You shou’nt be in here.” Then she giggled, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.

The tension in the lieutenant’s posture relaxed slightly and the look of suspicion creasing his face eased a bit. Tracie thought she saw him stifle a grin. The gun, however, remained pointed at her midsection. If he fired now, the slug would probably punch a hole right through the envelope. He took another couple of steps forward, this time moving with more swagger and less aggression, lowering his gun and sealing his fate. He was almost close enough.

As he took another step, Tracie stumbled to one knee. He was eighteen inches in front of her. Any closer and he might conceivably be too close. It was time to act.

She shot to her feet, propelling her body forward, grabbing her captor’s gun with her right hand. The man took a step back in surprise, and Tracie yanked his hand hard, jerking his body toward hers as he squeezed the trigger reflexively. The sound of the gunfire was loud and Tracie hoped the thumping bass beat out in the club had covered most of it. The people working in the kitchen down the hall would have heard, but she wasn’t worried about them.

He clubbed her on the side with his left hand as she used his momentum against him, flicking her head forward, the movement tight and compact. Her forehead impacted the man’s nose and she could hear the bones shatter even above the damned disco music and the ringing in her ears from the gunshot.

He crumpled immediately, blood streaming over his mouth, which he had opened in a scream of pain. It gushed out, spilled down his face, and splattered onto the dirty floor. It looked like Niagara Falls. She grabbed the soldier’s weapon and yanked it away from him. His finger jammed in the trigger guard and Tracie felt it break.

The man staggered, splattering blood onto her leather pants and boots. He was practically out on his feet. She pivoted her hand to the side, like a hitchhiker trolling for a ride, and then reversed direction and slammed the butt of the pistol against his temple. His eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped straight down. She flashed back to her encounter with the security guard in the Ukraine less than ten days ago. All my dates end badly.

She hoped she hadn’t killed the man but couldn’t afford to take the time to find out. By now the KGB agents monitoring the front of the club would have discovered the man they had followed was empty-handed, and it wouldn’t take long before they realized they had been victimized by the oldest trick in the book, the bait-and-switch. Within minutes, maybe less, this place would be blanketed, locked down, and if Tracie was still here when that happened she would never get out alive.

The sound of pounding footsteps told her the soldier’s gunshot had been heard. She dropped to one knee and turned, raising the man’s gun. An elderly man and woman—they each had to be seventy years old if they were a day—burst out of the hallway and into the storage area. They were undoubtedly the pair she had seen working in the kitchen, although they had been too far away to identify for sure. “One more step and you die,” she said in German, pointing the gun in their direction, hoping her voice hadn’t carried into the bar.

The pair skidded to a stop, the old woman banging into the old man in front, sending him careening helplessly toward Tracie. He fell to the floor and then scrabbled backward, almost knocking the old woman over in the process. It looked like a Three Stooges routine, and under other circumstances might have been funny.