T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

Jackie raised her eyes to the rooftops. There was no longer any choice. With weary resignation she accepted the inevitable. She would contact the man she had vowed never to see again.

She traced her way back along the cobblestones with a deliberate tread. Spacing out her steps in time to her plotting. It made the future more endurable. First she would see if the hotel operator had managed to connect with Cairo. Then she would book her flight home. Then try Esther Hutchings again. Then check the internet site to ensure that the notoriously fickle federal prison system still held Shane. Wishing there were some way around the move, knowing she had no alternative.

In the moment of dread and indecision, they struck.

Two faceless moped drivers. They appeared in noisy comedy, the most innocuous of Roman sights. Their vehicles were a parody of transport, with narrow wheels and motors that produced more smoke and noise than power. Jackie noticed them only because they came at her together, one from each of streets fronting her café.

She stopped in midstride. Part of her brain realized they were aimed straight for her. Yet she was unable to move. Making the perfect target.

A blow sliced her left shoulder, then a third moped raced by from behind. She spotted the batons held by the other two just as she felt the pain. The third moped driver’s baton came up red and dripping over his head. She knew it was her own blood, knew also in an instant of impacted time that razors were imbedded in the wood. She heard a scream just as she fell to the stones, and heard the whizzing swoop of blows aimed too high, and the roar of motors passing to either side. Jackie could not tell if the scream was her own. But the noise unlocked her fully. That and the pain.

By the time the mopeds slowed and turned, Jackie was up and moving. She took one step toward the hotel, then halted. The plaza seemed freeze-framed as one moped spun around to block the hotel entrance. The driver swiped the air with his baton, the threat enough to throw every person in the plaza up against the closest wall, or into the nearest doorway. All but Jackie.

She raced for the café. Two old men with gaping eyes and toothless mouths bounded like adolescents for the doorway. Her hyperactive senses formed an auditory radar, warning her of another attack racing up from behind. She took a flying leap for the doorway.

The blow meant for her head caught her calf instead, and sent her spinning into the outside tables. Which was not altogether bad, because she slammed one of the metal-topped tables around in front of her, shielding herself from the other moped’s oncoming assault. The baton whanged and the razor zinged across the table’s battered surface. Jackie crouched tightly behind the metal barrier and took a breath. Another. Breathing in not air but fury.

When she heard the mopeds whine through a tight circle, she leaped to her feet and offered them a scream of her own. Knowing it was her voice, yet hearing the cry of some more primitive woman. She hefted the nearest metal chair and took a hard two-fisted aim.

The nearest moped was already committed and racing toward her. The driver was much burlier than the normal teenage moped driver, which granted her a larger, more solid target. Jackie met the baton head on, heard it snap before her chair connected with a padded elbow. It was not her best strike, but she intended to improve on the second go.

Still shrieking one continuous note, she ignored the second baton entirely. She took furious aim straight for the man’s helmet and struck with a crack heard on all seven of Rome’s hills, or so it seemed at the time. Jackie felt the clout in the soles of her feet. The man went careening off the back of the bike. A solid triple. Jackie wheeled about, searching for the third man, wanting to try for a home run.

The square was empty save for two red-soaked batons, one groaning man, an idling moped, and a host of gaping onlookers. Then she heard the racing engine. Not a moped. A car. And knew it was not over yet.

As usual, the hotel limo was parked just around the bend, between the hotel entrance and the church. The same young man who had driven her and Wynn gawked from behind the wheel. Only when Jackie raced across the piazza did she feel the slice in her leg. It slowed her down, but not overmuch. She flung open the back door and vaulted inside. “Drive!”

“Signora, your leg, the blood-”

Through the open door Jackie heard the squeal of rubber and the roar of a hyperstressed engine. “They’re coming! Drive! ”

Now the young man heard it as well. He put the car into gear and gingerly pulled away. Habit kept him in gentle tourist mode.

That lasted only until the car entered the cobblestone square. It slowed long enough to fling open a door and gather up the moped driver, who was already shouting and pointing toward Jackie and the car.

She reached over, slammed her door shut, and screamed, “ DRIVE! ”

The limo driver floored it just as the approaching car took aim. Jackie flung herself against the opposite side as they were hammered by a silver-gray blur.

The limo driver fishtailed about and took off down the nearest lane. The attackers followed so close Jackie could make out their mustaches bouncing around inside.

Perhaps the young driver had always lived for this moment. Or perhaps it was a latent Italian gene, waiting for the chance to break loose. Whatever the reason, the polite chauffeur was gone. In his place sat Mario Andretti. “ Dové? ”

Jackie bounced around the back seat like a lone pea in a tightly padded can. Leaving bloody stains wherever she hit. “What?”

“ Dové! Where?”

Only one place came to mind. “Sant’Egidio!”

Having a destination only added fuel to the flame. The driver met an oncoming split in the road by feinting left then flying right. He took the corner too tightly and met the stone angle with an abrasive whine and a shouted curse. He oversteered and whacked the opposing wall. He then avoided by a hair a car that appeared from an invisible intersection. He dove down the increasingly steep incline with a shout of his own.

People shrieked on all sides, jumping with lightning reflexes into doorways and windowsills. Shopping bags flashed across the windshield. Horns blared. Sidewalk tables and chairs leaped into the air at their passage. Barrages of fruit from an overturned stand spilled across the windshield. Sirens. Searing flashes of sheer terror.

They entered the Via Tritoni in a four-wheel skid, slipped under the nose of an incoming bus and threaded through a red light, following a narrow track that was not there. Jackie risked a backward glance. “They’re gone.”

Instantly the driver slowed, pulled into a sudden alcove, and drove sedately around a cobblestone bend. There he halted behind a tinkling fountain, lowered his window, and listened. Nodding once, he rose from the car, and searched in all directions. Nodding a second time, he walked to the fountain and dipped his handkerchief in the water. He returned to the car and handed it over the seat to Jackie. Only then did she realize the backseat was smeared with her blood. As were both side windows, floorboards, roof, door handles, and the rear shelf. Jackie touched her shoulder with one hand, her calf with the other. Suddenly both burned with sticky fire.

“The hospital, miss?”

“Sant’Egidio,” she weakly repeated. “Hurry.”

The gypsy selling roses in the church doorway would not give up her position, not even when Jackie left a bloody handprint where she leaned against the wall. But the Gypsy’s cries brought Anna from within. The young woman’s every movement showed that Jackie was not the first to arrive wounded. She led Jackie around to the side entrance to avoid tracking blood inside the sanctuary, then settled soiled towels about Jackie’s chair and called to others for hot water, hand rags, scissors, and a bottle.