“What?” Jake asked her.
“Was I smiling?”
“Yes, you were.”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve never seen anyone break down a gun with such precision. You were like a child at Christmas opening a present.”
Jake wished he’d gotten a gun like that for Christmas. He had gotten a single shot .410 shotgun one year, and was the happiest kid on the block that year. “Okay. Did you find the history professor?”
“I did.” She handed the phone to Jake. It had the address up and tracked to the GPS.
“Let’s go then,” Jake said.
The professor lived just a few blocks from the campus in the suburb of Msida, an old fishing village. But the university and the professor’s house were both situated up on high ground. Although it was dark now, the lights from the capital Valletta shone off the water to the south of them as they cruised along a residential street lined with apartment buildings.
“One block ahead on the right,” Jake said. “That building on the second floor.”
Elisa pulled up to the curb and shut down the engine. “How do you want to handle this?”
Jake didn’t even have to think about that. “We use you. The professor is in his early forties and single. Born in France, he’s lived here in Malta for the past ten years.”
“What if he would rather have a man?”
Being French, that could have been true. But Jake had to go with the odds. “All right. We’ll both go talk with the man. But you knock on the door. Hate to scare him with my mug at night.”
They got out and walked toward the building ahead. Jake checked the feel of his new gun tucked into the sleeve on his left hip. It was in a cross draw position, which Jake preferred. He would have liked his normal leather holster under his left arm, but it was impossible to use those in the hot regions of the world in the summer. The sleeve he could tuck into even a waist band without a belt if he needed, and then just throw a T-shirt over the butt of the gun.
Neither said a word as they climbed the stairs of the apartment building and then stood before the professor’s apartment door. Jake stood to one side as Elisa knocked on the door. Nothing. They looked at each other and both shrugged.
Jake checked the door handle and the door swung in a couple of inches. Without thinking, he pulled the gun and aimed it toward the door opening. Elisa followed him closely. But Jake heard something just as they were about to enter. With one swift motion, he pushed Elisa away from the opening.
Bullets smashed through the door, splintering the wood. Jake aimed his gun and shoved the door inward as he dove toward the floor. He saw flashes from across the room and he aimed at those and fired twice before rolling to the left.
Silence. Only the ringing in Jake’s ears.
Then more shots, but this time from the corridor outside, followed by some shots from Elisa before she dove into the apartment right next to Jake. He thought he had heard the familiar sound of body striking floor after his two shots. But there could be another shooter somewhere within the apartment. Yet, they were pinned down.
Jake jumped to his feet and hurried through the small apartment until he found a man laying on the tile floor of the kitchen area. Checked for pulse. Nope. He could see that at least one of his bullets had entered the man’s face, taking out the guy’s right eye, the one that had aimed the gun.
More shots from the corridor, followed again by Elisa shooting. She seemed to have that under control, so Jake rushed through the apartment. He found the professor strapped to a chair in the bedroom, gagged with a leather belt, and with cigarette burn marks on his arms, his neck and his face. But what had killed the man was obviously the widest string taken from the man’s acoustic guitar and twisted around his throat.
Damn it. They needed to get out of there.
Running back out into the main room, Jake went straight to the door. “Follow me,” he said to Elisa. Without further explanation, Jake rushed out into the corridor. When the bullets started coming from the end of the hallway by the stairs, Jake ran forward firing his gun. He didn’t look back.
By the time Jake reached the staircase he could hear two things. First, he heard multiple footfalls down the stairs. Second, he could hear the sound of police cars approaching with sirens blaring. Since he could feel Elisa right behind him, he continued down the stairs, guessing the men who had been shooting at them would not stick around now that the police were on their way.
Jake hesitated at the outside door, just in case the shooters were waiting for him. But instead he heard tires burning rubber as a car raced off down the street.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jake whispered loudly.
When they got to the car, Jake asked for the keys, got in and lowered the windows to hear from which way the cops were coming. He turned the car around and at a reasonable pace got them out of there, vectoring to the south toward the waterfront. He watched a few blocks over as two police cars flew past them heading toward the shooting scene.
How in the hell had this gone from a simple case of finding a college professor from Texas to a murder and possible kidnapping?
He glanced to his right at Elisa, who was visibly shaking. “Are you all right?” he asked her.
She still held her gun in her right hand, the muzzle pointing at the glove box.
“You might want to safe your gun, reload your magazine, and put on your seat belt.” Jake did the same thing with his gun, driving with one hand and slamming a new magazine into the handle of his gun against his leg. Then he shoved the gun into the holster on his left hip and put on his seat belt.
Elisa took deep breaths and then completed the same tasks. Finally, she said, “I’ve never been shot at.”
Jake laughed. “Well, you’ve only been with me for a short time. Just wait until we’ve been hanging out for a while.”
“Your file says you’ve been in a lot of these situations. How do you get used to it?”
He didn’t really know how to answer that question. Perhaps enough time lapses between such incidents to inoculate his mind. But this was getting shot at twice in less than two weeks. Not a record for him, yet a bit unusual.
“You never get used to it Elisa.”
“But you just ran right toward the shooters.”
True. Maybe he was luckier than smart. Some had said he had a death wish. But what Jake knew is that most people also don’t like to be shot at, so he used his own covering fire to close the distance on the shooters. It was a calculated risk.
Changing the subject as he slowed the Passat down and wound through the waterfront area of town, Jake said, “The man who I shot in the apartment. I knew him. Well, we had an encounter on the ferry from Tunis to Trapani. I took his gun but he must have found another one.”
“And the professor?” she asked.
“Tortured and dead in the bedroom. And it looked like someone enjoyed it too much.”
She seemed to sink down into the leather seat even more, her arms across her chest, resembling a young school girl who had just had a fight with a parent. She was clearly disturbed by all this.
“What about the woman, Professor Sara Halsey Jones?” she asked with a quiet tone, nearly a whisper.
“I don’t know. It’s my guess the history professor tried to keep her location a secret, but he would have failed.” So these men knew where she was or where she was going. Time to turn things around. Change from the pursued to the pursuer.
10
The three men sat in the rental car outside the international arrivals area of the Malta airport. Demetri, the current leader of the crew, was concerned about having to tell Zendo about their failure. Well, partial failure. But anytime you lose a man, it’s not a good thing. Kyros, the man behind the wheel of the large German sedan, sat expressionless as usual. Nothing seemed to rattle that man, Demetri thought.