The Evasion

The Man in the Black Suit

The Evasion

A figure dashed from the alleyway, unaware of the crosshairs marking him for death.  Across the street, there was the stealthy spit of a suppressed rifle shot, and a shell casing tinkled on the bed of a truck parked parallel to the river.

The bullet slapped into the man’s forehead, dropping him instantly.

But there was an error: a second man followed the first from the alley.

In the truck bed, Aakil cursed profanely as he realized what had just occurred.  It was too late.

A hotwired SUV slammed into Aakil’s vehicle at one hundred kilometers per hour.  Glass shattered and metal buckled with protesting screeches.  In one car, airbags expanded with a whoosh.  In the other, a man died.

Both vehicles slid and tumbled into the water.  They sank instantly.

The body of the gunman known as Aakil floated up, but in the SUV, a man in a black suit was restrained by his seatbelt.

Even though he’d intended to take down both vehicles, the impact still stunned him into immobility for several precious moments as the metal coffin plummeted silently.  Water gushed past the gaping mouth of the missing windshield.  Fumbling with his seatbelt buckle, the man freed himself and took a last gulp from the dwindling air-pocket in the top of the SUV.  Then he swam free of the vehicle, slipping away as it sank into the murk.

The Elbe’s freezing waters gripped him as he shed his jacket and pawed off his shoes.  Taking a moment to orient himself, he began swimming.

The man who’d killed Aakil breast-stroked a hundred yards downriver and clambered unnoticed to the shore.  At the spot where the cars had gone off, a crowd was gathering.

The man surveyed faces.  Only one of his pursuers still lived, and that man was located standing on the edge of the congregation, talking animatedly into a cell.  Apparently, he assumed his target was dead.

Dripping wet and bereft of jacket or shoes, the man who was not dead hailed a cab and ordered it to an expensive hotel, creating a story for the driver’s questions.  He couldn’t risk going back for his possessions, and since his last residence had been downscale, it was best to procure accommodations on the opposite side of the spectrum.  He had enough money on him to cover contingencies of this nature.

He took a hot shower in his new room, rented under the prepared alias of Abel Falke.  After his shower, the man named Falke sipped a drink from the minibar while waiting for laundering services to take care of his clothes.  He’d need to purchase new ones.

Then he sat for a while in thought.  At last he decided: it was time for some research.

The Gunman

The Man in the Black Suit

The Gunman

The man in the black suit was no longer a tourist.  Now he was a fugitive.  The world screamed trap.

            Leather shoes scuffed on muddy brick as he sprinted toward the alley’s end.  He’d been trying to lure his followers into a choke-point.  Instead, he’d placed himself in one.

Instinct was what saved him.  Some subconscious part of his brain – the professional part – analyzed what was about to happen an instant before it occurred.

            As his foot hit the last brick of the alley before he abandoned cover, instinct forced him to hurl himself to the street.

            He’d never come so close to death.  A brick shattered as a bullet struck it.  No sound, of course.  But a sniper had been waiting for him to panic and run.

            He rolled off his shoulder and staggered back to his feet, allowing the momentum to carry him across the street.  Now the fugitive was zigzagging through more alleyways, and there wasn’t a chance in the world that the sniper would take him down from a nest.  His attacker needed to go mobile.

            There were shouts: his two tails breaking out in pursuit.  He sprinted through a backstreet, turned a corner, and ran down another.  Yells and the sound of shoes pounding pavement emanated from behind him.

Both exits from his alley led onto the main street.  Ahead, an industrial garbage bin sat against the back wall of a shop.  Racing towards it, he did some quick analysis, but his next move was ultimately a gut reaction.

The garbage bin’s lid gave him enough spring to leap up and catch the edge of the building.  Feet scrabbling for purchase, he hoisted himself onto the roof.  At a couching run, the fugitive made his way across the gently sloping surface.

His shoulder blades itched in expectation of a sniper’s bullet, but this was a calculated wager.  The gunman had likely taken to the streets already.

Leaping the twelve-foot drop of an alley, he landed on another roof and kept running, this time daring to rise a little higher.  Quickly surveying the immediate area below, he spotted none of his pursuers.  More importantly, several unoccupied vehicles were parked at the street’s edge.

Reaching the end of the roof, the fugitive hung from its sagging rain gutter and dropped.  Concrete rushed to meet him as he landed in a crouch and rolled onto one shoulder.  He ignored the stinging in his heels.  Vanishing among the pedestrians was his next move.  Straightened the cuffs on his black suit, he walked casually from the alley.

That man in the black suit is good.  A real professional, Aakil decided.  But there was one primary difference between that man and Aakil himself: the black suit was in the crosshairs, and Aakil was behind them.

Aakil was short, and he lay on his stomach in the bed of his truck.  The gunman’s rifle was mounted, trained on the alley from which his target would appear.

 Taking to the rooftops to avoid his followers; that had been an intelligent tactic.  Aakil had been climbing down from his nest when he’d noticed the figure clambering onto a roof.  The time was not sufficient for Aakil to reassemble the rifle and take a shot.  However, a bird’s eye survey of the rooftops had allowed him to predict with reasonable certainty the spot from which his quarry would exit.  Aakil had been close, and his vehicle had enabled him to arrive first.  The high sides of the truck bed prevented his being noticed by pedestrians.  Now, it was just a matter of patience.

The gunman’s patience was unwavering.