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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.
    Right now, though,
the only thing on Tracie’s mind was escape. She had already been inside the
building far too long. She rose to her feet and said, “Go back to the kitchen
and stay there for at least ten minutes. If you move before ten minutes has
passed, I’ll come back and kill you both. Do you understand?”
    The pair nodded at
the same time, then turned and hurried back down the narrow hallway. They moved
quickly, but did not scream or yell into the front of the club for help, as
Tracie had been afraid they might. She waited until they had reentered the
kitchen, then sprinted for the door.
    She burst into the
night, the oppressive heat of the club vanishing in an instant. The service
entrance opened into a narrow, trash-littered alley. A row of frost-covered
garbage cans had been lined up next to the doorway and the rank stench of
spoiled food hung in the air around them like smog over L.A. The alley was
deserted.
    She slowed to a
fast walk along the crumbling pavement, moving south, knowing their East German
collaborator had been instructed to turn