10:28 p.m.
The door in front of them at first seemed to split apart in violent, thrashing chunks. Then, as Maso held his finger down over the automatic firing trigger, 950 rounds per minute quickly turned the chunks to fragments and the fragments to dust. The door appeared to dissolve, and the deafening report of the MP7 cut out all other sound.
It took only three seconds. When Umberto motioned for his partner to cease his firing, there simply was no door left to prevent their entry.
In an instant the two brothers were in motion. Their sidearms were raised to eye level as they partnered their way into the flat, filled with haze and dust from the destruction. The suppressors at the end of their barrels seemed entirely pointless now and they detached them with a quick twist. When plans change, accept the change. The firearms were more accurate without them anyway.
The flat was a scene of chaos. Splinters of wood still soared through the air and the impact of the bullets had shredded a blue sofa and nearby chair, whose linings and synthetic fluff filling now floated through the room’s interior in a frenetic cloud.
Umberto was on highest alert. He swung his arms steadily from the center of the room to the right, allowing Maso to take the left half of the flat. His forearms never left their solid pose, the gun sighted directly forward of his eyes. The moment something, anything, came into his line of vision, it would be dead center in his firing line.
It came less than a second later.
On the far side of the room, beyond the haze, Umberto caught a flicker of motion. It was tall, nearly six feet—the height of a man. He spun toward it, and at the same time the shape spun toward him.
His skin prickled. The hunt, running in both directions. He would have to give Alexander Trecchio credit for fighting back, for taking a stand. But Umberto was too well trained, and he was too fast.
He pulled his finger back on the trigger, the smooth shape of the metal sliding beneath the pad of his fingertip until he felt the familiar click of the pressure threshold giving way. The gun fired. Before the muzzle flash had died, he’d fired again. Twin shots blasted through the room, their loud report crashing from the walls.
Umberto instinctively crouched aside as his finger came off the trigger, making himself a moving target in case the other man happened to get off a shot in return. But that shot never came. The man simply exploded before Umberto’s gaze.
Exploded.
It was so surreal it took his mind a moment to register. The man with the gun aimed at him through the dust and swirling debris fragmented into a thousand pieces, accompanied by the sound of glass shattering as he fluttered out of existence.
“Fuck!” Umberto cried a second later, his senses grasping what had just taken place. On the far side of the sitting room the shattered fragments of a full-length mirror fell to the floor. He had skillfully assassinated his own reflection.
“Boss, look here!” Maso’s voice burst through his angry self-reproach. His younger brother had called him “boss” since they’d started working together, a habit he couldn’t break and which Umberto didn’t mind. He looked across the room to the younger man.
Maso was pointing toward his left. Just beyond the edge of the room, a few steps into a small corridor, the door to a bedroom stood open. On its far wall was a window, open to the night air of the city beyond.
Alexander had never descended a fire escape in his life, and the absurdly inappropriate thought that raced through his mind as he took the last steps down to ground level was that it was far harder going than it appeared to be in films. The quick escape out of the side of a building always seemed to show people racing downward as if they were taking a set of stairs. The reality was that the escape was an extraordinarily steep series of ladders woven through tightly spaced iron framing, all of which was constricting, difficult to manage and made for slow going. They had started only three flights up, but it seemed like minutes later when Alexander finally landed on solid ground.
Gabriella was a few feet above him and he held out his arms to help her with the final drop—an act of bravado that felt comical a moment later as she reached back under her jacket and reclaimed her firearm from its holster. Hardly a woman who needs help off a ladder. But he also noticed she hadn’t resisted the hand.
“Get moving,” Gabriella commanded. She motioned toward the corner of the building, redbrick and sleek, then raised her eyes and her handgun back up the fire escape.
Alexander followed the motion. On the third landing, a head poked its way out of his bedroom window.
Alexander froze as he caught the man’s eyes staring down at them. Cold didn’t begin to describe the complete lack of emotion there, and that dispassion was far more terrifying than any expression of rage or hatred could have been. He knew in that instant that this was a man who would extinguish his life without emotion or remorse.
A moment later, beneath the man’s shoulder and head, an arm emerged from the window.
“Run, now!” Gabriella commanded. Her voice jolted Alexander into action. He forced his legs to move, glancing back to ensure Gabriella was doing the same.
Her arm was raised to the man at the window, and Alexander saw her hand clench as she fired the gun. Sparks flew from the metalwork of the fire escape and she darted to the side, aiming high and firing again.
Alexander rounded the corner as the sounds of more gunshots and impact ricochets filled the air.
He could only pray they were coming from Gabriella’s weapon.