Page 10 of Denied Access
No matter.
Greta did not have to escape. She just needed to buy time for Rapp to flip the equation governed by angles and inches to his favor. With a burst of speed, Rapp flowed down the museum’s steps while formulating the manner in which he would deal with the threat. His concealed Beretta was the most obvious answer, but Rapp was loath to employ thepistol in broad daylight, especially since the stubby suppressor was not screwed onto the pistol’s muzzle. The knife hidden in his belt buckle was another option, but that weapon required time to retrieve.
Time that Rapp did not have.
Instead, he would have to rely on two things he possessed in abundance—speed and violence of action. Rapp tightened the knuckles of his dominant hand into a fist and selected his target. Haymakers to the jaw made for great TV, but these sorts of strikes often did as much damage to the attacker as the recipient.
During an early sparring session in the Lake Anna, Virginia, training center he ran for potential Orion Team members, Stan Hurley had boiled the art of hand-to-hand contact down to a simple parable—use hard things on soft targets and soft things on hard targets. Case in point, Rapp intended to embed his hard, bony knuckles into the soft flesh lining the man’s muscular neck. If he hit the vagus nerve, so much the better, but the strike didn’t require that level of precision. The punch only needed to stun the man and thereby open a pathway for a follow-on blow from Rapp’s pointy right elbow.
Rapp surged across the courtyard. The Swiss girl was still struggling, but her assailant was undeterred. Lifting Greta from her feet, the fire hydrant of a man shouldered his way past the tables and advanced toward the confluence of streets to the west.
A Good Samaritan moved to intervene.
The newcomer was rail-thin with narrow shoulders and shaking hands. He seemed to have as much expertise with unarmed combat as Rapp did with quantum mechanics. Still, what the man lacked in martial skills he made up for with courage. While his fellow diners seemed content to watch a man kidnap a resisting woman, he acted. The Good Samaritan reached for Greta with a pianist’s delicate fingers.
The kidnapper was unimpressed.
With the same disregard he might show a puppy attacking his trousers’ hem, the kidnapper cuffed the man with an open-handedslap to the head. The heavythunkgenerated by the flesh-on-flesh collision echoed across the courtyard. The Good Samaritan spun in a half circle and crumpled. He tried to arrest his fall with a limp hand, but succeeded only in overturning a chair.
A chair that tumbled directly in Rapp’s path.
The stricken man struggled to his feet on unsteady legs. That his efforts thus far were proving to be unsuccessful didn’t seem to register. Or perhaps his addled brain was still trying to reboot after bouncing off the inside of his skull. Either way, Rapp figured he stood a better-than-even chance of joining the man on the cobblestones if he tried to leap over the prone figure.
Instead, he deviated to the right.
The distance and angles changed again.
The kidnapper gained a step.
Greta’s wide eyes found Rapp’s. The fear radiating from their depths became something else.
Resolve.
Greta tucked her knees against her chest like she was about to cannonball into a swimming pool, held the position for an instant, and then rocketed both legs toward the ground. The abrupt change in her center of gravity caused her assailant to stumble. Like a yo-yo winding back up its string, Greta used the man’s motion to her advantage by arcing her head toward his face. She missed his nose but connected solidly with his chin.
Her abductor stumbled a second time.
Rapp did not.
Sprinting past the still-addled Good Samaritan, he closed the remaining distance to Greta and reached for her wrist.
Missed.
Reached again.
Brushed her fingertips.
Greta elbowed her abductor in the torso twice, turning her shouldersinto each blow. The kidnapper grunted and faltered, trying to restrain his captive.
A step later, Rapp was on him.
Or at least he would have been were it not for the Citroën that barreled into the courtyard from a narrow side street. Rapp heard the redlining engine and instinctively leapt skyward. The car’s bumper missed his leg but caught the bottom of his foot, spinning him in midair. Rapp crashed into the sedan’s hood, tumbled off the metal, and fell. His head bounced against the hard stone and his vision swam. For a long moment the world seemed far away as he drifted on the euphoria of semiconsciousness.
Then a shrieking engine birthed a single thought.
Greta.
Rapp groaned and pushed himself to his feet just in time to see the kidnapper bundle a flailing Greta into the rear seat before climbing in after her. The passenger door slammed shut and the car’s engine revved. The driver made eye contact with him through the windshield. Rapp tried to get clear of the car’s bumper, but his sluggish legs weren’t responding.
