The screaming crowd scattered before the running men like frightened birds. A policeman blocked their way for a few foolish seconds before eighty rounds of spraying death spattered bits of his shredded flesh on the shrieking throng scrambling out of the way. His body hit the shiny black floor in a widening pool of blood.
Outside, just past the line of legal cabs, a car idled with its parking lights on. The lights flashed once before the sedan wheeled over to the running men and slowed enough to let them jump in.
It was 4:02 when the black Mercedes with West German plates smoothly accelerated and sped away from Leonardo da Vinci airport.
CHAPTER 2
E gon had had several leisurely grappas while waiting for his flight to Paris. His throat still felt warm from the liquor as he left the coffee bar and turned the corner into the main hall, but it closed up in terror when the guns opened fire. He froze, gasping for air, clutching the wall, his instincts screaming, Back! Go back! But he was paralyzed with fright, incapable of movement. How did they know I was here? he hysterically thought. He'd only decided himself on the spur of the moment to accept Jean-Claude's invitation for the weekend. No one should have known. He hadn't told a soul. Not his valet, not his housekeeper. Not even Jean-Claude.
It took a full ten seconds while he anticipated bullets ripping into him before he realized the gunmen's target was at the counter across the floor from him. And then another five seconds more before he found the strength to slide back around the corner, out of sight. He clung to the wall, shaking, drenched in sweat while visions of falling bodies, blood, unearthly screams with almost a corporeal quality assaulted his mind.
He wasn't the target; someone else was, he concluded for a short moment before an irrational fear overwhelmed the logic.