I hear immediate shouts, both echoing around me and through my earpiece from Talyssa’s microphone and, just as I disappear from their view, I see two of the eight men peel off and come my way. They are a minute out if they move along the square at a careful pace, but less than half that if they run.

I figure they’ll run, because they won’t know for sure I’m with Talyssa and won’t immediately move in a defensive posture. They find me curious enough to send a couple guys to check, and I’m sure someone has told them to be on the lookout for a lone male operator in all this, but they aren’t going to just open fire.

I don’t think.

And I won’t open fire on them. I have no qualms about killing a couple of kidnappers, but I want to avoid a direct confrontation, if possible, while there are so many guns around the girl. At the same time, however, I don’t want to go into full retreat, where I’ll likely lose my chance to get her back.

Looking towards the sky as I run to the north, I make my decision.

I’m going up.

To my left a copper drain spout climbs the side of the three-story building, all the way to the roof. I adjust my backpack and start heading up, moving as quickly as possible, hoping like hell I can get over the lip of the tiled roof before the two Albanians make it onto my little stairway passage. For a brief moment I consider pulling my pistol and firing a couple of rounds into the cobblestones to slow their approach, but instead I just concentrate on climbing as fast as I can.

My knuckles scrape against the ancient walls behind the drainpipe as I struggle for handholds, and the toes of my boots dig for purchase as I climb. Quickly I realize I’m not going to make it all the way before the men arrive below me, but I chose a pipe out of the illumination of the streetlamps, so I do have another way to remain undetected. On the second floor I swing away from the pipe and step onto the ledge of a darkened window. I squat down, positioning my body totally within the window’s frame, next to a planter with a small orange tree in it, and then I freeze.

Below me two men run into view, pistols swinging low in their hands, and they continue down the eight-foot-wide staircase towards the main street of the Old Town, still several blocks away.

Since I’m in my black clothing and squatting in front of the black window, twenty feet above their heads and in dim light, they don’t see me. Once they travel another block down, I reach back out to the drainpipe, carefully take hold, and swing my body off the window ledge. Quickly I continue my ascent up to the roof.

Getting up the overhang is tricky, but the drainpipe helps as I dangle off it and climb out, hand over hand, until I can pull myself up onto the tiles.

The building I’ve chosen is on the opposite side of the street from Talyssa and her captors, and this puts me farther away from her, with two narrow north-south passages between us. I run along the angled roof and see that there is one more connected building before the next east-west street, so I leap down to it, its roof a few feet lower than the one I climbed onto.

Rushing again through the dark, I tell myself I can make the leap across the narrow alley to the next roof, one story lower because it’s farther down the hill that descends to the center of the Old Town. I pick up my pace, pull my backpack off my back, and swing it in my arm as hard as I can. I let it go, and it flies through the air in front of me over the street. While it sails on, I time my footfalls so my last one will land right at the roof’s edge, and then I leap, giving it everything I have.

I sail over clotheslines full of drying laundry, my feet and arms flailing.

I make it over the narrow street and land tumbling onto the roof, using my forward momentum to keep from rolling off the steep tiles. The Glock on my hip bites into me when I bang it on the hard surface, but I’m up on my feet with the momentum of my roll and I lean down and snatch my pack as I climb, sliding it over my shoulders.

I’m well behind Talyssa and the others now, still two blocks west of me, and I don’t yet have a plan as to what I’ll do if I manage to catch up.

But I keep going. If I don’t reach her before they get her piled into a van and out of here, or I don’t get to my vehicle to tail them, then I won’t get another chance.

Almost out of breath, I speak softly for Talyssa’s earpiece as I run on. “Slow them down. You have to slow them down.”

* * *

• • •

Talyssa heard the transmission from the American; she could tell from the desperate tone of his voice and the exertion that she hears along with it that he was doing his best to get to her, and she was certain she would die if he did not. Already she could see a large square that ended at the main street of the Old Town, just a few blocks below her, and the gate that led out the eastern side of the walled pedestrian-only space was just to the right on the far side. She imagined there would be a car waiting out there for her, and she’d be in it in a couple of minutes unless she did something to slow them down more until the American could arrive.

The two men who had ventured off to check out the man running a couple of blocks over were still gone, but the other six men surrounded her, and they jostled her when she tried to slow again.

She knew she needed to do something, so she tried the only thing she could think of. On her next step down, she purposefully turned her ankle and fell onto the cobblestones, shouting in pain.

“My leg!”

She spoke for Harry’s benefit, letting him know that she was trying to delay her kidnappers. She didn’t know if it would be enough, but it was all she could think of.

One of the men grabbed her, pulled her upright while shouting at her in his native tongue. She knew almost instantly he was Albanian. He then switched to English. “Walk!”

She took a step and then started to collapse again, as if she really had injured herself, but two of the men lifted her off the ground and began all but carrying her with their hands under her shoulders.

“Put me down. Let go!” she shouted, this time to let Harry know her plan had bought her a little time, as the men carrying her would be forced to move slower now, and the others surrounding her would be forced to wait for them.

* * *

• • •

   I hear Talyssa while I’m in midair, making the desperate kicking leap over the first of the two north-south staired passageways between me and her. I land on the roof to the west, my hands and my feet striking the tile, and then I climb up, running diagonally along the pitched surface so that I am still heading in the right direction to get to the woman, or even to get back in front of her.

A few seconds later I make the crest of the roof, then run down the other side, picking up speed, and I launch myself off again, then land again, one block over. Unless the Albanians have changed direction, they should be three stories down on the other side of the roof I’m now on, so I move more quietly. At the peak I lower to my butt and crab-walk down towards the edge, then look over the side.