One-Way Ticket

Lars felt the giant shadow before he saw it looming behind him in the bulletproof glass.

“Game time is over,” the giant said.

Lars spun around and looked up into two steel eyes embedded in a beefy skull under a single eyebrow. “What the fuck?” he said. Hasani’s enforcer didn’t normally work indoors.

“He wants to see you.”

Lars smelled garlic. “Let me cash in my chips.” He turned back to the window. The cashier was nowhere to be seen.

“Now,” the giant said.

Lars shifted his weight, keeping his phone hand out of view. His thumb felt around desperately for the SOS button. Holding it down for three seconds activated a GPS alert. Officer in trouble.

“Let’s go,” the giant said.

The button vibrated confirmation.

Lars nodded and put the phone away. Then he pivoted, took a half-step, and put his full weight into the kick.

The giant’s eyes went wide. He went down clutching his groin.

At the blackjack table, bettors looked at them with open mouths. The chef de table was frozen mid-motion, a card in his hand.

Lars slammed into the emergency exit and flew down the steps, using the railing like a sled, bumping into walls at each turn. A herd of buffalos pounded the stairways above his head. Round and round they went. Third floor, second floor, first floor, lobby.

As Lars crashed out of the stairwell, he saw a guard at the front desk talking into his sleeve and staring right at him. Lars flashed his P6 and cleared the turnstile in one fluid motion. Then he blasted through the double glass doors and raced to his Harley. It took him two frantic attempts to jump-start the beast. As it fishtailed out onto the street, he felt rain in his hair.

He made a hard right through a red at Alsterglacis. A double-articulated bus packed with commuters skidded sideways across the intersection. Up ahead was a sea of cars on Kennedybrücke.

A black van crashed through the brush of Gustav Mahler Park and accelerated into his path, its battering ram nearly grazing his right leg.

Lars gunned the chopper onto the frontage road below the bridge and through the underpass. He made a hard left onto Lombardbrücke, somehow bouncing onto the sidewalk without hitting the steel railing.

Needles of rain pelted his face as he weaved in and out of bike paths and around posts. The Alster River flew by on his right, and he kept pace with the InterCity train to his left. A kid waved at him from one of the windows.

Halfway across the bridge, the headlights were gone from his mirror. He almost laughed. Oversized black vans with snatch teams didn’t fit on sidewalks.

He slowed the chopper as the path curved into a wooded area. Wet oak leaves slapped his face as broken cement rattled his spine. The chopper made a looping left at Ferdinandstor and followed the path under a second low bridge. The InterCity screeched above.

A wall of light blinded Lars. He screamed as the railing shattered his knee, flipping the chopper sideways and slamming him into an I-beam. He clawed rusty iron on his way down.

The headlights backed up through the moving spokes of his front wheel. As the van gurgled away, everything went black.