The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (beach read .TXT) 📕

round clipped Duval’s ear and missed Ben by an inch. Amid the Frenchman’s cries, he heard the ricochet—metal on pavement. It hadn’t hit Clara. “You okay?” He refused to believe the German would intentionally shoot Clara, but a stray round might clip her.

“I’m fine.” Clara laid a hand on his shoulder and offset her torso a little to the right. A good position, and he loved her calm. Instinct? Or had someone taught her to communicate through body signals in the heat of battle? Either way, they could do this. “We’re getting out of here.”

“I know. I trust you.”

“You must be the only one.” He kept sidestepping toward the tree-covered path. The second round passed clean through Duval’s left bicep. As it turned out, dirty French cops made poor shields against tungsten bullets. But if Sensen didn’t mind shooting him, why not center his shots for a better chance at Ben?

Bulletproof vest.

Duval was wearing protection. A standard vest couldn’t stop tungsten rounds from entering Duval’s body, but it would slow them, preventing them from exiting Duval’s back and tagging Ben. “Stay low,” he said to Clara. Two strides later, they reached the path.

Ben hugged the foliage, keeping clear of Sensen’s view. He pushed Duval up against a lamppost. “Leave me alone. Understand?”

Duval sneered at him. “You’re a dead man.”

“Not by your hand. You’re out of your league.” Ben smashed the back of his head against the post and let him drop, senseless.

“Halt!”

Three security guards raced up the path, batons out and ready.

Clara moved off to the side. “Don’t hurt them, Ben.”

He shot her a look that said You’re asking a lot.

The guards slowed. Clara shrugged. “They’re only doing their jobs.”

“Hände hoch. Die Polizei kommt.”

Ben frowned at the guy and forced him into English, just for the distraction. “I don’t understand you, buddy.”

“Hands up. The police are coming.”

“Which means I’m short on time. You three should run away now.”

They didn’t listen.

The guards advanced, and Ben laid out the first two with three rapid punches each. The third guy raised a can of pepper spray. Ben smacked the crook of the guard’s elbow with the second guy’s baton—which he had confiscated—and turned the arm to point the can back toward its owner. The can went off. The young man fell to his rear, clutching his face.

Ben took Clara’s hand and the two continued their run down the path. On the way, she smacked his arm. “I told you not to hurt them.”

“If they want to do security work, they need to learn how to take a punch.”

“Not funny.”

“Do you hear me laughing?”

“The first guard”—Clara pressed her lips together—“the one you punched in the throat. He said they called the police.”

“Correct.” Ben slowed to a stop at the camel junction, still keeping an eye on his position relative to the FIFA building. “With all this gunfire, I’m betting the entire Zürich police force will be waiting outside the entrance.”

“So . . .” She squeezed his hand—a signal of urgency, not affection.

“So, we can’t escape using the front gate.” Ben thrust his chin at a south-pointing sign that read REPTILE HOUSE, AQUARIUM, CHILDREN’S ZOO in three languages. “We need to find some cows.”

Hale chose the zoo to keep Ben contained, creating something known as a forced funnel. But Ben knew as well as his mentor did that forced funnels were illusions. A good field operative could always find another way out.

“Cows?” Clara said. Puffs of white drifted behind them as they ran—labored breaths in cold air.

“I know, right? European petting zoos always have cows. Goats, I get. Ponies? Sure. But cows? Cows are for burgers and milkshakes, not petting or riding.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m asking you why we need them now.”

The wail of sirens rolled up the hill from the city below. It had become their song. “Big animal. Big access point where we can escape.” He pointed at a sign. “I’ll let you pick. Elephants, lions, or cows?”

“Fine. I get it. Cows it is.”

“Thank you.”

A scene had developed at the petting zoo. What Ben initially took to be a crowd seemed to be a single family with a ton of kids locked in a surreal battle with five zoo guides.

There were kids everywhere—noisy, squealing kids. Each carried a bag of feed and hurled fistfuls at the sheep and goats while their father shouted and gesticulated at the pack of guides. One, a girl in her twenties, spoke rapidly into a radio, eyes on the edge of panic.

Chaos.

Ben and Clara’s arrival didn’t help.

Radio-girl ditched the argument with Super-dad and pushed out a palm to stop the two newcomers. She seemed to think Ben and Clara were guests fleeing the gunshots. That impression didn’t last. She took a long look at Ben and the baton he’d stolen from the guards and backed away, calling to the others.

Ben shook his head. So much for hiding his exit point.

The keepers and the family parted like waves to reveal a pen of furry alpine milk cows at the section’s rear. Ben and Clara hopped the fence, stopping when they found a toddler who’d apparently crawled through wires to join the herd.

Clara passed the girl over the fence to her mother. She gave the woman a stern look. “He needs to pay for a babysitter, okay? You need a break. Tell him tonight.”

Ben gave her a quizzical look. “Do you know these people?”

“Long story.”

“Later, then.”

The sirens were loud now. New voices spoke in solid tones on the keepers’ radios. The professionals had taken over, and they’d soon close any windows of escape.

Doors painted to match the barn setting at the back of the pen opened into a wide concrete feeding station instead of an exit. Ben let go of Clara’s hand and raced to the back, relieved to find a gate to the left. He flipped the latch and shoved it open. “This way.”

He passed between a line of stalls and a set of offices. Unlit passages led off in both directions. The whir of machinery blocked out all other