The man with the glasses was on the ledge, his gun level as he approached the bend where his target had disappeared. His name was Ben-Meir, and he cursed with each step along the precarious bastion wall. Finger on the trigger, he rounded the corner and was surprised to see a busy restaurant. His target was nowhere in sight.

Keeping to the shadows, he bent his chin toward his tactical microphone. "Position."

"Near the restaurant entrance," said his second-in-command, a Bulgarian named Radko.

Radko's partner, who'd been in charge of mission planning and was thus the most familiar with the city's layout, added, "I recognize the place—there's no back door. I repeat, no back door!"

Ben-Meir cursed again, this time more loudly. "Does anyone see him?"

A long pause, then two negative replies.

They had their man surrounded, his back to a wall. Not good. Ben-Meir had wanted to finish things quickly and cleanly, but the mission had proved costly and taken far longer than it should have. He activated his transmit switch.

"Pull back!"

He had no sooner unkeyed the transmit switch when he heard a loud crash and a chorus of screams.

"Pull back! Pull back!" he repeated.

It happened in a flash. Near the outer wall a bolt of movement and color. In a defensive instinct, Ben-Meir shifted his weapon to the spot. His target was there, a blur in the transition between the restaurant's bright lights and the darkness beyond. He seemed to be clinging to something, and then, incredibly, the man in his sights flew over the rampart ledge and into the black void beyond.

Ben-Meir fired once, a certain miss as gravity accelerated the crazy, cartwheeling silhouette into the night sky. He ran into the restaurant while patrons bolted toward the exit. Ben-Meir knocked aside an empty table in his scramble toward the ledge, and to compound the confusion he waved his gun and yelled, "Police! Police! Everyone out!" It might buy thirty seconds.

At the ledge he leaned over and looked down, but saw only a void, the lights all around spoiling his night vision. He did, however, hear a series of crashes that rang like muted gunshots. Then a more imperative sound from behind—a fast-approaching siren. With one last look down, he ordered the egress.

It was fifteen minutes later, with their car withdrawing quietly through the Mdina gate, that Ben-Meir and his team realized how badly things had gone. Kieras was dead, and there had not been time to recover his body. He'd been the youngest and most fit of the lot. Not the most lethal, perhaps, but a good fighter all the same. Radko had found him in the stairwell, and while there was nothing to be done, it never sat well with soldiers to leave comrades behind. Ben-Meir would at least not have to notify Kieras' next of kin—a minor consolation of commanding an off-the-books army.

"How could this have happened?" said Radko.

"Shut up," said an irritated Ben-Meir. "It's our own fault. We knew he was good."

"Apparently not good enough. You saw how it ended—our mission failed in the worst way. What will we report?"

"I said shut up!" roared Ben-Meir. "We report nothing until we're sure."

The ensuing ride was short and silent, weaving through Howard Gardens before a loop around the city to the north. The driver pulled onto a gravel siding where the road reached its nearest point to the calamity. Ben-Meir and Radko got out, and from the lower elevation they jogged a kilometer uphill to the foot of the bastion walls. They had no trouble finding the spot—the restaurant above was lit like a carnival—but they were stunned by what they didn't find. The body of their target was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't understand," said Radko. "No one could survive a fall like that."

Ben-Meir cupped a hand over his chin, but said nothing. In the spill from the lights forty yards above, he saw something on the ground. He moved closer, recalling the flash of color as their quarry had gone spinning over the wall. One of the big red-and-white patio umbrellas from the restaurant lay on the ground. Partially open, most of the fabric had been ripped from its bent frame, and metal rods jutted out at odd angles.

His lieutenant looked on with disbelief. "He jumped from a cliff and survived by holding that? The man is suicidal, I tell you."

The commander scanned the ground with his flashlight and found branches that appeared freshly broken, one as thick as his arm. He shifted the beam upward, into a thick bay tree, and followed from top to bottom where the arboreal gauntlet had been run.

"No," he argued. "To stay above, from his point of view—that would have been suicidal." He reached down and picked up the bent aluminum frame. "This? This was a calculated risk. The umbrella alone would never stop his fall. Yet if he knew the trees were here, and if he could jump out far enough to find them. Ten meters, no more. The only question would be holding onto the thing during its run through the branches. That would require a certain . . . tenacity."

The two exchanged a look, and the lieutenant said, "We need to be careful with this one."

"We were careful—now Kieras is dead."

Ben-Meir bent down and examined the fabric strips that had been torn from the umbrella. He was studying a bloody smear when voices from above drew his attention. He looked up to see a policeman in the half-light leaning over the granite ledge, next to him a waiter pointing downward.

"Come," he said, snapping off his flashlight and turning back toward the road on a fast walk, "there is nothing more for us here."

The driver set a brisk, professional pace, and the city fell behind them. In the front seat, Ben-Meir studied a map of the area on a tablet computer. "This is useless—he could have gone anywhere." He addressed Radko's partner, Stanev, who'd been their primary shooter. "You are certain you hit him?"

"No doubt," the man said. "I saw him react. He was limping afterward."

Ben-Meir stared at the empty map display. He removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took out his phone. He placed a call that was picked up immediately.

"Well?"

"We reached him," said Ben-Meir, "only things didn't go completely as planned. He got the better of our point man."

"Were you able to clean it up?"

"No. There was no time to retrieve the body."

A pause. "And your target—where is he?"

Ben-Meir looked at the topographical image of Malta on his laptop, thinking it looked bigger than ever. "We don't know."

"How can that be?"

"I don't know—there could be any number of reasons. We cornered him perfectly and scored a hit, but then he started taking chances. At the end he jumped off a goddamned cliff."

"A cliff?"

"He survived, but he's definitely injured."

"Badly?"

"I can't say."

Another pause, then, "This wasn't what we intended."

Ben-Meir thought silence the best option.

"All right," said the distant voice, "assuming his injuries are not severe, there is still a chance. We know where he has to go. Be ready—and next time make no mistakes."

Copyright © 2014 by Ward Larsen