22.
Slowly, I lower the pistol.
While I’m doing it, I gaze down
into the glass. It was right in front of me the entire time. A small mirror,
about the size of my palm. One side of it is jagged from having been broken off
from the identical half-mirror I’m now carrying in my right trouser pocket.
“Drop the gun,” the first,
pony-tailed man insists. By the sounds of it, he’s an American. He c***s the
hammer on his revolver.
“Do it,” demands his partner. A man
who is most definitely Egyptian. “Or we won’t hesitate to shoot you here and
dispose of your body in the desert.”
“Don’t I know you fellas?” I say.
I lower the 9mm, go to set it onto
the glass counter. But, rather than set it gently, I swing the barrel down hard,
shattering the glass.
Pony-Tail shoots, misses, the
bullet
