Coit Tower

Team Balkan - Thessaloniki, Greece

The greasy ponytail may have hidden the hole in the back of his head, but the gushing sound of blood gave it away.

“It got in my eye!” shouted the man gripping the semi-automatic Zastava CZ99.

“What?” Drago Zoric looked over at his friend and saw him wiping at his face with the backs of his hands.

“His blood!” Branko Petrovic stopped momentarily and pointed the handgun at the man slumped over a weathered wooden table. “It splattered on my face,” he said, hurrying over to the kitchen sink in the corner of the studio apartment. The faucet handle squeaked, and yellowish water sputtered into the shallow basin before turning mostly clear.

Zoric shook his head as he shoved an assault rifle into an old guitar case and locked the cover in place. “We have to get out of here.” He bent down next to two other bodies that lay motionless on the floor and rummaged through their pockets before moving on to the one at the table. 

When he finished, he made a quick survey of the decrepit apartment. The paint on the dull, white walls had bubbled and cracked. Stained linoleum curled up along the walls, revealing rotted floorboards beneath. Cobwebs draped the once-golden crown molding near the ceiling. It looked as if no one had lived there for years. Zoric let out a loud breath before walking over to the sheetless single bed against the wall and grabbing a silver briefcase off it.

“I’m sure some of that Greek pig’s blood splashed into my eye,” Petrovic ranted as he scooped water into his face.

“Let’s go.” Zoric walked toward the front door with the briefcase in one hand and the guitar case in the other. “There’s not much time. I hear sirens. We must leave now.”

Petrovic looked up. Water trickled down his face and collected in the three days’ growth along his jawline. “That’s what happens when you fire an AK-47 in a quiet neighborhood,” he spat.

“Next time, don’t stand so close when you pull the trigger,” Zoric fired back.

“You left me no choice when you started shooting the other two.”

“It’s always the same with you: Blame me for everything.”

“I thought we had a plan: tie them up and kill them quietly. Not with that cannon you lug around. Now the police are on their way.”

“Right, so let’s go.”

Petrovic wiped his hands dry on his faded blue jeans before shoving his handgun into the waistband. 

The two Serbians exited the apartment and quickly made their way down three flights of narrow stairs, the heels of their boots drumming the wooden steps along the way. They continued through a semi-lit hallway on the ground floor. A paisley carpet runner, tattered and barely holding its shape, led them to a door that opened into a small parking lot behind the building. 

They walked briskly to a white delivery van they had stolen from a driver on his morning route. In the back of the vehicle, between shelves full of freshly baked bread, lay his body hidden under newspaper and flattened cardboard boxes.

Within seconds, they had pulled out of the lot and sped down the tight alley behind the building. The vehicle made a right onto the main drag that would connect them with the PATHE Motorway—a straight shot out of Greece and into Macedonia if all went well.

Zoric concentrated on the road ahead, breaking his gaze only to peek at the rearview mirror. No one seemed to be following them. Petrovic sat quietly in the passenger seat, fiddling with the lock on the security briefcase.

“You have to press both of the latches at the same time to open it,” Zoric said, his eyes trained on the road.

Petrovic followed the instructions and a second later had the case open, revealing banded stacks of $100 USD. “We hit it big, Drago.” He picked one up, but as quickly as his smile had formed, it disappeared. “What the fuck?”

“What?” Zoric grunted, still focused on the highway.

Petrovic picked up another banded stack and another, revealing that underneath lay stacks of cut newspaper. “We got ripped off.” He flipped through the stack with the $100 bill. The first bill was real. The rest were scraps of newspaper. “Look at this shit,” Petrovic said, holding up the worthless paper cuttings. “Those pigs planned to fuck us.” He threw the briefcase into the back of the van.

“It’s a good thing we fucked them first,” Drago said.

“We’re screwed. We just killed three of Stefanokos’ soldiers.”

“So?” Drago threw his shoulder up a bit.

“Kostas Stefanokos? The Godfather of Greece?” Petrovic shifted in his seat. “This was your idea. I should have never agreed to it.” He dug into the front pocket of his leather jacket and removed a crumpled pack of cigarettes, plucking out a bent one. “‘It’ll be an easy score,’ you said.” The crooked smoke dangled between his lips, bobbing in sync with his words. “‘We’ll pretend to have a large shipment of cigarettes we need to unload,’ you said,” Petrovic continued, adding a wave of his hand.

“It was a good plan. We should be grateful it’s not us lying in a pool of blood back there.”

Petrovic shook his head as he exhaled loudly through his nose. “Look, these side jobs take our focus off our task.” He struck a match and cupped his hand around it. His cheeks sunk as he took a long pull.

“We need the money.”

“No, what we need to do is keep playing the game and win the prize.”

Petrovic searched the other pocket of his jacket and removed his smartphone. He navigated to the Chasing Chinatown application and tapped the icon. A few seconds later, the app chimed. “We have a message.”

Zoric glanced at Petrovic and then back at the road.

Petrovic had to reread it twice to be sure he understood it.

“What?” Zoric inquired.

“They changed the game.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Now there is only one Attraction, and the first team to complete it wins ten million dollars.”