THIRTY-THREE
Court didn’t draw his HK pistol as he neared the metal door to the level P3 garage, but his hand hovered near it, ready to pull if he encountered any threats.
He’d heard a gunshot above him as he descended; he had no idea what that was all about, but he didn’t want to open fire down here unless he was absolutely forced to. If both the bad guys and the cops were up at street level searching the area, he didn’t want to do anything to draw attention to this garage before he could unass it.
He opened the door with a loud metal creak, then moved around the corner in the direction of his BMW.
He scanned the mid-distance of the well-lit and nearly packed garage, but then, right in front of his face, a submachine gun spun around in his direction. A man held it, the weapon was slung around his head and neck, and he’d apparently been as surprised by Court as Court was by him. He tried to get his weapon up and aimed, but Court fired out his left hand and grabbed the subgun by its suppressor.
The man yelled something, but Court wasn’t listening. Instead he locked his hand down harder on the cylinder of the suppressor—he’d ID’d the weapon in an instant as a Stribog—then pushed the muzzle of the weapon away from him while simultaneously kicking out, striking the man in the chest.
The stunned operator fell to his knees, but he didn’t go down because Court still held the business end of the rifle, and the rifle sling was wrapped around the back of the man’s neck.
Court kicked at the man’s face now, hit him with a glancing blow to his jaw, and then brought his foot back and kicked again, this time slamming the tip of his Merrell shoe into the rifle’s receiver. He was aiming for a particular part of the gun, but he missed his target, so he fired his foot out a fourth time while still controlling the muzzle of the gun with his left hand.
And this time he did it. His boot kicked the magazine release of the weapon. The mag dropped out of the mag well and onto the parking lot, and then Court used the bottom of his foot to push the weapon’s pronounced charging handle all the way back, ejecting the shell from the chamber in the same process.
The rifle was empty, so Court let it go.
But the man on his knees had recovered, and now he drew a pistol from his right side and began swinging that up and into play.
Court spun on his left foot, around the rifle held between himself and the enemy on his knees, and he executed a reverse roundhouse kick with his right foot.
His heel struck the gun just as the man raised it, knocking it away, and Court followed up with a kick to the man’s head, snapping it to the side.
The unconscious operator crumpled onto the dusty pavement.
And then a gunshot boomed in the enclosed space. Concrete exploded off the wall next to the metal door, and Court dropped to his knees, drawing his HK as he did so.
A second shot, then a third, both struck the wall near the first, but Court wasn’t concerned with the impact points of the rounds; he was concerned with the origin of the fire.
And then he saw it. A weapon’s flash all the way at the end of the row of vehicles, right where Court had parked his motorcycle.
He tucked lower, then moved behind a VW Golf parked near the stairs, hunting for concealment from the shooter thirty yards away.
And then, for the first time while in action, he felt his body failing him. Even with all the adrenaline in his system he could tell he was weakening considerably. His stomach retched, and he vomited against the passenger-side door of the Golf, then recovered, spit on the ground, and scrambled one vehicle closer.
He didn’t love the idea of attacking the man who had a better defensive position and a better weapon, but he knew with the shooting down here it wouldn’t be long before the lot was full of armed men, be they police or enemy.
He had to assault the man’s position now.
He moved between the wall and the grille of a Mercedes. He was still low, and he fought off another wave of nausea before he heard scuffling sounds near his bike ahead. This indicated to him that his adversary was repositioning. He was probably trying to find his target, unaware Court was working on a flanking maneuver.
When there were only two vehicles separating the two men, Court saw his enemy again. He was crouched behind the rear end of an Opel four-door that had backed into its parking space.
Court himself was knelt down behind the engine block of a little Fiat 500. He knew he could rise and get an angle on the man, but he also knew the man might have a subgun like his partner, and if Court exposed himself, he could have thirty bullets coming his way faster than he could fire four or five from his pistol.
He began to raise his weapon to try to shoot through the windows of both vehicles, when he saw the man’s head appear behind his suppressed weapon. The man fired first, bursting the window of the Fiat and narrowly missing Court.
Court dropped down hard onto his left shoulder, not just to avoid the gunfire but to also get a different sight line on his target.
The wound below his left collarbone spiked with fresh torment, but he remained in the fight.
Looking under the Fiat he could see the boots of the man just fifteen feet away, and Court aimed and fired, striking the man in the right ankle.
The operator fell to his knees; Court shot his left thigh, and then when the man tumbled down to his side, Court fired a fifth round, hitting the man in the neck and finally killing him.
Court pulled himself back up to his feet, using the Fiat to do so, and then he staggered around the Opel, his pistol leveled at the dead man lying next to it.
He climbed onto his bike and fired it up in one motion, then lurched forward in the parking lot, squealing his tires as he shot towards the ramp back by the stairs.
He fought to get his helmet on, using his right hand to do so because his left shoulder was killing him. The helmet wasn’t just to protect his head; he was certain he’d been picked up on cameras somewhere, probably at the bike shop and again at the men’s store, so he wanted to get out of there without any more exposure.
He rode off, out of the area, keeping pace with the traffic so as not to draw attention to himself.
Court had learned several things from the encounters of the past few minutes. For one, his data was on PowerSlave, despite Drummond’s assurances it was not. Also, whoever it was he’d just confronted had been well trained, perhaps not in spycraft but at least in combat arms. He thought about the men he’d run across in Caracas a couple of days earlier, the team of operators who killed Clark Drummond.
These guys might well be from the same crew.
He fought nausea again but he kept it down, tried to control his breathing to slow his heart rate, and felt a trickle of blood down the left side of his chest. But he drove on, heading east, beginning an SDR that would eventually lead him back to his apartment in Spandau.
Hades and Thor stood over Mercury, clearly dead with gunshots to his neck and legs. They’d already scooped up Atlas, who’d been unconscious and bloody when they found him, and put him in the backseat of the BMW.
Thor said, “Just like Caracas.”
Hades said, “Of course, it’s just like Caracas. It’s the same dude.”
“Yeah . . . but . . . Ronnie, and now Scott? Both them boys were solid. This guy who did this . . . this ain’t luck.”
Hades finished Thor’s thought as he turned to head back to the car. “It’s skill. He’s good, I’ll give him that. But I want another shot.”
“Same here.”
“Get in the car, call the others, and tell them to stand down. When Atlas comes around, we’ll find out what we can about this Gentry bastard.”
The men climbed into the Mercedes and headed for the exit ramp as sirens blared at street level.