FORTY-SEVEN
Court saw Zoya; she was in the corner twenty feet across the living room, hefting a plate of food and slinging it at the larger of the two attackers, who now stood in the middle of the room. It wasn’t much offense from Zoya, but he understood she was trying to distract the man while Court got his shit together, and he wanted to take advantage of it.
Maksim only had to step around the kitchen island to get the mystery man back in his sights, but after taking one step in that direction, a plate with food spinning off it whizzed right at his face. He knocked it away, then batted down a second projectile, this one a metal coffee urn Zakharova had flung his way.
He looked back and saw her there, over his right shoulder, but he kept his gun pointed towards the kitchen. This man had been so fast, Maksim knew shifting his fire to the unarmed Zakharova was too dangerous right now. He’d take a plate in the head, but first he was going to move around the right side of the island and pump a half-dozen rounds into Zakharova’s would-be savior.
Akulov darted around the island and trained his gun on the space there, but his opponent was gone. A trail of blood led around the corner.
The wounded man was crawling back into the living room.
Semyon was in the process of shifting his aim back to their primary target, the filthy and bleeding woman on the floor. He’d almost lined up on her when she launched to her bare feet, dove onto the hardwood, and rolled forward. He fired high, and then she came up from her roll, standing well within striking distance. She threw an open palm into his jaw, knocking him back a half step, and then she grabbed hold of the hand holding on to the pistol.
She tried to flip the man over her hip and wrestle the weapon free, but only for an instant, because quickly he shoved her in the back of her head, sending her flying face-first down to the floor, almost all the way to the large open window. As she fell, however, she managed to strip the man’s handgun, and it tumbled over the couch and clanged onto the floor by the food cart.
Court knelt at the end of the island, not far from the front door, but he knew he couldn’t stay here. The man in the room service coat would be coming around through the kitchen to his left right now; Court needed to arm himself and get back in this fight before it was too late.
Ducking his head around the corner into the living room, he saw the attacker in the jacket drop his gun over the sofa while fighting with Zoya. It was fifteen feet from him, but he’d have to expose himself to both the larger and the smaller man in order to go for it.
And then he saw something else. Hidden under the edge of the food cart, a small black pistol lay on the floor.
He heard a Russian voice speaking English coming from the kitchen, steps from where he crouched.
“Poor valiant hero! When they find your body, you will be remembered as a cold-blooded murderer!”
At the same moment the big man saw Court, and Court saw him. The man reached to the small of his back, to pull either a gun or a knife.
Court knew he had to go for a weapon now, although he would be up against two armed killers in opposite directions. He saw little chance for success, but no chance at all without action.
Court threw his body forward and rolled towards the pistol, lying there by the island. His shoulder and his arm rioted in excruciating pain, even through the effects of adrenaline.
On his second roll he snatched up the CZ pistol, then rolled again, across eggs and toast and butter on the floor. He crashed into the food cart, causing it to lurch towards the window. As he raised his gun in the direction of the man at the sofa, who was now brandishing a small semiautomatic pistol, he kicked at the second pistol he’d seen lying there, sending it skidding across the floor to where Zoya had just risen into a seated position against the wall.
“Z!”
She spun to him, and he could see in her eyes that she understood.
Court stood and swung his pistol in a 180-degree arc as he pivoted away from the living room to aim at the target on the other side of the kitchen island.
He was giving his back to an armed man so that he could target another armed man, and he was putting all his trust in Zoya, betting his life that she would end the threat behind him while he dealt with the one in front of him.
Semyon Pervak had pulled his tiny SIG Sauer P238 up from the small of his back and lifted it towards the man three meters away on the opposite side of the sofa. He had two targets to choose from, but the decision was an easy one for his experienced tactical brain to make. He knew Zakharova was unarmed—she’d been flinging tableware and food around the room, after all—so he concentrated on the man who had just come out of a roll. He saw that the man was focused on Maksim, not him, so he lined up for an easy shot to the back of his head.
Fool, he thought.
Before Pervak could depress the trigger, however, he heard an impossibly loud unsuppressed gunshot. Simultaneously, he felt a blow to the side of his neck that dropped him to his knees.
Blood spurted obscenely from his throat just below the jawline, all over the sofa. He dropped his weapon to press against the wound. He tumbled down to his left, coming to rest over the body of the man he had himself killed moments earlier.
Zoya Zakharova had shot him, he understood this much. But as he died he realized he would never know where she’d found the gun.
Finally Court had his weapon up and aimed at a target. He’d managed to catch the man in the white server’s coat as he swung his gun towards Zakharova, who he clearly knew now had a firearm. The man had his back to the wall in the kitchen, and the open window was a good six feet off to his left and ahead of him.
Court shouted at the top of his lungs, “Drop it, asshole!”
The would-be assassin’s own weapon began to rise, but he seemed to realize he had no chance against two shooters.
He lowered his gun, and Court moved quickly between him and Zoya, who was now behind Court in the corner of the room. He was covering her with his body, and he was also preventing her from taking a clean shot.
He shouted to her, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Why not?” Zoya asked breathlessly, the fight with the big older man having left her utterly wasted.
“Overpenetration.” The room on the other side of the wall behind the man was where the family of six were staying. He said, “I’ll fire if he poses a threat.”
The surviving would-be assassin slicked back hair that had fallen in his face with his free hand. He dropped his gun to the ground, then looked up and smiled at the pair of armed opponents in front of him.
Zoya shouted, “Move! I’m shooting this bastard anyway!”
“No!” Court said. “We’ve got him. Where’s he gonna go?” Court asked.
“Yes,” the man said in panting English. “Where . . . can I . . . possibly . . . go?”
The only sound for a moment was the heavy breathing of the three people left alive, but quickly, with a continued smile towards both Court and Zoya, the man in the server’s coat turned to the open window, and then he rushed forward.
He dove out, headfirst, over the railing, making not a sound as he did so.
Zoya’s fourth-floor suite was five stories above the street.
“What . . . the . . . fuck?” Zoya muttered.
Court dropped back on his butt on the floor in utter exhaustion, sitting down on the eggs and blood smeared all around. He lowered his pistol as he did so. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Zoya moved to him, but she kept her weapon trained on the door to the hallway. “There’s at least one more of them out there, somewhere.”
Court blew out an exasperated sigh and hefted his own weapon with his bloody right arm, and he fell down onto his left elbow; the rapid onset of the fatigue in his body made him worry he was about to faint. “Shit.”
Inna Sorokina couldn’t believe what she’d just seen on the monitor from her suite up the hall. Maksim had taken a nose dive out of the building. Quickly she shouted an order through her earpiece to Anya, who was moments away from entering the fray.
“Hold! Come back here.”
“I’m at the door, I can—”
“Sem and Maksim are dead. Both hostiles have the door covered. Return.”
And with that Inna pulled off her headset and quickly slammed the laptops shut, then shoved them in the two backpacks remaining in the room.
When Anya made it back up the hall, Inna met her at the door and handed her one of the packs. Anya slipped her Grach pistol into it, and the two women headed for the nearby stairwell. Along the way, Inna pulled the fire alarm, hoping the two of them could blend in with the crowd of evacuees and escape.
Zoya crawled over to Court and hugged him with the arm that wasn’t holding the SIG pistol on the door. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” she asked, clearly seeing his utter exhaustion.
“Not . . . not too bad . . . you?”
She looked down at herself. Her bloody nose had soiled her torn white blouse, she was covered in jelly that had broken from a jar, coffee and juice dripped off her, and bits of egg covered her arms. But she appeared to be otherwise fine. She said, “We have to get out of here, fast.”
Court looked at the window the man had just flung himself out of, and he said, “Quickest way’s not always the best way.”
She helped him up to his feet, saw the blood running from his arm. “Tie that off. I’ll fix it when we’re clear.”
It took less than a minute for Zoya to change into a black turtleneck and to throw her important belongings into a bag, while Court used the time to stagger into the bathroom and cinch a hand towel around his injury with the belt from Zoya’s bathrobe. Soon the two of them moved carefully into the hallway. The space was already full of people, all of whom, they assumed, had heard the gunfire, but Court and Zoya were banking on the confusion buying them the time they needed to get out of the building.
Court ducked into his room for his backpack, and then they headed off with the crowd.
The stairwell was all the way down at the other end of the hallway, so they stepped into the elevator. They stood with several other people coming down from the fifth floor, and made stops along the way down, ending with a car full of guests obeying the fire alarm.
As they walked through the lobby, Court holding the towel with his left hand to help stanch the bleeding, Zoya saw the stairwell door open. Several guests came filing out, and then, right in the middle of the thick pack, Zoya saw Inna Sorokina and a younger woman. They both had empty hands, but they carried backpacks slung over their shoulders.
Inna and Zoya made eye contact across the crowd, both stopping and staring at each other.
Zoya took Court by the arm. “One o’clock. In the blue top.”
Court followed her eyes. “Got her.”
“She’s one of them. The woman next to her. Looks like they’re together.”
Court said, “Nothing we can do about it.”
Reluctantly, Zoya admitted to herself that Court was right. She wasn’t going to get into a gunfight around one hundred people.
The two of them stepped out the western side doors of the Adlon, with Zoya looking back over her shoulder, all the way across the big lobby, where she caught a glimpse of Inna moving with the throngs out the east side, into the sunny morning.