Marcus had hoped to distract Schofield with talk of his childhood and the terrible events that had taken place at the Wisconsin compound. And it had worked. But before he could make his move, two things had to happen. First, he needed to slowly close the distance between them, and second, he needed Schofield’s body lined up between him and the Fountain Cafe, effectively blocking the view of the shooter inside.
At the mention of the abuse the killer had suffered at the hands of the Prophet, Schofield stepped forward and thus met both of Marcus’s requirements.
Marcus had learned a long time ago not to hesitate when your enemy gave you an opening. So when Schofield moved into position, Marcus quickly latched onto Schofield’s fists, clamping his hands over the killer’s like two vise grips.
Then he squeezed.
It took only around twelve pounds of pressure to break a bone in the hand of an adult man, but he wasn’t worried about breaking Schofield’s hands. He was more concerned with the two grenades held in the killer’s fists.
With both his hands occupied, Marcus tilted his head downward slightly, clenched his teeth, and stiffened the muscles in his neck. A headbutt sounded like a pretty straightforward maneuver, but in reality it could easily cause more damage to the person attempting it than the one receiving it. In principle, the concept was simple. The forehead is a large hard bone, but the face and nose are soft, fragile areas. A hard forehead crushing into a man’s nose could be a formidable blow if executed correctly.
And, unluckily for Schofield, Marcus had always been good at hurting people.
He thrust his head forward, bending his back and throwing all his weight into the attack. His forehead collided with the bridge of Schofield’s nose, and the killer’s head snapped back from the force of the blow.
Schofield’s grip on the grenades slackened, but Marcus kept hold of them as the killer let go and stumbled backward. Blood poured down Schofield’s face from his shattered nose. His eyes were dazed and glassy, and he nearly toppled over as he staggered away from the fountain in an unsteady run.
But Schofield wasn’t the only problem.
Marcus could feel the cross-hairs of a 7.62mm rifle lining up on him and Stupak at that very second, so he drew back his right arm and threw a grenade toward the sniper’s location. His main concern was to distract the man, not blow him up. And unless Schofield’s grandfather was some kind of hard-core Spec Ops rifleman, he’d be hitting the deck the second he saw an explosive flying through the air in his direction.
“Get to the fountain,” Marcus yelled to Stupak as he jumped over a waist-high black wire fence and headed for the lip of the landmark.
He pictured the grenade lofting toward the small building, striking the snow-packed ground, and rolling up to the cafe’s outer wall like the world’s deadliest snowball.
Stupak was on his heels as they slipped over the edge and landed on their hands and knees in two feet of snow that had accumulated in the bottom of Buckingham Fountain’s outer ring. The fountain was only four feet deep, but it was more than enough to provide them with cover.
The sound of the explosion thumped against his ears as the grenade filled the air with snow and concrete dust and fragmentation projectiles. Marcus felt the wave of pressure in his bones.
His left fist still held a live M67 fragmentation grenade, but he pulled his Sig Sauer with his right hand and scanned the cafe and park for signs of movement. He didn’t see Schofield. The Anarchist must have made it to cover. But he did see a flash of something in the window of the cafe and dropped back below the fountain’s concrete lip. He was thoroughly outgunned at this distance, pitting his .45 ACP pistol against a 7.62mm rifle. If they were going to stand any chance, he needed to get closer.
He scanned the interior of the fountain. Normally, water would have been above their heads, but during the winter the fountain was just an empty shell with its pipes, jets, catwalks, lights, and supports all exposed. Snow covered the decorative statues and obscured their details. Marcus couldn’t see anything that could help them, only the ornamentation and framework. No manhole covers indicating drains or tunnels that could lead them to safety.
Staying low below the fountain’s lip, Marcus moved toward the other end of the bowl. Then he chanced a quick look over the edge. There was a line of benches backed by shrubbery and small trees maybe a hundred feet away. Beyond that was a walkway bordered by a section of the park filled with several large trees. The wooded section butted right up against the back of the Fountain Cafe. If he could reach the benches and then the trees, he could flank the shooter.
But in order to do so, he would have to cross over a hundred feet of snow-covered open ground, and he would be completely vulnerable and exposed.
He poked his head up over the edge again and caught sight of Schofield limping from a line of trees toward the cafe. The killer’s impaired movement suggested that he might have taken some shrapnel from the fragmentation grenade.
Then a bullet ricocheted off the lip of the fountain just to the right of Marcus’s head, driving him back down.
“Dammit,” he said.
“This isn’t working out very well,” Stupak commented at his side.
“You think?”
Marcus searched for a solution and found one gripped firmly in his left fist. The first grenade had bought them enough time to reach cover, and he assumed that the second would do the same. But if Raymond Schofield was smart enough to realize that Marcus’s throw from even closer had fallen well short of the building, the older man might not take cover as he had the first time. He might take aim and squeeze the trigger instead. But it was a risk they’d have to take.
“Okay,” Marcus said. “Get ready to lay down some covering fire on that building. I’m going to toss this last grenade and then make a break for the trees. You keep them pinned inside, and I’ll work my way around to their backs.”
Stupak nodded, a .40 caliber Glock 22 held ready in his right hand. Marcus took a deep breath and prepared to throw the grenade.