The two young Tallinn municipal police saw the movement, but neither the officer with the gun in his hand nor the officer talking into the radio had any reaction that was fast enough to defend themselves.
Trestle Actual opened fire on them, spraying the two young men and their patrol car with round after round of nine-millimeter hollow points. The windshield exploded, glass turned to white dust, and blood sprayed throughout the car’s interior.
The echoes of gunfire died in the alleyway, and sirens neared from the west and south.
Nick reloaded his weapon quickly and turned back in the street to catch up with Trestles Two and Four, but as he did so, he saw a man coming toward him in the darkness. He raised his pistol, but Dead Eye moved into the glow of a streetlight.
Actual lowered his pistol and shouted angrily. “I thought I told you to stay inside your damned—”
Dead Eye raised his weapon.
“The fuck is wrong with—”
Whitlock shot Nick, Trestle One, through the jaw. He fell back onto the icy street, his arms wide, his pistol tumbling from his hand.
Russ stood over him, and their eyes met through the snowfall. He shot the man again in the forehead, then knelt and retrieved the gun.
A minute later Trestle Five climbed behind the wheel of the van in front of the hotel. He’d found Six, dead out here in the parking lot, and dragged his body into the vehicle. All around him lights were on in the buildings; a few people looked out from windows, but the majority of those in the neighborhood had the good sense to keep their heads down.
With the door still open he started the van, and then he saw a shadow to his left. He turned quickly, raising his MP7 at the threat, but almost immediately he lowered it and breathed a sigh of relief.
It was the singleton, Dead Eye. He was holding his left hip with one hand, and he held a pistol in his right.
Trestle Five said, “Get in! I can’t raise anybody. The whole fucking team is down, man! We’ve got to—”
He stopped speaking when Dead Eye drew his pistol up to eye level. He tried to get his own weapon up to meet the threat, but Whitlock shot him once between the eyes. Five flipped away from the side window, out of the seat, and over the center console of the van, and his foot slid from the brake. The van began rolling forward across the little parking lot through the heavy snow, and it crashed into the entrance of the hotel.
Dead Eye turned away and disappeared into the shadows.
SIXTEEN
Gentry had moved southeast away from the Old Town and into a newer district full of restaurants and office buildings that were empty at this time of morning. From all directions he heard sirens as first responders raced to the scene of the gun battle, and flashing lights beat off glass and metal surfaces. Court ducked into doorways and behind bus stops when emergency vehicles came into view, but this was slowing him down, and he searched for a faster route out of the area.
He had lied to Russ; Court had no intention of hanging out here at the edge of the kill zone where eight guys had come out of nowhere to punch his ticket, especially now that every cop in town was racing through the blizzard and into the area.
Court leaned into the blowing snow and pushed on. He wore his black coat now and stayed in the shadows, and he concentrated on remaining low profile while putting some distance between himself and the scene.
Court thought back to everything that had happened, or at least everything that happened after his head had cleared from the effect of the nine-banger. He was pretty sure he’d dropped three or four of the opposition. The guy he’d fired at in the hallway of the hotel before running up the staircase, the dude who’d been shooting at him from the hotel parking lot, and the two guys he and Russ had shot in the alley after falling off the roof into the snowdrift. He’d also tried to bury a couple of shooters in an avalanche as he ran along the roof, but he had no idea if he’d been successful with that low-probability plan.
And he also had no clue if Russ had managed to take out any of the enemy, which meant there could easily still be four or five able-bodied assholes in the neighborhood with a mandate to kill him.
No thanks, Gentry thought to himself as he walked through the storm. I’m not going to sit around and wait for that.
Whoever the hell Russ was, Court knew he could take care of himself.
Except for the fact he’d gotten himself shot while saving Gentry’s life.
Dammit.
Court kept walking, perhaps a little slower now, but he kept walking.
Kaubamaja Street was dark and quiet, so he turned onto it, moving through the heavy snowfall and out of the streetlamps’ glow. Sirens squealed on a parallel parkway, but Gentry felt safe enough to keep walking here for the next few blocks.
He had not asked for Russ’s help. He had no idea who he was or what his intentions were. For all Court knew, the man was a bounty hunter ordered to bring Court back alive, back to Madrigal or LaurentGroup or whoever the fuck was now running Sid’s operation. Just because the bastard spoke English like he was American did not mean he wasn’t a bad guy.
Meant nothing at all. Some of the biggest pricks Gentry knew were American.
But the guy had taken a bullet, a bullet that was meant for Court.
Court slowed down a little more.
“Dammit, Gentry,” he mumbled aloud.
He had to do something for him. Something to help him out or, more precisely, something that would allow Court to walk away from this shit with a clear conscience. He could find a place to get out of the weather for a minute to warm up and, at the same time, to watch for Russ, just to make sure he was good to go.
Court found a dark alley that gave him a good line of sight of the intersection, and he stood in a doorway there, out of the wind. He shook off the snow that covered his coat and eyed the streets leading back to the Old Town. Every thirty seconds another whining flashing emergency vehicle passed, and up the hill in the district where it had all gone down it looked like a damned fireworks display. Flashing, glowing red and amber lights bounced off every reflective surface for a square mile. The lights were visible even through the blizzard, and they indicated to Court that the area was crawling with cops now, and the streets would be full of onlookers.
Court figured Russ didn’t stand a chance of getting out of there unseen, especially hobbled with a gunshot wound.
He had his eyes focused on streetlights in the mid-distance, not expecting to see anyone passing, and he did not, but suddenly he saw a brief movement on the sidewalk much closer. Just fifty feet away he saw a figure in a dark coat, wearing a backpack and limping slightly. Though obviously injured, the man seemed to float easily through the urban landscape, avoiding the lights of the passing cars, just as Gentry himself had done.
The man — clearly now it was Russ — stopped in the snow, lifted his left hand to his face to check the blood, then pressed his hand again to his hip and limped on.
Shit. Court wanted to watch the man pass and disappear in the snow, but his innate sense of self-preservation was eclipsed, in this instance anyway, by his innate sense of honor, and he could not bring himself to leave the wounded American behind.
Court stepped out of the alley and whistled. In moments Russ crossed the street and joined him in the doorway.
Russ said, “I was beginning to think you hit the bricks.”
“No,” Court replied, wondering if he should have done just that.
“I heard shooting. You run into more assholes?”
“Yeah. Nothing left but us good guys now.” Court moved Russ’s hand away from his left hip and pulled a flashlight from his backpack and shined it on the area. There was a hole in Russ’s jeans just below his belt on the far left side of his hip, and blood had soaked the denim all the way down to the knee.