Harris moved forward to kneel behind the nearest car. He set one of the pistols down beside him, brought the other one up in a two-handed grip, and readied himself to kill.
Across the street, Doc shoved the guard, then yanked hard. The guard’s head, now bloody, emerged a second time. This time he didn’t scream. But the door didn’t budge.
Jean-Pierre pulled out his pistol and fired it at the lock, two quick shots. Harris saw one of the passing cars swerve at the sudden noise. Doc yanked again and the head of the guard bobbed, but the door still didn’t move. Harris thought he saw Doc curse.
The shutters above and to the right of the stoop swung open. Harris saw two men lean out into the light. One held an autogun.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Harris aimed at the window and squeezed off a fast shot. He saw the man in the window flinch. It was too dark to line up the gun’s sights; he thumbed the hammer back and aimed as best he could for the second shot, the third, the fourth, the gun kicking in his hand.
The men in the window dropped back out of sight. Harris cocked the revolver again and sighted in on the window, waiting.
Across the side street, Alastair opened fire with the autogun; Harris flinched at its jackhammer roar. The doctor hosed down the left wall of the inset. There had to be a window there, too, and it must have opened.
There was gunfire from the far side of the office building. Harris saw Doc curse again. The building’s door still stood resolutely closed. The thing had to be massively reinforced.
The man with the autogun appeared in the window. Harris fired. This time he saw the man jerk and drop back. The autogun fell; Jean-Pierre, his attention on the windows, caught the weapon before it hit concrete. He swung around and, like Alastair, directed gunfire against the window Harris couldn’t see.
A quick exchange between Doc and Noriko. Harris saw her draw her blade, a silvery line glinting in moonlight. Doc released the guard; the man hung in the doorway. Doc stooped and cupped his hands.
Noriko stepped into the stirrup his fingers made. Doc straightened, swinging his arms up. Suddenly Noriko was flying, leaping up to the window Harris was covering. She got one hand on the pane and came down with her knee on the sill; Harris saw her face twist in pain. Then she slashed at something beyond the window and scrambled in, disappearing from sight.
A blur of pink to Harris’ right. He glanced that way and saw Joseph charging toward the front of the office.
Joseph ran like a child, with tottering, off-balance steps, his arms waving awkwardly out in front of him. He didn’t pause for traffic. A gleaming green Hutchen swerved to miss him; the driver honked and kept driving.
Joseph hurtled up the stairs. Doc and Jean-Pierre leaned out of his way.
The clay man hit the door like an awkward football lineman in full charge. The door didn’t slow him; it just broke with a noise like a gunshot and was instantly gone. Harris didn’t want to think about what had become of the guard behind it.
Jean-Pierre charged in after him, the autogun pointed high, and Doc followed.
Alastair emerged from cover and crossed the four-lane, dodging traffic. He paused at the corner of the inset, scanning the entrance and the window he’d fired on. Then he scrambled up the stairs and disappeared into the office building.
And then there was nothing but muffled gunshots. Shouting that Harris couldn’t make out.
He concentrated on his breathing again.
How many shots had he fired? He broke open the gun in his hand, ejected the brass. One cartridge was still unfired. He replaced it in the cylinder, then reloaded the weapon from the ammunition in his pocket.
They started firing on Joseph the moment he crashed through the door: two autoguns, pistols he couldn’t number. He dimly felt impacts before he plowed through the line of gunmen, cracking limbs and ribcages, scattering them.
It was sad. But perhaps if he broke them now no one would have to shoot them later.
Ahead, more men were rolling a metal door into place, blocking the opening into the warehouse beyond. Joseph picked up speed.
He hit the metal door as hard as he’d ever hit anything. He heard its scream of protest, felt it buckling under his mass as though it were a light roasting pan. It tore free from its housing and crumpled around him as he drove it before him; he went off balance and tripped, skidding across the concrete on his malformed metal sled, scattering more men.
Harris watched as, across the street, one of the sections of concrete sidewalk levered open. It was just like the hidden door at Duncan’s Wickhollow house. He came alert, closed his pistol, aimed it across the hood of the car.
A man’s head rose from the hole and looked around; he didn’t spot Harris. He climbed out of the hole. In his hand was something that looked like a sawed-off shotgun. It was Eamon Moon, now dressed in what looked like a scarlet silk robe.
Harris let him get completely out from the hole. Moon took a couple of furtive steps toward the open office door. His intention was obvious: sneak up on the Sidhe Foundation people from behind. Harris shouted, “Don’t move!”
Moon turned and yanked the trigger.
Harris felt blind fear as he saw a gout of fire emerge from the weapon barrel. The other side of the car he crouched behind screamed and crumpled in protest.
Harris fired. Moon jerked as if punched in the gut and stared stupidly at Harris.
Then he aimed the gun again.
Harris fired a second time. Moon took a staggering step back toward the hole and fell to the concrete. Harris stared at his unmoving body.
He’d just shot a man. He paused, expecting . . . expecting he didn’t know what. Nothing happened except he found that his mouth was dry.
What now? If men came pouring out of that hole, Harris wouldn’t be able to stop all of them. They’d be able to hit Doc and the others from behind.
He half turned. “Gaby, get up here!”
“I hear you.” Her voice, coming from right behind him, made him start. He craned his neck to look back. She was standing where he’d been just a few moments ago, at the corner of the building; all he could see was some of her rifle’s barrel, protruding beyond the corner, and a little of her silhouette behind the building edge.
“I have to go block that hole.” He grabbed his second handgun and sprinted across the street, stuttering a step to avoid running in the path of a northbound limousine. Once past the brick roadway, he moved cautiously up toward the dark hole, both guns out in front of him.
Concrete steps leading down into darkness. If he got close enough, anyone down below would be able to see him.
The thought of somebody lurking at the bottom of the steps, a shotgun ready, drove all the air out of his lungs. He circled around the hole, coming up on it from behind the tilted slab of concrete. That put him right beside Eamon Moon. He took a soccer-style kick at Moon’s gun, clattering it up against the side of the building, then put his shoulder to the slab and shoved. It obligingly keeled over and fell back into place, making an enormous hollow boom and stinging his feet through the leather soles of his shoes.
Situation under control . . . for now. He picked up Moon’s gun and trotted back across the street, keeping the slab, the dead man, and the bottom of the stoop in view. He knelt down behind the cover of the car. There were more shots from inside the building.
Harris could see Moon’s eyes staring up at the stars, unblinking. He had the uneasy feeling that if he stared long enough, Moon would look up with a hurt expression and point an accusing finger at him.