And then it happened. Just as he started to move his backpack around on his wrist to swing it, a five-round string of fully automatic gunfire rolled in from out in the bay. Court recognized it instantly as an AK-47 firing fully automatic.
The muffled blast of a shotgun followed close behind.
Court had been the only one in the establishment who had half expected to hear a battle rage on the cargo ship, so he was the only one who stayed on task when the firing started.
The other men’s heads swiveled towards the bay in surprise, giving the American a second to begin his attack.
Zoya Zakharova had been lying prone, deep in the high brush of the overwatch hide site on the far side of the bay, looking through the ten-power scope of the sniper rifle at the Tai Chin VI. All eight of her men had disappeared moments before when they moved in teams of four off the main deck and into the superstructure of the seventy-five-meter-long ship. She knew from the briefing held on the yacht earlier that they would break into teams of two inside to clear cabins and the engine room, with another team climbing up to the bridge deck. She could listen in to their radio network through her own headset attached to her walkie-talkie, but there was nothing to hear. Anna team was maintaining strict radio silence, and they expected the same from her.
So she just lay up here alone, watching the scene.
Suddenly staccato reports of a burst of rifle fire pounded in the night, rolling across the bay from the ship. Zoya recognized it as the unmistakable sound of an AK rifle, firing 7.62-by-39-millimeter cartridges in fully automatic mode. All the Zaslon men had suppressors on their weapons that fired a different caliber, so she knew this had to be a hostile actor inside the ship engaging her commandos.
Der’mo. Shit, she said to herself. She’d hoped she wouldn’t hear any noise out of the cargo ship at all.
The boom of a shotgun told her that another armed hostile was firing on the raiding party, and she started to worry that this operation was falling apart right in front of her.
Within one second of the shotgun blast, Court’s backpack slammed straight down against the forehead of the man brandishing the knife, and the five-pound air tank inside acted like a hammer striking flesh and bone. The man dropped down unconscious in front of the crowd tight behind him, while Court brought his right hand out, swinging his Kershaw knife. He made contact with three men in this first swing, cutting two men in the arm, and one deeply in his shoulder, opening his flesh to the bone. He brought the blade back around 180 degrees in the other direction, and this time he sliced across the hands of two more men, while all the others around him lurched back in surprise at the violence of the action that had just erupted from the gweilo who, two seconds before, had been meek as a field mouse and offering no hint of resistance.
Court couldn’t bypass the dozen or more Triad men between himself and the deck railing, so instead he leapt high, kicking his legs into the air. He landed on his back on the wooden bar, rolled off, and dropped behind it, pulling his backpack along with him. He ended up in a standing position and swung his pack at the astonished bartender, clocking him in the face with the air tank inside the bag, dropping the young man flat onto his back.
Nearly fifty men screamed in wild frenzy now; some made to leap upon the bar to climb over it, while others moved around to access it from the side closest to the entrance. Court saw knives everywhere in the scrum in front of him, but he saw no guns.
Bottles of alcohol rested in a well next to Court. He grabbed two full big one-and-a-half-liter vodka bottles, then shattered their necks on the side of a waist-high refrigerator. He spun in a circle, flinging their contents all around the bar, soaking some of the men climbing onto it. He snatched up the lighter he’d seen behind the bar and lit the whiskey-soaked washrag, which immediately burst into flames.
He took a step back towards the doorway to the kitchen, then dropped the rag on the floor of the bar.
The flames began instantly; the alcohol vapor in the air around the three liters of spilled spirits caused a brilliant flash in the low-lit room, even flaring past Court himself for an instant. Several of the men on the bar found themselves engulfed in flame, and they scrambled frantically, crashing into others while trying to get away. Court shot straight back into the narrow galley kitchen, slammed the completely inadequate door there, and reached for the lock, but didn’t waste his time with it when he realized it would just take a hard push to break the weak plywood door in, locked or not.
No one on the other side of that door was going to bother turning the knob; they’d come through hard and fast, and it would take no time before men began pouring at it, shattering it off its cheap hinges.
The fire behind the bar wouldn’t last, nor would it stop anyone who really wanted at him; it would just slow them down for a few seconds.
Court’s plan had been to dart through the back exit in the kitchen, but those hopes were dashed in an instant. He saw no exit that led back onto the footpath, only a closed door that, from its location at the southern end of the galley kitchen, meant it led out into the bar itself very near the main entrance of the building.
Court reached as high as he could and grabbed onto the top of a metal shelving unit full of goods right next to the door he’d just entered, and he pulled with all his might. He thought it would be difficult to tip the tall, heavy structure, but he just had to give the old rusted unit a hard yank off center for its legs to bend and buckle, and then the eight-foot-high assembly crashed down in front of the doorway just as the door started to push in behind the weight of several men who’d made it through the fire. The shelving unit was full of cans of spices, bags of rice, boxes full of bagged grease, and other heavy items, so it held the door shut, for a moment, anyway.
Court now sprinted for the other exit; it was only five steps away up the narrow galley, but after just three steps the door flew open and a pair of rough-looking young men appeared.
The first man lunged forward with his knife; Court continued his advance and sidestepped the thrust, pushing the man farther into the kitchen while the second attacker swung a switchblade towards him. The first man fell over the shelving unit while Court concentrated on the second. Court short-circuited this man’s attack by blocking him at the forearm, then took hold of the hand with the knife and spun behind the man. He pulled the man’s arm up high as he whirled behind him, and his own hands covered the man’s hand clutching the hilt of the knife. Driving down hard, Court forced this attacker to stab himself in the neck.
While he did this he kicked his right foot back behind him and slammed the particleboard door into the face of a third attacker as he breached the door frame. This knocked the man back into the bar, crashing him into two others just behind him.
In front of Court, another crash against the plywood door broke it down and over the smashed shelving assembly and its contents. Men fell into the center of the galley kitchen on top of one another, just a dozen feet away from the American assassin.
Flames still licked high in the bar area; these men had just been too wild with the thrill of the hunt to care.
Court concentrated on the man in his grasp. He pulled him back a step, then spun him down to his knees against the door.
With strength and efficiency, he ripped the man’s hands from the knife hilt deep in his neck, then rotated the blade across the kneeling man’s throat, sending a spray of arterial blood against the wooden door and killing him almost instantly in the process.