The Triad on the dirty deck, now pinned there by Court’s knee, looked up to him with blood all over his face. “Let me go! I’ll kill you if you don’t let me go!”
Court used his left hand to bang the man’s face down hard against the deck, silencing him for the time being.
A shout came from the men holding their positions just thirty or so feet away. “Hey! Gweilo! You gonna die, motherfucker!”
Court pushed harder with his left knee to hold his captive down, and then he released his left hand from the man’s hair. He dropped the magazine from the grip of the pistol, a Norinco Type 92, and saw he had eight rounds left. It wasn’t a particularly powerful weapon, but Court knew his marksmanship would go a long way to make up for any shortcomings of the 5.8-by-21-millimeter round.
His mind assessed his situation quickly. There were still easily twenty-five or so potential threats here in this bar, but from the sound of the gunfire there weren’t more than one or two pistols in the crowd other than the one in his hand. He wasn’t terribly worried about the knives now that he had a standoff weapon; unless they all charged him at once, nobody was going to get into a knife fight with the Gray Man if he had a gun.
He heard a boat fire up downstairs at the dinghy dock, and he wondered if it was one of the tenders for the cargo ship. He thought he’d heard one a minute earlier, as well, but it was hard to tell with all the action going on.
With the revving of an outboard motor’s throttle he was certain now he was listening to a tender racing away from the bar.
Another voice shouted out, startling Court and forcing his head down lower. This man spoke in Mandarin, and from the tone of his words it sounded to Court like he was barking out orders to underlings. A few other men replied, and it felt as if some kind of plan was being formed by the gang.
Not good.
Court didn’t have a moment to spare. The longer he stayed here, the braver the men plotting against him would get, and the more organized their next attack would be.
Suddenly, several shots rang out in quick succession. Court heard glasses behind the bar shattering nearby, the sound of the ice bucket taking fire — he even saw splinters of wood kicked off the corner of the bar a foot from his face.
Christ, Court thought. These guys didn’t have much concern about the well-being of the Triad boss on the floor under his knee.
Court reached the pistol around the side of the bar and fired two rounds without looking. The angle of the pistol was right to hit threats here in this target-rich environment, so even though he couldn’t see what he was shooting at, he figured he was doing some damage.
The gunfire from the crowd stopped, but the shouting, the ordering, and the callbacks all continued.
Court assumed they were coordinating some sort of plan that included covering gunfire to pin Court down along with a movement forward by all the men with the edged weapons.
He felt around the body of the man underneath him, desperately searching for another magazine, but found nothing save for a wallet and a cell phone.
Court took a quick half peek around the corner. He saw dead bodies and wounded men around the tipped-over tables, then movement a little farther back on the deck. He heard the rushed voices of several men. He grabbed the Triad roughly by the neck and climbed off the man’s back, staying low in a crouch, as if ready to launch.
The man Court held looked at him with a crazed grin now. “Stupid gweilo! They don’t care if they kill me. You use me as a hostage? Are you fucking crazy, man? I no hostage. They shoot anyway.”
Court looked to the railing of the deck, twenty feet across open ground. Upturned plastic chairs and tables lay in the way, but nothing he couldn’t bull his way through in a desperate situation.
And he was pretty sure this predicament qualified.
Court pulled the Triad up to his feet but kept him in a low crouch. Leaning into the man’s ear with his eyes on the railing, he said, “You aren’t my hostage, buddy.” Court looked straight into the man’s eyes now. “You’re my meat shield.”
The Triad leader cocked his head in confusion, and then Court propelled himself up and out to the left, using his strong thighs to haul the man up with him. With his gun arm out in front of him he used the man in the dragon shirt for cover.
Court opened fire, simultaneously pulling the man along with him as he went for the railing.
Cracks of return pistol fire filled the night; the zing of a bullet burned the air inches from Court’s ear. He pulled the Triad sideways as he moved. Three feet, five feet, ten feet. Straight towards the railing over the water, as fast as Court could go while yanking an unwilling man along with him.
The Triad boss lurched into Court as they shuffled quickly along like two men dancing badly; clearly he’d been shot. Then he lurched again a second later; another round in the back.
Court’s pistol emptied and he dropped it, using both hands now to pull his meat shield along with him across the floor. The dying man took another shot, this time to the back of his head, and his legs gave out, but Court didn’t let him drop.
Gunshots cracked across the room; Court both felt and heard a round scream by again, this time even closer to his own head, but he raced forward anyway, towards the edge of the deck.
Men with knives launched to their feet and gave chase now, getting in the way of the guns, and Court let the dead body in his arms fall, then turned and sprang onto the railing.
The closest blade was just two feet away and swinging fast as the Gray Man dove over the side, launching himself out past the dinghy dock.
He was going for a swan dive — it was the fastest and most efficient way to get himself in the water — but as he dropped, his legs rotated past ninety degrees and he hit the water with his outstretched hands, then his head, then his back and legs. It wasn’t pretty, but the lights of the bar above didn’t make it down to the water’s surface, so once he broke through, his momentum sending him deep, he knew he was out of the line of sight and the line of fire.
As long as he didn’t need to breathe.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Zoya’s attention had been on a different part of the bay. She had just lined her rifle up on one of the four men in the second tender to launch from the bar in the past three minutes, when the man in her sights tumbled out of the boat and into the water.
She was confused for an instant, but when a second man dropped down in the boat a moment later, she understood; Ruslan and Sasha were firing their silenced rifles at the little boat from the deck of the cargo ship off to her left.
The SVR operative on the hill at the southeast edge of the bay flipped her weapon’s fire selector switch up to the “safe” setting, then moved the rifle to her right, pointing it back at the bar. She was fascinated by what sounded like a full-on gun battle raging in there, and she wanted to see if she could get eyes on more of the action to determine what the hell was going on.
Just as she put her eye back in the cup of the scope, she focused quickly on movement. A man flew through the air, facedown and arms outstretched, swan-diving out of the bar and chased by what looked like two dozen or more frenzied men.
She saw nothing of the diver before he splashed awkwardly into the black surface other than the fact that he had dark clothing and he wore a backpack.