Chamroon was still there, still holding on to his bloody knee.
Court raced back to the lion again for the third time, but when he arrived he saw that the tall raven-haired girl had been hit by a piece of shrapnel across the back of her hand and forearm. It bled freely, and she screamed in pain and shock, but Court could tell it wasn’t particularly serious, considering all the dangers close by.
Another man came around the pool now, again on Court’s left, and Court shot him three times before he dropped his pistol and fell to his knees, finally crumpling onto his back just ten feet away.
Court reloaded, and got the tall injured woman to hold on to his hips like the first two, and again he launched himself out into the open, sidestepping back towards the doorway. He’d made it just halfway when the snap of a bullet cracked close on his right. “Get behind me!” he shouted, and the woman tucked tighter, and then Court felt the impact of a round high on his chest, slamming into the marble.
It rocked him back and he stumbled, but he kept his feet and the two of them made it into the changing area.
The woman looked at her bloody hand and arm; Court reminded her that she needed to run, and soon she did just that, disappearing through the thick gray smoke and down the labyrinth of halls towards the stairs.
Court did not hesitate; he ran back to the lion, exposing himself again to fire, and by now he saw that the smoke out here was obscuring his vision as well.
There were two women left: the black woman and the fit blonde with the Egyptian-looking eyes. Court sized up the black woman as being the more terrified of the two, so he told her it was her turn. She put her hands on his hips and they took off.
As they shot back the forty feet, Court could see a pair of dark figures in the smoke coming around the other side of the pool now, back to the right of the lion. He fired several times at the figures but missed, saw them dive behind a stone fountain and a marble bench.
Back in the changing area, the smoke continued rolling out of the vents and hung high in the room. The smell had gone from noticeable, to heavy, to now nearly overpowering, and visibility was dropping fast. But despite the worsening conditions and the insanity of the raging battle, Court was pleased to see the woman running off to the back without prompting, and Chamroon still lying in agony on the floor.
One more time, Court told himself, and he ran back to the lion through the smoky haze. This time he could feel the marble tile in his shirt shift and crumble where it had been struck by the bullet; it was almost useless now as a ballistic shield.
He dove feetfirst and slid the last ten feet to the lion pedestal, the marble cutting into his chest as he did so. As soon as he got there he raised his Glock 17 and fired back in the direction of the two figures he’d seen earlier, hoping to keep their heads down.
The blonde was still there, down on one knee with her back to the marble pedestal. She looked at Court through her heavy eye makeup with rapt fascination. She’d been the most “together” of the five women, so he’d left her for last, but now her odd expression had him wondering if she was finally going into shock herself.
“Your turn. You ready?” he said while he reloaded the Glock.
The woman spoke with a distinctive accent that he thought might have been Hungarian. “I am ready. Please, stay close to me.”
“I will.”
There was a fresh intensity to the gunfight at the deep end of the pool, and Court wanted to hurry up to take advantage of it. He turned away from the woman, she put her hands on his hips like she’d seen happen four times previously, and Court said, “Here we go!”
Court risked a peek around the corner where the figures had been, and then he moved quickly back to his left, scanning with his Glock in a wide arc as they moved together in perfect symmetry.
He used suppressive fire to keep heads down, because he could barely see ten feet in the smoke and poor light, but he somehow managed to make it a fifth time through the gauntlet. He kept moving deeper into the smoke-filled changing area. The girl with him kept her hands on his hips, and after he checked to make sure Nattapong Chamroon hadn’t moved from the corner, he spoke to the blonde, still close behind him and holding on.
“It’s okay, you’re safe now. Follow your friends down the hall to the—”
Court started to look back over his shoulder when he felt the woman’s hands leave his hips, slide up his body, then re-form in a grasp around his right wrist, just below his pistol. She spun her body around, pushed her back into him, then twisted his arm, all in a quarter second. She slammed her hips hard into his upper legs and yanked forward with a brute strength Court wouldn’t have expected from most men.
The American felt his center of balance tip towards her; his feet rocked forward, and then the blonde swept her right leg back, kicking his legs out from under him. She threw him over her right hip, still holding his wrist so she could control the barrel of his weapon.
Court’s feet went over his head, and he landed hard on his back. He felt the pistol pulled from his grasp at the same time that the air was knocked from his lungs.
The blonde dropped down on him, placing a knee hard in his chest. He didn’t see the gun, but he was certain she had it now. Instead, he just looked up at her, her face inches from him.
“I’m taking Chamroon,” she said.
She stood quickly now, holding the black Glock pistol on Court as she moved over to Nattapong Chamroon. She grabbed him by his arm, pulled him up to his feet, and half dragged him towards the back hallway. Chamroon coughed in the smoke and grunted in pain each time his right foot came down and his wrecked knee took his body weight, but he followed along.
Court rose to his knees, still watching the blonde, still trying to take a breath.
At the door she glanced out into the hall for an instant, then turned back in Court’s direction. Just as he managed to suck in some smoky air, he saw her raise the weapon towards him.
She fired once into the wall, just a foot to Court’s right.
Court looked at the bullet hole, then back at the blonde.
In English she said, “If anyone ever asks, I missed. Is that cool?”
Court just stood there, utterly transfixed by the woman. He said nothing.
The blonde repeated herself as she struggled to muscle Chamroon all the way up against her body so she could move with him. “Is that cool?”
Now Court replied softly, “Very cool.”
She shoved Chamroon into the hallway, and they disappeared in the smoke, leaving Court alone in the room.
He spoke to himself now. “What the fuck just happened?”
At the far end of the pool, nearly thirty meters away from the changing room, a soaking wet Vasily decided to give the order to retreat. He would throw away any chance he and his team had to capture Nattapong Chamroon, but he made the decision because this gunfight had turned into a stalemate, and smoke in the room had gotten thick enough that he felt the attackers had no more chance to achieve their objective than he did.
The men at the double doors were Chinese; this Vasily had worked out quickly. A group of Thais had stormed into the single door halfway down the pool on the right side after the Chinese arrived, but Vasily and his men had killed all but one or two of them relatively quickly. Not so with the Chinese, who had the sense and the skill to remain in the cover of the doorway and just fire into the large open room.
Vasily had climbed out of the swimming pool by pulling off his jacket, his body armor, and his chest rig, and now he knelt behind a marble nude at the deep end. Mikhail lay dead right in front of him, faceup with a bullet wound in the side of his mouth. Yevgeni was seriously injured, hemorrhaging from his thigh, and only a self-administered tourniquet had prevented him from bleeding out in the past minute. Ruslan had been shot through the arm, but he was engaging a Thai gunman with his pistol now.