Which was when Bunny gripped the side of the pool table with his massive hands, gave a mighty heave, and flipped the entire thing over on its side. The other two Closers both danced back, narrowly avoiding losing their toes. The fallen Mac wasn’t so lucky, and a heavy, ominous snap and a wet squish arose as the table landed on some part of his anatomy.
Top didn’t waste time standing around feeling sorry for the guy. He dropped into a crouch behind the table, joined by Bunny and Warbride. They immediately cast about for anything they could use as a weapon.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have a whole lot on hand.
“Now can we call it in?” Warbride demanded, phone already in her grip. She’d hit the rapid-call for the Pier even before Top had finished nodding, but a second later she scowled. “No signal — they’re jamming us,” she reported.
Of course they were. Top sighed. It was, after all, exactly what he’d do.
“Okay,” Bunny said, ducking a little lower as the two remaining Closers opened fire, their bullets alternately slamming into the heavy slate of the pool table and shooting past above their heads. “So we’ve got two Closers on us, both heavily armed, and we’ve got no weapons and no way to call for backup. That about cover it?”
Top started to answer, but stopped as something to the side caught his attention. “No,” he answered, fighting the urge to rub at his eyes. He knew what he’d just seen. “Five Closers, all heavily armed, and us with no weapons.” He gestured, and his two teammates both looked in that direction, to where three more Closers approached from the bar’s rear corner.
“Crap,” Bunny muttered. “Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know,” Top answered, “but they weren’t there a second ago. Literally — I looked up and suddenly there they were.”
“Teleporters?” Warbride shook her head. “Yeah, that fits.” It did, too — it explained why all night they’d been seeing the Closers for just a second, or hearing them, and then nothing. “Which means they could call in as many as they want. We’re hosed.”
“We would be,” Top said slowly, “except for one thing.” He waited a second to make sure he had his teammates’ attention. Then he grinned. It was his slow, nasty grin, the one he reserved for right before delivering a serious ass-kicking. “These fuckers are messing with Echo Team. Which means they’re about to find out what being hosed is all about.”
“Hooah,” Bunny replied, matching his grin, and Warbride echoed him. “You got a plan, boss?”
Top nodded, his mind already ticking elements into place. “I do, yeah,” he replied. “You ain’t gonna like it — but I guarantee those Closers’ll like it even less.”
Warbride laughed. “Then let’s do it,” she said. “Those fuckers owe me a belly-ring.”
A lull settled around the place. Top guessed that the Closers had exhausted their first volley. Now they waited to see what Echo Team did next. None of the shots had penetrated the heavy pool table, but that didn’t mean a ricochet couldn’t have gotten lucky, even if there weren’t any groans or cries to confirm a hit. So they waited.
Quiet hung over the bar. Any remaining patrons had fled as soon as the shooting had started. If any of them had called the cops, they were still a ways out. Not a hint of sirens.
Top pointed a finger at Bunny, who nodded back. The big man tensed his muscles, gave a mighty heave — and, with a terrible screech, the pool table practically jumped across the room, slamming into the wall on the other side with a resounding crash.
The Closers had been spaced out facing it, with three right in front and one to either side. Of the three, one managed to get clear completely. Another had the heavy table slam into his ankle as he fled, hard enough to crush the bone there and to spin him around.
The third one, the man in the center, was still fully behind the table when it hit the wall. A wet sound erupted as the two heavy surfaces smushed him between them like jelly on a sandwich.
The remaining Closers all darted forward, ignoring their wounded and fallen comrades for the moment to go after the now exposed and presumably defenseless Echo Team.
The first one to get a clear shot fell backward before he could fire, his forehead caved in by an expertly thrown pool ball.
The second one slipped on a pool of liquid from a tossed pint glass — before he could clamber back to his feet Warbride leaped on top of him, impaling him through the eye with a broken pool cue.
The third found himself staring down the barrel of a gun — an all-too-familiar gun, because it was one of their own. Before he could figure out how that had happened Top shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the head.
Warbride had grabbed her target’s gun from his hands and rolled to the side, clearing the body and coming up shooting. Bunny made the long reach and wrested the gun from his victim, and now Echo Team was properly armed again.
“Head shots!” Top reminded his teammates. “They’ve got body armor!”
Echo Team had discovered the hard way in their previous encounters that the Closers wore some kind of fancy micromesh that stopped not only the bullets themselves but also their impact. They’d been cocky tonight, though, and weren’t wearing helmets.
Only two Closers remained, but they were too experienced to panic at the sudden reversal of fortune. Both ducked down behind tables for cover, and returned fire with Echo Team. In the reflection from a bar mirror Top could see one of them speaking rapidly into a throat-mic. Probably calling in a sit rep and asking for reinforcements.
Apparently the call didn’t go the way they’d hoped, but it did yield results. Because suddenly the bar fell quiet again, as the two remaining Closers disappeared.
“Hold your fire!” Top ordered, and all shooting stopped. He scanned the bar quickly. Not only had their last two foes vanished but so had the others’ bodies. “Damn. Clear.”
Bunny and Warbride nodded. Now that the fighting had stopped, they could hear sirens in the distance. “Stay or go, boss?” Bunny asked.
Top considered. “Go,” he finally decided. “I’m not in the mood to stand around answering questions.” He looked at the other two. “Let’s clean it up.”
They both nodded. Warbride grabbed the pint glasses she and Bunny had used, Top’s whiskey glass, and their pool cues. Bunny went behind the bar and found the surveillance system, yanking out the drive. He also retrieved Top’s credit card, which he handed back to him as he returned. Top had collected the fifteen ball he’d thrown at Mac and the ball — the eight, amusingly enough — that Bunny had used on the other Closer. He surveyed the rest of the room, but other than incidental contacts or places where there’d be too many fingerprints to distinguish, they were clean. All that had remained of the Closers were the guns Echo Team had taken off them, and they’d bring those along as souvenirs.
“Time to move,” he ordered once they had everything. The sirens blared closer now. The three of them headed out the door double time, and were safely around the corner and a block or two away, walking as though nothing strange were going on, by the time the first cop cars arrived.
Top was already thinking about how he would explain all of this to Ledger.
“So they had some kind of teleporters, and a ray gun that could target and destroy anything metal, and they tracked you to this bar and jumped you two to one, and you handed them their asses?” Ledger asked, leaning back in his chair.