“I’ll do that, Ewan.”
“Call your dog, tell him if he makes it… I’m the bloke with the green shirt and the black trousers. My gun will be in the dirt; he needn’t worry about that.”
“Good lad, McSpadden.”
The Scot receded into the dark; the shaft of light reappeared and then narrowed and extinguished behind him.
The knife dug deeper into Gentry’s stomach. The pain was horrific. Knee weakening. Bowel loosening. Something was happening that Gentry didn’t understand, so he looked down, saw he’d somehow caught the attacker’s wrist with the hook of the umbrella. Gentry pulled down and away on the umbrella’s shaft, did not have the strength to pull the knife out of his body, but at least his effort kept the blade from sinking in more than a couple of inches. Painful, excruciatingly painful, but much better than the knife digging in hilt deep or worse, cutting up into his gut like a fish filleted.
With all his might Court pulled down on the umbrella with his right hand. With his left, he reached out at the attacker. He fisted him in the chest weakly, because there was little strength in reserve after the exertion from his right arm and the pain deep in his belly. The assassin punched back, tried a head butt, but Court leaned away from it in time.
Court reached across his body to his waistband, took poor hold of the Glock pistol with his left hand but drew it anyway, just pulled it free of his belt as the assassin knocked it away.
The steel and polymer weapon clanged to the cobblestones, rattled off in the dark.
Their free hands fought one another, the attacker in the dark warding off an attempted eye gouge and Gentry deflecting an open-handed blow to his Adam’s apple that would have surely killed him, the tempered steel shaft stabbing into him notwithstanding.
The attacker gave up on trying to yank the knife up to the sternum or push it in deeper; the umbrella’s hook on his arm prevented him from accomplishing either task. Instead, the blade cut down, came to rest against the hip bone and gouged into it.
Gentry stifled a scream. He was nearly out of his mind from pain but knew more killers were yards away. Any slim chance he had at survival against the blade in him and the man manipulating it would disappear if more men intent on his demise heard his cries.
Court changed tactics himself. He pushed forward with his legs and shoved his chest into the smaller man, an Asian he could clearly now see. He slammed him into the wall, which only served to jab the knife in him a fraction of an inch deeper.
Court followed this with a head butt that slammed the two men’s foreheads together with a crack louder than any other sound in the alleyway since the fight began. The umbrella still held the Asian’s right hand down. Court pushed again with his body, and the Asian stumbled backwards all the way across the alley and slammed into the other wall. Court was still attached by the knife’s blade, so he moved along with his attacker. The light was better over here and, through the agony that threatened to cloud his mind to mush, Court saw the straps of the backpack and realized the man was now trying to take hold of something behind him in the bag with his free hand.
Court grabbed the Korean’s wrist with his own free hand and slammed it back into the brick wall.
“What’cha got?” Court asked, his voice quavering with pain and exertion. “What’s in the bag?” There was enough light for eye contact on this side of the covered alley, and their eye contact did not waver, though both men’s lids twitched with the expenditure of effort. One pushed forward, the other pushed back. “What’s in the bag?”
Gentry yanked sideways with the umbrella, pulled the Asian quickly off balance, used the moment to reach behind the man to the pack pressed against the wall. The American had to tighten his abdominals to do so, and his voice cracked as he groaned in agony.
The Asian turned the knife; the two-inch-deep wound opened with the twist and Gentry felt blood run freely across his crotch and down the insides of both legs.
“Ahhh.” It was quieter than a scream, but it echoed in the alleyway nonetheless. Court had the bag now and got a hand on a zipper. Kim knocked the hand away with the side of his head. Another head butt from Gentry stunned the assassin, and Court quickly opened the top of the backpack and reached inside with his left hand.
“What’s this? What’s this?” he asked as tears began streaming down his face. The tears dripped into the spit that sprayed from his sobbing mouth as he spoke. The discharge flew into his attacker’s face with his words. “This what you want? This what you’re after? Huh?” Court pulled the end of a small black sub gun from the bag, stared into the new fear in the eyes of his adversary. Kim reached back and got his hand around the squat suppressor of the weapon, then pushed harder on the knife hilt, Court tried to back off of the blade but could not, and the shaft sank another millimeter into his gut.
Court slid his finger into the trigger guard and fired the MP7. Kim had left the fire selector switch on semiauto, just as Gentry would have. The barrel was pointed at the brick wall behind Kim, and rounds exploded off the masonry and debris whizzed around them both. As fast as he could, Gentry pulled the trigger. Each ignition of a cartridge in the breach caused recoil, which made Court’s body jerk, which allowed the knife in his gut to bite into a new morsel of flesh and bone. Three rounds, five rounds, ten rounds, twenty rounds. Kim screamed in agony and let go of the weapon’s silencer, nearly white-hot now from the gunfire. He wrapped his burned hand around the hand that held the knife, and now with both clenched fists and all his might, he tried to force one last, fast, massive thrust of the blade through to the Gray Man’s spine.
The American’s blood pumped over his scorched fingers.
Gentry brought the empty HK down in one quick action, smashed the hot barrel into Kim’s face, breaking his nose.
Both men fell to the cobblestones, their connection finally broken. Kim lay on his back, head against the bullet-pocked wall, blood gushing out his nose, and his burned hand cradled in his lap. His chest heaved from exertion. Gentry lay on his side in the center of the alley, his chest also heaving, the black hilt of the black knife jutting obscenely from his lower abdomen.
Court tried to pull the knife free, cried out as he did so. The Asian, exhausted and stunned from the concussion, clambered to his knees and frantically crawled across the cold stones to close the distance between them.
At five feet he leapt into the air, desperate to get his hand on the knife before the Gray Man pulled it out of his stomach.
An instant before he landed on his target, the full length of the black knife’s blade appeared in the low light, slick, wet with blood. Court slashed it back-handed across the wide-eyed Asian’s throat as he came down. Arterial blood spewed forth.
Song Park Kim thrashed in the alleyway and died in seconds, his lower torso ending up across the Gray Man’s body.
Gentry dropped the knife on the cobblestones and pushed the dead man’s still-spasming legs off him. The body rolled unceremoniously onto its back, and all movement ceased. Court unfastened his tie with one hand and wadded it into a ball. He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself and then pressed the ball down into the hole in his abdomen. Blood ran down his white shirt onto the pavement.
“Jesus!” he screamed, tears and spit and snot covering a face contorted with pain. He felt the nausea brought on by abject agony but quelled it by focusing on his work.
Normally he was careful about his DNA, but now he didn’t bother. It would take a bathtub of bleach, a five-man cleaning crew, and a full day to sanitize this scene, and Court had nothing of the sort.