Carl gestured. ‘That’s hardly a nondescript gun.’
‘This?’ Onbekend lifted the revolver again, weighed it in his hand. ‘This is—’
Now.
It wasn’t much – the fractionally lowered reflexive response in the other man, neurochemical sparks lulled and damped down by Carl’s previous open-handed gestures and the descending calm after all the shouting. Then the fractional shift of the revolver’s muzzle, the few degrees off and the brief lack of tension on the trigger. Then Onbekend’s standard issue thirteen sense of superiority, the curious need he seemed to have to lecture. It wasn’t much.
Not much at all.
Carl exploded out of the chair, hands to the table edge, flipping it up and over. Onbekend got one shot off, wide, and then he was staggering back, trying to get out of the chair and on his feet. The shadow by the door yelled and moved. Carl was across the empty space where the table had been, into Onbekend, palm heel and hooking elbow, turning, try for the gun, lock in close, too close to shoot at. He had the other thirteen’s arm in both hands now, twisted the revolver up and round, looking for the man by the door. Tried for the trigger. Onbekend got his finger out, blocked the attempt, but it didn’t matter. The other man yelled again, dodged away from the slug he thought was coming. The door flew inward on its hinges, the other half of Onbekend’s human back-up burst into the room. Carl yanked at the revolver, couldn’t get it free. The new arrival didn’t make the same mistake as his companion. He stepped in, grinning.
‘Just hold him there, Onbee.’
Desperate, Carl hacked sideways with one foot, tried to get the fight on the ground and jar the revolver out of Onbekend’s stubborn grip. The other thirteen locked ankles with him, stood firm, and Carl tumbled instead, pulled off balance by his own weight and a tanindo move that hadn’t worked. Onbekend timed it just right, stepped wide and shrugged him off like a heavy backpack. He went down, clutching for the revolver, didn’t get it. Onbekend kicked him in the groin. He convulsed around the blow, tried frantically to roll, to get up–
Onbekend levelled the revolver.
The world seemed to stop, to lean in and watch.
In the small unreal stillness, he knew the impact before it came, and the knowledge was terrifying because it felt like freedom. He felt himself open to it, like spreading wings, like snarling. His eyes locked with Onbekend’s. He grinned and spat out a final defiance.
‘You sad, deluded little fuck.’
And then the gunblasts, the final violence through the quiet, again – again – again, like the repeated slamming of a door in a storm.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Marstech Beretta had a burst function that allowed three shots for every trigger pull. Sevgi Ertekin came through the door with it enabled, gun raised and cupped in both hands, and she squeezed the trigger twice for each figure in her sights. No time for niceties, she’d seen through the window what was about to go down. The expansion slugs made a flat, undramatic crackling sound as they launched, but they tore down her targets like cardboard.
Bodies jerked and hurled aside. Two down.
The third one was turning, tiger swift, the first burst missed him altogether. A big, heavy silver revolver tracking round in his hand. She squeezed again and he flipped over backwards like a circus trick.
Marsalis flopped about on the ground, struggled to sit up. She couldn’t see if he was hit. She advanced into the room, gun swinging to cover angles in approved fashion. Peering down at the men she’d just hit, no, wait–
-she took in staring eyes and crumpled, awkward postures, one of them slumped almost comically in the arms of a chair, legs slid out from under him, one on the floor in a sprawl of limbs like some tantrum-prone child’s doll–
-the men she’d just killed. The Marstech gun and its load, unequivocal in its sentencing as a Jesusland judge.
The third one hit her from the side. Flash glimpse of a bloodied face, distorted with rage. She hit the floor, arms splayed back to break the fall, lost the fucking Beretta with the impact. For a moment, the third man lurched above her, growling through lips skinned back off his teeth, empty hands crooked like talons. The look in the eyes was savage, stripped of anything human. She felt the terror thrust up like wings in her stomach and chest.
He saw the fallen gun. Stepped past her to get it.
‘Onbekend!’
Her attacker twisted around, bent halfway over to the Beretta, saw the same as her – Carl Marsalis, propped up off the floor with the big revolver in his hand.
He wheeled about and the shot went wide. Deep bellow of the heavy calibre across the room. Marsalis snarled something, swung and fired again. The door swung shut on the other man.
Sevgi grabbed up her gun.
‘You okay?’
Grim nod. He was getting unsteadily to his feet. She gave him a tight grin and went to the door. Pushed it open a crack and peered out. The teardrop she’d taxi-trailed from the hotel was still there on the other side of the deserted, dilapidated street. The injured third man fumbled at its door, got it open. No time. She ran through and took up her firing stance again on the sidewalk. A thousand memories from the streets and back alleys of Queens and Manhattan, eleven years of pursuits and arrests – it pulsed through her, anchored her, steadied her hands.
‘Police officer! Put your hands on your head, get down on the ground!’
He seemed to kneel at the opened door of the car. She trod closer.
‘I said, get your hands—’
He spun, yanked a weapon clear from somewhere. Came up firing. She shot back. Clutch of three – saw him punched back on the teardrop’s high sheen flank, but knew at the same time she’d gone too high. Felt something kick her in the left shoulder, staggered with it and fell back against the wall of the bar. One leg shot out from under her, she flailed not to go all the way down. She braced herself on the wall, saw him reel off the car, leave smears of blood on the shiny bodywork of the teardrop, stagger and collapse inside the vehicle. She fought to get upright again, watched him lean out to haul the door closed after him, knew she was going to be too late. She threw up the Beretta one handed and snapped off a shot. The three-slug burst was too powerful to hold down, the bullets pinged off the teardrop, nowhere near. The door hinged and snapped shut with a clunk she heard right across the street. The engine whined into instant life. She stumbled forward, tried to straighten up, tried against the numbness in her shoulder to get a clean bead on the teardrop as it took off.
Three times, she came down on the trigger. Nine shots, solid pulsing kick each time into the wounded shoulder from the two-handed firing stance she held. The teardrop slewed side to side, then straightened up, reached a corner and took it at speed, disappeared from view on a screech of abused tyres. She let her arms drop, blew out a disgusted breath, and just stood there for a moment.
‘Fuck it,’ she said finally. Her voice sounded loud in the suddenly silent street. ‘Two out of three, anyone got a problem with that?’
Apparently no one did.
She walked back to the bar, pushed open the door and leaned there in the doorway, surveying the mess. Marsalis had got himself upright in the midst of it, had the revolver in his hand. He jolted as she came in, then just stood there, looking at her. A faint smile twitched at her lips.