faced the man, warily watching his knife hand. He slashed a long, looping strike, attempting to rip her from the pelvis up. Having nothing else, she blocked it with her left arm, feeling the knife slice into the meat of her forearm.
She lashed out in a snap kick and connected with his thigh, forcing him back. She turned and grabbed another lamp, this one shaped like a lotus flower with heavy brass leaves. The blood running from her arm sent her into a feral state. She rotated with all of her might, connecting with his head and driving one of the leaves into his eye socket.
The man shrieked, a high-pitched wail like a child, and fell to his knees. She jerked the lamp free of his eye and swung again, knocking him onto his back. She fell on top of him, hacking with the lamp again and again, the brass leaves working like a medieval weapon. She stopped when she realized his skull had cratered, leaving a bloody bowl where his face should have been.
She dropped the lamp and rolled off the body, hyperventilating.
32
The Chinese man kicked the bathroom door closed, looking like he was about to pull the trigger. I raised my hands and said, “Whoa, whoa. Easy. Don’t shoot.” He said, “I won’t if you come quietly. You do anything else, and I will kill you. We only need one. You are just extra baggage.”
His words hammered home.
The man saw my reaction and said, “There’s a team outside. You can’t get through us all. You fight, you die.”
Before he could say anything else, the sounds of multiple weapons exploded on the street outside. The man jerked his head to the door and I struck him just above his Adam’s apple with my fist, crushing his larynx. I ripped the gun out of his hand as he fell to the floor, holding his throat and gasping for air. Leaning over him, I pulled his head up by the hair.
“Oops. Looks like you’re not the only one with a team.”
I slammed his head into the floor and left the bathroom.
The dining room was full of people cowering and screaming, all intent on getting away from the gunfire. I waded through them, batting panic-stricken tourists aside until I reached the street. Ducking behind a concrete picnic table, I could see muzzle flashes down at the end of the alley. At least four, maybe more. People were screaming and diving in all directions to get away from the gunfire, with two bodies leaking blood onto the alley. I couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead.
I sought out where I’d left the team and saw Retro across the alley, pistol raised and looking for a target.
I keyed my radio, “Retro, take your guys and flank them. Hit them while they’re still focused on the alley. I’m going back into the restaurant to find a rear exit. You hit them from the left flank and I’ll hit them from the rear.”
Retro caught my eye across the alley, keying his radio. “Roger that. I told you we should have brought at least one long gun. Don’t take too long or the fight’ll be over.”
I nodded at him and turned to go back inside. I saw a small child in the alley, sitting and crying. In the middle of the funnel of rounds.
Jennifer looked at the blood on her arms, not sure how much was hers. She saw a three-inch gash in the fleshy part of her forearm, sending a stab of nausea through her. It looked like a piece of steak from the butcher, her meat leaking blood much slower than she expected. She grabbed a tourist keffiyeh and wrapped it tightly around the wound, fighting back the dizziness the sight caused. The gunfire continued outside, snapping and popping in a steady stream. She duckwalked to the front of the store and peered around a shelf that served as the entrance wall.
Looking down the alley, she saw the body of the store owner faceup, blood pumping from an open head wound. Scores of people of all nationalities were cowering wherever there was cover, and a child of two or three was in the middle of the street, wailing next to the body of a woman.
She saw the team on her side of the alley, pistols raised, looking for a clear shot.
Whoever was shooting at them had no such concerns but was keeping up a steady stream of fire at anything moving, the air in front of her snapping with the crack of supersonic rounds. She counted five muzzle flashes at the end of the alley seventy meters away.
She returned to the boy, mentally begging him to run. She rose into a crouch, preparing to sprint the short distance to him, when a bullet chipped the wood next to her head. She retreated, unable to take her eyes off of the child.
Her body refused to move, the fear of her own death overriding her desire to save the child.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, a form sprinting through the bullets. With a shock, she recognized Pike. She wanted to scream at him to stop, but simply watched him in morbid dread, knowing she was going to witness his death.
He reached the boy and scooped him up without breaking stride, running toward her and the safety of the shop. He reached the low shelf she was hiding behind and launched himself into the air, rotating over like a high jumper, the child cradled in his arms. He landed hard on his back, right next to her, his body cushioning the boy. He lay still.
She shook his shoulders, leaning over him, “Are you hit?”
He looked at her in surprise, letting the boy scamper to the back of the store. He sat up, his face splitting into a grin. “I don’t think so, but I’ll be damned if I know why. What the hell are you doing here?”
She said, “I found—”
He cut her off with a raised finger, listening to his covert earplug.
“No, we aren’t breaking contact. Smoke those fuckers.”
He returned to Jennifer, saying, “Retro’s flanking now. I want to keep them focused down here.”
He leaned out and snapped off a couple of rounds, drawing a fusillade of fire in return, the wood chipping all around him. He snapped his head back.
“Jesus. He’d better hurry the fuck up because I’m not doing that again.”
The words still hung in the air when the gunfight erupted, the random popping of rounds replaced by a cacophony that sounded like a string of firecrackers. In seconds it ended, the silence overpowering.
She heard Pike say, “Roger that. The guy in the bathroom had a Chinese passport as well. Everyone okay?”
He paused a second, listening, then said, “Good to go. Starburst out of here before the cops show up. We’ll meet back at the hotel.”
Scanning the store, he saw for the first time the corpse of the Chinese man Jennifer had fought. Walking over to it, he took in the massive trauma to the head and the bloody lamp next to the body. He looked at Jennifer leaning back against the shelf, her head on her arms. He noticed the keffiyeh, a red stain in the middle.
“You okay?”
She looked at the body, then at him.
“No… no, I’m not.”
33
Keshawn Jackson leaned up on an elbow, barely able to pick out the slumbering form next to him in the feeble light of dawn. A glance at his cheap Casio caused a spark of concern. It was past six.
