stairwell door. Bullet-sized.
'I think someone's-'
Wiktorja screamed. She stared at her right arm as bright red soaked through the sleeve of her jacket. Logan grabbed her and dived behind a tiny, Lego-block-shaped car.
'Are you OK?'
She gritted her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks, blood dripping from one trembling hand. The other was wrapped tightly around her bicep, trying to staunch the bleeding. 'Cholera jasna…'
Logan poked his head over the bonnet of the car and scanned the shadows. No sign of anyone. Why couldn't they hear any gunshots?
A little chunk of concrete path exploded, followed by the sound of a ricochet.
Wiktorja flinched back against the car, then stopped. A look of horror crawled across her face. 'We have to move!'
'What? Where? This is the only cover for-'
'This is a Trabant! Made of fibreglass: the bullets will go straight through it!'
And right on cue a fist-sized hole appeared in the car's bodywork next to Logan's head. 'Shit!'
'Shoot back!'
'At what? I can't see anything.'
THUMP — another hole.
'JUST SHOOT!'
'Jesus…' He scrabbled through his jacket pockets, looking for a pair of latex gloves, pulling out evidence bags, a notebook, little yellow forensics stickers… the collected debris of a dozen crime scenes back home. There was a pair of gloves buried at the bottom, sealed away in their own sterile plastic pack. He stuffed everything else back in his pockets, peeled the pack open, then snapped the gloves on.
'What the hell are you doing?'
'You think I'm leaving my fingerprints all over a strange bloody gun?' He unwrapped the thing from its square of paisley-patterned fabric. It was some sort of heavy-duty semiautomatic pistol and it weighed a ton. Nothing like the nice light Glock 9mm they'd taught him to shoot with during firearms training. Logan ejected the clip, checked it was full, then slapped it back in. He hauled the slide back and let go — it clacked forward into place. Ready.
'Well?' Wiktorja was starting to go pale, her lips taking on a delicate shade of blue. No way she'd lost that much blood already, so it was probably shock. 'What are you waiting for?'
'I can't just shoot into the dark at random! I might hit someone.'
'That is the point!'
THUMP — another hole in the Trabant.
He rolled the paisley handkerchief into a thin rope and tied it above the hole in her arm. 'Try not to pass out on me, OK?'
She grabbed him by the lapel, leaving a bloody handprint. Then kissed him. 'For luck.' Pause. 'You know, like in Star Wars?'
He was right: they were all mad.
Logan snapped up, tried to pick a spot in the shadows where he wasn't going to accidentally shoot someone through their living-room window, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Of course: it wasn't a Glock, was it? He flicked off the safety catch as the car's windscreen blew cubes of glass everywhere. This time when he squeezed, the gun roared, kicked like a mule, and pinged a brass cartridge case out to bounce along the fibreglass bonnet.
BOOOM!
'Bloody thing's a cannon!'
Two more shots came in reply. One shattered the wing mirror and the other thunked into the nearest tree. And this time Logan actually heard a 'futttt' in the darkness. Silencers. He fired a couple back, trying to aim for the noise.
BOOOM! BOOOM!
Ears ringing, he ducked back down again as they retaliated. The Trabant was beginning to look like a badly engineered piece of Swiss cheese.
Voices in the darkness — shouting instructions.
'What are they saying?'
Wiktorja closed her eyes. 'They… they're going to rush us from both sides.'
'How many of them?'
She shrugged, then hissed in pain. 'Three. Maybe four.'
'Sodding, bastarding hell.' He popped his head back over the bonnet, scanning the darkness. There were people standing at their apartment windows now, looking out. One by one the lights went off. No one was coming to help. 'We've got to make a run for it — back into the apartment block, OK? Can you do that?'
Wiktorja bit her bottom lip and nodded.
'Right, on three. One, two…' Logan jumped to his feet, ready to give covering fire. A man was charging towards them: mid-thirties, big moustache, dark curly hair, leather jacket. Gun. Logan shot him.
The man didn't fly backwards like they did in the movies, he just folded up, his momentum carrying him forwards into the other side of the Trabant. The whole car rocked as he slammed against the bodywork.
'Oh God.'
The man started to scream.
Wiktorja grabbed Logan by the sleeve and tried to drag him back towards the building. 'Run!'
'I shot him…'
The car's rear window exploded in a shower of glass.
'You have to move!'
Logan backed up a couple of steps. 'I… I've never shot anyone before…'
She tugged at his sleeve again as chunks of brickwork flew from the wall behind them. 'They are getting closer.'
Logan started forwards. 'We need to get him an ambulance!'
'SHUT UP AND RUN!'
49
They burst through into the building's stairwell. The sound of screaming trailed away as Logan dragged Wiktorja up the stairs. Now the only noise was the blood pounding in his ears, their feet hammering on the concrete steps, and the angry shouting outside. Oh God, the man he'd shot was dead. He'd killed someone. Or maybe the man had just passed out? Please dear God, let him have passed out.
One more storey to go and they were back at Gorzkiewicz's front door. Logan hammered on the plain wooden surface. There was music playing inside: something cheery and upbeat. Down below he could hear feet clattering up the stairs after them.
'GORZKIEWICZ, OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!'
Nothing.
Footsteps getting closer.
Logan backed up to the banister, and slammed his foot into the wood, next to the lock. The frame burst as the deadbolt tore loose, but the chain still held firm. He kicked again and the chain ripped free in a shower of splinters.
He shoved Wiktorja into the darkened apartment, then turned and fired two shots at random down the stairwell. BOOOM! BOOOM!
Outside the gun had been loud, in here it was deafening, the roar bouncing back at them from the solid walls.
Swearing came from the floors below.
Logan charged in after Wiktorja, shutting the door behind him, looking for something to jam against it… only
