splintered hole and buried itself in the ceiling above me and left dust and traces of smoke in the air.
No gunshot. They all had silencers.
I fired back, a triple tap vertically downward, straight through the same hole. Then I stepped away to where I guessed their kitchen was.
Fourteen rounds gone. Sixteen remaining. Nine loose in my pocket.
Another shot came up through the floor. Seven feet from me. I fired back. They fired back. I fired back one more time and figured they were starting to understand the pattern, so I crept out to the hallway and the head of the stairs.
Where I found that they had been figuring exactly the same thing: that I was getting into the rhythm. A guy was sneaking up on me. Number two on Springfield’s list. He had another Sig P220 in his hand. With a silencer. He saw me first. Fired once, and missed. I didn’t. I put a triple tap into the bridge of his nose and it climbed to the middle of his forehead and blood and brain spattered on the wall behind him and he went back down where he had come from in a heap.
His gun went with him.
My spent brass tinkled away across the pine.
Twenty-three rounds gone. Seven left, plus nine loose.
One guy up, plus the Hoths themselves.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
I ignored her. I pictured her crouching one floor below, Svetlana at her side. One last guy between them and me. How would they use him? They weren’t dumb. They were the heirs of a long and tough tradition. They had dodged and weaved and feinted through the hills for two hundred years. They knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t send the guy up the stairs. Not again. That was fruitless. They would try to outflank me. They would send the guy up the fire escape. They would distract me with the phone and let the guy line up through the glass and shoot me in the back.
When?
Either immediately or much later. No middle ground. They would want me either surprised or bored.
They chose immediately.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
I stepped back into the left-hand room and checked the view. The iron ladder rose right-to-left from my perspective. I would see the guy’s head as he came up from below. Which was good. But my angle wasn’t good. The street was narrow. Nine-millimetre Parabellums are handgun rounds. They are considered suitable for urban environments. They are much more likely than a rifle round to stick in the target and go no farther. Subsonic Parabellums, more likely still. But nothing is guaranteed. And there were innocent non-combatants across the street. Bedroom windows, slumbering children. Through- and-through bull’s-eyes could reach them. Wild deflections could reach them. And ricochets, or fragments. Certainly out- and-out misses could reach them.
Collateral damage, just waiting to happen.
I crept through the room and flattened myself against the window wall. Glanced out. Nothing there. I extended my arm and flipped the window latch. Tried the handles. The window was stuck. I glanced out again. Nothing there. I stepped in front of the glass and grabbed the handles and heaved. The window moved and stuck and moved again and then shot up in the frame and slammed open so hard the pane cracked end to end.
I backed up against the wall again.
Listened hard.
Heard the dull muted clang of rubber soles on iron. A steady little rhythm. He was coming up fast, but he wasn’t running. I let him come. I let him get all the way up. I let him get his head and shoulders in the room. Dark hair, dark skin. He was number fifteen on Springfield’s list. I lined up parallel with the front wall of the building. He glanced left. He glanced right. He saw me. I pulled the trigger. A triple tap. He moved his head.
I missed. Maybe the first or the last of the three bullets tore his ear off but he stayed alive and conscious and fired back wildly and then ducked back outside. I heard him fall against the narrow iron walkway.
Now or never.
I went out after him. He was scrambling head first down the stairs. He made it back to the fourth floor and rolled on his back and raised his gun like it was a hundred-pound weight. I came down the ladder after him and leaned away from the building and stitched a triple tap into the centre of his face. His gun spun and clanged end over end two floors down and lodged ten feet above the sidewalk.
I breathed in.
I breathed out.
Six men down. Seven arrested. Four back home. Two in a locked ward.
Nineteen for nineteen.
The fourth floor window was open. The drapes were drawn back. A studio apartment. Derelict, but not demolished. Lila and Svetlana Hoth were standing together behind the kitchenette counter.
Twenty-nine rounds gone.
One left.
I heard Lila’s voice in my head again:
I climbed over the sill and stepped into the room.
EIGHTY-ONE
The apartment was laid out the same as the ruined place on the second floor. Living room at the front, then the kitchenette, then the bathroom, then the closet at the back. The walls were still up. The plaster was all still in place. There were two lights burning. There was a folded-up bed against the wall in the living room. Plus two hard chairs. Nothing else. The kitchenette had two parallel counters and one wall cupboard. A tiny space. Lila and Svetlana were crammed hip to hip in it. Svetlana on the left, Lila on the right. Svetlana was in a brown house dress. Lila was in black cargo pants and a white T-shirt. The shirt was cotton. The pants were made of rip-stop nylon. I guessed they would rustle as she moved. She looked as beautiful as ever. Long dark hair, bright blue eyes, perfect skin. A quizzical half-smile. It was a bizarre scene. Like a radical fashion photographer had posed his best model in a gritty urban setting.
I aimed the MP5. Black and wicked. It was hot. It stank of gunpowder and oil and smoke. I could smell it quite clearly.
I said, ‘Put your hands on the counter.’
They complied. Four hands appeared. Two brown and gnarled, two paler and slim. They spread them like starfish, two blunt and square, two longer and more delicate.
I said, ‘Step back and lean on them:
They complied. It made them more immobile. Safer. I said, ‘You’re not mother and daughter.’
Lila said, ‘No, we’re not.’
‘So what are you?’
‘Teacher and pupil.’
‘Good. I wouldn’t want to shoot a daughter in front of her mother. Or a mother in front of her daughter.’
‘But you would shoot a pupil in front of her teacher?’
‘Maybe the teacher first.’
‘So do it.’
I stood still.
Lila said, ‘If you mean it, this is where you do it.’
I watched their hands. Watched for tension, or effort, or moving tendons, or increased pressure on their fingertips. For signs they were about to go somewhere.
There were no such signs.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
