5. Percy Leads
CHAPTER FIVE
PERCY LEADS
I t would take a lot of cocaine for almost anyone to feel confident in their ability to take Percy Ashdown on when he was spoiling for a fight. He was tall, muscular, always with a touch of madness about his compelling eyes, but he was very rarely standing atop the central table of a room towering over everyone else dressed extravagantly in the garb of a well-known killer.
Dubois may have been arrogant to a fault, but he was also rich to the point of moral ruination, therefore he yelled, “Security!”
He needn’t have. The two men in black uniforms, who were already wishing they’d taken that other job, moved from the base of the stairs to either side of Percy. The guests backed up a little to enjoy the drama, hoping they had enough distance to avoid being hurt in the crossfire.
In a very tired voice, one of the guards said, “Kom alsjeblieft daar vandaan.”
“I don’t speak Flemish,” Percy replied. “But ‘no’”.
The men, however, understood his refusal perfectly well. They threw a few pointed glances across at one another, while Percy stood very still, waiting to see who would make a move first. It may have been nothing more than a nervous twitch, but whatever it was, the one on the right copped Percy’s shoe on his chin for the offence of a sudden gesture. His head flipped up and back and smashed into the stone wall. Percy twisted around and brought the back of his heel across the other man’s cheek. That man was large, and didn’t move except for a recoverable snap of his neck, so Percy rebalanced himself and gave him a jumping front kick to the nose instead.
Blood. Blood was always good because it unsettled the opponent triple-fold. The guard looked at the red just long enough for Percy to smack a palm into his chin, and he was down.
The first guy had recovered to the point of unsteady standing, but he wasn’t the target any more than the man with blood streaming down his face was, and Percy had no real interest in crippling either of them that night. He jumped down from the table and closed the distance between himself and Dubois in four short steps. Dubois’s face remained defiant, as falsely smug as it could be in that situation, and Percy was determined to correct it.
He snapped Dubois’s wrist back, and his knife clattered to the floor. Percy got one good punch in, his fist striking Dubois’s cheekbone hard enough to break it, but within a half second of contact he was wrenched backwards and thrown to the floor. He felt the boot of a new security guard on his chest and locked an arm around the back of the man’s supporting leg. He rammed hard into it, the leg gave at the knee, Percy twisted over and smashed a hand down on his kneecap, felling him into a screaming mess.
Percy was aware of Dubois in his peripheral vision, baying for his blood as he pretended to protest against being dragged from the room by even more security, but Percy was unable to follow because of the strong arm that tightened around his neck and jerked him backwards. Percy threw a sharp elbow into the man’s ribs three times and met nothing but solid muscle.
It was a cheap shot, but Percy knew Joe might, by that time, be in a room alone with a deadly painting, so he flicked his wrist, releasing his dagger from its holster, and dug the blade into the man’s thigh. He aimed for the edge, trying to avoid any major arteries as best he could, but the man inadvertently flinched and Percy took a larger slice than he had intended to.
“Fuck! Sorry.” He turned, smashed the man’s head down hard onto his knee and let him drop, unconscious and not in excruciating pain. For now.
The other guests had been forced out of the room with Dubois. There were four large men writhing on the ground, and Percy was just about to make a break for it when he heard the click.
He paused, back to the gun, blood dripping from his dagger.
“Zet het neer,” said the shaky voice.
Percy guessed he was being asked to put the knife down. So he had a decision to make. Do that and risk a fist fight against a gun? Risk being hauled off to jail over this and leave Joe to deal with everything by himself? Or drop, aim, and fling the dagger into the man’s neck, killing him in one clean blow. Because if Percy let him live, if Joe couldn’t do it all by himself, how many more people would Dubois kill with the painting?
And above all, was this stranger’s life worth risking Joe’s?
With that final reflection, the man’s fate was as good as sealed.