Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Ten seconds earlier, Court found himself on his knees on the bed in the middle of Irene Ortega’s bedroom, smoke swirling around him, and here he took just an instant to get his bearings.
Looking through the glass lenses of the holographic weapon’s sight on his small pistol high in front of him, he actuated his weapon light and saw through the darkness, through the smoke, a figure standing in the doorway to the bathroom, facing away, waiting for the smoke to clear so that he could shoot the woman who must have been somewhere inside.
But the noise of the shattering glass behind him had caused the killer known as Deep Space to look back over his shoulder in Court’s direction.
Court saw a latex mask covering his face; he barely made out the man’s wide eyes reflecting in the light through the eyeholes.
The surprised killer began spinning his body, shifting his aim towards the man who’d just appeared behind him from nowhere.
Court fired a double tap, two rounds into the spinning man’s torso, and then, not knowing if his enemy was wearing body armor, he targeted the man’s head, but Deep Space’s body collapsed so fast, Court missed high with his third round.
Court stood up on the bed now, window glass crunching under his boots as he did so, then aimed at the man who had fallen back onto the threshold into the bathroom.
Court fired twice more, both times into the man’s head. Blood and tissue splattered into the bathroom, painting the side of the tub.
Court started to broadcast to his team, but then a fresh volley of gunfire echoed up to him from the street directly below, and more gunfire came from the east, from the direction of Hightower and the Ford Expedition.
Both of his teammates sounded like they were engaging multiple adversaries, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it up here.
The American leapt off the bed, quickly cleared the rest of the smoky condo with the light on his weapon, then came back and found the woman still lying fetal inside the bathtub, her hands covering her ears.
Court’s own ears rang as he grabbed her right arm and helped her up to her feet.
She stood on shaky legs, then stepped out of the tub as he assisted her.
Irene Ortega was in stocking feet; the thick smoke had cleared enough for him to see that much, so he told her to put on her shoes.
But the other complication in a night full of them was that he had no idea what Ortega’s involvement in all of this was. Could she have been a bad actor, as well? He realized he’d lost sight of her when she went into her closet, so he pointed his weapon there and shined his light.
The woman’s face was drained of color; she was in shock as she stepped into a pair of slip-on tennis shoes, then squinted into the light shining at her.
“What now?” she asked.
He had to get the woman out of here, down to street level, then out of D.C. He prayed the two other assets of his organization would be ready to go with him by the time he climbed into a vehicle, but for now he had to focus completely on his own predicament.
—
Matt Hanley stood in the darkness of the suite in the Hotel AKA Washington Circle, still wishing he had a weapon, but for now all he could do was try to watch the action in the street and monitor his earpiece for news.
He couldn’t see Travers; he was behind the side of a building, but it looked like he had nowhere to go from there. Hightower had disappeared in the distance, somewhere on the other side of his vehicle.
Behind him Hanley heard Arnold quickly zipping bags, clicking closed cases, dragging things towards the door.
He called out to Arnold now. “Bricklayer, how soon till we’re clear?”
“Ready to go.”
“Okay.” He turned to Gumdrop, who stood in front of the last laptop still on the table. “We get to the vic and go pick up the assets.”
The three of them rushed out of the hotel room, each one carrying multiple backpacks and rolling more luggage behind them.
—
Chris Travers found himself back up on his knees, halfway down the ramp to the locked underground parking garage door and facing L Street to the south.
There was no gunfire here, though he heard it echoing against the buildings from the east, and this told him Zack was still fighting there.
At first, that was about all he knew. He found himself a little dazed; he’d pushed himself up to his knees seconds earlier, after being shot and knocked down, disoriented by the spin and the pain and the fall, and it was only now he realized he did not have a gun in his hand.
He looked down and saw it, right in front of him, and he hefted it with his right hand.
And then the pain under his right ear began anew.
Aiming the pistol up the incline and at the street—the Audi was thirty feet out of sight on his left on the other side of the ramp wall—he searched for a target while at the same time evaluating his injury.
He knew he’d been shot in the neck, and that was never good news, but he wasn’t dead, and his body seemed to be working, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to wield the pistol.
There was blood, of course; no one gets shot in the neck without bleeding.
He felt it on the pistol, he felt it running down his upper arm and dripping from his elbow, his forearm, and he worried that fighting with his right hand, swinging his arm around and snapping off rounds with moderate recoil, just might turn a damaged artery into a severed artery.
If that happened, he’d bleed out in moments; he knew this, but he also knew he had a job to do.
He reached up with his left hand, put as much pressure as he possibly could on a jagged wound two inches below his ear, and felt blood seep between his fingers.
Chris Travers had been in the Airborne, he’d been in U.S.
Army Special Forces, and he’d served in a CIA paramilitary unit, so he knew all about gunshot wounds.
The blood he felt was annoying, slightly worrisome because it was coming from his own body, but—in the short term, anyhow—it wasn’t life-threatening.
The blood from the wound was not spraying, it wasn’t under pressure, and that meant he was still in this fight; he just knew he had to do whatever he could to hasten the end of this fight and get treatment.
He took stock of his physical surroundings now; he had decent coverage here from the little wall between himself and the Audi, but he knew he couldn’t hide here, because if at least one of the Gauntlet men was still alive up on the street, and they had an incentive to keep the fight going, it would take just seconds for them to come around from his left, gun or guns barking and belching out lead towards the only tiny piece of cover in the area.
Heavy gunfire continued from Hightower’s scene to the east, and Chris wondered how much ammo Zack had with him.
He heard voices off to his left now; this told him both his enemies were still alive, and they were plotting his demise.
Suddenly, a sense of anger welled up in him.
He rose from his knees to his feet, the pistol still straight out ahead, and he saw motion now, in the darkness on L Street.
A man shifted into view from his left; Chris must have had himself in darkness because the man didn’t immediately see him, but when Travers saw the gun in the man’s hand begin to swing into the tight corner here, he fired three rounds in rapid succession.
The man buckled, shuffled back a few steps, then dropped dead in the street.
Travers knew there was only one more man from the Audi, and he thought there was a chance the man had been injured in that first close-in volley, just as Travers himself had been.
He began creeping forward, ready to engage the man if he was still somewhere by the car on the left, but then he heard the engine of the German sedan fire and the tires squeal as the vehicle began to race off.
For one complete second, Travers thought about letting the Gauntlet man drive away, but then it occurred to him that the Audi driver just might be on his way to go help his teammates up the street in their fight with Zack.
Travers clutched his neck even harder now as he staggered up the ramp, then into the darkened street. Traffic had been incredibly light in the five minutes since he’d come out of the hotel, mercifully so, in fact, but now a single vehicle appeared, slammed on its brakes behind him.
He saw a delivery van, the driver’s eyes wide and terrified, and Travers knew this man was no threat.
Turning back towards the danger, he knew he had other things to worry about.
Hightower was somewhere beyond his field of view, but he was potentially not out of his field of fire.
The black Expedition was two blocks beyond where Travers’s gun was aimed, so he knew he had to be careful with his shots.
He ignored the vehicle behind him, kept the pressure up with his left hand on the right side of his neck, and felt himself stumble a little as he slowed to turn, then raised his small pistol with his right hand.
He aimed carefully at the Audi heading east on L Street and fired one round directly into the back of the head of the driver at a range of eighty feet.
He did not fire again, did not want to send more bullets downrange, potentially into Hightower’s position.
The Audi veered sharply to the right, then crashed into a building on 22nd Street and came to an abrupt stop.
Travers took a few steps in the direction of the continued noise coming from Zack’s firefight, then slowed, then stopped. Zack was maybe sixty yards away, but if Travers ran to him, he might well bleed out on the way. He dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and spoke into his mic now.
“This is Teddy. I’m hit.”
Matt Hanley responded immediately. “On the way to your poz at this time. Be there in two mikes. Hang on.”
“Go help Night Train. I’m good here,” he said, and then he sat down, quickly pulled off his jacket, and used it as a larger compress on his neck.