Chapter Fifty #2
“Right.” Court said, “I got two of them. You?”
“I know I hit one, don’t know if I put him down.”
Court said, “Dad, we have to move. They are going to converge on this room from different doorways.”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to cross back towards Jacob’s Ladder, go up to the catwalk.”
Jacob’s Ladder was a ladder in a vertical CONNEX box on the northeastern part of the shoot house. It led up to the catwalk, but it was covered, unlike most of the staircases.
Jim reloaded the Staccato with a fresh eighteen-round magazine. Said, “We haven’t done CQB together in a long time.”
“It’s okay,” Court said to his father. “I’ll lead. We’ll keep it simple. We get to a doorway. We peek, pause, push. You stay on my back, you have 180 degrees of responsibility behind me.”
“I can do that.”
They began moving through the warren of rooms, sure there were three or four men around here gunning for them. At each entrance to a room they would stop, and Court would move across the threshold, flash his light while looking in, while his dad checked the hallway behind.
Once Court was reasonably sure there was no one behind, he would begin moving, and his dad would follow, his left hand on his son’s shoulder but his eyes, and his bloody right hand, on the weapon pointed behind.
Court had done this exact form of close-quarters operating back when he was a kid, maybe five or six years old, with his dad at the lead and him in back with a squirt gun.
Now Court led his elderly father, and the stakes were considerably higher.
When they were one hallway away from the CONNEX box with the ladder, Jim flashed his light and saw movement at the other end. He fired the Staccato multiple times at a target there, then ducked into the metal shipping container Court had just entered.
Court had been focusing his attention on the way ahead; he leaned into his dad’s ear. “What did you see?”
“I got one of the fuckers. He’s dead at the end of the hall.”
“He have an Irish cap on?”
“What? No. Just a raincoat.”
“Okay,” Court said. “I want you to stay here, but when I go up that ladder, I want you to fire an entire magazine to the south, shooting up towards the catwalk.
“Then I want you to reload, stay right here, and wait for me to come get you.”
“Okay. Be careful, Court.”
Court put the little revolver in the small of his back again, then began climbing the old ladder, and then Jim started shooting to the south towards the pitch-black catwalk.
—
Campbell Coyle and Alfie Donnelly had seen each other on the catwalk and had begun moving closer together in the dark, their eyes still on the rooms they could see around them.
A burst of gunfire from the northeast turned their heads, but they saw nothing but glowing in an area, no pinpricks of light indicating flashes, so they had no line of sight on the shooter.
Coyle and Donnelly moved closer together, and then Alfie turned, leading the way slowly and gingerly on loose and, in some places, rotten flooring, always keeping one hand on the rail, his eyes ahead and his gun swinging left and right.
Campbell was close behind, his own weapon up, his own light ready to turn on at the first indication of trouble.
Coyle spoke again to his team over his earpiece, and this time he didn’t get a response from Barry.
The Northern Irishman assumed Barry Nolan had been a victim of the last volley of fire he heard.
Then a near-constant barrage came from nearby, sending both men kneeling, as bullets sparked off the tin roof just above them.
Alfie started to react to the panic of the shooting and the rage of losing his brother.
He rose and began to run along the catwalk towards the north, though Coyle thought someone was just letting off some probing fire, and he wanted to just stay where he was.
But Coyle believed strength in numbers was of value now, so he himself rose as soon as the shooting stopped, and he hurried to catch up with Alfie Donnelly.
—
Court Gentry came out of the CONNEX box on the catwalk level just as his father ran out of ammunition in his magazine below. He knew his dad would reload, and he hoped his dad would follow his orders and just wait there, but Court knew it was his own responsibility to end this now.
He expected to find someone on the catwalk as soon as he flashed his light, but he was patient; he probed along slowly, putting each foot down carefully, heeding his father’s advice.
He came to a T junction, turned to the left, then began moving south, still in darkness.
The sound of the rain pounding the tin roof was amplified up here, because he was only six feet below the ceiling, so he thought there was little chance he’d hear much of anything, but then the slapping sound of footsteps came from directly in front of him.
Someone was running up here; they weren’t close, maybe thirty feet, but they were approaching quickly.
Court aimed the little Smith and Wesson with one hand, then hooked the back of his hand around the back of the other hand, which held a tactical flashlight.
He clicked on the beam and saw a big young man moving along the catwalk with a stainless steel automatic pistol in front of him.
The man seemed surprised to find an enemy up here in front of him; his weapon was oriented towards the rooms down below.
Court fired at the man and hit the gun with his first round, sending sparks into the air. With his second shot he caught the man in the face, and then with the third the big man’s head snapped to the side, and he began to fall forward, still running.
A fourth shot from the little revolver hit the stumbling man in the shoulder, and Court was about to empty the gun into the body when he realized that a second man was running right behind the first.
Instantly Court recognized Campbell Coyle, just twenty-five feet away from him.
Both men had their guns up; Court had just one round left in the chamber of his revolver.
And then the big running man’s falling body impacted the catwalk floor, right above a support beam that had been quietly rotting away for twenty years.
The beam snapped under the weight.
Court squeezed his trigger.
Coyle squeezed his trigger.
The floor fell out from under them both, and they disappeared in the darkness and the wreckage, their shots flying harmlessly into the trees around the shoot house.