Chapter Fifty-One
Fifty-One
Jim Gentry heard the blasts of gunfire, the crack of wood, the symphony of a multistage collapse that shattered a catwalk, crumpled staircases, snapped support beams, even pulled a portion of the tin roof down as old and unmaintained support cables popped.
Jim knew his son had been up there, in the fight, when it happened, so he rose from the shipping container he’d been hiding in, then bolted as fast as he could towards the center of the building. He used his flashlight along with his gun to clear the way, but he wasted no time closing on the area.
The crash had happened halfway down and on the western side of the building, and Jim thought about going out an exit and then entering back into the building near to where it happened, but he saw that the hallway down the middle of the shoot house was only partially blocked with fallen debris.
He moved through it quickly, passing a man covered in blood and faceup. He had several obvious bullet holes and he wasn’t moving, so Jim didn’t shoot him again and reveal his presence any more than his flashlight already did.
He’d just made it into a room they called the Ballroom because of nothing more than its size when he found Court lying there, half buried under moldy plywood and two-by-fours. Rain from an open hole in the roof the size of a minivan poured in on his son, and the hole gave some light to the scene.
He knelt over Court, then quickly looked up to a west-side exit door to the outside, where a man appeared, silhouetted by the light behind him.
The man raised a pistol, Jim raised his, and they both got off one shot before the man stumbled away, out of view. Jim didn’t think he’d killed the enemy, but he heard footsteps slapping through the mud, and that told him the man was running away.
Below him, Court said, “Was that him?”
“Don’t know. You okay?” Jim asked.
“I’m fine.” He began pushing the wood off himself. “Coyle. Coyle was on the catwalk. Did you see him?”
“I saw one dead guy. I don’t think it was—”
“Was he wearing a hat?”
“No.”
“Fuck!” Court said, still struggling to push himself free and stand up.
Jim said, “The only guy I saw alive is running away.”
“Let him go,” Court said. “We have to find—”
“If that’s him,” Jim told his son, “then this is the best chance to end this shit.”
Jim Gentry rose and moved quickly towards the exit, his Staccato up in front of him.
“Dad! Wait!” Court said, still trying to push free of all the debris.
The elder Gentry broke into a run, got to the doorway at full speed, then caught his foot on a cable that had snapped from above and now hung loose across the doorway. Jim stumbled a little, just enough to lose his balance, and his eyeglasses fell off his face.
He caught them as they tumbled down his body, then he looked up to see two men going over the top of the berm, running away in unison, back in the direction of the SUV they’d parked on the western side.
“Dammit!” Jim said as he fumbled to get his glasses back on, and then when he did, he watched while the SUV drove at high speed around a CONNEX, then through the stormy weather back south towards the tree line and the road beyond it.
He rushed back towards his son, who was now clear of the wreckage but struggling to find the little pistol in all the mess.
When his father got close, Court said, “Give me my piece.”
Jim handed the Staccato over to his son, and while doing so, said, “It’s a full mag. I just saw two of them drive away.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. West side. That means we killed four.”
Court found the 642 revolver, handed it back to his dad.
He reached into his pocket and passed over the strip clip.
“Reload and wait right here for me.” He moved towards the exit, hobbling a little at first, suffering the effects of the fall and the crash of the old catwalk.
As he walked, he called out to his dad. “You’re sure you saw two drive off? ”
Jim opened the cylinder of the pistol, began removing spent shells. “Yep. I saw two go over the berm. Then I saw the Suburban take off. I can’t say for sure that…” He paused, looking away from the gun, then said, “I didn’t see how many were in the vehicle. It was too far away.”
As Jim spoke, he reloaded the pistol with his four remaining bullets, his eyes on his son as he ran through the door, leaping over the cable Jim himself had tripped on. Court then ran up onto the berm, his pistol out in front of him as he went.
Jim stood there a moment watching, he closed the cylinder, then looked down at his partially loaded revolver.
He decided he’d go back to the dead man he’d passed in the hall and look for his weapon, but only after putting an insurance round in the poor bastard, just to make sure he was dead.
If those two men in the SUV doubled back, Jim reasoned, then they might need more firepower than his little two-inch Smith could provide.
—
Campbell Coyle looked at the rain, at the sky, trying to make sense of it all. It had seemed like it would be so easy, at first. Go to an old man’s house, take the old man, force his son to show up to get him.
Then kill the son and let the old man go.
But now…but now it was all such a bloody mess.
Now…now he lay on his back, watching the rain pour down on him, and he wondered how long he’d been knocked unconscious.
He’d looked right at the Gray Man; the killer of his boy, Charlie, had been a half dozen paces distant, no more, when he began to press the trigger on his pistol.
And then the world had turned upside down.
He remembered falling, remembered something hitting his head when he was in the air, and he did not remember anything else, not till now.
He lay on his back, wet and hurting, no doubt injured.
He felt around with his right hand, realized his weapon was there, and he grabbed it, and then he recognized that there was something lying across his legs.
He lifted his head and saw that it was just a bit of plywood, some rusty tin, a few pieces of rotten support beam.
But then, beyond that, he saw something else.
On the other end of the hall, illuminated from light coming from another hole in the roof, a man stood there, aiming a gun at something on the floor.
Coyle couldn’t make him out in the heavy rain coming down, but when the man fired his pistol, the Northern Irishman rose quickly, pushing debris out of the way.
He extended his gun arm.
Coyle got a sight picture through the window of his optic, put it right on the target in the low light, and then he realized he wasn’t looking at Court Gentry. The killer of his son.
No, he was looking at the old man.
Through his weapon’s optic he saw the father—wet silver hair, eyeglasses, a scowl of a mouth—look up in his direction suddenly, and the eyes behind the thick eyeglasses widened for an instant.
Then they narrowed with resolve.
He raised his pistol towards Campbell.
“No!” Campbell Coyle shouted. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
—
Jim Gentry squeezed the trigger on the Smith and Wesson revolver, and the hammer dropped on the one empty cylinder in the weapon.
The gun went click.
And then Jim Gentry saw the flash of the barrel of the gun in the other man’s hand.
The seventy-five-year-old felt the blunt, forceful impact dead center in his chest.
Then he was falling, not flying. Down, not back, dropping to the wet ground, amid the trash and the mud of the catwalk.
He folded up, rolled over, and died.
One perfect gunshot through the heart.
—
Court Gentry had swept the area out behind the berm for more enemy, found nothing but the tire tracks of the retreating Suburban. He heard a shot inside the building; it sounded like his dad’s .38, and he took it as his father putting an insurance round into one of the killers.
Another shot came just two seconds later.
It sounded similar enough to him out here, out in the rain, so he thought little of it other than the fact that he’d told his dad to stay right where he was.
He headed back towards the shoot house, looking up at the unceasing rain, and then, just before he made it back inside, he heard a new noise.
An engine firing on the opposite side of the building.
He ran back to the top of the berm just in time to see the other gray Suburban roll off towards the trees.
Court was far away, over fifty yards, and he couldn’t see who was inside, so he knew better than to fire.
So, just as his dad had said, two men had gotten away, but they’d each taken a different vehicle.
Court climbed back down the berm, squinting in the rain, and then he went back inside the shoot house to find his father.
—
The Cirrus Vision Jet flew over the East Coast, halfway between Jacksonville and Norfolk, Virginia, over two hours into its journey, the first time Court Gentry considered answering his phone.
It was two p.m.; he’d made it back to the airport by eleven thirty, just after the storm ended, and then the jet waited its turn to take off. All the while the FibreNet app on his phone kept buzzing, every ten minutes or so.
Each time, he’d reject the call.
The Signal app rang a couple of times, as well, and this would be Hanley, who knew what had happened, or Zoya, who by now probably also knew, although he hadn’t spoken with her.
He’d called Hanley when he was still on the property, when the storm still raged, before any police or ambulance had arrived, and who knew who Hanley had told?
Hanley had agreed to contact Skip, to have him come back out to the scene as soon as the weather cleared a little, and to make sure the body of his friend, Court’s father, was respected by local authorities.
Court wanted to take his dad back home with him, but that was a no-go.
Hanley insisted the locals had to process the scene, that Court’s dad had to be there or the incident would grow in complexity and attention by five thousand percent, and Skip would be told just what to say and just what to do.