Dead Eye

SIXTEEN

Gentry had moved southeast away from the Old Town and into a newer district full of restaurants and office buildings that were empty at this time of morning. From all directions he heard sirens as first responders raced to the scene of the gun battle, and flashing lights beat off glass and metal surfaces. Court ducked into doorways and behind bus stops when emergency vehicles came into view, but this was slowing him down, and he searched for a faster route out of the area.

He had lied to Russ; Court had no intention of hanging out here at the edge of the kill zone where eight guys had come out of nowhere to punch his ticket, especially now that every cop in town was racing through the blizzard and into the area.

Court leaned into the blowing snow and pushed on. He wore his black coat now and stayed in the shadows, and he concentrated on remaining low profile while putting some distance between himself and the scene.

Court thought back to everything that had happened, or at least everything that happened after his head had cleared from the effect of the nine-banger. He was pretty sure he’d dropped three or four of the opposition. The guy he’d fired at in the hallway of the hotel before running up the staircase, the dude who’d been shooting at him from the hotel parking lot, and the two guys he and Russ had shot in the alley after falling off the roof into the snowdrift. He’d also tried to bury a couple of shooters in an avalanche as he ran along the roof, but he had no idea if he’d been successful with that low-probability plan.

And he also had no clue if Russ had managed to take out any of the enemy, which meant there could easily still be four or five able-bodied assholes in the neighborhood with a mandate to kill him.

No thanks, Gentry thought to himself as he walked through the storm. I’m not going to sit around and wait for that.

Whoever the hell Russ was, Court knew he could take care of himself.

Except for the fact he’d gotten himself shot while saving Gentry’s life.

Dammit.

Court kept walking, perhaps a little slower now, but he kept walking.

Kaubamaja Street was dark and quiet, so he turned onto it, moving through the heavy snowfall and out of the streetlamps’ glow. Sirens squealed on a parallel parkway, but Gentry felt safe enough to keep walking here for the next few blocks.

He had not asked for Russ’s help. He had no idea who he was or what his intentions were. For all Court knew, the man was a bounty hunter ordered to bring Court back alive, back to Madrigal or LaurentGroup or whoever the fuck was now running Sid’s operation. Just because the bastard spoke English like he was American did not mean he wasn’t a bad guy.

Meant nothing at all. Some of the biggest pricks Gentry knew were American.

But the guy had taken a bullet, a bullet that was meant for Court.

Court slowed down a little more.

“Dammit, Gentry,” he mumbled aloud.

He had to do something for him. Something to help him out or, more precisely, something that would allow Court to walk away from this shit with a clear conscience. He could find a place to get out of the weather for a minute to warm up and, at the same time, to watch for Russ, just to make sure he was good to go.

Court found a dark alley that gave him a good line of sight of the intersection, and he stood in a doorway there, out of the wind. He shook off the snow that covered his coat and eyed the streets leading back to the Old Town. Every thirty seconds another whining flashing emergency vehicle passed, and up the hill in the district where it had all gone down it looked like a damned fireworks display. Flashing, glowing red and amber lights bounced off every reflective surface for a square mile. The lights were visible even through the blizzard, and they indicated to Court that the area was crawling with cops now, and the streets would be full of onlookers.

Court figured Russ didn’t stand a chance of getting out of there unseen, especially hobbled with a gunshot wound.

He had his eyes focused on streetlights in the mid-distance, not expecting to see anyone passing, and he did not, but suddenly he saw a brief movement on the sidewalk much closer. Just fifty feet away he saw a figure in a dark coat, wearing a backpack and limping slightly. Though obviously injured, the man seemed to float easily through the urban landscape, avoiding the lights of the passing cars, just as Gentry himself had done.

The man — clearly now it was Russ — stopped in the snow, lifted his left hand to his face to check the blood, then pressed his hand again to his hip and limped on.

Shit. Court wanted to watch the man pass and disappear in the snow, but his innate sense of self-preservation was eclipsed, in this instance anyway, by his innate sense of honor, and he could not bring himself to leave the wounded American behind.

Court stepped out of the alley and whistled. In moments Russ crossed the street and joined him in the doorway.

Russ said, “I was beginning to think you hit the bricks.”

“No,” Court replied, wondering if he should have done just that.

“I heard shooting. You run into more assholes?”

“Yeah. Nothing left but us good guys now.” Court moved Russ’s hand away from his left hip and pulled a flashlight from his backpack and shined it on the area. There was a hole in Russ’s jeans just below his belt on the far left side of his hip, and blood had soaked the denim all the way down to the knee.

Court said, “You aren’t trailing blood, not yet, but we’ve got to find a place to treat that wound. We can lie low for a bit, at least until all the first responders get out of the way.”

Russ just nodded, pressing down on his hip again to slow the flow of blood.

They moved down the alley and found a staircase in the darkness that led down to a basement door. Court picked the lock with help from his flashlight and a set of picks from his pack. While he did this Russ sat silently on the steps and watched.

In under a minute they were inside and found themselves in the tiny kitchen of a pub that had closed for the evening hours earlier. They made their way to the bar area, and Russ stepped behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of Redbreast Irish whiskey. He bit off the cork, spit it on the floor, and took a long swig.

Court headed to the front of the establishment, parted the vinyl curtains, and saw that the entrance to the pub was belowground, just like the rear. A tiny staircase led up to street level at the front.

He checked his watch; it was four forty-five A.M., and the sign on the window said the bar did not open until three P.M.

“We’ll be fine here,” he called back to Russ. “No one can see us from the street.”

Court moved back to the bar, and for the first time since the action in the Old Town he realized he was also banged up. He had his own bumps and bruises and scrapes and pulls; the adrenaline in his bloodstream and, to a lesser degree, the cold air had numbed him, but now all the jumping over alleys and falling off roofs was catching up to him. Still, Court knew from experience that most things on his body that were hurting were going to hurt even more tomorrow no matter what he did now.

Russ, on the other hand, was truly injured, and Court knew he had to treat him quickly. He flipped on a small table lamp on the bar, and, motioning to the wound, he asked, “You okay with me checking that?”

Russ took off his coat and lifted his shirt, then undid his bloody jeans and lowered them a few inches. He leaned his elbows on the bar, bracing himself for the pain that was sure to come.

Court grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka from behind the bar and unscrewed the cap. He didn’t bother to tell Russ that it was going to hurt; he had no doubt the other American would know that as well as he. Instead he just poured half a bottle of the clear spirit over the bloody injury, washing away the blood and giving Gentry his first chance to assess the damage. He saw both entry and exit wounds, two inches apart just below the man’s belt line on his left side. “Nice one,” he said.

Russ grunted with the burn, then growled, “In what sense is it ‘nice’?”

“You aren’t about to die, so that’s nice for you. You’ve got an exit wound, so it’s through and through. That’s good, too. You okay with me checking it for frag?”

Again, Court was certain the other man would know exactly what he meant.

Russ tensed up, holding on to the side of the table. He grunted again in anticipation of the pain. Then whispered, “Do it.”

Court poured the vodka over the fingers of his right hand, then began feeling around the outside of the entry wound. He said, “No fragments. It’s a little hole. Not a handgun. They were rocking MP7s, so you took a four-point-six-millimeter round. Personally, I’m not a fan of the caliber.”

Russ said, “I am developing a bias against it myself.”

Court snorted out a polite laugh. He kept digging, feeling into the hole now with his semisterilized fingers. Court fought a slight trembling in his hands, concentrated on his task, and hoped this stranger would not be able to pick up on the fact he was unnerved by his close brush with death.

Russ showed he had more pressing problems by grunting with pain.

Court poured more vodka on his hand, washing off the blood. “I need to see if your hip is broken. You ready for this?”

Russ did not speak; he just nodded. Sweat covered his brow.

Court’s finger felt its way through the path of the bullet; he rubbed against the bone under the torn skin and muscle and felt a scored and jagged hardness, but no major fracture. “You are a lucky son of a bitch. It just grazed the bone. It will hurt for a couple of weeks, but if you don’t get an infection, you’ll forget it ever happened.”

Court pulled his hand out of the wound, then emptied the bottle of vodka into the hole. “Jeez, man. You’re a bleeder, aren’t you?”

Russ bit his lip from the pain. His face was almost white, and the only thing holding him up was the bar.

Court wiped away blood with a bar towel. “We’ll need a compress and some ice.”

Court fashioned a bandage from a bar towel, then soaked it with more vodka to clean it and tied it tight around Russ’s waist with a cotton apron. He filled a plastic bag with ice from the bar freezer and cinched this over the bar towel with another apron.

Russ then walked around the bar for a moment to test his leg and his hip. He gave Court a weak thumbs-up. “Good work.”

With the ice numbing the wound area and the blood flow under control, Russ appeared stronger almost immediately. He washed the blood off his hands, drank some water from the tap, then grabbed the bottle of Redbreast and two shot glasses from behind the bar. He looked at Court. “How ’bout you let me buy you a drink?”