Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Court Gentry slid like a baseball player stealing home, then up to his knees, and he put his back against the lion pedestal to shield himself from the three-way gun battle raging across the pool. He looked at the five women with him here behind the big statue. They all looked back at him, some with unrestrained terror in their eyes. He shouted over the gunfire, “English? Everybody speaks English?”

He saw looks of shock on some faces, and he was pretty sure a couple of the girls were high. The platinum blonde with the long bangs and the Middle Eastern eyes nodded first, and then some of the others said yes.

He drew his gun just as a Thai man rounded the shallow end of the swimming pool on his right, carrying a silver .45 caliber pistol in his hand. He was obviously looking for his boss, and he was braver and more loyal than he was competent.

Court shot him in the side of the head before he even noticed the group standing behind the statue next to the hot tub.

Some of the ladies screamed.

Court realized he couldn’t shepherd all five of these women to safety at once. They would present a massive target, and everyone in the room would lock on to them during the forty-foot run to the changing area.

He shook the auburn-haired woman to stop her from screaming, and he spoke to the group over the gunfire. “Listen up! I’m taking you through that doorway over there, one at a time. When I get you there, run straight to the back. There is a stairwell. Find it. Don’t wait on the others, just go!”

He heard an “okay,” a “da,” and a few other noises, maybe not a response from everyone, but they all seemed at least to understand he was trying to help them.

The girl with auburn hair sounded Russian. She looked up towards the ceiling, where the smoke poured into the dark room through the air ducts. Already the phony starscape on the ceiling was completely obscured. “There’s a fire! There’s smoke!”

Court looked around the side of the pedestal quickly, making sure no one else was approaching his position. While he did this he said, “We have to hurry. Go down one flight of stairs, then get into the hallway. There is a window that looks out on a fire escape. Take that down to the street.”

A busty redhead wearing only a bra and panties cried openly. Court sized her up as the most unhinged of the group and decided he needed to move these women in ascending order of levelheadedness.

He took the busty redhead by the wrists. “You come first. Put your hands on me here.” He turned away from her and put her behind him, placed her hands on his hips. “Move with me, understand?”

She sniffed and cried. Just then, a bullet snapped the tile floor just inches from where the group stood.

“Shit!” shouted Court in surprise, and this brought the redhead behind him to the edge of hysterics. “It’s okay,” he said, although it clearly was not.

“Just stay behind me and you’ll be fine. Ready?”

And with that, Court moved across the open space, walking backwards and to his left, facing the threats of the room, covering the woman behind him.

It took just a few seconds to cross the forty feet, but it felt significantly longer.

When he got to the changing room, he saw that Chamroon was trying to stand. Court pointed his pistol at him. “I’ll blow your other knee off if you try.”

The young man stopped moving, and Court pushed the redhead on her way. He doubted she’d make it to the stairs before the next woman caught up to her.

Seconds later Court slid back behind the lion again. He stood back up, evaluated the remaining four, and took the auburn-haired Russian with him to the changing area, because she was clearly in shock. Still, she followed his commands, staying roughly behind him with her hands on his hips, and he traversed the area between the lion pedestal, passing behind the hot tub and the columns and finally through the door to the changing area. Here she ran off towards the back, and Court noticed that the smoke was now thick enough to affect his breathing, because the ceiling was lower here than in the pool area.

Chamroon was still there, still holding on to his bloody knee.

Court raced back to the lion again for the third time, but when he arrived he saw that the tall raven-haired girl had been hit by a piece of shrapnel across the back of her hand and forearm. It bled freely, and she screamed in pain and shock, but Court could tell it wasn’t particularly serious, considering all the dangers close by.

Another man came around the pool now, again on Court’s left, and Court shot him three times before he dropped his pistol and fell to his knees, finally crumpling onto his back just ten feet away.

Court reloaded, and got the tall injured woman to hold on to his hips like the first two, and again he launched himself out into the open, sidestepping back towards the doorway. He’d made it just halfway when the snap of a bullet cracked close on his right. “Get behind me!” he shouted, and the woman tucked tighter, and then Court felt the impact of a round high on his chest, slamming into the marble.

It rocked him back and he stumbled, but he kept his feet and the two of them made it into the changing area.

The woman looked at her bloody hand and arm; Court reminded her that she needed to run, and soon she did just that, disappearing through the thick gray smoke and down the labyrinth of halls towards the stairs.

Court did not hesitate; he ran back to the lion, exposing himself again to fire, and by now he saw that the smoke out here was obscuring his vision as well.

There were two women left: the black woman and the fit blonde with the Egyptian-looking eyes. Court sized up the black woman as being the more terrified of the two, so he told her it was her turn. She put her hands on his hips and they took off.

As they shot back the forty feet, Court could see a pair of dark figures in the smoke coming around the other side of the pool now, back to the right of the lion. He fired several times at the figures but missed, saw them dive behind a stone fountain and a marble bench.

Back in the changing area, the smoke continued rolling out of the vents and hung high in the room. The smell had gone from noticeable, to heavy, to now nearly overpowering, and visibility was dropping fast. But despite the worsening conditions and the insanity of the raging battle, Court was pleased to see the woman running off to the back without prompting, and Chamroon still lying in agony on the floor.

One more time, Court told himself, and he ran back to the lion through the smoky haze. This time he could feel the marble tile in his shirt shift and crumble where it had been struck by the bullet; it was almost useless now as a ballistic shield.

He dove feetfirst and slid the last ten feet to the lion pedestal, the marble cutting into his chest as he did so. As soon as he got there he raised his Glock 17 and fired back in the direction of the two figures he’d seen earlier, hoping to keep their heads down.

The blonde was still there, down on one knee with her back to the marble pedestal. She looked at Court through her heavy eye makeup with rapt fascination. She’d been the most “together” of the five women, so he’d left her for last, but now her odd expression had him wondering if she was finally going into shock herself.

“Your turn. You ready?” he said while he reloaded the Glock.

The woman spoke with a distinctive accent that he thought might have been Hungarian. “I am ready. Please, stay close to me.”

“I will.”

There was a fresh intensity to the gunfight at the deep end of the pool, and Court wanted to hurry up to take advantage of it. He turned away from the woman, she put her hands on his hips like she’d seen happen four times previously, and Court said, “Here we go!”

Court risked a peek around the corner where the figures had been, and then he moved quickly back to his left, scanning with his Glock in a wide arc as they moved together in perfect symmetry.

He used suppressive fire to keep heads down, because he could barely see ten feet in the smoke and poor light, but he somehow managed to make it a fifth time through the gauntlet. He kept moving deeper into the smoke-filled changing area. The girl with him kept her hands on his hips, and after he checked to make sure Nattapong Chamroon hadn’t moved from the corner, he spoke to the blonde, still close behind him and holding on.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now. Follow your friends down the hall to the—”

Court started to look back over his shoulder when he felt the woman’s hands leave his hips, slide up his body, then re-form in a grasp around his right wrist, just below his pistol. She spun her body around, pushed her back into him, then twisted his arm, all in a quarter second. She slammed her hips hard into his upper legs and yanked forward with a brute strength Court wouldn’t have expected from most men.

The American felt his center of balance tip towards her; his feet rocked forward, and then the blonde swept her right leg back, kicking his legs out from under him. She threw him over her right hip, still holding his wrist so she could control the barrel of his weapon.

Court’s feet went over his head, and he landed hard on his back. He felt the pistol pulled from his grasp at the same time that the air was knocked from his lungs.

The blonde dropped down on him, placing a knee hard in his chest. He didn’t see the gun, but he was certain she had it now. Instead, he just looked up at her, her face inches from him.

“I’m taking Chamroon,” she said.

She stood quickly now, holding the black Glock pistol on Court as she moved over to Nattapong Chamroon. She grabbed him by his arm, pulled him up to his feet, and half dragged him towards the back hallway. Chamroon coughed in the smoke and grunted in pain each time his right foot came down and his wrecked knee took his body weight, but he followed along.

Court rose to his knees, still watching the blonde, still trying to take a breath.

At the door she glanced out into the hall for an instant, then turned back in Court’s direction. Just as he managed to suck in some smoky air, he saw her raise the weapon towards him.

She fired once into the wall, just a foot to Court’s right.

Court looked at the bullet hole, then back at the blonde.

In English she said, “If anyone ever asks, I missed. Is that cool?”

Court just stood there, utterly transfixed by the woman. He said nothing.

The blonde repeated herself as she struggled to muscle Chamroon all the way up against her body so she could move with him. “Is that cool?”

Now Court replied softly, “Very cool.”

She shoved Chamroon into the hallway, and they disappeared in the smoke, leaving Court alone in the room.

He spoke to himself now. “What the fuck just happened?”

At the far end of the pool, nearly thirty meters away from the changing room, a soaking wet Vasily decided to give the order to retreat. He would throw away any chance he and his team had to capture Nattapong Chamroon, but he made the decision because this gunfight had turned into a stalemate, and smoke in the room had gotten thick enough that he felt the attackers had no more chance to achieve their objective than he did.

The men at the double doors were Chinese; this Vasily had worked out quickly. A group of Thais had stormed into the single door halfway down the pool on the right side after the Chinese arrived, but Vasily and his men had killed all but one or two of them relatively quickly. Not so with the Chinese, who had the sense and the skill to remain in the cover of the doorway and just fire into the large open room.

Vasily had climbed out of the swimming pool by pulling off his jacket, his body armor, and his chest rig, and now he knelt behind a marble nude at the deep end. Mikhail lay dead right in front of him, faceup with a bullet wound in the side of his mouth. Yevgeni was seriously injured, hemorrhaging from his thigh, and only a self-administered tourniquet had prevented him from bleeding out in the past minute. Ruslan had been shot through the arm, but he was engaging a Thai gunman with his pistol now.

Over one third of Vasily’s force had been decimated by the Thais and the Chinese… and the motherfucking building seemed to be on fire.

He’d lost his headset somewhere in the pool, but his waterproof handheld walkie-talkie had survived. Into it he said, “Anna One, all signs! We are leaving via the fire escape on the west side. Exfil together. Keep your shape!”

His men rose from cover and began bounding back in retreat, engaging both the Chinese and the smattering of Chamroon men while they attempted to disengage from the fight.

Zoya Zakharova shoved Nattapong Chamroon hard over a stack of tables on the second floor of the building. The wounded man crashed down onto the floor, grabbed at his back and his leg simultaneously, and wailed in pain.

Zoya knelt over him with the gun pointed at his face. “I won’t ask you again!”

“I told you! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Then you and me are going to sit here until you figure it out, or until you burn!”

The two of them were closed off in a large storage closet for the nightclub two floors below the pool, and even though there were no air ducts in this room at all, the gray smoke swirling about made it hard to breathe. Zoya rubbed her eyes hard, smearing eye makeup, and the dark color only made her look more dangerous to her prisoner.

Nattapong screamed now. “My brother! My brother handles the computers! I just handle the girls!”

Zoya said, “Da, you handled me with your nasty fingers right between my legs as we walked up the stairs to the pool, didn’t you?”

“I’m… I’m sorry! It was just a touch!”

Zoya slammed her heel into the man’s bloody knee, and he screamed. “Where is your brother?”

“I… don’t know.”

“After this. After tonight? Where will he go? Where will he hide?”

Nattapong Chamroon cocked his head, thinking over the question. “I… I don’t know for sure.”

Zoya placed the barrel of the gun over Chamroon’s crotch now, and she pulled his mobile phone out of his front pocket. “Why don’t we get him on the phone right now. You will tell him you have been attacked by the Chinese, who are looking for Fan Jiang, and you will tell him they are coming for him next. That will force him to make a move from where he is, and he will take Fan with him as a bargaining chip.”

She handed him the phone, and then she said, “Di chan poot tai dai.” I can speak Thai. It wasn’t true; she’d studied Thai for a grand total of two days, but she was a polyglot with skill and technique at picking up the important components of a new language quickly. And she knew if Nattapong thought she could speak his language, he’d be less likely to try to trick her when talking to his brother.

He cocked his head. “Khoen kauwtsjaaj phom maaj?” He was testing her, asking her if she understood him.

She did not, but she played a hunch on what she thought he was saying. “Ka,” Yes, she said, “but speak English to me.”

Chamroon looked at the smoke filling the room. “The building is burning down! There is no time for this.”

“Then let’s not wait any longer. Call your brother. Find out where he is, where he is going, and no fucking tricks. Khao jai mai?” Do you understand?