Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Court raised the shotgun at the sixteen-inch window and fired a blast, blowing out the center. While Fan ran to the bathroom holding his ears to get away from all the gunfire, Court kicked out the rest of the window glass.

Behind him Zoya fired more bursts from her weapon, and between them she shouted again. “Cover!”

Court raced over to the door to the hall and leaned out and over Zoya, just as her weapon went dry. A Thai man had come out of one of the staterooms off to the side, and he reached out for the machine pistol dropped by the injured man. At the same time, another Italian guard with a twelve-gauge shotgun reached around the corner, ready to fire blindly up the hall.

Court fired two shells in quick succession, blasting the man with the shotgun in his hands, severing them instantly, and taking the man leaning out to grab the machine pistol in the chest with his second shot.

Court now yelled into the room behind him, “Take Fan and get all the way down to the subdeck! We’re going for the tender!”

Zoya already had Fan by the arm, and then she leaned out the window with her pistol, scanning the foredeck below her. She let go of Fan, brushed away the rest of the window glass, and pulled herself through. Straddling the window, she put her pistol in the small of her back, kicked her other leg out, then slid down to the deck, dropping the last couple of feet.

Back in the stateroom, Fan pushed his head out the window at the same time that Court fired the last two shells in his shotgun, narrowly missing the Italians in the wine bar, all of whom were staying out of the line of fire but reaching around with weapons and firing blindly.

Court stepped to the side, dropped the twelve-gauge, and pulled the SIG pistol out of his coveralls. He looked back to see Fan sliding out of the window, then reached around and fired several rounds back down the hall. At his feet the Thai guard Zoya had knocked out was coming to and crawling up to his feet, but Court kicked the man in the face, spinning him back to the carpet.

Down to a dozen rounds in the pistol, Court took a quick look back up the hall and realized none of the attackers were willing to chance a run his way. He decided this was his chance to go out the portal himself, so he pocketed the weapon again, ran across the stateroom, and grabbed on to the handrail on the wall. Using it for balance he stepped on the ledge, pushed both feet out the window, and slid out.

As soon as he landed on the deck he heard gunfire closer to the bow, just fifty feet away. Looking in that direction, he saw Zoya targeting someone above on the upper deck, forward of the stateroom Court had just slid out from. Court pulled his pistol and was backing up to engage Zoya’s target, but a new source of gunfire startled him. It came from the main deck, back at the port quarter near the swimming pool at the stern. He dropped down as automatic fire chattered, and flashes there told him a single shooter was dumping an automatic weapon in his direction.

The safest solution was for Court to dive off the side of the yacht, but he remained flat on the teak deck, firing the SIG pistol over and over at the threat.

After half a dozen rounds, the submachine-gun fire ceased; Court pushed up to his knees, then turned and sprinted for the bow.

As he made it to the forehatch, the same hatch he’d climbed through upon arriving on the yacht a half hour earlier, he saw that Zoya and Fan had already descended. Court kept his weapon trained on the bridge deck, which was where Zoya had been shooting seconds earlier. Just as he slid into the hatch, shots flashed from right outside the control room, and Court fired a single round in answer before he stumbled down below.

He was back down in the hallway between the crew berths, Zoya and Fan were ahead of him in the hall, and he was glad to see that neither of them appeared to be injured. Court closed the latch above him, but as he’d previously removed the hinges, it wouldn’t take much to get it open.

Zoya and Fan took a ladderway down to the subdeck, and just behind them several members of the crew stood in their doorways watching. None of them were armed; they were mostly young women from the kitchen or older male engineers, and they stared in rapt fascination at the progression of wild-eyed, armed, sweat-covered strangers down here belowdecks.

Court, Zoya, and Fan made it down to the tender garage at the lowest level of the ship, and here Court ran straight to a control desk built into the wall. While Zoya covered the ladderway, Court read the various markings on the panel that controlled the door and winches, and he started pushing buttons and flipping levers before he’d completely figured it out.

Court yelled to Fan, “Get in the tender!”

“The what?”

“The boat!”

“Which boat?”

It was a fair question; there were two white fifteen-foot tenders, positioned on winches next to each other, but Court figured the first door that opened and the first boat that popped out would be the right one to get into.

The starboard-side garage door began to rise, so Court pointed to the starboard-side tender.

“That one!”

A shotgun boomed from the open hatch above the ladderway, and Zoya fired her pistol back up at whoever was firing down from the lower deck. A body fell through the ladderway to the floor, and an HK submachine gun fell with it. Zoya stepped closer to the hatch in the ceiling to retrieve the weapon, holding her pistol on the opening, but as she reached for the HK a shotgun boomed again above and Zoya lurched back into the tender garage and dropped her pistol on the floor.

As Court spun away from the control panel, Zoya fell onto her back, just feet away from him.

He could see the blood splatter on the deck next to her body.

“Zoya!” Court sprinted the ten feet to her, sliding on his back past her body and firing his pistol straight up at the hatch above. A man leaned his twelve-gauge down into the ladderway and started to pull the trigger without looking.

Court could only see the weapon; he had no target to shoot at.

He also had no time. The shotgun blast straight down through the hatch was certain to hit him here, lying on the floor and looking up at the barrel of the weapon. Court adjusted his aim and squeezed off a single round.

His 9-millimeter bullet struck the steel hatch door, ricocheted at forty-five degrees, and nailed the hidden man holding the shotgun right in the forehead, knocking him back before he could pull the trigger.

The first Court saw of his target was when the man fell half through the hatch and dropped the shotgun from his dead hand, and his head and torso hung down across from the ladder.

Blood drained from a hole in his forehead at his scalp.

Court caught the pistol-grip pump shotgun as it fell, then rolled over and stood up. He grabbed Zoya by the collar of her black crewmember shirt and pulled her out of the line of fire, just as a pistol began firing blindly down the ladderway.

Blood smeared the deck below her.

He lifted her up, then rushed to put her into the tender with Fan, which was still on the winch and just now moving out of the garage and towards the black water.

“I’m okay,” she said, but Court took his hand away from behind her back and felt the blood there.

“Just hang on!” he said, but she immediately rolled over and started crawling for the helm.

He spun away from her when he sensed movement at the ladder. He got his gun up in time to see the dead Thai man with the shotgun fall the rest of the way down the ladderway into the tender garage.

The boat hung fully outside at the starboard-side waterline now; Court slammed his hand down on the winch release button, and it dropped into the water. Another weapon fired down into the tender garage through the ladderway; Court fired up as he ran past, then leapt off the yacht and over the gunwale of the tender just as Zoya fired up the boat’s engine and jammed the throttle all the way forward.

Court knew they weren’t out of danger by any stretch, because he was sure there would be armed men on the decks above, well aware that the tender was about to come into view. He pushed Fan down to the deck of the tender, lay on his back on top of the smaller man, shouldered the submachine gun, and looked through its ghost ring sight. Just as the bridge deck above came into view, he opened fire on a man there with a rifle in his arms.

Court shot the man with a burst of 9-millimeter rounds.

A second target showed itself when an Asian wearing a white silk shirt blasted off rounds from a handgun on the upper deck, and Court raked return fire in the man’s direction, sending him and the men around him diving to cover inside the salon.

Zoya was getting everything possible out of the engine of the tender; the boat was banging up and down on the gentle waves already, and Court found it hard to aim. He fired short bursts of suppressive fire at the upper decks now, doing all he could to keep heads down while they made their escape.

He knew he’d be out of ammunition in a few more rounds, but he kept it up until the HK went dry.

“Get off me!” Fan shouted from below.

The tender was far from the lights of the yacht, so Court threw the machine pistol over the side, crawled off Fan, and made his way up to the helm.

Zoya was bleeding heavily from her right shoulder; her black shirt was torn in two places there, but instantly a wave of relief washed over Court. He found entry and exit wounds of two big shotgun pellets, both above her collarbone, but they hadn’t hit any major blood vessels or arteries.

She called back to him, “Did I get shot?”

“You weren’t bleeding when we got here,” Court joked, and she smiled. “In and out, no big deal.”

“Damn,” she said. “More scars.” Then, “How’s Fan?”

Court turned around to check on the man he’d come all the way around the world and fought a half dozen different organizations to find. Fan had thrown up on the floor of the tender, but Court just patted him on the back. “You okay, brother?”

“I am okay,” he said, and then he looked up at Court. “Brother. Thank you.”

Zoya called back to Court now. “You know, we never talked about where we would go after we got him. I guess we didn’t really think we’d do it.”

Court made his way back to her. “The three of us need to find a place to put the boat in, someplace where we can get a taxi, a pharmacy, and a hotel. In that order, preferably.”

They landed at Patong Beach at one forty-five a.m., then walked away from the tender and up a beach road. They squeezed into a tuk-tuk returning from taking drunk vacationers from a bar back to their resort, and the driver took them to a pharmacy that was open all night. Court bought everything he needed to tend to a gunshot wound and was surprised to find that the pharmacist would also sell him narcotic pain medicine over-the-counter. Zoya insisted she didn’t need anything, but Court told her he’d been sutured up without anesthesia once himself, and he promised her that the pain from the wound itself paled in comparison to the procedure needed to close up the holes.

Finally she relented, Court bought the drugs, and he also picked up a six-pack of beer for himself and Fan to split while Zoya slept it off. He then grabbed a mobile phone, some packaged food, and several bottles of water.

After another twenty minutes in the tuk-tuk they were taken to a jungle guesthouse a couple of miles inland, and here they made their way through a few drunk or stoned young backpackers to the front desk, where the three of them got a room with two double beds and a bathroom.

By four a.m. Court had Zoya’s wound professionally bandaged; she slept on one of the beds in the dumpy little hostel while Court and Fan stepped outside, Fan still in the simple cotton T-shirt and cotton warm-up pants given to him by the Chamroon group, and Court still wearing the filthy blue coveralls he’d taken from the engineer on the Medusa.

For ten minutes or so Fan told Court everything that had happened to him since the moment Court dove backwards off the boat in the Cambodian river. Clearly Fan was still pissed about being left behind, but Court hadn’t second-guessed that move once in the past week.

When Fan finished relaying his story, filling in some answers Court knew he would need in the next few minutes, the young Asian man sat on a bench by the front door of the still and quiet guesthouse. Fan wasn’t particularly tired; he hadn’t been hanging off cliff faces and battling teams of trained killers like the two Westerners with him, but he’d rather be in bed inside than out here swatting bugs.

But Court asked him to stay outside for a few minutes; the American had a call to make and, at some point, Fan Jiang would be required to take the phone.