On target

FOUR

Ten minutes later Court had reholstered his weapon. He'd decided not to kill the man in front of him. He'd told him as much. The Irishman did not smile or breathe a sigh of relief, but he did strike out a hand, and they shook. They sat mostly in silence in the dim light from the streetlamps outside the tiny room. Court was careful to leave his hands on the small wooden table to keep Slattery relaxed.

After a while Dougal said, "Sid's not gonna be happy with you."

"We had an agreement. I told him I would only execute contracts I approved of. If he gave me bad intel, I reserve the right to pull out. Fuck him."

Slattery lifted a Bushmills into the air.

"I'll drink to that. Fuck Sid!"

"He'll just send someone else after you, you know."

"Aye. Suppose he will. Maybe I should just go ahead and have you do me in, just to get it out of the way."

Court said, "I don't take requests."

The thick Irishman laughed heartily. "That's a good one, mate. Maybe my two lads will be out of the hospital by the time the next hitter shows. Hopefully Sid feckin' Sidorenko will send someone they can handle."

Court chuckled. "I doubt that."

Dougal Slattery poured another shot of Old Bushmills for himself and then, seemingly as an afterthought, pulled Gentry's shot glass to his side of the table and began to fill it.

Court tried to stop him. "No. I'm good."

Slattery kept pouring. "It's the third, me boy. The third wee shot will make a man of ye, I swear it!"

Court shrugged, shook his head, reached across the table for the drink, hoped the hard liquor would substitute for the pain meds his body craved. He said, "You might want to think about leaving town until-"

The table rose into the air to meet Court's face. The shot glass slammed into his mouth before he could grab it, the wooden table's edge hit him squarely on the chin. Gentry's head snapped back, and he flew backwards off his chair.

The big Irishman had flipped the table up on him. Slattery lunged over it, took hold of Court before his back hit the floor, and Dougal's meaty hands wrapped around the American's muscled neck.

Court tried to shout but could not make a sound. He felt two thumbs digging into his throat, pressing his Adam's apple to the point of crushing. Though dazed by the blow from the table, he had the instincts to turn his head sharply to loosen his opponent's grip. He swept an arm up to try to knock away the hands entirely, but the big man's thick arms barely budged.

"Stop!" Gentry gurgled. He had every intention of leaving Dougal Slattery alive. Either Dougal Slattery did not believe that, or he felt, for some reason, Sidorenko would only convince this killer to return someday, and the Irishman wanted to preclude that event here and now while he saw an opportunity.

On his back, with the big Irishman on top of him and his hands choking the life from him, Court saw only one option. He scooted around on the cheap linoleum flooring, used the heels of his shoes to rotate himself and his attacker around to where Court's legs were bent against the door to the little flat. From here, still using his hands to try to push away the iron grip on his throat, he walked his feet up the door. Six inches, two feet, three feet. This raised his lower torso off the ground and caused Dougal's dead weight to roll forward onto Court's face and shoulders. Quickly, with all his strength, Gentry pushed off the door with the balls of his feet, executed a sloppy headstand, then a backwards roll. His head popped free of Slattery's grip when he spun back over the top of him. Court landed on his knees on the overturned table, leapt back to get away from any wild punches from the prostrate former boxer.

In one second both men were on their feet. Court looked at his attacker; the Irishman's fat face was beet red and slick with sweat, his eyes wild from fury. He shouted something; it was Gaelic, perhaps, as Court could not understand.

Gentry wanted to tell the man it was a mistake, that he just wanted to leave, but there was no use. Slattery took a step forward and threw a right jab that half connected with Court's left cheekbone. It stung and stunned him, and instantly his right eye filled with water and his vision blurred.

Court had vastly underestimated the flabby man's brute strength and blinding speed. It was a mistake that he could easily find himself paying for with his life.

Court backed away into a corner, created just enough space from the big man to reach for his Makarov, but he found his holster empty. He was certain it had fallen loose when he did the headstand, and was somewhere on the floor under the overturned table or the broken chair.

Slattery noticed Court's empty holster. A wild-crazed smile broadened across his cherry-red face. "You're feckin' dead, laddie!" The Irishman fired another jab. This one Gentry leaned away from and avoided all but a brush against his chin.

A left hook came next, thrown from Dougal's body, his torso and legs shifting along with the punch to get full force behind it. Gentry blocked it, but it still knocked him down. The fist failed to impact him, but just the power Court absorbed in his forearm sent him tumbling in the tiny living room. He ended up against the wall on his knees.

He stood quickly, just in time to recognize and then duck below a jab. Gentry then quickly retaliated with a finger spear into Dougal's solar plexus, followed with an instep kick to the big Irishman's crotch.

Slattery was unfazed. "Jesus sufferin' fuck, ya fight like a Molly!"

Then Court remembered Slattery's weakness; he'd followed the limping man for half an hour through the night and had watched him struggle to put weight on his left knee. Court kicked viciously to the inside of the knee, and it buckled outwards. Dougal screamed and stumbled but did not fall.

Instead he kept coming, though the American's attack caused him to telegraph his next move.

Court dropped low and to his right, ducked the right fist as it whipped the air just above his left ear. The American moved in on his attacker with all his speed, leapt off the ground, and got his right arm on top of the Irishman's right shoulder. From here, in a blur of perfectly practiced execution, Gentry reached high with his right arm, rolling his own shoulder forward to turn his fingers in. His hand came behind Slattery's neck and back around in front of his face from his left side, then it hooked back around under his chin. Court's hand grabbed the right collar of Dougal's rugby shirt, pulled it back across his throat, yanked it all the way around his neck in the back, and handed it off to Court's left hand.

"Fight like a bloody man, you feckin'-"

Dougal's words were replaced by a choking gurgle. Gentry cinched the collar tight like a twisted garrote, using the man's own shirt to strangle him. He wrapped his right arm around Slattery's neck as if he were hugging him passionately, wrapped both his legs around the man's back, and held on for dear life as his left hand pulled and pulled and pulled on the rugby shirt digging into the boxer's fat throat.

In the panic of loosing his airway, Slattery moved across the flat, wobbling on his bad knee, crashed the American assassin's back into the glass window, slammed him into a wall hard enough to crack the Sheetrock and knock cheap imitation lithographs of mustachioed bare-knuckled boxers onto the floor, and then spun him sideways into the heavy wooden door.

Just then, above the crashing and the panting and the shouting, a pounding came from the other side of the door. A woman screamed frantically, asking Mr. Slattery if he was all right. Asked if she should go for help. Dougal could not speak. He tried to reach for the door latch with his left hand, but the strength was leaving him with the depletion of oxygen in his lungs. Just as he got a finger on the latch, Court reached back with his right hand, flicked the dead bolt to lock it, and then used his legs to push off from the door.

Both men went crashing to the floor in the middle of the flat.

Slattery still could not breathe, but he had plenty of fight left in him, and he managed to use his legs for leverage as he flipped on top of Court. But Court did not, would not, let go. He forced the momentum of the roll to continue and again found himself above his target.

For thirty seconds they grunted and kicked at one another among the shambles of the broken furniture and furnishings of the little flat. Gentry got both legs over one of Slattery's arms, but the other fist hammered down on Court's back and the top of his head with frantic repetition.

The big Irishman tried head-butting Gentry, as well, but their heads were pressed against one another already; there was no room for him to get his skull back so that he could slam it forward.

And then the fight slowed. And then the fight ceased.

Court kept the pressure up on his victim's throat, but he leaned back a bit to check Slattery's face. His eyes had bugged out, his face had turned impossibly red and was covered with sweat that smelled like whiskey and vinegar and body odor. Court was over him, could see his own blood dripping off his lips from where the shot glass cut them. The red splotches speckled the Irishman's forehead and stained red the sweat rivulets running into his eyes.

The bulging eyes blinked weakly.

Court let the rugby jersey loosen a bit. Quickly Dougal sucked air, gagged, and wheezed.

Court's face was inches from him. Gentry spoke through gasps from the exertion of the brutal fight. "The kid. Your boy… with the Down's? He's real?"

Slattery's tongue was swollen, his throat was nearly closed. He coughed bloody sputum. "I swear it."

Court nodded. He wiped sweat from his own brow. Still he spoke through gasps from his near hyperventilated state. "Okay… okay. Don't worry. I'll see to him. He'll be okay."

The bugging eyes of the Irishman turned to him. Blinked tears mixed with blood that streamed down both sides of his face. Mucus sprayed from his nose as he sobbed. He nodded. Spoke through a clenched throat. "That's just grand, lad. I take it back. You've got a soul. You're a good man."

"Yeah." Court brought his fingertips to the Irishman's forehead. "That's me." He smoothed the man's sopping-wet gray hair back gently.

He nodded again.

"I'm a goddamned saint."

In a swift single motion, Court Gentry scooped the Makarov from its resting place on the floor beside him, punched the suppressor into Dougal Slattery's fleshy neck, and fired a single round up through his chin, through his tongue, through the roof of his mouth, through his sinus cavity, and into his brain. The.380-caliber hollow point projectile danced inside the skull of the fifty-four-year-old Irishman before coming to rest behind the left ear. Slattery's protruding eyes turned glassy and remained wide-open in death.

Court rolled off of Slattery's chest and lowered himself onto his back on the floor next to the dead man. He was exhausted, drained, sapped of all energy and emotion. His face hurt where he had been punched, his stomach and leg hurt where he'd been stabbed and shot last winter.

Together he and Slattery lay amid the shattered shambles of the little flat and stared vacantly together at the low ceiling.