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One of the policemen walking just behind her turned back to the sergeant, who trailed his four men and his two prisoners, and spoke. “What did they just say?”
The sergeant just shrugged. He didn’t know they were speaking Russian, he just thought it was English that he hadn’t understood.
Still thirty feet or so from the wall in front of him, they neared a window on their left that looked in on the blackened interior of the little structure. Court looked around quickly, then stopped walking.
Zoya stopped one step later, right next to the shattered-out window, barely visible through the steady rain draining off the roof overhang like a waterfall.
“Vaya,” one of the men behind barked, ordering Court and Zoya to move on.
Court spoke English to the older man, standing somewhere behind him. “Sergeant. Whatever it is you think we did, we’d be happy to just pay a fine and”—he took a half step back, his eyes still on the gray cinder-block wall in front of him—“be on our way.”
The sergeant passed Court on his right and then turned to face him. The man had apparently made some peace with what he was about to do; he looked resolute enough, although the underlings around him remained less sure.
He pointed a finger at Court; rainwater dripped off the front of his plastic-covered hat.
In English, he said, “You keep walking! Over there.” He pointed at the cinder-block wall.
Instead of moving forward, Court scooted back a little more, as if he were recoiling against the man’s words. In truth, he was trying to make contact with the rifle no doubt pointed at his back so that he knew exactly where it was, because the next few seconds—the rest of his life—depended on him getting control of it.
Court switched effortlessly to Spanish, though his accent and words made it obvious he was no native speaker. “Someone has told you to execute us. It was an order, not a request. Your boys don’t want to do it. You don’t want to do it, although I’m sure you’ve been offered a lot of money.”
He saw the police officer surprised to be addressed in Spanish; he sensed that the four cops behind him were surprised both by the language and the words, but the sergeant recovered quickly and stuck his finger back up, pointing at Court from ten feet away. “Callate!” Shut up.
Zoya spoke Spanish now. “You’ll never get that money, Sergeant. I promise you that.”
“Vayan!” one of the four officers behind Court said now, but instead of moving forward, he scooted another couple of inches back, still looking at the sergeant.
“Please, sir,” Court said in Spanish, a tone of desperation in his voice now. “These are just boys. They have their whole lives ahead of them. No one needs to die today.”
“Callate!” The sergeant said it again. Angrier than before.
“Do you have a family, señor? Kids who need you?”
The sergeant began drawing his weapon from inside his raincoat. Court didn’t think the man was going to shoot him right here, with four of his men behind Court and Zoya and therefore in the line of fire. No, the gray-haired man was planning on using the weapon as an intimidation tool.
As it came out of the raincoat and the man began to raise it, Court sighed, then raised his hands and moved back for a third time, and this time he felt the slight pressure between his shoulder blades where the barrel of a Tavor tapped his soaking-wet shirt.
And this gave him all the information he needed.
He spun to the left, swung his arm up and around, and ducked at the same time.
Making contact with the short barrel of the bull-pup rifle, he pushed it up and to the right, in the opposite direction of Zoya, and the officer holding the gun instinctively pulled the trigger, sending a painfully loud rifle crack through the air.
Black howler monkeys wailed in the trees.
The sergeant got his gun up at the same time, but Court was now flying around behind the officer with the rifle, taking hold of the weapon as he did so.
While this was going on, Zoya took a step to her left and jumped high through the rainwater cascading from the roof, her feet landing on the outer portion of the window ledge next to her. As soon as she planted, she vaulted up and backwards into the air with all the strength in her quads, sailing just above the officer who’d had a gun at her back. This man fired, his bullet hitting the side of the derelict building, and Zoya’s backflip dropped her directly behind the man, where she grabbed him by the neck, then yanked him backwards and off balance, spinning him around.
Court had just grabbed his cop with his left hand, yanking him in that direction, when the silver-haired sergeant in front of him fired his Glock pistol. Court could feel the bullet impact the young officer in his grasp—the man jolted back and let out a cry of shock.
Court had a two-handed grip on the cop’s rifle by reaching around his body, and he leveled it at the sergeant in front of him, then pulled the trigger just as the older man fired again.
A single 5.56 round pounded out of the gun and straight into the gray-haired sergeant’s chest at the same time a second 9-millimeter round from the sergeant’s pistol slammed the young officer in Court’s grasp.
•••
Zoya had swung the small guard she held from behind 180 degrees; he now faced in the direction of the last two armed men, and they held their fire because they had their sergeant and three colleagues in front of them as well as the two Canadians they’d planned on executing.
