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The man in Zoya’s grasp couldn’t break free from her rear choke hold, and he couldn’t wield his rifle to shoot her back over his shoulder, so he furiously reached inside his raincoat.
But Zoya beat him to it. Her right hand found his pistol on his utility belt, and she pulled it free of its leather holster.
One of the cops who had been standing farther behind her, a man with an Uzi, realized he had to fire and risk killing his colleague because the prisoner now had her hand on a gun. Just as he began to press the trigger, Zoya fired the Glock 17, shooting from the hip of the man she held on to, and her round hit the officer with the Uzi in the thigh.
He fell to the mud and weeds and garbage there behind the dilapidated tienda; his weapon skidded out in front of him.
Now Zoya let go of the man she’d been holding, pushed off him, and jumped back, rolling over the windowsill next to her. As she fell backwards out of view of the men trying to kill her, she fired twice, hitting the man she’d taken the gun from in the stomach as he spun around to get his rifle pointed her way.
She disappeared behind the cinder-block wall just as the last standing officer, ten meters back, opened fire on her position with his Tavor, raking the wall around the window.
•••
Court got the rifle away from the man who’d been shot twice by his own sergeant, then spun around just in time to see Zoya rolling backwards through the window, firing between her legs through a sheet of rainwater draining from the metal overhang as she disappeared from view.
He saw a man injured and crawling in the mud, and a second on his feet, a little farther back, now dumping fully automatic fire at the window. The man hadn’t even noticed Court there with the rifle, so fixated was he on removing the threat in front of him. Court knew that gun battles were hard for the untrained to manage—with the onset of panic, vision had a tendency to narrow, and focus tended to sharpen on one small point: the perceived greatest threat.
Everything else but the greatest known threat disappeared, so a trained gunfighter knew to keep both eyes open and his head swiveling, ready to process new information while still dealing with the old.
Court aimed the Tavor and shot the standing man in the side of the head, then spun the weapon towards the wounded officer with the Uzi. The man reached out for his weapon, and through the mud and rainwater all over his face, Court could also see the shock, as if the small young man couldn’t believe this was happening.
In Spanish, Court shouted, “Don’t touch it!”
The man looked up at him, reached his arm out further, and then Zoya appeared out of the rain pouring off the roof, leveled the Glock, and shot the injured officer through the top of his head.
He dropped down dead on his weapon.
Court spun around with his rifle, checking the bodies quickly to make certain all threats were neutralized.
When he was finished, Zoya stood beside him, pistol held low in both hands.
“You hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Cuts and stuff. You?”
“I’m good.” He looked her over. There was a small gash on the back of her neck, and her right shoulder was bleeding a little, as was her right elbow.
“Could have been worse.” He looked down at the five bodies lying all around. “These kids didn’t even want this.”
Zoya walked over to the dead sergeant. “Who gives a shit?”
Court was a killer, but at times like these he was unable to kill without a level of remorse. He continued looking at the men—four of them boys, really—who’d had the sole misfortune of being assigned to the checkpoint on Western Highway this afternoon.
Zoya snapped him out of it. “Hey! The two guys back at the roadblock will have heard this. You know they’ll call it in. You think they’ll come investigate?”
Court shook his head to clear it. “Get a couple of Uzis and two Glocks. Any extra mags. Leave the Tavors and Jerichos.”
Zoya and Court fished through the bodies quickly; he pulled a set of keys from the man who had been behind the wheel of the pickup he’d arrived in while she grabbed guns and mags, and soon they ran back around the building, leaving the five dead behind them lying in the mud and the detritus of the derelict building.
Both of their backpacks were still in the bed of the lead pickup. Court climbed in and fired up the engine; Zoya jumped in the passenger side and put the Uzis on the floorboard at her feet and the Glocks in the center console. “You think this little road leads anywhere but back towards the roadblock?”
Court shrugged. “We’ll take it in the other direction as far as it goes, and then we’ll get out and move through the jungle if we have to. We can’t go back to the highway.”
She nodded, put her hand on the back of her head, and brought it back to find a little blood there. Wiping it on her jeans as if it were nothing, she said, “Help me understand this. Who ordered those cops to kill us?”
Court shook his head as he drove through the storm. “No idea. Whoever is running this op has reach like I’ve never seen. They must have the money, the influence, and the connections to make that happen back there.”
“So…what?” Zoya said. “You still think we can just keep running?”
