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Neither Court nor Zoya could see the attacker, but they didn’t wait around for him to come into view. They fought their way to their feet, turned, and raced back up the stairs towards the dense black smoke pouring down after the explosion above.
•••
Sir Donald Fitzroy lay on his back, then pushed himself up to see what was happening around him. This turned out to be folly. His eyeglasses were gone, but that hardly mattered because the room was thick with smoke through which he could just make out the glow of a small fire over by the window curtains.
A second fire smoldered ahead on his right as the sofa he’d been sitting on went up in flames.
Fitzroy didn’t know if he was injured or not; he felt around and realized he still had his arms and legs, but when he wiped his face with his hands he felt the unmistakable smear of thick blood. Sharp pains on his forehead and hands told him there was broken glass in multiple places on his face, so he simply stopped touching it.
He turned to look over his shoulder and found the air a little clearer there back by the stairs. To his immense relief he saw both Court and Zoya on their feet and staggering to him, so he peered forward again where he lay, trying to see some sign of Tudor.
The flames grew ahead to his left as more of the draperies ignited.
Court knelt down beside him, sticking his pistol in his waistband as he did so. “Can you stand?”
“My…my glasses.”
“Here you go.” Zoya handed them to him. Both lenses were cracked, but putting them on helped him see nonetheless.
“Help me up.”
It took Court and Zoya both to get Fitzroy on his feet; he felt a pain on the right side of his rib cage that made him catch his breath.
And by the time he recovered and stood upright, the haze of the explosion had cleared enough to see the carnage in front of him.
Two mangled bodies lay in a pile next to the overturned chairs in the center of the room. Jack Tudor’s guards, their heads and torsos shredded, blood everywhere, the blast of whatever explosive had detonated on top of them doing the work of a half-dozen machine guns.
Tudor was to their right, his legs protruding out from behind a wingback chair.
“See about Jack,” Fitzroy shouted.
Zoya ran to the man on the floor and found him alive, but barely. His face, neck, and shoulder bled freely, his dress shirt had been burned through on the right arm, and it appeared every finger on his left hand had been shattered.
The man’s eyes blinked, but Zoya knew he’d be in shock.
Behind this, Fitzroy groaned in pain now, put his hands on his right side. With a wince he said, “Broken ribs, at a minimum. Leave me, deal with the problem downstairs.”
“Putting you and Tudor in that library first.” Zoya climbed back up, got under Fitzroy’s arm to support him, and started moving around the bodies, staying well clear of the window because of both the burning curtains and the threat of more kill drones.
Court pulled Tudor along the floor. The man made no sound, and though he was still breathing, Court felt certain the man had only moments to live.
More gunfire below made him wonder if they all had only moments to live.
Fitzroy shouted again in pain as they advanced, but soon they all made it into the library. Court was happy to see a window in the room looking out over the courtyard at the center of the hacienda, but no window to the rear of the property where the drone had attacked from.
Zoya helped Fitzroy down to the floor behind the large partners desk just in front of the wall of bookshelves, and then she pulled the window curtains closed. Court dragged Tudor right next to Fitzroy.
The hammering gunfire continued around the mansion, and it seemed to be closing on their position by the second.
Zoya shut the door to the great room most of the way to prevent the mounting smoke from the burning curtains and sofa from filling the library, but she left it cracked enough to keep an eye out for any attackers that made it upstairs. While she did this, she called out to Court. “What happened?”
“Apparently our enemy has kamikaze drones.”
“Well, that’s fucking perfect,” she muttered. Shouting over mounting gunfire now, Zoya said, “I hear two sniper rifles, but why would you go CQB with a sniper rifle?”
“Close-quarters battle” was the term used for room-to-room gunfighting, and Court had been thinking the same thing. He answered her question with one of his own. “And why would two dudes with sniper rifles attack a building with a dozen defenders?”
Zoya said, “We need to know what we’re up against.”
