Zack led the way with his smoking pistol; Catherine wheezed and heaved from the stress and exertion, and Court one-armed his subgun while scanning for targets back to the east, his left hand guiding the former newspaper reporter from behind.
Construction materials were all around the backyard and on the redbrick patio; Zack found the door unlocked, entered the ground floor of a row house, and immediately encountered a four-person painting crew up on ladders working on the molding. The Hispanic crew had stopped working; the intense gunfire outside to their east had been the culprit for that, but none of them had moved from their perches, so frozen were they in disbelief and fear.
Zack passed them by, all business, heading for the front door with his pistol out in front of him.
Catherine shuffled under the ladders next, and Court took the time to shut and lock the door before running himself up the hall, cradling his suppressed firearm in both hands now. He looked up at the crew, two men and two women, gave a little shrug, and kept going.
Seconds later they were out on N Street, a tiny residential tree-lined affair. Zack and Court waved their guns to the left; Zack’s shot-up Yukon was there, as was the black Gauntlet sedan parked behind it, but the white Nissan Armada that had been across the street in front was gone.
No one was shooting at them from that direction, at least, so they turned their guns to the east and found themselves just a block from relatively high-trafficked Wisconsin Avenue.
Here Court had parked the Big Cheeze tow truck he’d used to scan the plates in the area just minutes earlier, so he led the others towards it, still at a run.
They were just slowing at the truck, however, when fresh gunfire burst from behind. Court turned to find two men squatting behind parked cars near where Zack had left the Yukon in the middle of the street.
He fired single shots in their direction, desperate to conserve the last few rounds of ammo in his CZ Scorpion.
Zack fired, as well, moving out into the street to get a better angle, and this put him near the driver’s-side door of the tow truck.
Court shouted over the gunfire, still aiming in on the targets to their rear. “It’s unlocked! The key’s under the mat.”
“Roger!” Zack shouted back, and then, “King! Get in the passenger side!”
Court hit one of the Gauntlet men right in the pelvic girdle, droppinghim writhing on the sidewalk, and the other operator had ducked down to cover either to reload or else to reconsider his career path, but Court took the opportunity to run to the open passenger-side door.
They sat three abreast in the front seat, with Zack behind the wheel. He fired up the engine and then threw the big vehicle into gear.
Just as they lurched forward, however, the white Nissan Armada that Zack had clocked parked in front of him minutes earlier lurched around from Wisconsin Avenue and began racing towards the tow truck, gaining speed.
Behind it, a GMC pickup followed.
Court had just a couple of rounds in his subgun, but he fired them through the window at the oncoming truck, then dropped the rifle and pulled out his Glock again. Catherine screamed, and Zack jerked the wheel to the left in an attempt to avoid a crash, but the full-sized Nissan SUV plowed headfirst into the grille of the tow truck.
Airbags deployed, knocking Court’s Glock out of his hand, flinging it somewhere onto the floorboard as the inflating bag shoved Court’s hand up into his face.
His AirPod flew from his ear, as well.
Court found himself hopelessly dazed and disoriented with the noise and concussion and the blow of his hand to his mouth, and all this, along with the fine powder from the airbags filling the air of the tow truck’s cabin, made it hard to focus on any new dangers.
Maybe five seconds had passed; he heard Zack shout something, and he heard Catherine scream. He tried to push the inflated airbag out of the way, and when he did, he saw a man moving towards him, a pistol high in his hands.
Court recognized Asem Shaban, the assassin who operated around the world under the moniker Snare.
Snare approached Court’s side of the truck, a confidence in his movements.
Court reached for the knife he had mounted sideways in front of his belt buckle. It wasn’t much, but he knew the Jordanian assassin would kill them all, and he wasn’t going to die without some attempt to fight back.
Snare yanked open the door right next to Court and centered his Beretta pistol on him, and Court realized he was out of knife range.
The bearded killer smiled, didn’t say a word, because he seemed to recognize that no one here was in a position to stop him. He aimed at the right side of Court’s head; he was only eight feet away, and he began to press the trigger.
Thirty-Nine
A black BMW 3 Series traveling sixty miles an hour appeared from behind Court on his right. It raced along the sidewalk, knocking over mailboxes, and slammed into Snare at the same instant it ripped off the open door of the tow truck, and then it crashed, head on, into the Armada, knocking the bigger vehicle back and spinning it away. The white SUV flew back across N Street, where it sideswiped into cars parked there.
Car alarms rang up and down the street, adding to the concerto of chaos that had erupted in Georgetown.
The BMW came to rest next to the Armada, and only then did Court see the bloody, broken body of what had seconds ago been the Jordanian hit man fall out of the sky, hit the sidewalk, and then roll to a stop.
