But he made it into the room, immediately covered the area with his gun, then raced around a faux wooden bar that ran along the left-hand wall, because that was where the access from King Tut’s Tomb led.
He got back there, knelt, then quickly flashed his light. In front of him, he saw his dad sitting on his butt on the concrete, leaning against the bar and adjusting his glasses.
There was blood on his hand and smeared on his face. Court crawled to him through a puddle that was a couple inches deep. “You’re hit?”
Jim said, “Put my hand through a fucking nail crawling through thatdamn tunnel.” He held it up. It was his shooting hand, and the nail hole was bloody and ragged, but small.
“Shit,” Court said. “Can you shoot?”
“Hell yeah. Hey, son. Remember when this place was a lot more fun?”
“When both it andwewere twenty-five years younger, and the bullets weren’t real? Yeah, I remember.”
“The good ole days.”
“Right.” Court said, “I got two of them. You?”
“I know I hit one, don’t know if I put him down.”
Court said, “Dad, we have to move. They are going to converge on this room from different doorways.”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to cross back towards Jacob’s Ladder, go up to the catwalk.”
Jacob’s Ladder was a ladder in a vertical CONNEX box on the northeastern part of the shoot house. It led up to the catwalk, but it was covered, unlike most of the staircases.
Jim reloaded the Staccato with a fresh eighteen-round magazine. Said, “We haven’t done CQB together in a long time.”
“It’s okay,” Court said to his father. “I’ll lead. We’ll keep it simple. We get to a doorway. We peek, pause, push. You stay on my back, you have 180 degrees of responsibility behind me.”
“I can do that.”
They began moving through the warren of rooms, sure there were three or four men around here gunning for them. At each entrance to a room they would stop, and Court would move across the threshold, flash his light while looking in, while his dad checked the hallway behind.
Once Court was reasonably sure there was no one behind, he would begin moving, and his dad would follow, his left hand on his son’s shoulder but his eyes, and his bloody right hand, on the weapon pointed behind.
Court had done this exact form of close-quarters operating back when he was a kid, maybe five or six years old, with his dad at the lead and him in back with a squirt gun.
Now Court led his elderly father, and the stakes were considerably higher.
When they were one hallway away from the CONNEX box with the ladder, Jim flashed his light and saw movement at the other end. He fired the Staccato multiple times at a target there, then ducked into the metal shipping container Court had just entered.
Court had been focusing his attention on the way ahead; he leaned into his dad’s ear. “What did you see?”
“I got one of the fuckers. He’s dead at the end of the hall.”
“He have an Irish cap on?”
“What? No. Just a raincoat.”
“Okay,” Court said. “I want you to stay here, but when I go up that ladder, I want you to fire an entire magazine to the south, shooting up towards the catwalk.
“Then I want you to reload, stay right here, and wait for me to come get you.”
“Okay. Be careful, Court.”
Court put the little revolver in the small of his back again, then began climbing the old ladder, and then Jim started shooting to the south towards the pitch-black catwalk.
