But just as he made it to the other side of the table, he jolted in surprise as fresh gunfire boomed. One round, then two, then three.
He couldn’t see the origin of fire, no flashes of light, but with the fourth shot he felt a hard tug on his left thigh, and he knew he’d been hit.
He returned fire reflexively; he had no target in the darkness, but he dumped round after round in the direction of the darkened doorway.
Then he realized what was happening.
The aggressor was not at the door; he was to the left, still in the hallway somewhere, firing through the wall of the suite.
Charlie shifted aim, and as he did so, he took one step to the left, but when he planted his foot, his wounded leg gave out and he fell behind the coffee table.
On his back now, he pushed himself up onto an elbow and began raising his gun again, but before he could sight in on the doorway, a dark figure appeared, sliding into the room like a wraith.
A string of three gunshots flared; Minchev cried out from the open kitchen on Charlie’s right, just as Charlie got his weapon up and back into the fight.
The young Northern Irishman centered his aim quickly and fired once at the dark figure as it floated through the living room.
The figure spun, fell, and crashed hard onto the tile flooring on the far side of the coffee table, and through the ringing in his ears Charlie heard the clang of a pistol as it bounced away.
He fired once more as the figure fell, but Charlie couldn’t be sure he’d hit his target with the second round.
Charlie realized he’d gotten lucky by falling here on this side of the table; the attacker had not seen him lying on the floor, and he had identified and targeted Minchev instead.
But now the bloody bastard was down himself.
Charlie rose, his gun pointed towards the other side of the table, and he struggled to get an angle to fire an insurance round into the body there. He realized he’d have to stand to see his target, so he used the table’s edge to steady himself with his free hand, then pulled up, pushing off on his uninjured right leg.
When he rose to his feet, he peered through the dim light, and he saw the outline of a body lying there, crumpled, unmoving. He could make out no features, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that the man was still alive, so he aimed at the man’s head and began to press his trigger.
Then, faster than he could squeeze off a round, the man’s legs shot out and his feet slammed into the coffee table, driving the heavy piece of furniture right into Charlie Coyle’s legs.
Charlie fell forwards; his gun fired, but he didn’t know where the round went. He crashed chest first into the table, the glass shattered, and he fell through, slamming down to the floor.
He kept hold of his weapon in his right hand and flipped quickly onto his back, flinging aluminum and glass as he did so, but just as he began to look for the man above him, the dark figure landed on him.
Charlie felt hands on his wrist, on his pistol; a knee slammed into his wounded thigh, and he vomited from the pain. He threw punches with his left fist, but his attacker was too close for the blows to have any effect.
And then it happened. The American took a hand away from the pistol, drew it back, and Charlie expected him to rain a punch down towards his face. The twenty-four-year-old turned his head to the left so that the punch would hit the side of his head and not his nose, but the punch didn’t go for his nose.
It went for his chest.
Charlie Coyle felt a sharp blade slip between his ribs just to the right of his sternum and just below his pectoral. The fist holding the knife punched him in the chest, and then the man on top of him pulled the blade out.
The American rose up to his knees, one hand still on Charlie’s gun.
Charlie saw the black knife, not in the American’s left hand but rather jutting from under his wrist.
And he knew what it was. Once, when Charlie was in the Foreign Legion and deployed in Ivory Coast, he’d met a Corsican in a bar who showed off his spring-loaded wrist stiletto, a weapon that remained hidden under his sleeve until he flexed his hand up in a certain way, at which point the narrow, razor-sharp blade fired from its scabbard and extended several inches.
He’d thought the weapon to be little more than a gimmick, but he’d just been on the receiving end of it, and he had a new appreciation of its value.
Charlie let go of his Walther because he suddenly felt very tired, and he knew instinctively that this fight was over.
He lay on his back, his feet raised over the aluminum edge of the shattered coffee table, his body covered with broken glass and twisted metal, and the man rolled off him, onto the floor, crunching more glass there as he did so.
How is this man alive?Charlie had shot him; he feckingknewhe’d shot him.
It made no sense.
