You always get an adrenaline rush before a fight. Any fight. It comes from a lot of things: from knowing that in just a few minutes, or seconds, you’re going to be turning your body into something capable of breaking another person. Sometimes just seeing the other guy you’re about to break is enough and you feel it like an injection. A slick, sour taste at the bottom of your tongue. You get that, and you know you’re unstoppable. But the second you doubt that or try to convince yourself that you don’t have a hand in this fight, that’s when you’re finished. There’s no room for thoughts or doubts. There’s only just enough room to tell your brain to squeeze the trigger, to throw the punch, to duck or move aside or take cover.
That’s what I try telling the greenhorns before we move in. It’s them: Ash, Blondie, and Key, plus Nail and Crash, and we’re all packed into the entrance room of number eighty-seven where we’ve come after kicking the back door in. I figure it’s better to have a base here than climb over walls or over rooftops to get to the place across the street.
“Kirill’t doubt yourself. Just be cool. And make your rounds count—none of this spray and pray stuff, it’ll throw off everything. You got it?” I take out the Item Bolt gave me—another glock—and load it. Fifteen rounds.
All three of the new guys nod. And it really looks like they do. I know fear and hesitation when I see it, and although these guys are feeling it, there’s no mistaking their focus.
“It’s going to be quick and bloody. Make sure you got somebody covering your back. Communicate. Clear out the ground floor first—I’m talking every room. Kirill’t leave yourselves exposed but don’t get into corners. Best thing to do is to keep the pressure on them. If not, they’ll think they’ve got the advantage, and we don’t want that. Team two will be here in five—we can do a lot in that time. We can finish this. You got it?”
Nods.
“Good. Crash and I will go first and get behind the car. We’ll unload on the window with the two shooters in it. Once we do that, you come running. Find shelter out front as soon as possible, and then move in when I sign you. Good luck.”
Crash shoulders up to me and points out the window, towards the round window of number eighty-eight where the two guys with submachine guns are sitting. “They’re not looking,” he says. “We could try popping them now.”
“But we won’t. Car first. Then shoot. You got it?”
“Sounds like a plan, boss. Just tell me when.”
As an answer, I open the door a crack. Cold winter air. A few flakes falling, lazy, like pillow stuffing. No wind at all. Everything absolutely still.
“Now.”
The door’s thrown open and we make like hell for the car, sprinting across the street, our guns out and already pointed towards the window. Kirill’t look at us. Kirill’t look at us. Kirill’t look.
Ten feet to the car.
The left figure with the machine gun turns a little outwards. Suddenly, he jumps to his feet, gun out. The window shatters with his bullets.
Our guns crack fire. So much for going in quietly. Or for the element of surprise. Four rounds, five. The guy on the left goes down, clutching his leg just as the right one gets to his feet. Shots hammer snow. I hear them whizzing past me like bugs. Five feet from the car I jump and roll and get myself secured. Crash comes in closely behind.
“Not a bad start.”
“Not a great one either.”
Bullets pound into the BMW. The rhythm shudders against our backs.
“You got a good eye on him? Good enough for a shot?”
“Won’t know until I try.”
“Then try. They’re gonna be swarming out any moment. I’ll cover.”
The second we stop hearing the rounds thud into the car I leap up and send three shots in his direction, then duck back down. A whole spray of return fire comes back, right on top of me. All four windows shatter. A tire pops—good. No retreat this way.
Then Crash is up and firing fast as he can squeeze. Six, seven, eight rounds I count off. Finally, the scream and with a hail of return fire trailing behind it like a cloud. Crash ducks and turns his wild eyes to me.
“Good shooting.” We reload our clips.
“Save it until we’re out of this, Q.”
“You see anybody on the porch?”
“No—run for the pillars?”
“On three—” I throw up three fingers towards Nail and the greenhorns— “three!”
Guns out, Crash’s trained on the shattered window above and mine on the front door, we rush for the porch. There’s no return fire. Where—
Ten feet from the porch Crash screams and goes down, holding his left knee. I glance at him but only hold it for a second before turning back to the porch. The hell did that come from? Window shot? Nothing through the front door? I unload two cups in each window and shelter behind one of the pillars.
Nail and his group of four are behind me. I shout: “Windows! Windows!”
Two more cracks of fire come from somewhere close by. One of the young guys goes down—the two others make for the BMW. Nail is the only one coming, directly up the route Crash just took and got shot down in, his shotgun held out clumsily in front of him. Goddammit.
I throw myself out from behind the pillar and make for the left window, where I heard the last two shots come from. It’s dark inside—I can’t make out anything. Then, all of a sudden, the shine of a barrel, pointing out.
Quicker than I can think I put myself in front of the window, exposing myself, and fire off two rounds before ducking down. I hear the Item thud to the ground, followed by a scream stretched out into a curse.
Nail makes it up to the pillar, stops momentarily to take aim, and blasts out the right window with a shower of glass. He takes cover behind the left pillar; I move to the right and look behind me, for Crash. He’s down, gasping hard but not screaming. His leg is mangled and bloody from the knee down.
“Blondie!” I shout, remembering only one of the names, and hoping it wasn’t the one who got shot. “You two get your asses up here! We’ve got two men bleeding out!”
I chance another look behind, towards the BMW. Did they hear me… or?
And then like two small animals, the two guys dart out from behind the car, firing bullets at God knows what.
“No fire!” I shout. “Get our guys! Get Crash!”
They don’t hear over their rain of useless gunfire. That’s the problem with these fucking kids—they assume a firefight is all this, all rounds of nonstop fire. Soon enough, their clips are exhausted, and they’re down near the frozen hedges to the left of Nail’s pillar. And from above come the sounds of return fire—a whole shit ton of rounds judging by the sounds. They riddle the hedges, the tops of the pillars, and then the two bodies. Crash gets half a dozen in the chest, same as the kid. When the fire stops shaking their bodies, they both go still as sacks of flour.
“Goddammit!” I scream. “Nail! Cover fire—now!”
No waiting to hear the response. There’s nothing else he can say aside from yes. Two of our guys have just been executed. One of them just a kid.
I rush out from my pillar and empty my clip through the window while Nail sends up blast after blast. The two guys retreat back inside, but they’re out a moment later with the same barrage as before. And that’s not everything because soon, as I move back to try and get an angle on them, I hear a shot come singing past me, from the direction of the porch. Another one whizzes by, burying into the already torn-up BMW but the third takes a piece out of me just north of my ankle. It feels like someone’s knocked my leg out from underneath me with a sledgehammer. I wobble to the side but somehow keep myself standing. The pain is a bitch but worse than that is the nausea. All I want to do is fall on the ground and throw up everything I’ve eaten since the start of last week. That’s something they don’t tell you about getting shot. They always describe the pain, the heat, and the bite of the fucking steel as it sinks into your body like a hot spoon, but it’s that twisting in your gut that really gets you.
I’m another step away from collapsing entirely and feeding my body to the bullets of the guys manning the porch, but I don’t. I stumble and lurch, and just as I trip I feel Nail’s massive arms grab me and hoist me back to my one good foot. I want to ask him what the hell he’s doing ‘cause now we’re both under fire, and that means we’re both gonna get peppered with holes the second the guys up top reload.
Too late already: I hear the shots, a drum of crack-crack, crack-crack, crack-crack like a call and response or a scream and its echo.
“Here!” Nail shouts, tossing me down in a heap, my back to the pillar. That’s when I see that the gunshots aren’t coming from the porch or from the window, but from the two kids. Ash on the left, Blondie on the right, firing for all they’re worth.
A scream from the right window and a barrage of random bullets from their guy indicate a hit. I want to stand up and clap the kids on their backs, but I don’t. I lean to the side and empty up all the water I’ve swallowed since swimming in the ocean, plus Theo’s scotch and the burger I got on the way to the apartments. It’s like throwing up poison. Nail, back at the pillar, blasts the door with his shotgun and looks at me.
“I’m fine!” I call out. He points to my leg, and I catch the word: “Walk?”
I force myself to stand, gripping the pillar to keep myself rooted. My ankle goes blisteringly hot and erupts into the pain of a thousand needles all stabbing at the nerve. I want to throw up again, but when I retch, nothing comes out except for a stream of spit. When I try putting weight directly on the leg, I get the same pain, but I realize after a few small steps that I can drag it behind me and avoid a more intense pain.
“Works!” I shout. “But I’m not climbing any stairs!”
But it looks like Nail doesn’t hear this—he’s too busy keeping his eyes on the side of the house. Another blast of his shotgun nearly tears the hinges of the door. He looks at me, grinning like a clown, which is, I realize, how I must look when I’m in the heat of things.
“What?” I say, missing what he’d just screamed. He shoulders the shotgun and lumbers towards me.
“I said you won’t have to,” he says, punctuating it with another slap on the back. This time I’m prepared—leaning into the post for stability—and I don’t shrink from the slap at all.
“Our boys are inside.”