Court grabbed a flash bang grenade hooked to his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it underhanded into the room. He ducked down quickly to avoid the blast, and as soon as the distraction device erupted he rose and ran into the room with his rifle held high.

And as he entered the room he realized the flash bang had been a mistake. The device instantly started a fire in a collection of old, dusty, and unframed oil paintings, blueprints, and maps stacked in piles and leaning haphazardly along the wall.

Shit, the last thing he wanted was to be stuck down here in this dungeon in a fire.

He looked for something to extinguish the fire with, turning to the corner on his right and shining a light to see what he could find.

And then he realized he had been wrong before. This, this was the last thing he wanted.

There, three feet away and closing fast, was Jon Hines. Behind him he caught a glimpse of Fox, running under a metal gate over another archway that led out of the room, a subgun in his hands.

Court got a shot off but his weapon had already been knocked to the side by Hines; a bullet ricocheted around the room with an angry multinote shriek. The two men crashed into the hard stone floor, rolling up next to the burning paintings, and Court’s rifle sling slipped off his head as the weapon slid away. He struggled up to his knees and started to reach for his pistol but didn’t get it out before Hines grabbed his wounded hand and wrenched it to Court’s left. This sent him down on his back in agony and short-circuited his attempt to pull his gun.

Hines got a meaty hand on the pistol’s grip and yanked it free of his holster, but Court elbowed the man’s hand and the pistol spun away, as well.

The fire behind Court against the wall was growing; he could feel the heat, and through the flickering firelight Court saw smoke billowing across the floor. Hines was on his feet now. Court’s body still felt broken from his first two encounters with this leviathan of a man, and he knew he had little chance in another round of one-on-one with him.

“We’re gonna get to finish our fun, after all, mate!” Hines said with a roar, and he launched forward at Gentry yet again.

Court threw a right jab that connected with Hines’s chin but only partially slowed him down. The Englishman threw a swing of his own; Court managed to lean back away from it, but in doing so he fell down again onto his back.

The flames were raging, the smoke thickening by the second as more oil paintings ignited.

He rolled over, launched to his feet, and ran unarmed for the tunnel Fox had taken, not in pursuit of the Russian, but instead desperately trying to get away from Hines. He’d just run under the iron gate suspended above by rope attached to the floor when he felt Hines grab the back of his Kevlar vest and yank him back.

Court fell to the ground and spun around to kick at the big boxer, while simultaneously reaching out with both hands to grab something, anything, to fight Hines off with. His left-hand fingertips grabbed a two-foot-square wooden-framed oil painting that was fully engulfed with flames, and he Frisbeed it as hard as he could at his attacker, both to keep from burning himself too badly and to generate as much momentum as possible. He hit Hines square in the face with the burning material, but the broken bones in his hand hurt worse than ever now.

The man shouted in shock and fell back, buying Court a moment’s time. He rose to his feet and ran again for the archway now, but he noticed flames raging from the ACE bandage on his left arm. He took a blow to the back of the head; Hines had thrown something at him, apparently, and he tumbled forward, falling on the ground yet again, now directly under the wrought-iron gate suspended over the archway tunnel out of the room.

He coughed in the smoke, rolled onto his back, and looked back to Hines, who was rubbing soot out of his eyes. While he did this Court ran his left arm up and down the old but thick rope holding up the gate above him, and flames immediately began licking upwards towards the ceiling.

He then covered his burning bandages with his body, extinguishing the flames, but creating fresh agony as his weight went down on his broken hand.

He looked back over his shoulder as he lay on the floor under the iron gate.

Hines was approaching, back in the fight now; he always seemed to bounce back.

Court rolled on his back, scooted backwards on his elbows, trying to draw Hines closer.

The Englishman’s big voice boomed in the subterranean room as he advanced, paying no attention to the fire all around him.

“Gotta snap your neck and end this shite now, mate, but you were one hell of a goer, I give ya that!” Court kicked at the man, trying to buy a little more time, but also trying to keep from looking to the rope on his left that, once it burned through, would fly up, sending the iron gate down right through Court’s midsection.

Hines stepped under the archway now and knelt down with a smile over the wounded American, his face glowing red from the flames. He took Court by the collar, but just as he did, Court brought his knees to his chest and shifted his legs to his left.

With all the might left in him he kicked with both feet into the rope that had been burning fiercely for thirty seconds, and in so doing he tore away the last of the fibers that had not burned through.

Hines smiled as Court’s wild kick missed him and hit a burning rope, and then he heard a loud squeaking noise several feet above his head.

His eyes met Court’s in the firelight.

And now it was Court’s turn to smile.

The iron gate dropped like a guillotine, and the vertical shanks slammed into Hines’s back, penetrating his rib cage, lungs, and heart, exiting out his chest and slamming him face-first into the stone floor.

His face just a foot from Court’s, blood gushed from his mouth. He choked out one last “Fuck you!” before he died, a look of astonishment frozen into his wide-open eyes.

Court climbed to his knees and looked back into the smoky room around the body. His rifle was on the opposite wall in a raging fire, but his Glock pistol was just within reach through the square openings in the gate. He reached in for it, next to Hines’s left hip, and scooted it with his fingertips back towards him. But when he tried to pull it through the gate he realized the weapon was just slightly too large to get through.

“Shit,” he said. With his one good hand still on the other side of the gate he dropped the magazine from the weapon, fired off the round in the chamber, then pulled the slide back a half inch by pushing the grip back on the floor. With his thumb he pressed the takedown lever on the frame. After he pulled the trigger again, the metal slide slid off the pistol onto the floor.

Now Court easily pulled the frame through the opening next to the dead man, then reached back in and grabbed the magazine and the slide, barrel, and slide rod off the floor and brought them out as the heat began to overtake him.

Lying on his side he reassembled and reloaded the pistol, still with one hand, all the while worrying about Zoya, somewhere down here in pursuit of her father.