Court brought his arms up to protect himself from another cracking blow, but even though he blocked it the punch knocked him back into the wall again. More punches rained down into his arms and shoulders and onto his head. He covered defensively and rode them out, all the while expecting Zoya to help him by engaging this beast with her weapon.

But instead he heard her shout, “Contact front!” as she opened fire on the door at the end of the hall.

Court sidestepped a punch from the big man, already recognizing him to be a boxer, and then ducked below a right hook. But when he rose back up again and attempted to fire out a jab of his own to the man’s face, his attacker’s longer reach got to him first, and Court took another blow, this time to his left eye.

His head snapped back and he was racked with pain all the way across his face.

It was too dark to see much about the man beating him soundly, and he didn’t have time to check what Zoya was up against; all he could do was flail ineffective punches at a boxer who was obviously both incredibly powerful and skilled.

The gunfire continued behind him; it sounded like Zoya had emptied the revolver and opened up with another pistol. He assumed she’d grabbed his Glock, because she kept up a steady rate of fire. He knew he only had a partial mag in the weapon, and he started to shout this out to her so that she would be aware, but a fist whizzed by in a left hook, forcing him to snap his head back and out of the way and focus fully on the next salvo of raining fists.

Court knew he had to let Zoya deal with the gunmen down the hall because he wasn’t just in a fistfight. He was in a battle for his very life.

A punch to his midsection connected when the man closed quickly on him, and this doubled Court over. He anticipated the uppercut that came next, so he shifted to his left and took the inevitable pounding fist in his right shoulder, then charged forward, wrapping his arms around the man’s midsection, driving him back towards the stairs with all the power he could generate. Court had been involved in dozens of hand-to-hand fights in his life. He knew he was using enough force to bowl the man over, but just as Court drove the man to the tipping point, the powerful giant reached back with his left foot and braced it against the stairs.

The big man did not fall. Instead he pounded down on Court’s head, neck, and shoulders with his elbows until Court let go. Court then caught a vicious right cross to the jaw, staggered back to the wall, and slid to the cement floor in a daze.

He saw brilliant specks of light in the air all around him, but in the middle of them all the huge man tightened and raised his big fists, then approached with a gait that told Court he was moving in for the kill.

“Z! Shoot this motherfucker! Now!”

* * *

• • •

Zoya Zakharova had been firing the Glock up the hall, hoping Court’s pistol was full, because she didn’t have a backup magazine for it. She’d emptied the .38 she got from Kravchenko’s aircraft, and now with Court’s gun she began the slow but steady fire necessary to keep her attackers back with their heads down. She could see from the glow around their weapon lights that they were the same men who had chased her into the building from the alleyway, and there were at least four or five. All she could do was lie prone to make herself a small silhouette, and fire each time she saw a target, to keep them from engaging her. She was certain she’d injured at least one of their number; the others were holding back on the other side of the open metal door and around the corner farther beyond it.

She glanced to her right into the darkened stairwell and saw Court take a lightning-fast right cross from the colossal attacker sending him back against the wall like a rag doll. Court slid to the ground and then called out through what sounded like a swollen mouth, “Z! Shoot this motherfucker! Now!”

She’d assumed Court could handle a hand-to-hand encounter, even with a much larger man, but all she’d witnessed in the quick glances she’d had time to steal was him taking blows, not delivering them.

She fired two more rounds at the door, then swung the Glock to her right towards the stairwell. She sighted on the chest of the man looming over Court and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. She looked at the weapon in her hands and saw that the slide was locked open on an empty magazine.

And she had no more ammunition.

Court had fallen sideways onto his left hip. She could tell he was beaten; his arms weren’t up to defend the blows that would come any moment. He crept back on his elbows out of the doorway and into the hall. By doing this he put himself in the line of fire from the men up the hall, but Zoya realized he was trying to get the hell away from the man currently beating him to death.

Zoya began to stand. Her plan was to attack the massive form head-on, try to knock him back into the stairwell to both get herself out of the line of fire up the hall and buy Court some time to get up and get moving himself.

But before she could do so, the doors opened at the other end of the hallway. High-lumen weapon lights shone up the entire space, illuminating Zoya and the men in the doorway beyond.

“Metropolitan Police!” came the repeated shouts of at least a half dozen men. “Get down!”

Zoya heard Court groan out, “Fuckin’ finally!”

The big man had entered the hallway and knelt over his crawling victim, and he held his fist perfectly still now above his head as he turned to look at the police. After a second, he lowered his hand, turned, and disappeared into the stairwell. Zoya heard him running up the stairs.

The police shouted for him to stop, but no one fired, so Zoya shot out of the hall and into the stairwell herself, but instead of taking the stairs, she found an unlocked door to the courtyard of the building, and she raced through it.

* * *

• • •

Court was racked with pain, but he knew he’d have to move now, because this was his one opportunity to stay out of police custody. He saw that these cops weren’t shooting, so he climbed to his feet while the men closed on him. He, too, took off into the stairwell, wincing and grunting with each movement.

He found a door that led to an emergency exit to the building. Court shot through the door, setting off the alarm. He could only hope Zoya had gotten away, as well.

* * *

• • •

Ten minutes later Court staggered along the sidewalk, pain in his face, his shoulders, his ribs, his abdomen; all of it encumbering his movement.

It felt like he’d been tossed down a flight of stairs, only to crawl back up to get tossed down again.

A white Mini Cooper pulled up beside him and stopped. He looked inside and was relieved to find Zoya behind the wheel.

For myriad reasons. He was glad she was alive, was free of the police, had come back for him, and he retained the operational focus to be pleased that the person who had infiltrated Cassidy’s safe, Court’s objective for the evening, was back within his field of view.