Brunetti threw a beer bottle that hit a Syrian holding a chair over his head, and Anders blocked a hook from a Russian and countered it with a punch to the stomach and an elbow uppercut to the jaw.
As Court moved towards one of the pistols on the ground, he couldn’t help but notice that this bar fight had devolved into an every-man-for-himself situation on the part of the KWA contractors; the mercs weren’t engaged in helping one another but instead were either fighting for the pleasure of it or fighting to beat back the men attacking them.
The camaraderie Court had known while working on a paramilitary team in the CIA or around other civilian security contractors over the years was nowhere in sight with these mercs.
The armed bouncer from downstairs came through the stairwell with a gun in his hand and was immediately set upon by a pair of Russian soldiers, who both decked him and hit him with a beer bottle, sending him crawling out of the room and back down the stairs.
Court blocked a spinning bar stool with a chair, and then he slung the chair fifteen feet across the center of the room, where it slammed into the back and head of a man kneeling to pick up one of the two loose firearms on the floor. The man went down hard after taking the hit, but the attacker with the bar stool got a second swing in, and Court could only fire an arm up to absorb it.
The blow caused Court to stumble ten feet to his left, all the way over to the windows that looked out to the street in front of the club. The Russian who hit Court charged again, but this time the American ducked the swinging bar stool, causing the man to spin with the momentum. Court used the opportunity to grab him from behind, and he slammed him into the wall between the windows.
The man crashed face-first against the bricks, and the bar stool left his grasp and slammed hard against the window, sending fissures across the one-meter-by-two-meter pane.
The Russian was dazed but not out of it. Court grabbed him by the head and tried to drive him again into the wall, but the man spun and caught Court in a bear hug and lifted his feet off the ground for an instant, nearly toppling him. An elbow into the eye of the Russian short-circuited his offensive move, and while he recovered from the stunning blow, Court separated himself enough to deliver a heel kick to the crotch. He spun back around and sent a knee hard to the falling man’s nose.
The knee sent the man’s head snapping back as he fell backwards, and it slammed into the cracked windowpane, shattering it outright.
As soon as the sounds of breaking glass dissipated, Court could hear sirens outside in the street. It sounded like several emergency vehicles were just pulling up out front. This would mean guns and truncheons and handcuffs and express rides to jail, and Court didn’t want to hang around for any of that.
As the Russian dropped onto his face and out of the fight, Court turned around to see Saunders pounding a Syrian on the floor behind the table, and Anders and Broz kick-stomping the Tiger Forces soldier whose phone Court had stolen. Brunetti was bleeding from the head and face, standing in the middle of the room looking for another challenger, and Walid had miraculously staggered closer to the stairwell without taking a beating from anyone involved in the fight.
Court saw him there, legs unsteady, with the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. He wasn’t wielding the bottle as a weapon; he was holding it up to his mouth to take another swig.
Court had missed a Syrian on the floor on the far side of the table till the man pulled himself back to his feet just three feet from where Court stood. The soldier lunged at Court, but the American’s reflexes were good enough to wristlock the man’s hand, spin behind him, and yank him pitilessly back down to the floor onto his back, where he kicked the man in the head, knocking him unconscious.
Quickly Court scanned around the room for the loose pistols; he saw one on the floor and the other in the hands of a bartender, who picked the weapon up and took it behind the bar, as if to protect his bar against any attempts to steal the booze.
Court started again for the one gun he could spot on the floor, but a young bearded Syrian got to it first. He lifted it into the air and fired a single round over his head, bringing the fighting around the room to an immediate halt.
From the direction of the stairwell Court heard the whistles, the fresh shouting, the sounds of voices that could have only come from police or soldiers here to break up the fight and break the heads of anyone who resisted.
The armed man dropped the pistol, but a Russian standing near the stairwell threw a punch at the first uniformed officer through the door.
Court knew there would be a lot more cops behind that one, so he decided to make a break for it. He still planned on using the fight as a means to slip out to make a call, so he hustled to the shattered window and climbed out, careful to avoid lacerating himself in the process. He put his feet on the window’s ledge and looked down, but just as he did so he heard the police in the room behind him. A large commercial window unit air conditioner was in the next window, and he decided that if it was braced from the bottom, it should support his weight. He climbed over and up onto it quickly, shielding himself from being seen from inside the second floor.
He saw no fast way down to the ground floor other than a straight drop of twelve feet. It was just sidewalk below, so he decided against this approach. Instead he lay down on his stomach on the window unit, and it creaked and squeaked against the strain. Feeling down below it he was happy to find braces that led at 45-degree angles to anchor into the wall of the building, and he held on to one of these, lowered himself off the unit, and swung down below it.
With his feet just three feet off the ground now, he dropped the rest of the way onto the sidewalk. Here dozens of men and women—patrons of the bar, mostly—stood around. Parked in the street not far away, Court saw two Toyota Hilux pickup trucks bearing the symbol of the NDF, the National Forces, the pro-government militia that had been co-opted as a secondary law enforcement entity here in the police state of Damascus. The vehicles seemed to be unmanned, and Court thought about stealing one to get away, but since there were people watching him right now, and since the phone he’d gone through so much to get was still sitting in the garbage behind the disco, he decided to go for that instead.
Court entered the front door of Bar 80 now, heading to the back exit. There were a surprising number of patrons still inside, idiots all, Court told himself, and the police and NDF were all over the place. With Court’s dark hair, beard, and civilian clothing, he didn’t stick out in the crowd, so he just moved through, heading to the back exit so he could get to the alley.
As he passed the stairwell, a group of police and NDF descended, with Saunders at their center. He was handcuffed, his upper lip was fat, the buttons of his shirt had been ripped off, and sweat mixed with a little smeared blood on his bald head. The Brit, who had been cursing out the cops in Arabic, saw the man he knew as Wade and switched into English.
“You lucky prick, how did they miss you?”
Court kept walking, but gave the man a wink.
“Find Walid and get back to base. Don’t go alone. You’ll get popped at a checkpoint if you try. We’ll be out in a few hours, but Brunetti’s got ’imself a busted nose.”
Court nodded but kept walking towards the back; he didn’t want the cops to pay any attention to him.
At the back door he turned around and looked towards the stairs. Brunetti, Anders, and Broz all were being led out in restraints by NDF and police, along with Russians and even Syrian Tiger Forces soldiers.
Court was alone.
He exited the back door, stepped into the alley, and walked over to the garbage can. The phone was still there, lying on a pile of beer bottles. He plucked it out, wiped it on the leg of his cargo pants, and then began running off, back in the direction of Walid’s car.
He realized the opportunity he had now. This was no longer about finding five minutes to make a phone call before deploying to another part of the nation tomorrow.
Instead, Court knew he had to go for the baby. Right now.
No . . . this wasn’t a perfect situation . . . Far from it. But he would have to make it work.
CHAPTER 37
Court was astonished to find Walid in the parking lot by his car, still holding the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. The Desert Hawks officer had apparently staggered out of the club with the booze, and while he was obviously shitfaced drunk, Court determined he was not drunk enough to suit Court’s purposes.
Together both men took a swig out of the bottle, and they spent a few seconds talking about the fight that had just taken place. Court’s sudden rudimentary Arabic surprised the major. Walid took a second swig of the booze, and then Court directed him to the front passenger seat of the car.