More bursts of fire chased him back across a hall in the east wing, and then, when he made the turn to head towards the stairs to the basement, he found himself facing down another pair of men with flashlights and guns, just a dozen feet away.

As gunfire pounded his ears, Court dove to the dusty floor of the abandoned building, sliding on his hip towards the gunmen. He took one down like a bowling pin as they collided, then shot the second man three times as he spun and took aim on Court’s prone body.

The sentry on the ground with him had lost control of his gun and it fell away, but he quickly pulled a short, hooked, fixed-blade knife out of a sheath on his belt and drove it down at Court’s face while Court still had his weapon pointed in the direction of the other enemy. Court parried the first strike with his left hand, and the man knocked Court’s gun arm back and lurched to stab again.

Court rolled quickly onto his stomach. The knife cut through air above him, and then the blade slammed into the backpack, burying itself into a plastic bottle of water.

Now Court rolled onto his backpack, bringing his left arm out as he whirled back around, and he executed a spinning backfist that connected with the jaw of the man above him. With the thunk of bone on flesh, the man’s head snapped to the side, a tooth flew out of his mouth ahead of a spray of blood, and he slumped to his side, on top of his dead colleague.

Court rose to his feet as more men approached from behind. He fired back behind him as he ran the opposite way, quickly getting himself out of the line of fire by racing into the stairwell down to the basement.

As he entered the tunnel to the mortuary seconds later, he could hear the footsteps and shouts of what sounded like at least a half dozen men running through the basement behind him. He ran in a crouch through the tunnel, using his red light freely now, a necessity to avoid tripping through the trash-filled water or banging his head on pipes hanging from the ceiling that ran the length of the passageway.

He knew that in moments there would be bullets racing through the narrow shaft and he’d be a fish in a barrel, so he pulled off his pack, yanked out the grenade launcher, and spun back around. He dropped to his knees in the murky sludge just as the first flashlight beam shone on him, and he raised the weapon.

A crack of unsuppressed gunfire, the ping of a bullet hitting a pipe feet from Court’s head, and then Court pulled the trigger, arcing a 40-millimeter grenade back up the small tunnel to the entrance to the basement. With a jarring boom and a ball of fire it detonated, and Court was back up and running again, reloading the single-shot break-open-barrel weapon, this time with a tear gas round.

He made it all the way to the mortuary end of the tunnel before the gunfire behind him resumed, and here he dropped again into the ankle-deep water, spun back, and fired the launcher once more.

The tear gas round didn’t generate the sound or the flash of the high-explosive shell, but he knew it would make the poorly ventilated, claustrophobic tunnel impassable for the next hour or so. When it detonated halfway down the passage he raced up the stairs into the postmortem room of the mortuary, then ran through the building, throwing his M320 back into his wet pack and retrieving his pistol from his waistband.

He exited through a window of the mortuary, then sprinted for the woods with his gun, shifting left to right with his eyes as he scanned for targets, unsure if anyone was up at ground level with eyes on him.

* * *

• • •

A minute later he was back on the little pit bike, racing through the woods at a breakneck pace. He was aware that the men behind him were in possession of two vehicles that could run him down in seconds, and the last thing he was going to do was buzz out onto the highway on top of this two-wheel toy.

He needed a car, and he knew where to get one.

As he’d flown over the area most of an hour earlier, he’d spied a golf course with a parking lot adjacent. It was just on the eastern side of the forest, so he took his bike all the way to the wood line, then ran from there onto the property.

He climbed a fence, dropped down into the parking lot, then crouched between cars while he watched a lone valet near the entrance to the clubhouse. An older man with a set of clubs on his shoulder stepped up to the valet and handed him a ticket, and then the young man grabbed a key out of a box next to him and began running off into the lot.

Court had spent dozens of hours watching valets in his career, and as was usually the case, this young man had not bothered to lock the key box.

Court stowed his pistol under his jacket, rose, and walked confidently up to the valet stand despite his filthy clothes, soaking backpack, and soiled face. He nodded politely at the man standing there. Without a word he reached into the key box. He settled on a set of Audi keys, hoping to snag something that was both fast and low-profile in his surroundings.

Walking through the lot he pressed the key fob, and a beep to his right directed him to a 2005 Audi A4 sedan. It wasn’t particularly fast, certainly not like the two cars he saw back at the hospital, but he didn’t think he’d have much trouble blending in with a fifteen-year-old four-door.

A minute after that he was on the A17, heading west. While he drove he opened his backpack and checked his gear.

He realized quickly that a large hole had been cut in his bag from the knife attack, big enough for the two spare pistol magazines to fall out somewhere, likely in the tunnel. Checking the mag in the pistol, he found he had only six more 9-millimeter rounds, plus the one in the chamber. The Ruger .22 was still in the backpack, but he was down to his last five rounds with no spare mags for this weapon, either.

“Shit!” he shouted to the empty car, then glanced up at his rearview to check his six.

“Shit!” He shouted it this time because the gray Charger he’d seen at the hospital was in the center of his rearview mirror, growing by the second. He’d been concentrating so much on his gear in his lap and the road ahead that he’d failed to notice the vehicle closing the distance with incredible ease. The Mercedes followed behind the Charger, and from the speed of both vehicles he was now assured they were both, indeed, V8 models.

As he stomped on his gas pedal, he saw armed men rising out of both sides of the Charger’s backseat, and they each pointed a weapon at Court’s Audi.

CHAPTER 14

   Court ducked down and looked ahead now. The traffic in front of him was light, but there was enough in both lanes to where he knew he couldn’t devote all his attention to the approaching cars behind him.

He heard the crack of gunfire now, and his head turtled down even more.

This A4 was the 3.1-liter V6, the top-of-the-line engine in the series for the year it was built, and it produced 255 horsepower. This wasn’t bad for a fifteen-year-old luxury sedan, but it was nothing like the Mercedes and the Dodge behind him, which he assumed to both have in excess of 400 horsepower.

Court brought his car up to one hundred miles an hour, but more snaps zinging by his driver-side window told him the men after him weren’t backing off.