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Russ found himself face-to-face with the Gray Man. He’d thought of this moment for months. He knew his entire future depended on the success of this conversation. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

“I’ve got something you need to see. I’m reaching into my right coat pocket and pulling out my cell phone. I’ll move slowly.”

“Don’t move at all,” Court ordered, then took a step forward, unhooked the chain from the door and opened it, reached into Whitlock’s coat, and pulled out the phone. He took a single step back from the doorway.

“Look at the screen,” Russ instructed.

Court did as instructed, keeping his gun trained on the stranger’s chest.

It was an image from a camera; it looked like the stairwell here in the hotel. From the odd angle and the marginal quality of the picture, Court imagined the man in front of him must have set up his own mini surveillance cam high in the stairwell, and Court was now viewing a live feed. At first there was no movement, but then four men in black came into view, floating up the stairs, slowly and carefully in a tactical formation. They held their short-barreled weapons high, pointed higher in the stairwell. In under a second Gentry registered their guns, their body armor, their communications gear.

Court’s eyes flashed up, peering past his gun’s front sight and into the eyes of the man in the doorway. He did not speak.

Whitlock broke the stillness, quickly but softly. He was all business. “Eight in total. Four up, four down.” And then he added, his tone grave, “They’ve got skills, dude.”

“Fuck.”

Russ spoke in a whisper now. “Don’t worry, Violator. We’ll get through this together.”

FOURTEEN

Gentry scanned the face of the man in front of him. He was roughly the same age as Gentry himself, though his features appeared more chiseled and wind-worn than Court imagined his own to be. He wore a beard similar to Gentry’s; his brown hair was only a shade lighter than Court’s and Russ wore it a little shorter than Court wore his, but the two men appeared to be virtually the same height and build.

From the way he talked and an air about him Court picked up from years of experience, Court identified the man as a CIA asset, a tier-one spec ops operator, or some other brand of elite soldier or spook.

In short, to Gentry’s way of thinking, this Russ guy was trouble.

But not as much trouble as the assholes coming up the stairs.

Court backpedaled to his pack, keeping his gun on the man in the hall. Without taking his eyes off the stranger, he slung his backpack over a shoulder. His coat was threaded through a strap on the outside, but he didn’t stop to put it on. He glanced quickly outside the window overlooking the park, but again he could make out little save for the blowing snow and the darkness. He thought about his rope on the floor, considered using it to get to ground level, but if there were four men downstairs he thought it likely two of them would be at the back of the property, and he did not want to expose himself to them for the length of time it would take to climb down a rope.

No way. He was going to have to fight his way out of this with his new friend, whoever the hell he was.

“Okay,” Court said. “You got a piece?”

Russ whispered, “Waistband.”

“Don’t reach for it,” Court ordered, still weighing the dynamic situation. “Not yet. I need to think.”

“Do what you want, chief. But I’d say we’ve got less than fifteen sec—”

The window to Gentry’s left shattered. He turned to the sound and crouched at the same time, but he missed it; he did not see the small canister that penetrated the glass, banged against the far wall of the little room, and dropped, spinning to the floor in front of the bed, just behind him.

But Russ saw it. He turned his head away and shouted, “Nine-banger!” but it was too late to save Court.

It was a souped-up version of a flash-bang grenade, called a nine-banger, and in the space of three seconds nine two-hundred-decibel brain-hammering cracks battered the little room, along with nine brilliant flashes of light designed to disorient anyone in the vicinity. Court fell to his knees, dropped his pistol on the ground, and grabbed at his head. He’d shut his eyes before the first flash, but still the searing light had penetrated his eyelids and now he could barely see or hear.

Whitlock was fine, however; he had avoided the effects by turning away in the hallway. He drew his Glock from his hip and raised it at the stairwell. The first member of the Trestle team was just rounding the corner; only the suppressor of his HK was visible. Whitlock lined up his weapon and fired, striking the man between the eyes before he’d even fully turned into the hallway. He fell back, slamming into his three mates behind him, sending them all tumbling down the stairs.

Whitlock fired twice more up the hall to keep anyone in the stairwell from poking their head back out, and then he turned and grabbed Court by his black shirt, pulling him into a standing position and pushing him up against the wall. He retrieved Court’s Glock from the floor and stuck it into his own belt. He then grabbed Gentry again and led him along with him as he advanced toward the stairwell, his gun out in front. He shot out the two hall lights; both bulbs exploded in showers of sparks and the hallway turned dark.

As Gentry’s legs strengthened and he slowly regained his wits, Whitlock picked up the pace.

* * *

“Man down! Man down!” Trestle Actual shouted into his mic. He himself was on his back on the landing between the second and third floor. Trestle Three had been the first man into the hallway from the stairwell, but now he was on top of Nick; blood ran freely from his face and his goggles had a ragged hole in them, right between his eyes. Nick knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for his man; all he could do was get himself and his two other teammates back in the fight.

He pushed Three to the side and started to climb back up to his feet.

Just then he saw movement at the top of the stairs. He lifted his weapon toward the movement but saw a quick series of muzzle flashes, moving left to right, as whoever was shooting crossed the stairwell in the hall.

He felt the slap of a handgun round on his Kevlar chest panel and sparks flew off his magazine stowed there. He dropped back to the floor of the landing. To his right and one step behind him, Trestle Six lurched backward with a grunt of surprise and stumbled back into the wall, ending up on the floor of the landing next to Three’s body.

Trestle Actual returned fire at the movement above, but the shooter was gone.

“I’ve got two men down! Get me two more in here!” Nick shouted as he returned to his feet. He scrambled back up the stairs with Trestle Five, leaving Trestle Three dead and Trestle Six wounded on the landing.

* * *

Court felt himself being pulled along, his shirt yanked by the right arm and his weak legs shuffling as fast as possible below his body. He slammed into the wall hard, only after he hit he realized he’d been pushed there, and he saw that the man named Russ had deposited him here so he could turn and shoot at something in the hallway behind them.

Court processed the gunfire as distorted low thuds, more felt than heard, as his ears still rang from the effects of the nine-banger. His eyes were whited out in the center of his field of vision, so he had to turn his head to the side to see what the hell was happening.

With a quivering hand he reached down to his waistband to draw his gun, but it was not there.

“Hey!” he shouted at the stranger, but Russ grabbed him again, and again they started running up the hallway.