Court said, “You aren’t trailing blood, not yet, but we’ve got to find a place to treat that wound. We can lie low for a bit, at least until all the first responders get out of the way.”
Russ just nodded, pressing down on his hip again to slow the flow of blood.
They moved down the alley and found a staircase in the darkness that led down to a basement door. Court picked the lock with help from his flashlight and a set of picks from his pack. While he did this Russ sat silently on the steps and watched.
In under a minute they were inside and found themselves in the tiny kitchen of a pub that had closed for the evening hours earlier. They made their way to the bar area, and Russ stepped behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of Redbreast Irish whiskey. He bit off the cork, spit it on the floor, and took a long swig.
Court headed to the front of the establishment, parted the vinyl curtains, and saw that the entrance to the pub was belowground, just like the rear. A tiny staircase led up to street level at the front.
He checked his watch; it was four forty-five A.M., and the sign on the window said the bar did not open until three P.M.
“We’ll be fine here,” he called back to Russ. “No one can see us from the street.”
Court moved back to the bar, and for the first time since the action in the Old Town he realized he was also banged up. He had his own bumps and bruises and scrapes and pulls; the adrenaline in his bloodstream and, to a lesser degree, the cold air had numbed him, but now all the jumping over alleys and falling off roofs was catching up to him. Still, Court knew from experience that most things on his body that were hurting were going to hurt even more tomorrow no matter what he did now.
Russ, on the other hand, was truly injured, and Court knew he had to treat him quickly. He flipped on a small table lamp on the bar, and, motioning to the wound, he asked, “You okay with me checking that?”
Russ took off his coat and lifted his shirt, then undid his bloody jeans and lowered them a few inches. He leaned his elbows on the bar, bracing himself for the pain that was sure to come.
Court grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka from behind the bar and unscrewed the cap. He didn’t bother to tell Russ that it was going to hurt; he had no doubt the other American would know that as well as he. Instead he just poured half a bottle of the clear spirit over the bloody injury, washing away the blood and giving Gentry his first chance to assess the damage. He saw both entry and exit wounds, two inches apart just below the man’s belt line on his left side. “Nice one,” he said.
Russ grunted with the burn, then growled, “In what sense is it ‘nice’?”
“You aren’t about to die, so that’s nice for you. You’ve got an exit wound, so it’s through and through. That’s good, too. You okay with me checking it for frag?”
Again, Court was certain the other man would know exactly what he meant.
Russ tensed up, holding on to the side of the table. He grunted again in anticipation of the pain. Then whispered, “Do it.”
Court poured the vodka over the fingers of his right hand, then began feeling around the outside of the entry wound. He said, “No fragments. It’s a little hole. Not a handgun. They were rocking MP7s, so you took a four-point-six-millimeter round. Personally, I’m not a fan of the caliber.”
Russ said, “I am developing a bias against it myself.”
Court snorted out a polite laugh. He kept digging, feeling into the hole now with his semisterilized fingers. Court fought a slight trembling in his hands, concentrated on his task, and hoped this stranger would not be able to pick up on the fact he was unnerved by his close brush with death.
Russ showed he had more pressing problems by grunting with pain.
Court poured more vodka on his hand, washing off the blood. “I need to see if your hip is broken. You ready for this?”
Russ did not speak; he just nodded. Sweat covered his brow.
Court’s finger felt its way through the path of the bullet; he rubbed against the bone under the torn skin and muscle and felt a scored and jagged hardness, but no major fracture. “You are a lucky son of a bitch. It just grazed the bone. It will hurt for a couple of weeks, but if you don’t get an infection, you’ll forget it ever happened.”
Court pulled his hand out of the wound, then emptied the bottle of vodka into the hole. “Jeez, man. You’re a bleeder, aren’t you?”
Russ bit his lip from the pain. His face was almost white, and the only thing holding him up was the bar.
Court wiped away blood with a bar towel. “We’ll need a compress and some ice.”
Court fashioned a bandage from a bar towel, then soaked it with more vodka to clean it and tied it tight around Russ’s waist with a cotton apron. He filled a plastic bag with ice from the bar freezer and cinched this over the bar towel with another apron.
Russ then walked around the bar for a moment to test his leg and his hip. He gave Court a weak thumbs-up. “Good work.”
With the ice numbing the wound area and the blood flow under control, Russ appeared stronger almost immediately. He washed the blood off his hands, drank some water from the tap, then grabbed the bottle of Redbreast and two shot glasses from behind the bar. He looked at Court. “How ’bout you let me buy you a drink?”
SEVENTEEN
The two men sat in a booth adorned with dusty vinyl cushions, staring across the table at one another and sipping in silence. The only light was from the lamp on the bar across the room, and a little residual glow from the street that filtered through the curtains.
Court had questions for the man, of course, but for now he tried to feel him out via nonverbal cues. Tried to read his face and body language to see what kind of a threat he still might be.
Court Gentry could accept that Russ had saved his life, but he was still not ready to trust him.
Under the table, Court had pulled the Glock from his jeans and placed it between his knees. His right hand rested just next to it on his thigh.
While he kept his fallback option under the table, he realized he was getting nowhere with his nonverbal evaluation above the table. Other than an occasional wince of pain when he moved, the face of the man across from him was as unreadable as Gentry imagined his own to be.
“Your hands are shaking,” Russ said, and Court looked down and saw he was right. The tremor in the fingers of his right hand was slight, but obvious. He wrapped them around the shot glass, and the tremor went away.
“Just cold.”
“Adrenaline,” Russ corrected. “Lots of people get the shakes when they’re under fire.”
Gentry downed his drink. Repeated, “I’m cold.”
Russ did not argue. Instead, he refilled Court’s glass. “I’m sure that’s all it is.”
Court fought to keep his hands still while Russ eyed him from across the table. To change the subject, Court said, “One question. None of my business, but I’d like to know.”
“I’m an open book.”
“What are you on?”
“What am I ‘on’?”
Gentry nodded. “That hole in your hip is bleeding more than it should. You seem too young and fit for blood pressure meds, and you aren’t coked up, so I figure you are taking amphetamines of some form.”
“Spoken like a man who knows his pharmaceuticals,” Russ replied.
Court did not respond to this. He had developed an addiction to pain pills after an op a year or so earlier, but he could not imagine how this stranger across the table would know about that.
After a moment Russ answered, “Adderall. Helps with reaction time, cognitive function, mutes pain.”
“Are you trying to sell it to me?”