Court scanned the street in front of him while lying on his chest on the icy cobblestones, but when he did not immediately see more Townsend men in his line of fire, he took one hand off his firing grip and reached down to a pouch on his chest. He yanked out a fragmentation grenade, pulled the pin, and then side-armed the baseball-sized explosive under the Mercedes. It skidded out the other side and slid up the street, stopping under the parked Ford Galaxy.
Court did not wait for the explosion; he scrambled on the ice, crawling, slipping and sliding in the other direction, back toward the Audi, which was still rolling down the street, with a dead man behind the wheel.
Boom!
The grenade detonated under the Galaxy, erupting the gas tank and turning the vehicle into a massive fireball. The passenger of the van had sought shelter behind it, ducking behind the right front fender.
He was killed instantly in the explosion.
Beaumont thought he’d been shot at first, but he quickly realized it was Jumper Two’s blood that had covered the entire front seat of the Mercedes, filling his eyes and temporarily blinding him. His second-in-command was slumped next to him, behind the wheel, unrecognizable as a human being with the loss of his face and the top of his skull.
Beaumont wiped blood from his eyes with the arm of his coat as gunfire cracked in the street just outside his vehicle. Behind him, both Babbitt and Parks screamed in terror.
Twenty feet behind them, the Ford Galaxy exploded in a fireball.
Beaumont bailed out of his passenger-side door and fell into the street, crawling away from the Mercedes as it rolled backward slowly toward the burning wreckage. He ended up in the snow on the sidewalk; here he drew his pistol and began whipping it around looking for a target.
Twenty yards in front of him the Audi came to a stop in the entryway of a narrow apartment building. Jumper Eight was still alive, only now climbing out of the wreckage with his pistol in his hand but down to his side as he staggered in a daze.
Beaumont spun around quickly, looking up the street in the other direction. Just ten yards from him, the Galaxy was engulfed in rolling black smoke in the middle of the narrow street. A burning body lay next to the open passenger-side door.
But where was the fucking Gray Man?
Beaumont rose from the snow into a crouch, used the back of his left arm again to wipe blood from his eyes, then spun toward movement to his left. Babbitt opened the door to the back of the Mercedes and fell out. Crawling on his hands and knees onto the sidewalk, he rose and crab-walked over to Beaumont, keeping his head low. Jeff Parks crawled out just behind him, his silver automatic pistol waving in the air as he stumbled out of the car.
Gunfire on Beaumont’s right turned his attention in that direction. Jumper Eight fired at someone on the far side of the Mercedes; Beaumont could not see what he was shooting at, but he kept his head down and moved toward the rear of the vehicle to approach from the opposite direction. Return gunfire snapped, round after round in rapid-fire succession, and Beaumont saw his subordinate spasm as a bloom of red blossomed from his coat, and then he flew back onto the trunk of the Audi as he was hit again in the lower torso.
Beaumont stayed low, knowing now Gentry was on the opposite side of the Mercedes, either flat in the street or, like himself, down in a crouch. Babbitt and Parks passed on Beaumont’s left, but he ignored them, focusing all his attention on moving quickly around the car to get in behind his target.
Court dropped the man up by the Audi with five rounds from the Glock 19, then turned back to the minivan just as the man who’d found cover in the doorway spun out into the street and fired at him. The round slammed into Gentry’s Kevlar vest, just below the collarbone, and it knocked him back onto his heels, but not all the way down to the ice.
Court returned fire, hitting the Townsend man in the pelvis and spinning him. He dropped his pistol and fell awkwardly on his knees and elbows. He reached out for his gun on the ice and Court shot him again, this time through the top of his head.
The Townsend man dropped face-first onto the cobblestones; blood poured into the street.
Now Gentry heard movement back in the opposite direction; he spun to it and aimed at two men in wool coats running away along the sidewalk. He fired a single round, shooting the second man in the back. The man toppled forward and a silver automatic pistol skittered on the ice; his body knocked the first man down as he landed on him. As Court put the first man in his sights he sensed new movement, close on his right, behind the black Mercedes. He whipped his pistol to this threat and saw a big bearded man aiming a handgun at him.
Court squeezed the trigger of his Glock and fired a single round. At the same instant his arm kicked up in the air and his pistol twirled out of his hand. It felt like he’d been hit in the forearm with a baseball bat. He saw blood splatter up into his face and felt himself spinning and then slipping and then falling down onto the street, and he knew he’d been shot even before he landed face-first on the icy cobblestones.
He lay there for a moment, shaking his head, trying to get back in the fight. He saw the road around him smeared with his own blood, steam pouring into the air. Along with it gray down feathers from where the bullet tore through his coat drifted about him like gentle snowfall.
Gentry’s arm was broken midway between his wrist and his elbow; it tingled and ached and burned and throbbed all at once. He pushed pain and shock from his mind, fighting to turn himself back around toward the threat, the big bearded shooter by the wrecked-out Mercedes. He saw his pistol on the cobblestones first; he dove for his gun with his left hand, but before he reached it he saw that the bearded man was down as well. He thrashed on his back, clutching his thigh, as arterial spray launched five feet into the air.
Court continued crawling toward his Glock pistol, his right arm hanging down and useless, and he looked back over his shoulder toward the man who was running away. It was Babbitt; he could see it now even at thirty yards. The director of Townsend neared the corner at the end of the street, but in his haste he slid on the ice there and fell down, then struggled to climb back up to his feet.
Court still didn’t have the pistol in hand yet. He turned from Babbitt, concentrated on it again, and reached out with his left hand.
But just as he put a fingertip on the Glock’s grip, new gunfire echoed on the narrow street.
Two policemen were in front of the Eglise St. Piere at the top of the street and they fired on him, their pistols cracking.
Court took his hand from the gun, turned, and rose to his feet. He began running down the street in the opposite direction of the cops, doing his best to use the burning Galaxy and the Mercedes for cover as he did so. He clutched his wounded arm as he ran.
The gunfire stopped; he heard shouts behind him as the cops yelled at him to stop, but he kept running. He turned the corner where he’d lost Babbitt and found no one there. He looked in all directions, then screamed in frustration at losing the head of Townsend. He ran to where he’d parked the van, climbed inside, and struggled to reach the keys on the right side of the steering column with his left hand.
In seconds he was moving, the van skidding on the hard-packed snow in the middle of the street as it raced off to the south.
Behind him seven men lay dead or wounded in the street.
Lee Babbitt had crashed through a small fence and hidden behind a child’s playhouse in the backyard of a private home. Here he lay huddled in the snow, his hands shaking too hard to pull his phone out to call for help.