Chris bounded over Evelina’s body, and when he hit the landing, his feet slid on the scattered ice. He caught the floor with his ass, desperately hanging on to his pistol as a hailstorm of bullets passed through where he’d been standing. If there was pain, he didn’t have time to feel it. That was twice he’d cheated death in the stairway, and he wasn’t counting on a hat trick. He turned and fired a burst in Animus’s direction before racing downstairs again. He skipped three steps at a time as he descended the next flight of steps.
Now that he was on the floor below the ice machine, he breezed through the exit and rushed out of the killing zone. The stairwell he’d just left had become a deathtrap. He glanced at the elevator, but that could turn into a more confined place to be ambushed, so he ran away and turned down the hall. A cheerful man stepped out of his room, but when he noticed Chris, his cheer faded, and he backed into his room and closed the door. Chris glanced down at himself, red splatter on his shirt and pistol in hand. He looked like a gangster. Even so, he was determined to survive, and he didn’t give a damn about appearances.
At the end of the hall, he burst through the doors to the north stairway and leaped up two stairs at a time, ascending two flights, until he reached his floor. He burst into the hallway. Hannah and Sonny must have already heard the gunshots, and at any moment they would rush to see if he was in trouble. Gunshots rang out from the southern stairwell.
Oh no. Hannah and Sonny are already there!
Just before Chris reached the southern staircase, footsteps came running up the stairs from that direction. Unlike the terrorists, who could shoot first and ask questions later, Chris had to identify the danger first. He aimed but kept his finger off the trigger. Hannah and Sonny appeared.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hannah said, dashing past him.
“Trouble coming!” Sonny shouted as he blew by Chris and Hannah. “I’ve got the point.”
“I’ll bring up the rear,” Chris said, following behind them.
They descended the north stairs unmolested. As they blew through the hotel lobby, some customers and hotel staff talked and pointed at the stairs, while others went about their business as if nothing was happening.
Chris, Hannah, and Sonny departed the building and had to wait for traffic before they could jaywalk across a one-way street and onto a tree-filled island, where they waited again for an opening in the traffic. Finally, they caught a break in the flow of cars and crossed into Hyde Park, where they took cover behind London plane trees.
“What the hell happened back there?” Sonny asked.
Chris explained quickly.
“Holy shit!” Sonny said. “Did you see Xander?”
Chris shook his head.
“You think he’s in there?” Hannah asked.
“Everybody else seems to be,” Chris said.
Through the trees surrounding the trio, Chris spotted Animus and an albino man stepping out of the hotel, both holding pistols down by their sides. The albino wore a porkpie hat, his white hair extending over his ears, and he had sunglasses covering his eyes and a white soul patch fixed between his lower lip and chin. He wore a black leather jacket and black pointy shoes.
“Whiteface looks like he just stepped out of a jazz club in Hell,” Chris said, nodding his head toward the men.
Sonny and Hannah turned to look. “Whiteface was one of the guys in the stairwell who was shooting at us,” Sonny said.
Police sirens sounded then, and six beefy Caucasian men came out of the hotel. Animus shouted at his comrades before pointing across the street in their direction.
“I think they’re coming our way,” Chris said.
Hannah nodded. “Sonny, take us out.”
Sonny resumed the point. There were no more trees immediately to the west, only an open grassy area, so going there would leave them exposed. If they went north, they’d run out of park — and trees — to hide in. Thankfully, Sonny had the tactical sense to take them south, staying in the tree line next to a wide walkway. Although Sonny set a fast pace, when Animus, Whiteface, and their comrades crossed the street, the trio couldn’t move fast enough.
Sonny sped up after a glance over his shoulder and approached a fountain where statues of a couple seemed to frolic, almost dancing, above the water as children around them dived and played in the sparkling liquid. The cheerfulness of the statues contrasted the impending doom of Chris’s situation. The area immediately surrounding the fountain wouldn’t conceal them, and Sonny guided them through the swath of trees to the right until they reached more trees.
With Sonny still on point, Chris had to keep watch behind them. Animus, Whiteface, and their gang were becoming more animated and picking up momentum. Animus raised his pistol in Chris’s direction.
“Contact rear!” Chris shouted.
Hannah and Sonny turned and faced Animus and his men, preparing to deliver the pain. Animus got off the first shot, and it nicked Chris’s shirt and he took cover. From behind a tree, Chris exposed only enough of himself to see and shoot, but a jogger in her mid-twenties stopped running and stood petrified near Animus. The shot was too close to take without risking a hit to a friendly, so Chris aimed at the next available target, Whiteface, but he rushed the shot and missed.
A small, potbellied elderly man who was walking two poodles through the park jumped at the gunshot. He dropped to the ground and hung on to his leashes. The dogs barked and tried to run away, but the man held on tight and shouted to his pets.
More police sirens sounded, and through the trees, Chris spotted a man who appeared to be a police officer standing on the sidewalk, talking into a radio, but he was unarmed and didn’t stand a chance of fighting Animus’s crew with a baton as his only weapon.
Animus’s team engaged Chris’s, and as mini sonic booms crashed against each other, the air snapped, crackled, and popped. Chunks of tree bark flew, and splinters of wood sprayed.
Animus seemed to follow Chris’s cue, taking cover behind a tree, but a hulking enemy was caught out in the open. Chris shot Hulk’s arm, sending him into a short spin, exposing his back, which Chris also fired at. The shot struck low, near the kidneys, but Hulk was still standing. Chris squeezed the trigger again. This time, Hulk fell over.
The air near Chris heated up, and a projectile narrowly missed his left arm. Although relieved the bullet hadn’t made impact, he still had to eliminate the threat of Animus and his goons. One of them, wearing a green shirt and green trousers must’ve been shot by Hannah or Sonny because he crumpled to the dirt.
Chris’s team had plenty of tree cover on each side for shooting and shielding their movement, but Animus’s squad had too many men and not enough wood. While Chris, Hannah, and Sonny fired and maneuvered freely, Animus and his comrades were trapped like fish in a barrel. Animus was no idiot; he wisely ordered his men to retreat.
Chris took a shot at a black-haired man who moved slow like molasses and nailed him in the back, but the shot propelled him forward rather than drop him. Chris breathed hot and fast, and his heart rate spiked without restraint. Molasses was about to find cover behind a tree. Chris aimed again, but his sights wobbled, hovering over nearly everything except his target. Chris hoped to take the shot when his sights aligned on Molasses’s upper back, but the shot missed.
As soon as Animus and his men reached a patch of woods for cover, he ordered his men to return fire. Chris wanted to chase them, but moving forward would put him and his team out in the open. He looked to Sonny, who wasn’t making a move, either. Hannah looked to Chris. She was a master at recruiting spies, but Chris and Sonny were the masters of killing. They needed to do something to gain a tactical advantage, but he didn’t know what. Patience could be a virtue, allowing the situation to unfold until an opportunity presented itself.