A cloud of white powder from the blowgun exploded into the air, all around Tracksuit’s head as he recoiled with the impact of the punch. Court moved between Tracksuit and the desk on his left, well aware of the gun on the bed next to the other man. Court dove for the bed, right under the cloud of powder, holding his breath as he did so.
He slid across the bed, but Business Suit beat him to the pistol, snatched it up, and tried to get a step back to earn enough space to raise it towards the blur in front of him. He let his phone fall to the carpet as he stumbled backwards against the wall separating the bedroom from the bathroom.
Business Suit was just squeezing the pistol’s trigger as Court rolled off the bed at speed and onto his feet, grabbed the suppressor of the handgun, and pushed it down. A subsonic 9-millimeter round left the pistol at 980 feet per second and scorched the air between Court’s legs, puncturing the floor. Court swung a handcuff-encased right hook that slammed into Business Suit’s temple and waylaid him, knocking him into the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom.
Court heard the sick crack of metal on bone, the man dropped straight down, and Court knew this man was out of the fight for now.
The unconscious man’s hand let go of the pistol easily, and Court snatched it away by the hot suppressor.
Spinning around towards Tracksuit, he first saw the huge cloud of powder hanging in the air. The man was somehow still on his feet, his head in the middle of the gray haze, facing away.
Court shot the man twice between the shoulder blades. The Chinese intelligence officer tumbled over the swivel chair and hit hard against the floor-to-ceiling window, then crumpled down and to his left, out of Court’s line of sight behind the bed.
Court heard the man cough, and it wasn’t the weak, raspy sound of a man who’d just had his lungs ventilated by a pair of 9-millimeter bullets. Court realized the operative must have been wearing a Kevlar vest under his tracksuit. The two rounds had done nothing more than knock him down.
Court began moving around the bed to get another shot off, the pistol high in front of him. He stopped after only a step, though, as the expanding gray puff of toxic dust created a no-go zone in the middle of the room. He could hear persistent coughing and hacking from the man on the floor by the window, but Court didn’t know if the man had his gun out and his wits about him.
Court realized the smart move was to find cover and then fire into the bed, hoping to get a round through and into the man’s head or arms. He backed up quickly, still unable to see his target. He didn’t want to get into a protracted trench-warfare-like gun battle here, and he thought about just retreating out into the hall and leaving the fight altogether, but he had other tasks to complete in the hotel room before he left. Both men were still alive, and there was a photo of Court’s face on the phone of one of the men.
Just as Court made it near the bathroom, a hand with a suppressed Beretta pistol in it rose over the far side of the bed and began firing.
Court dropped low, out of the line of fire, just as the wall to his right shredded with the incoming rounds. Court crawled backwards to the bathroom, looked back out up the length of the bedroom, ahead and to his right, and his eyes locked on the large flat-screen TV on the wall. There he could see the reflection of the Chinese operative wearing the tracksuit. The man knelt low, leaning his back against the floor-to-ceiling window on the far side of the bed, his legs obviously unsteady, and he coughed and shook his head, fighting the heavy effects of the scopolamine hydrobromide. His face was almost completely smeared with blood, like something from a horror film. Court also saw that despite the man’s struggle with the drugs, he kept his Beretta up and out in front of him, and his eyes forward, looking for his target. Court knew if he just leaned inches to his right he’d get shot in the face by this blood-drenched and doped-up asshole.
Tracksuit turned and looked to his left, then locked eyes with Court in the reflection of the sixty-inch television there. He knew Court’s exact location now; all he had to do was stand and shoot over the bed and through the far edge of the bathroom wall.
But Court wasn’t worried about this. He might not have had an angle on the Chinese officer, but he did have a line of sight on the big window the man leaned back against.
Just as Tracksuit reached back with one hand to push his weight off the window to stand, Court pointed his stolen pistol at the portion of the window in front of him, just over the fallen swivel chair.
Court fired at the glass, over and over. The suppressed weapon popped and hot brass ejected, forming a continuous arc that flew through the air till the spent casings banged against the wall to Court’s right.
He pressed the trigger over and over, emptying the pistol into the window.
The window glass pocked, then spiderwebbed, then shattered. Court watched through the reflection of the big television as the Chinese man in the black tracksuit tumbled backwards into the night behind a shower of crystalline shards.
It was twenty stories straight down to the roof of the adjacent building.
Tao shook his head slowly, wondering how long he’d been lying here unconscious. When he blinked to clear his mind, he realized the left side of his head dripped blood that ran down into his eyes. Smearing the blood away with the cuff of his jacket, he saw he was facedown next to the bed.
His head hurt like hell, and he knew he was still dazed.
He’d been out cold during the gunfight so he’d heard no shooting, but he smelled the burnt powder in the air now, and he had an immediate sensation that somewhere in the room a window had been opened.
He struggled up to his hands and knees and began reaching into his belt for a sheathed knife he kept there, but just as he got his fingers on the hilt he felt a pair of powerful hands grab him by the back of the neck. He tried to draw the knife, but it lurched from his hands and fell to the floor as he was yanked up off the ground. His feet kicked in the air in front of him, and in seconds he was half carried and half dragged into the bathroom.
He tried to yell, to talk to the man, to say anything, but his necktie was cinched tight around his throat, his airway was blocked and the blood to his brain restricted, and all the flailing with his arms could not break the hold of the bigger man behind him. He heard grunts of effort but no words from his attacker, the CIA man whom he had so much wanted to kill for sport just moments before.
Tao was dropped to the floor in front of the toilet; he grabbed on to the porcelain bowl and began pushing himself up. He was more disoriented now than when he’d regained consciousness, his eyes completely unfixed after ten seconds of intense choking, but he was a highly skilled operative, well trained in hand-to-hand fighting, so he knew if he could just climb to his feet and spin around to face his attacker he would be able to—
Tao felt the rough hands again, now on the back of his head, forcing him forward and down, and the crown of his head slammed violently into the open toilet seat, just before his face was shoved down, splashing into the shallow bowl of toilet water.
Tao gagged a throatful of water instead of air, and only then did his brain cycle into panic.
Court would have let this man live, not out of sympathy but out of efficiency; it takes more time to kill someone than it does to leave him, and Court had no idea how much time he had before someone else entered the hotel room.
But this Chinese agent had seen his face, and Court knew the man could either report to his higher-ups or even run into Court again on Court’s mission here in Hong Kong. The American had every intention of coming into contact with men like the man he now struggled to drown in the five inches of water in the toilet bowl, but those men he would come into contact with could not know he had deplaned from a CIA transport aircraft. The only way his mission here would be successful would be if he maintained his cover, and the only way Court knew to maintain his cover was to eliminate the compromise of the men here in the room with him.