He started to regain his composure. The pistol was still shoved hard into my mouth, but he was beginning to ease himself to his feet. He did it by putting weight on the pistol and then against my face; as the pistol turned in my mouth, it twisted painfully up against my cheek and teeth, scraping them with the sight. And all the time he kept a grip on Kelly's hair, pulling her around all over the place.
He moved back, the pistol now aimed at my chest.
"Get back up on your knees!"
"All right, mate, OK. You got me, OK."
As I moved I saw what had taken me down. The fire extinguisher had split open the skin at the back of my head. There was blood oozing out everywhere and matting down my hair.
There was nothing I could do; you just can't stop capillary bleeding.
I got back on my knees, my ass up in the air again so I wasn't resting on the heels of my feet, and I was looking at him, trying to sort myself out. He started to walk backward toward the office, keeping the weapon pointed at me.
"Come on, hard man, on your knees."
I got the hint, he wanted me to follow him.
By now Kelly was a mess. There was a small trail of my blood being wiped along the floor. Kelly must have been kneeling in it before she was moved. She had her hands on his wrist, trying to support herself. She kept on tripping up, walking on her knees, trying to pick herself up, as if she were getting dragged behind a horse. All he was interested in was moving backward with the weapon pointing at me.
He said, "Stay where the fuck you are!" and then shuffled backward past the door to the large office.
I was trying to compose myself; I knew I didn't have long to live unless I took some action.
"In there!"
I started to shuffle in.
"Walk!"
I got up and walked into the room, my back still toward him. I walked slowly toward the coffee table. I was just about to move off to the side to go around it when he said, "Stop!
Turn around!"
I did as I was told. It was an unusual command because normally you want the person you're holding facing away from you so they don't know what's going on. If you can't see, it's difficult to react.
As I turned, I saw Kelly sitting on the leather swivel chair that now had been dragged to the left of the desk. McGear was standing behind her. He still had his left hand wrapped around her hair and was pulling her back onto the seat and pointing the 9mm at me.
The top half of a semiautomatic, the part of the weapon on which the fore and rear sights are mounted, is called the top-slide. It moves back when you've fired to eject the empty case, then picks up a round on its return. If it's moved back by as little as an eighth of an inch, the weapon can't fire--so if you're quick enough, you can shove your hand hard onto the front of the muzzle, push the top slide back, and the trigger won't work as long as you can keep it there. It's got to be really quick, really aggressive, but I had nothing to lose.
There was a lull--was he trying to make a decision about what to do? It was less than twenty seconds, but it seemed like forever.
Kelly kept crying and whimpering; there must have been friction burns on her knees where she had been dragged earlier.
With his left hand McGear yanked her upright and said, "Shut the fuck up!" And just as he did that, we stopped having eye-to-eye contact; I knew that it was time.
I leaped forward, shouting at the top of my voice to disorient him, got my right hand and pushed it as hard as I could against the muzzle, pushing down on the top slide so I moved it back maybe half an inch.
He shouted a loud, drawn-out "Fuck!" half in anger, half in pain.
I got hold of his wrist, pulled it toward me, and pushed away with my right hand against the top slide He tried, but it was too late for him; it didn't fire. I needed to grip my hand around the muzzle now to keep the top slide back.
As this was happening, I was pushing toward the wall-just push, push, push; he still had hold of Kelly, and she was being dragged around, screaming at the top of her voice. I shut her out of my mind, keeping my eyes on the pistol, my body bent down, pushing and pushing. I felt the air leave his body as he hit the wall. Kelly was getting in the way; I was stepping on her, he was stepping on her, and she was screaming out in pain. He must have decided he needed two hands to sort me out because, the next thing I knew, Kelly was running.
I started to head-butt in earnest. I was hitting him with my head, I was hitting him with my nose, with the side of my face. My nose was hurting and bleeding as much as his must have been, but I just kept on butting, butting, and butting,
trying to do as much damage to him as possible, and, at the same time, keeping him against the wall.
He was screaming, "You fucker! You fucker! You fucker!
You're dead!"
And I was doing exactly the same back, screaming, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck!"
I still had him pushed right against the wall. As I butted him, his teeth cut into my face, opening up my forehead and just below my eye. You don't notice the pain when the adrenaline is pumping. I head-butted him again and again; it wasn't going to do him much lasting damage, but that was all I could do at the moment. My hands were on the weapon and I was shouting all sorts of shit at the top of my voice to scare him and, even more, to keep me psyched.
As his head came down, I bit the first thing that came into range. I felt my teeth on the taut skin of his cheek. There was that initial resistance, and then my teeth broke into what felt like warm squid and I was ripping his face open. He screamed out even louder, but I was focused totally on what I was doing; all other thoughts went out the window and I bit, gouged, did whatever damage I could.
My teeth sank in and in. He squealed like a pig. I had a mouthful of his cheek and was ripping and tearing. I saw terror in his eyes.
By now there was blood all over the two of us; I could taste the iron tang of it, and my whole face was drenched from the cuts on my face and his, all getting mixed in with our sweat.
Trying to clear my mouth, I choked some of it up into the back of my nose.
All the time, I was twisting the weapon away from me and trying to keep the top slide back. He was still pretty switched on and was squeezing the trigger, but nothing was happening--for now. His other hand was pulling at my fingers, trying to pry them off the weapon. As long as I kept my hand gripped around that top slide I'd be all right. I kept on pushing and pushing, keeping him up against something firm so I could lean against him, because all I wanted to do was move that pistol around.
I was still biting and gnawing. I'd gone through the first part of his cheek and kept on going. By now I was biting the top of his eyelid, I was biting his nose, everywhere I was ripping through the skin onto the bone of his jaw and skull.
I was running out of breath because the adrenaline was draining away, and pushing him against the wall had taken a lot of physical strength out of me. Then I started to choke, and I realized I had some of his skin at the back of my throat.
I could hear air being sucked into the hole in his cheek as he was breathing; I could hear my own throat rattling, blocked by chunks of his skin.
I was fighting him by feel, not sight. Our blood was burning into my eyes. Everything was blurred. I didn't know where Kelly was and at this stage I didn't care. I couldn't help her until I'd helped myself.
I was still trying to get the pistol into him somewhere. I didn't give a fuck where it went it could go into his leg, into his stomach, I didn't give a fuck, as long as I could start shooting him.
His screams increased as my finger wrapped around his on the trigger.
I turned it around, let go of the top slide and squeezed.
The first two shots missed, but I kept on shooting. I moved it around again and got him in the hip and then the thigh. He went down.