The first one through the door was the biggest of the crew, and not in the way Zviadi was big. His hands, surprisingly, were empty, and when he saw me, he saw the pistol I was holding parallel with my thigh, barrel down. His expression didn't even flicker. I was a threat that didn't rate.
Which made sense, because the second and third guys through the door were carrying their pistols in hand, much the way I was, and the last of their party had brought a shotgun with him. The door swung closed after him, heavy metal meeting concrete, and the echo rang off the floors and walls.
"Tiasa Lagidze." I kept my voice even. "Where is she?"
The one to the left spoke softly in Russian, and the leader canted his head slightly, to listen. None of their eyes left me. Shotgun and the second pistol began to spread out slowly, trying to keep from bunching up.
"That's the guy," the one on the left was saying. "That's the guy who dropped Gorda."
The leader righted his head, then nodded, barely. His whole expression was as dead as when he'd entered, his stare empty, with nothing for me to read in it.
Then he turned away, saying, "Kill him."
At least I'm pretty sure that's what he said, but I could be wrong. Everything after the word "kill" was lost when I started laying down fire.
I put my first two at the shotgun, and the double-tap hit him before he could bring his gun to bear. By then I was already moving back and left, counting my steps as I shifted my aim right. Second pistol got a shot off as I lined him up, but he rushed and it went high, and I was still counting steps when I drilled him with another two, then swung the pistol back left.
The leader had moves, already behind the nearest hard cover he could find, the two oil drums closest to the south door. I didn't linger on him. I was firing 45-caliber jacketed hollow-point, and there was no way it would penetrate both walls of the barrel to hit him. I continued bringing my weapon around to find first pistol, the one who'd spoken, who'd identified me. He was going for a set of oil drums himself, the same cluster of them that held Zviadi, and he was firing blind as he went, and his shots were hitting the floor and the walls and not me.
I shifted aim past him, and hammered the fuse box with five of the six rounds I had left, dumping them off as fast as the trigger would let me. Somewhere around bullet three I broke through, and the lights went, and without windows, the building dropped into an absolute darkness. I finished my count, and the heel of my left foot hit the door behind me.
I went outside, yanking the door closed behind me to give them the noise, checking my corners. No one was waiting to spring on me. With one hand, I grabbed the pipe I'd placed and slid it through the handle, leaving six inches of overlap on the wall, effectively barring the door from the outside. Then I sprinted for the eastern side, coming around and making for the southern door as fast as I could. I'd brought two mags with me, and I switched them out as I ran, slowed at the corner, then rounded strong, my weapon in high-ready. I saw the car, the same damn Land Cruiser, parked fifteen meters off to the side.
The door burst open. I'd thought it would be the leader who came out first, because he'd been the one closest to it, but instead it was the first pistol who emerged, raising his gun, and I realized too late that I was too close. I got a forearm up and under his weapon as he came in, forcing his gun away from me, and he fired anyway, for all the good it did him. Even as he did that he was barreling into me, and we went down together, each of us trying to get our weapons to bear, twisting like kids in a playground fight.
The fall trapped my weapon beneath him, denied me any useful shot. He didn't have the same problem. He fired again despite my grip on his arm, this time dangerously close to my left ear, and the report hurt like a motherfuck. I sacrificed the gun, went for the knife I'd taken off Zviadi, and doing it cost me my leverage, and we tumbled. He ended up on top of me, fighting viciously against my grip to bring the barrel of his gun in line with my head.
He was still fighting to do it when I punched him twice in the side with the knife. He made a soft and awful sound of surprise, then cut it short when I quickly drove the blade into him a third time. Then I pulled it free and stabbed again, fast, this time coming down into the side of his neck, where it met his shoulder. He turned to dead weight.
Then something heavy and hard skittered on the pavement my way, and a fucking hand grenade bounced out of the darkness of the doorway straight toward me.
The last time I'd dealt seriously with hand grenades had been in the Army, and that had been a lifetime ago, and all the training options that flashed through my mind came back as no-go. There was no way I could get into a pencil position in time, and even if I could free myself from the body, the nearest hard cover was ten meters behind me.
But I had soft cover.
I heaved myself and the dead weight off the ground and onto the grenade. Then I lunged back, losing the knife but heading for my gun, twisting to hit the deck on my belly, trying to get into the pencil position anyway. I managed to get my feet together and my mouth open and my hands up to my ears when the explosive detonated.
The dead man's body absorbed most of the blast, but overpressure still slapped at me, first from the explosion, then from the vacuum as air rushed to return to the detonation zone. Opening my mouth had helped, and my eyes didn't feel like they bulged too much, or at least, they stayed in my skull. Even with my hands over my ears, the concussion shot pain through my head, further traumatizing my left ear. I lost my body long enough to realize it, had to force myself back into play.
I reached for my gun, rolling clumsily back to my feet and staggering to the side. The leader had used the grenade to clear his exit, but he'd had to wait until after it had detonated to leave for fear of eating his own blast. I just hoped he didn't have a second grenade. Or a third.
Then he made his move, coming out with his gun at high-ready, pure Russian-military-style. Maybe he thought the body on the ground was mine, but it drew his attention and his aim first, and it gave me the half-second to pick my shot. I needed a live one, and he was the only one left.
The round punched him just inside the hip, shattering his pelvic girdle, and he dropped hard with his legs suddenly unable to support him. When he fell, he fell forward, and I closed on him as fast as I could manage. He was cursing in Russian, trying to bring his pistol around, but my boot found his hand, knocked the weapon free and sent it bouncing a couple of meters.
I holstered my gun, then dropped a knee onto the base of his spine and began to search him. It wasn't direct pressure on the pelvis, but it was close enough, and the pain kept him occupied. He had a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a wad of bills, a knife of his own, a set of keys for the Land Cruiser, and a phone. He also had a wallet, and the wallet had an ID card, and the ID card had his picture and a name, Vladek Karataev. I put the money, the keys, the wallet, and the mobile in a pocket, then flipped out the blade on his knife.
He was hissing out deep breaths, hands clenching and unclenching, trying to control the pain. I came off his back, rolling him. His breath caught when I moved him, the shattered bones in his hip grinding and shifting. I waited until his eyes focused on me again, then showed him the knife.
"Tiasa Lagidze," I said. I used Russian. "Where is she?"
"Go fuck your mother." The strain of keeping pain out of his voice made it sound very sincere.
Fucking Russians, I thought. Always proving how tough they are.
After a half-second for thought, I stabbed him in the thigh. He yelled, cursed me, tried to grab for my hand and immediately fell back in the agony the movement caused. I yanked the blade out, wiped it on his shirt, then closed and pocketed it. I straightened up, then put my foot on the wound I had just made, pressing down hard. From my pocket, I brought out his phone. It was a BlackBerry, one of the new ones.