Page 33 of Duke

Temple just sighed. “You’re a piece of work, Duke.”

I just winked. “You think this place is something? You should see my pad at Harris’s compound.”

With that I led her out of the bedroom, careful to make sure she didn’t glance into the bathroom on the way. I paused at the door of the apartment, watching out the peephole. When I was reasonably sure it was clear, I toed open the door and pivoted out, scanning the hallway, the stolen pistol in hand.

Empty, for now.

I gestured for Temple to follow me to the stairwell, putting a finger over my lips to make sure she stayed quiet. I nudged open the door to the stairwell, inched in far enough to peek down the stairs, listening and watching.

I heard voices below, chatting in low, gruff tones in a language I didn’t speak, probably Ukrainian or Russian. Damn. I glanced back at Temple, shushed her again, and then put my mouth to her ear so I could whisper.

“Stay here, and stay low,” I hissed as quietly as I could, setting the duffel bag at her feet. “Don’t move from this spot until you’re sure it’s me coming up for you.”

“If it’s not you?” she asked, sounding more than a little panicked.

I grinned and winked. “It’ll be me, sweetpea. No worries.”

Down the stairs then, in a low tactical crouch, back to the wall, aiming at the stairs below me. I got down to the first floor and then I crouched on a landing and waited. The voices grew louder as they ascended the steps, clearly unhurried and unworried. Which was stupid, on their part.

If you’re hunting Duke Silver you’d better be worried, motherfucker.

I waited until the first one cleared the landing completely, the second right behind him. I drew a bead on the second dude’s forehead and squeezed off a round. Thesnapof the suppressed report echoed in the stairwell, and there was a spray of red and a thumping as he fell backward. The guy in the lead burst into motion, throwing himself to one side as he hit the stairs on his belly, Tec-9 whipping up.

I scrambled to my right just in time, his semi-automatic chattering. Half a dozen rounds smacked into the drywall where I’d been, and four more strafed across, following me. I hit the landing hard on my right side, rolled, and popped off two fast shots at the shooter. Only one hit, but one was all it took. The round splattered through the top of his head and exited near his shoulder blade, making a godawful mess of the stairwell.

I held my position for a moment, waiting for a third dickhead to pop up. When half a minute passed without anyone shooting at me, I shifted to a crouch and inched toward the stairs, not taking anything for granted. I counted one dead guy and a second corpse on the landing below him, and a third standing in the corner—

Fuck.

CRACKCRACKCRACK!

Three rounds buzzed past my head, the last one nicking my earlobe, missing my neck by gnat’s whisker. I slammed against the wall to one side, pistol whipping up, cracked off two rounds one handed. Again, it looks cool in the movies when the hero does that whole one-handed, arm extended shooting thing, but in real life that’s liable to get you killed, as you’re likely to miss even if you’re as highly trained as I am. You just don’t have the stability to aim accurately one-handed. I mean, if you’re a gunslinger in the Old West and you’re drawing and firing in one motion, aiming for center mass, sure, you’ve got a decent chance of hitting someone,ifyou’re ten or fifteen paces away at most. Further than that? Forget it.

So yeah, my stupid ass missed. But my shots got close enough to make the guy duck, which bought me a few more seconds. And in a firefight, seconds are all you get. I used those seconds to slap my left hand up against my right in a nice, clean two-hand grip.

SNAPSNAP—

The suppressed pistol bucked in my hands, time once again slowing down as it does in those situations. I saw the shooter at the bottom of the stairs, tucked into a corner, crouched, both hands on his pistol in a professional grip, barrel aiming at me. I saw his finger squeeze the trigger once, twice, saw the weapon buck. My own was barking just a hair ahead of his, and then I was moving, throwing myself to the opposite wall. Something hot and sharp sliced my left bicep, and then a bee buzzed angrily past my ear, and then my foot was slipping in the gore on the stairs and I was flying, momentarily weightless.

I hit the stairs hard enough to knock the wind out of me, stars dancing behind my eyes, and then I was rolling down them. I reached the landing dizzy and disoriented and gasping, thudding up against a bleeding corpse, with the third shooter still standing, clutching his gut, shakily drawing bead down on me.

I was on my back, and he was behind me, and I couldn’t breathe and my head was spinning and throbbing from the topple down the stairs, but I got my piece up and a round squeezed off before rolling twice to one side, away from the dead guy. A bullet hit the concrete of the landing centimeters from my face, spattering me with sharp shards of spraying concrete dust, and then a second one hit an inch from my leg, and I had to roll again, but there was nowhere to go except down the stairs again and the asshole still wasn’t dead, despite a bullet in his gut and another in his chest.

“Fucking die, motherfucker!” I growled, and shot him twice more before throwing myself down the next flight of stairs.

I was ready that time, though, going down feet first on my back, my ass and shoulders taking the brunt of the initial impact, and then I twisted to my stomach, sliding down two more steps, my pistol aiming upward.

The soon-to-be-dead asshole staggered into view, torso now dotted with spreading stains. Tough sonofabitch, I’ll give him that.

“You first,” he ground out in a thick Eastern Bloc accent, arm rising limp, aiming at me.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said, and ended the discussion via the expedient method of a well-aimed bullet to the brainpan.

Gore painted the wall behind him, his head yanking backward as the round exited the back of his skull.

A sound below me had me rolling to my back and aiming down the stairwell, finger tightening on the trigger. Until I saw that it was Bruce, pepper spray in hand, eyes wide.

I groaned in relief, and lowered my gun. “Ain’t you ever been told not to roll up to a gunfight with pepper spray, Bruce?”