Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,93
fire door when Tony Tambo suddenly erupted into action. I don't know if he was playing at knights in shining armor or if it was just sheer rage at seeing his club abused like this, but he jumped up on the seat and ran straight across the table, leaping to the floor and going for the heavies. The one facing us didn't even pause for breath. He just let off two shots. The first caught Tony in the thigh, his leg bursting into shattered fragments of flesh and bone in a spray of blood. The second caught him in the abdomen as he fell, the exit wound bursting out of his back like someone had used a morphing program on his suit. His scream was like every nightmare you hope you'll never have. The groans that followed it weren't a whole lot better.
"I fucking warned you," the gunman shrieked, sound¬ing as if he was about to burst into tears. "Let's get the fuck out," he added.
His companion kicked the bar on the fire exit, which sprang open. I could just see the corner of the basement stairs that led up to the street. Then he shouted, "Get the fuck down here now, or the bitch gets it, you hear?" He stepped back, yanking Delia with him. Nothing hap¬pened, so he sidestepped her, still holding her hair, leaned into the doorway, and fired. I heard the singing whine of a ricochet against the stone walls of the stairway. Then he hauled Delia in close again. "Get them down here," he snarled.
"Come down quietly," Delia shouted. "That's an order."
By now, Tony had stopped groaning, so I was able to hear the sound of heavy feet on the steps. Two men edged through the door into the club. They followed the ges¬tures of the man with Delia and the gun and moved around the walls until they were almost parallel to Lovell and Delia's sergeant. "Okay. Nobody follow, you hear? Or the bitch dies," he screamed, rushing the door, fol¬lowed by his companion.
As they disappeared, Lovell made a superhuman effort that caught the sergeant unawares. Suddenly he was wrig¬gling free. I jumped onto the table and launched myself in a flying kick that would have got me suspended for life in any legitimate Thai boxing club. I hit Lovell in the side, and as we crashed to the ground together, I heard the sat-isfying crunch of snapping ribs and his simultaneous squeal of pain before the wind was completely knocked out of him. I rolled free and left him to Delia's sergeant. I ran for the fire exit, along with one of the cops. The oth¬ers were already out of the main door and heading for the street in a desperate bid to cut off the gunmen.
We reached the door at about the same moment the gunmen, slowed by an uncooperative Delia, reached the street. With a roar that King Kong wouldn't have been ashamed of, the one trying to control her picked her up bodily and threw her down the flight of narrow stairs.
No amount of training in how to fall drills you for that sort of experience. Delia tumbled down the steps in a loose ball, head defended by her forearms, bouncing off the walls. The cop and I stepped forward to break her fall. It was probably the worst thing we could have done. As she hit us, her leg shot out and snagged the wall. I heard the crack as bone snapped. Then we were a tumble of limbs. We settled with her face a couple of inches from mine. "What a fuck-up," she breathed. Then she fainted. I managed to free one arm from under her in spite of excruciating pain that ran like a flame up to the shoulder. When I saw the tattered sleeve of my jacket drenched in blood, I fainted too.
It had been a quiet night in casualty until we hit the infir¬mary. Tony Tambo was on the critical list, having blood pumped into him and hanging on to life by sheer willpower, according to the nurse strapping up the wrist I'd merely sprained in the crush at the foot of the fire stairs. The blood had been Tony's. I'd landed in it when I'd rolled free of Lovell. Mr. Big Promo was under arrest with four broken ribs and a collapsed lung, and I was half-expecting one of Delia's zealots to charge me