waste bin twenty-five feet in front of Court. Gentry slowed, stopped, faced the man, his hands down at his sides. It was one of the young men who’d been with Slattery in the Padraic Pearse. The Irishman exposed a long length of chain from behind his leg, began swaying it slowly like a pendulum.
“What the fek ya’ doin’ followin me mate?” His brogue was almost incomprehensible, but it hardly mattered. Court was not listening. Instead, all his attention was focused on softer noises, tuned to hear the footsteps that would be approaching from behind any second. This rugby boy’s buddy was out there somewhere, and he’d make his move from the rear, Court had no doubt. He might go for a headlock or, more likely, swing a chain or a piece of metal at his target’s exposed back. Normally, as an elite contract killer, Court dealt with more determined foes with better training and equipment. But in cover working in dockyards or hanging in seedy bars in scummy parts of shitty towns, he’d seen beatings and batterings by thickheaded ruffians often enough to memorize the standard operating procedure.
It didn’t matter where you were, really. There was something of a universal language to an ass-kicking.
The man in the black rugby shirt shouted something else, this time fully indecipherable, and then there it was: soft footsteps, getting louder and quicker behind him as they closed in. Court made himself look straight ahead at black-shirt rugby boy and pretended to have no idea he was about to be jumped from behind, until the last possible moment.
The steps were on him now, and Court moved like lightning, executing his first force-on-force encounter in months. In one motion he sank low and spun and moved to the side, saw a bald young man in an orange rugby shirt move in a blur and swing a length of bent rebar at the empty space where Gentry’s back had been three-quarters of a second before. The weight of the iron and the swing itself as well as the Irishman’s own momentum carried him through the space, and he kept moving forward long after his mind had registered that his target had avoided his strike. Court stood quickly as the man passed by him, used his left hand to guide the flying man past him, shot a clenched fist through the black night like a firing piston, connected perfectly with the area just under the man’s right ear, cracking the jaw and snapping the head to the side and rendering the man unconscious even as his out-of-control energy propelled him onwards.
The rebar clanged in the street and the Irishman followed, fell chest-first and rolled, all arms and legs flapping, to a stop at the foot of his mate.
He did not move. Blood on his face from the road rash acquired when his skin met the asphalt glistened in the cobalt streetlamps.
Black rugby shirt swung his chain wildly now, his eyes dropping to check on his friend and then darting back up, with equal measures of fury and terror, to the bearded man in front of him. Court walked towards the man, arms low, eyes and shoulders relaxed.
A man in his element.
The chain whipped forward.
The Gray Man stepped into the path of the chain, caught it deftly with his left hand, and yanked hard, knocking the young man in the rugby shirt off balance, bringing him closer with a jolt.
A right-hand spear to the throat knocked the Irishman to his back. He rolled in the street, gagged and wheezed, choking on his bruised and swelling airway as he stared at the bearded man who now squatted above him. When he spoke, the American sounded calm, in complete control, as if he were the one who had planned this ambush in the dark.
“Slattery’s flat number, please. I will only ask you once.”
Four minutes later the tip of a handgun’s silencer pushed open the unlatched door of flat sixty-six of the Queen’s Court Condominiums. Behind the silencer was a Russian Baikal Makarov automatic pistol. Behind the Mak was the Gray Man. All senses were alert, more so because the door had been left open invitingly, and that was odd, considering the fact that the man who lived there was surely aware that someone was coming for him.
As Gentry entered the well-lit living room behind the door, he did not have long to wonder about the location of his target. Slattery sat at a simple wooden table in the middle of the