straight up, grabbing the wrist of the man's outstretched hand.
The man's smile faded as Janson pulled his arm down in a powerful wrist lock, wrenching it toward his elbow and twisting it at an acute angle. Now the man bellowed in pain as the ligaments in his arm were strained and torn, but Janson was relentless, taking a long step back with his left foot and pulling the attacker to the ground. He yanked on the arm with all his strength and heard a pop as the ball joint was dislocated from the socket. The man roared again, agony mingling with disbelief. Janson fell on him, bringing all his weight down on his right knee, driving it into the man's rib cage. He could hear at least two ribs break. The man gasped, and behind the gold-rimmed glasses, tears rushed to his eyes. The broken ribs would make simply breathing exquisitely painful.
Roused by the nearby footfalls of his companions, the man tried to free his gun arm, despite his dislocated joint, but Janson had it pinned between his chest and left knee. Janson turned his right hand into a claw and clamped it around the man's throat, lifting and slamming his head against the ground until his body was limp. Moments later, when Janson reared up, he had a gun in both hands -
And squeezed off two shots - one at a rough-hewn man rushing toward him with an automatic pistol, a second at a bearded man several feet behind him, with a submachine gun held at his side. Both slumped to the ground.
Janson strode toward where the man they called Ratko stood, only to find the raking fire of an AKS-74 pocking the concrete floor in a storm of sparks and micro-explosions. It had to be directed by a man on a catwalk high above, and it created an impassable zone between Janson and Ratko - who had hastily hiked up his trousers and was turning to face him. A .45 handgun looked small in the Serb giant's enormous hand.
Now Janson ducked behind a concrete pillar. As he expected, the man with the submachine gun overhead repositioned himself to gain an angle on Janson. But in doing so he had exposed himself. Peering around the corner, Janson caught a fleeting glimpse of a short, stocky moonfaced man who held the AKS-74 as if it were part of him. A brief fusillade tore into the pillar he hid behind. Janson snaked a hand around it and squeezed off a blind shot. He heard it twang against steel-pipe railing and knew he had missed. Sudden footsteps on the steel catwalk helped him locate the man in space, however, and he squeezed off three more shots.
Each one missed. Damn - what had he expected? And yet he could not visually locate the man with the assault weapon without exposing himself to his deadly fire.
Light briefly flooded the dim warehouse as somebody opened a side door.
He heard footsteps - somebody racing into the cavernous space.
Another burst came from the AKS-74, directed not at Janson but at the unseen arrival.
"Oh shit! Oh shit!" It was Barry Cooper's voice.
He couldn't believe it: Barry Cooper had made his way into the abandoned warehouse.
"Barry, what the hell are you doing here?" Janson called.
"Right now, I'm asking myself that. Heard all this gunfire when I was in the car, got scared, and I ran in here trying to escape. Pretty dumb, huh?"
"Truthfully? Yes."
Another fusillade brought up a storm of sparks from the concrete floor.
Janson stepped back from the pillar and saw what was happening. Barry Cooper was huddled behind a large steel drum while the man on the catwalk began to reposition himself.
"I don't know what to do," Cooper said in a half wail.
"Barry, do what I'd do."
"Gotcha."
A shot rang out, and the short, stocky man on the catwalk abruptly stiffened.
"That's right, baby. Make love, not war, motherfucker," Cooper yelled as he emptied the entire clip of his pistol into the gunman overhead.
Now Janson could move around the pillar, and he immediately squeezed off a shot at Ratko's companion, who hovered with a knife near the trussed woman.
"Sranje! Shit!" the man called out. The bullet had struck his shoulder, and he let the knife drop. The man sank to the ground, moaning and incapacitated.
Janson saw the woman snake a foot out toward the knife, and bring it close to her. Then she wedged it between her two heels and, her legs shaking with the effort, gradually raised it