The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(2)

A voice spoke behind us. “Hey, what’s up?”

We both whirled around. Samuel reached inside his jacket for his gun.

It was the delivery man. He was holding a large tube wrapped in brown paper. It looked like the kind of packaging posters come in.

“I got a package for a mister”—the delivery guy consulted his clipboard—“Alfred Kropp.”

“I’ll take it,” Samuel said. He took a step toward the delivery man.

“All right,” the man said pleasantly. The package turned end over end as it fell to the floor, like it was falling in slow motion, the clipboard falling with it.

The man in brown was holding a sawed-off shotgun. He pointed it at Samuel’s chest and pulled the trigger.

I screamed, but my scream was buried under the roar of the blast.

Samuel fell forward, both hands clutching his chest.

The singing of sirens was floating up from the street below, but my mind barely registered them. I rushed the shooter.

The barrel of the gun swung toward my face. My foot caught on Samuel’s writhing body and I fell forward. Instinctively my left hand shot out and I shoved the barrel upward just as the guy pulled the trigger, sending the blast into the ceiling. I swung blindly with my right fist, landing a lucky punch square into the guy’s Adam’s apple. He countered with an elbow to my cheek.

I rolled to my right as he scrambled toward the doorway. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back. He kicked me in the groin with the end of his steel-toed boot. I curled up on my side, both legs jerking from the explosive pain of the blow and watched helplessly as he lunged through the open doorway into the reception area outside.

I crawled toward Samuel.

“Alfred,” he gasped. “Don’t let him escape ...”

“No,” I said. “I’ve got to get you an ambulance—”

He shook his head. “No! Must ... who sent him ...”

He pulled out his 9mm semiautomatic and slid it across the floor. I picked it up.

Our eyes met.

“Go.”

I went.

The door to the stairs was clicking shut when I came into the hallway. I kicked it open. I had taken two steps toward the railing when something hard smashed into my lower back—I guess the heel of his boot—and that flung me toward the steps that led down to the next floor. The classic hide-behind-the-stairway-door trick. I should have seen it coming.

My gun skittered and flipped and bounced down the stairs until it reached the little landing and came to a rest.

Then Delivery Dude was on me.

I saw a flash of metal. The blade in his hand was at least a foot long, tapered, thin. It sliced along my forearm as he swung it toward my gut. I smacked his wrist with the back of my left hand while I brought my right fist down on the side of his head. He stumbled back a couple of steps.

First I had to neutralize the knife: one of my long-term goals was never to be stabbed to death again. So I grabbed his wrist and slammed his forearm down as hard as I could against the metal railing. The knife flew from his fingers and dropped down the shaft of the stairwell.

The next step was to neutralize him. Unfortunately, he had the same idea, only he executed it just a split second sooner. He threw his shoulder into my chest and drove me backward. My foot slipped off the top step and I dropped about a foot ... a good thing, too, because he chose your classic head-butt-to-the-face move and my face wasn’t there to butt.

As his head snapped forward, I wrapped my arm around his neck, sidestepped to the right, and flung him down the stairs to the first landing. It was a pretty good maneuver, since it gave me a few extra seconds to recover. It was also a pretty bad maneuver, because I had hurled him to the exact spot as Samuel’s gun.

Fight or flight? If the other guy has a gun and you don’t, nine times out of ten, I’d suggest flight.

This must have been the tenth, because I didn’t fly.

I jumped.

He broke my fall, but it was too late. He already had scooped up the 9mm. When I landed on top of him, his chest slammed into the concrete, and the breath went out of him with a loud whumph! I lay on his back and wrapped both arms around his sides. He came back at me with a reverse head butt, this one landing true, against my nose. I heard a popping sound and blood began to pour.

It achieved the desired effect: my grip on him loosened and he tore free, bringing up the gun as he slid on his back down the stairs toward the next landing.

The muzzle flashed and my left shoulder jerked backward with the punch of the bullet.

I stumbled upward to the top landing, bleeding from my shoulder, my nose and cheek, my forearm; I was throwing off blood everywhere. The steps were slick with my blood. I slipped and tumbled to the same landing I had just vacated.

When I raised my head, he was standing over me, the end of the gun about two inches from my face. He was bleeding pretty badly too, but he seemed pleased with himself.

He sneered one word before he pulled the trigger. “Pitiful!”

“No,” I said. “Empty.”

I hoped I had counted right. I was pretty sure I had, but even simple things like counting can get complicated when someone is firing bullets at your head.

Snap. Then rapidly as he yanked the trigger over and over: Snap, snap, snap . . . snap snap snap snap!

I jumped up and landed a haymaker to the side of his head. Then another to the other side of his head. Then a gut punch, as hard as I could throw it. He doubled over and my fists kept flying wherever I could land them: head, shoulders, arms, chest. He dropped the gun. It hit the edge of the landing and spun into the open space of the stairwell, disappearing from view.