Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [23]
Ford was right behind him, and as the bigger agent made the leap, reason overwhelmed adrenaline and reminded him of what a big, bloody mess he would make down there by the pool if he failed to reach the other balcony.
It would ruin the rest of the afternoon for the beautiful people around the pool, that was for sure.
Ford didn’t completely clear the railing, but he got a foot on it and leaned forward desperately, letting his weight and momentum carry him onto the balcony of 627, where he landed in an awkward heap and rolled across the cement floor, scraping and bruising himself in the process.
He came up on a knee in time to see Parker charging into the room where a struggle was going on. The little blond guy who was their target appeared to be trying to fight off a couple of ugly bruisers who had hired killer written all over them. They must not have been all that good at their job, though, or else the kid would already be dead by now.
Instead, the target had backed into a corner between the bed and the wall and was flailing away at one of the intruders with what was left of a broken chair. He wasn’t big enough to have broken it himself, so he must have grabbed it during the fight.
“Get away from him!” Parker yelled as he leveled his gun at the two attackers. The one closest to him wheeled around suddenly and launched a spinning high kick that caught Parker on the wrist and knocked the weapon out of his hand.
Parker didn’t let that stop him. He stepped forward swiftly while the guy was still off-balance and grabbed his leg, wrapping his right arm around it. He used his left fist to hammer a blow into the side of the man’s head and then heaved on the leg. The man wound up on his butt.
Meanwhile, Ford had made it into the room, too. He pointed his gun at the second would-be assassin as that man grabbed the broken chair leg away from the kid and tried to jab the jagged end of it into his throat. The young man twisted away just in time to avoid the thrust.
Ford wasn’t going to give the guy a second chance. He fired across the bed, putting a round through the man’s forearm.
The man howled in pain and dropped the chair leg. He whirled toward Ford, leaped onto the bed, and bounced off it like it was a trampoline, using it to send him into the air in a diving tackle. Ford pulled the trigger again but didn’t know if the shot hit the man. It certainly didn’t slow him down if it did. He crashed into Ford with the impact of a freight train.
Ford went over backwards and the man landed on top of him, driving the air out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, Ford slapped around on the floor for the gun he had just dropped but failed to locate it. He grabbed the phone, though, which had been knocked off the table where it usually sat, and smashed it on the man’s head in an explosion of plastic and electronics.
That stunned the man enough for Ford to throw him off. Ford rolled onto his side and dragged air into his lungs. He spotted his gun lying on the carpet and scooped it up just as the man he’d been fighting with pulled a big, ugly revolver from somewhere. Maybe the two men had been trying to eliminate the target quietly at first, with a minimum of fuss, but that ship was way out of the harbor by now.
The hell with this, Fargo thought. He emptied the pistol into the man’s chest before the guy could pull the trigger.
A bullet hitting a man’s body usually wouldn’t knock him down unless it was an extremely heavy caliber. That was something else those guys on TV had proven.
But seven bullets, even of a smaller caliber, pounding into a guy’s chest in the space of three seconds would certainly make him stagger backwards, and that’s what happened now. With blood welling from the bullet holes, the man went back three steps through the open sliding glass door and then three more steps across the balcony. The backs of his thighs hit the railing, and inertia did the rest.
The guy flipped right over it and plummeted toward the ground, screaming as he fell.
Ford had time to mutter, “Look out below,” before