Court stood with Bianca fifty feet away, directly in the line of fire of five submachine guns.

The Gray Man whirled back away from the danger, and with all the momentum of his spin, he heaved the woman over the balcony railing, throwing her out into the night air.

Court spun back and drew his Glock, while behind him Bianca Medina screamed as she dropped like a stone.

CHAPTER 6

The slack rope tightened, and in the bedroom by the shattered living room door the body of the Syrian guard lurched and began rocketing across the travertine floor, many times faster than Court had planned.

Court knew his only option had been to toss the girl and engage the attackers, but he also knew that throwing her over the side like that was going to give her too much momentum, more than enough to send her to her death if he couldn’t arrest her descent before she hit the hard stone tiles of the forecourt.

But he couldn’t even address that problem yet. The first burst of incoming rounds screamed high over Court’s head, and he raced forward on the balcony, then dove headfirst, launching himself to the right of the French doors, rolling on his right shoulder under the spraying gunfire and up onto his kneepads in a firing stance. He came to a stop upright, still in view of the enemy through the sidelight next to the doors. His Glock was out in front of him, his front sight lining up on a target, a man moving laterally in the bedroom from right to left, trying to get his own sight picture on Court.

But the American saw the terrorist first, aimed his weapon first, and fired first, and he hit the man just under the right collarbone. A second shot sparked off the man’s MP5 rifle, ricocheted up into his face, and sent him tumbling back against the far wall of the bedroom and down to the floor, covering his eyes and screaming.

Court felt the compression in the air from a shrieking round missing the left side of his head by less than a foot, and he saw the muzzle flash ahead, pinpointing his target kneeling near the linen closet, still obscured by smoke and darkness in the recesses of the bedroom. Court fired a string of four rounds in his target’s direction, over the dead man tied to Bianca and sliding along facedown on the floor.

Behind Court on his left, the rope whined and burned as it ran over the iron railing.

He knew if he grabbed the thin rope with his bare hands it would rip his hands to shreds, and Bianca would continue falling too fast to survive the impact. And even if he grabbed the corpse as it passed he would probably dislocate an arm and still fail to stop Medina from hitting the cobblestones hard.

His only chance to prevent Bianca’s impact with the ground was to dive flat on top of the dead-body counterweight before she hit.

Court fired three more rounds through the sidelight again, towards the doorway to the living room, then rolled out from behind concealment, launching himself to the left with all the power in his legs.

He landed on the bodyguard fifteen feet from the railing, then went flat, emptying his Glock at the terrorists in the doorway as he glided along on top of the corpse.

He stopped just six feet from the edge of the balcony as his pistol locked open.

Bianca would be dangling just a few feet off the alley pavement now . . . if Court’s calculations had been correct. But if he had made an error in his math, then she would probably be lying dead on the cobblestones of the forecourt behind and below him.

A massive, sustained volley of gunfire erupted now, and the balcony was riddled with lead. Court rolled off the body, then again went to his right, outside the view of the shooters but not out of danger, as their bullets threatened to rip apart the stone masonry of the outer wall of the bedroom. All around him on the balcony, planters cracked and spilled their contents, glass shattered, and bullets ricocheted up into the night with a high-pitched whine.

This was not a sustainable fight for him, Court knew, but he also knew he could not simply climb down the outside of the building without these men making their way to the balcony and easily picking off Medina as she hung there by the rope.

Either he had to defeat the attackers up here totally, or else he had to find a faster way down to the forecourt.

As he reloaded while lying flat on the balcony tile, an idea came to him. He fired half a dozen more 9-millimeter rounds to keep the heads of the men in the living room down, then reached for his vest and pulled a device from it with his left hand. It was a “nine-banger” flash bang grenade, and Court pulled the ring and side-armed the small can towards the enemy at the door.

After just one second, while it was still in the air soaring across the bedroom, the nine-banger began to detonate, and intense white bursts and extremely loud reports erupted, but the device continued to sail on, hitting the travertine floor at the doorway and bouncing into the living room, right in the middle of the men there.

Nine flashes and booms in all blasted from the device, and while it was still going off, stunning and blinding everyone in the area, Court unfastened a second canister from his belt. This was a single-detonation stun grenade. He pulled both pull rings and slung it towards the threats in the living room.

This one did not arc as high; it bounced along and then slid across the bedroom, but right at the doorway it, too, detonated, delivering an explosion of 180 decibels—30 decibels louder than a jet engine on takeoff. It gave off a burst of light rated at one million candelas, enough to cause flash blindness to anyone within close proximity.

Even before the device went off, Court was up off the balcony tile and running forward, towards the danger, as fast as he could, his eyes closed and face averted from the light and his brain anticipating the boom that would take the others by stunned surprise. He crossed the bedroom in less than three seconds, leapt through the air, landed and slid on his hip along the travertine through the doorway into the living room. Here he found himself in the midst of three utterly stunned attackers. None of the men could see or hear, and Court’s plan had been to simply shoot each man with his suppressed Glock and end the threat completely. But just as he skidded to a stop on his back and leveled his weapon at the first dazed terrorist, gunfire cracked from the doorway between the big suite and the hallway that led to the stairs. Multiple flashes of light erupted, and Court realized there was at least one more gunman in the hall engaging him.

Court shifted his aim to the doorway, spreading his legs and pointing his weapon down between his feet, and fired his Glock until it emptied again, sending the shooter or shooters there to cover and buying himself an instant of mobility.

He didn’t have time to reload the pistol and shoot the three men on their knees around him, so he slapped his empty weapon back into the polymer holster and reached into his pack with one hand to grab the second rope line that he stored there, while using his other hand to take hold of the ammo vest worn by the closest terrorist.

Court yanked the man to him, hooked the carabiner on the end of the line to the man’s vest, then leapt to his feet and started back for the bedroom in a low sprint.

He’d made it just a couple of steps before booming gunfire from the hallway behind him began again, and just two more steps before he reached the other two men there at the doorway. Both were still down on their hands and knees, only now beginning to fight their way out of the several-seconds-long disorientation brought on by the two grenades.

As Court passed the second man he saw that the terrorist had a baseball-sized M67 hand grenade hooked in a pouch on his vest. Court reached out as he ran by, jammed his thumb inside the pull ring, and pressed on the safety lever with his hand. He raced on, yanking the pull ring along with him.

The still-dazed man recognized what had just happened, but his reaction was slowed by his concussion and his double vision. He just climbed up to his feet and reached out weakly towards the man rushing by, as if to stop him.

Court kept running, even faster now, letting the ring drop to the floor of the bedroom as rope spooled out from his backpack behind him. A round from an MP5 slammed into the bedpost ahead and on his left, splintering the hand-carved finial, but all Court could do was shift a little to the right, duck lower, and run faster.