Gone Tomorrow

remains of his head and then his gun hit the boards. I watched the stairs for another long second and then vaulted through the open trapdoor and fell through the air and landed feetfirst next to the guy, which made another loud noise.
    We were all through with secrecy.
    Eleven rounds gone, nineteen remaining, four men down, two still up.
    Plus the Hoths.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    Not now, Lila .
    I picked up the guy’s gun and opened the door to the front room on the left and backed into the shadow. Rested my shoulder on the wall and looked out at the stairs.
    No one came up.
    Stalemate.
    The gun I had taken from the dead guy was a Sig-Sauer P220, with a fat silencer on it. Swiss manufacture. Nine-millimeter Parabellum, nine rounds in a detachable box magazine. The same ammunition I was using. I thumbed the rounds out and dropped them loose into my pocket. I put the empty gun on the floor. Then I stepped back to the hallway and ducked into the front room on the right. It was bare and empty. I paced out the studio layout as I remembered it from below. Closet, bathroom, kitchen, living room. I made it to what I guessed was the center of the living room and stamped down hard. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. I figured Lila was directly below me, listening. I wanted to shake her up, way back in the lizard part of her brain. The scariest feeling of all. There’s something up there .
    I stamped again.
    I got a response.
    The response came in the form of a bullet smashing up through the boards three feet to my right. It tore a splintered hole and buried itself in the ceiling above me and left dust and traces of smoke in the air.
    No gunshot. They all had silencers.
    I fired back, a triple tap vertically downward, straight through the same hole. Then I stepped away to where I guessed their kitchen was.
    Fourteen rounds gone. Sixteen remaining. Nine loose in my pocket.
    Another shot came up through the floor. Seven feet from me. I fired back. They fired back. I fired back one more time and figured they were starting to understand the pattern, so I crept out to the hallway and the head of the stairs.
    Where I found that they had been figuring exactly the same thing: that I was getting into the rhythm. A guy was sneaking up on me. Number two on Springfield’s list. He had another Sig P220 in his hand. With a silencer. He saw me first. Fired once, and missed. I didn’t. I put a triple tap into the bridge of his nose and it climbed to the middle of his forehead and blood and brain spattered on the wall behind him and he went back down where he had come from in a heap.
    His gun went with him.
    My spent brass tinkled away across the pine.
    Twenty-three rounds gone. Seven left, plus nine loose.
    One guy up, plus the Hoths themselves.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    Too late for bargains, Lila .
    I ignored her. I pictured her crouching one floor below. Svetlana at her side. One last guy between them and me. How would they use him? They weren’t dumb. They were the heirs of a long and tough tradition. They had dodged and weaved and feinted through the hills for two hundred years. They knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t send the guy up the stairs. Not again. That was fruitless. They would try to outflank me. They would send the guy up the fire escape. They would distract me with the phone and let the guy line up through the glass and shoot me in the back.
    When?
    Either immediately or much later. No middle ground. They would want me either surprised or bored.
    They chose immediately.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    I stepped back into the left-hand room and checked the view. The iron ladder rose right-to-left from my perspective. I would see the guy’s head as he came up from below. Which was good. But my angle wasn’t good. The street was narrow. Nine-millimeter Para-bellums are handgun rounds. They are considered suitable for urban environments. They are much more likely than a rifle round to stick in the target and go no farther. Subsonic Parabellums, more likely still. But nothing is guaranteed. And there were innocent non-combatants across the street. Bedroom windows, slumbering children. Through-and-through bull’s-eyes could reach them. Wild deflections could reach them. And ricochets, or fragments. Certainly out-and-out misses could reach them.
    Collateral damage, just waiting to happen.
    I crept through the room and flattened myself against the window wall. Glanced out. Nothing