Killing Rain

past them. I looked for a shot at Manny, but Dox and the guard were in the way. Manny yanked the door open and he and the boy spilled out of the room.
    Dox transitioned to hadaka jime, a sleeper hold, and the guard’s struggles intensified, his body twisting and his legs churning the air.
    The door crashed inward again. Two men, both Caucasian, burst into the room. Both had guns drawn.
    “Down!” I shouted at Dox. But he was still struggling with the bodyguard. Still, he did the next best thing: he spun, pulling the guard in front of him like a shield.
    Both men dropped to one knee, reducing the size of the target they offered, the smoothness of the move demonstrating training and experience. Dox and the bodyguard were between us—in what was about to become the crossfire.
    A crazy thought zigged through my brain: How the fuck are they getting these guns in here?

    His considerable muscles no doubt supercharged with adrenaline, Dox dropped one hand to the back of the guard’s belt and heaved him into the two men. He used the force of the throw to hurl himself to the floor in the other direction.
    Both men tried to get clear of the oncoming mass of the bodyguard. Only one succeeded—the one nearest the door, who jerked away just in time. His partner took the impact. But in avoiding the bodyguard, the first man had been forced to momentarily give up his focus. And in that moment, I put two rounds into his chest.
    The other man was on his back now, he and the bodyguard hairballed up against the wall. He was trying to reacquire me, but too late. I swiveled and squeezed off two more shots. The first hit the bodyguard in the back of the neck. The second caught the downed man in the shoulder, jerking him partway around. He recovered, started bringing the gun toward me again.
    No way, shitbird, it is not your turn now. You don’t get a turn.
    I moved in, keeping the gunsight on him, and pressed the trigger back twice more. The first shot caught him in the sternum, the second in the face. I tracked to the bodyguard— Pause. Breathe. Aim —and put one in the back of his head, then a final one in the head of the man I’d shot in the chest.
    The room was suddenly, eerily quiet. My ears were ringing. The air was acrid with gunsmoke.
    Dox was looking up at me from the floor. His eyes were wide. “Damn, man, where did you learn to shoot like that?”
    I stepped over to the bodyguard and felt along his belt. There, a spare magazine. I pulled it free, ejected the current magazine, and popped in the new one. I stuck the gun in the back of my pants where it would be concealed by my shirttail. The used magazine went into my pocket. There was no time to wipe these items down and otherwise ensure that none of my DNA oranything else incriminating had adhered to them. Besides, from where we were to where we needed to get, the gun and the rounds left in the first magazine might prove handy.
    “Come on,” I said, myself again. I would think about what had happened to me later. “We’ve only got a few seconds. Follow my lead now.”
    “Your lead?” he asked, coming to his feet.
    I struggled not to get impatient. It seemed so obvious to me. “Look, some nutcase was in here shooting up the place. Security guards are going to be converging any second. We’re running from it, same as anyone would.”
    “Okay, you’re persuading me now.”
    We each pulled a hat from a pocket. Mine was a baseball cap; Dox’s was for fishing. Witnesses tend to remember gross details only, such as shirt color or the presence of a hat, and elementary precautions like ours can save a lot of grief later.
    We moved to the door. “Ready?” I asked.
    “Right behind you, partner.”
    I looked at him. He was grinning.
    “Goddamnit,” I said, “we were the victims, remember? You need to look scared.”
    “Man, I am scared!”
    “Try to show it better,” I growled.
    “Fuck, man, I’m telling you this is how I look when I’m scared!”
    Our eyes locked for a moment. His grin didn’t budge.
    I shook my head and said, “Here we go.”
    I opened the door. The corridor was clear. No sign of Manny or the boy. Just outside the corridor, though, the mood among the dining crowd had clearly been disrupted. The people with good sense and experience with the sound of indoor gunfire were wisely heading down the escalators. The curious, the deniers, and the simply stupid were lined up and gawking. Fortheir benefit, I turned my head back toward the bathroom