Court shook his head before replying. “Whatever I need, it won’t get here in time. I’ll work with what I’ve got.”
He hung up on Hanley, put his phone in his pocket, and turned to his father, still sitting at the table with his coffee in his hand, looking up at his son.
“Dad. When you said we had an hour before the storm hit. That was a lie, right?”
The older man nodded. “Yep.”
“I could tell.”
“Just wanted to enjoy a few minutes at the kitchen table with my oldest boy. Is that such a crime?”
“No crime. What do you think? Another ten minutes before it hits?”
Jim looked outside. “Five.”
Court turned back to the window. “Okay. Here’s the deal. You and I are about to get into a gunfight.”
“With each other?” Jim said, and Court swiveled his head back to him. There was a glint in the old man’s eye that showed he was joking. It also looked a little like excitement. “Quantity and quality of the enemy?” Jim then asked.
“I think there’s six in all. Five of them…they’re probably adequate. The other guy, well, I’m told he’s one of the best in the world.”
“And he’s the one whose son you killed?”
“Afraid so.”
Jim rose. Stood next to Court. Trash blew by on the street. Beyond it, past the tall grass on the barren property, he could see a pair of SUVs disappear behind some trees.
The elder Gentry said, “I’ve got an MP5, but it’s disassembled. Needs a new bolt. A 700 in .308, but I took the scope off to repair it. Bought an old PPK off a guy, but the ejector’s broke and I need to—”
Court said, “We don’t have time to assemble your old junk guns, Dad. We’re armed. We’re gonna make do with what we’ve got.”
Jim kept looking out the window, but he said, “And your plan is to juststand here and shoot it out with six jokers in a two-bedroom ranch-style, or is it to make a run for one of the vehicles and then get chased down by them on the road in a violent thunderstorm?”
Exasperated at his father, Court said, “I’mtotallyopen to other ideas if you’ve got ’em.”
“Well, son, seems to me that you and I have one hell of an advantage that you aren’t considering.”
“What’s that?”
Jim tipped his head towards the back of the little home. “We get our asses out back, next door, past the pines, and into that damn shoot house. You, me, and your brother spent thousands of hours back there; we know every inch of every room. Every hall, every doorway, every step on every stair, every single angle and sightline.”
Court put his hand on his dad’s arm. “How fast can you move?”
“Had no reason to find out till right now. Let me grab a flashlight first, then let’s get our asses back there.”
—
Jim and Court Gentry moved through the scrubby property, past chicken coops that hadn’t had chickens in them in a few years.
The older man couldn’t run; he seemed to have an impairment in his back and legs, but he shuffled along quickly, and Court stayed just behind him, looking over his shoulder every few seconds to see if Coyle and his goons had figured out that Court was making a run for it across the acreage behind the house.
There was standing water here and there. Jim wore roper boots and cargo pants, a plain gray sweatshirt. The temperature was in the low fifties, but the wind made it feel considerably cooler.
Lightning pounded the sky, and the winds whipped all around them; the rain began to fall, and their clothes were already soaked when they still had one hundred yards to go to the tree line.
As they moved across the rough ground, Jim said, “We get lucky, those Micks are gonna get bit by snakes before they make it to us.”
“I’ve never been that lucky,” Court said.
