Walid got a shot off but managed to miss a room full of people and hit the ceiling. Broz disarmed Walid with a shoulder shove and a pull of the weapon, but not before the Tiger Forces man who had been looking for his phone pulled his own pistol.
Anders, the Dutch KWA man, kicked a chair across the floor and it slammed into the Tiger’s legs, knocking him forward. His weapon went off before he had it leveled, and the round struck the table between Saunders and Brunetti, and by now all the women in the bar and half the men had either hit the deck or begun running for the exit. The other half of the patrons, including all the Russians and the Syrian Tigers, had enough training to know better than to turn away from a gun when it was in range of their backs, so some of the men attacked in the direction of Broz to get the pistol he’d yanked from Walid, and the others began swinging at what they perceived to be the greatest threat within reach.
The bar fight that Court wanted so badly had begun, but he was already regretting it.
The big Russian was only four feet away from Court, and he turned to grab a vodka bottle off a table behind him. On Court’s right Saunders, Brunetti, and Anders began mixing it up with a group of Syrians. Court counted three Russians grabbing bar stools and coming his way, while Broz swung the pistol he’d pulled from Major Walid up towards the Tiger Forces man who, while now flat on the ground, still had his gun raised.
But the gun in the hands of the man on the floor was accidentally kicked away by a Syrian who tripped and fell on his back, and at the same time, Broz was tackled hard from the right.
The weapon the KWA contractor held skidded away from him and across the floor.
Court ducked a flying bar stool, deflected the swing of the vodka bottle by the big Russian who’d accosted him, and fired a hard forearm into the man’s trachea, temporarily collapsing the man’s windpipe and dropping him to the ground. To his right Saunders had been tackled by a Syrian, and together he and his attacker rolled over the table where Court and the KWA men had been sitting.
Brunetti threw a beer bottle that hit a Syrian holding a chair over his head, and Anders blocked a hook from a Russian and countered it with a punch to the stomach and an elbow uppercut to the jaw.
As Court moved towards one of the pistols on the ground, he couldn’t help but notice that this bar fight had devolved into an every-man-for-himself situation on the part of the KWA contractors; the mercs weren’t engaged in helping one another but instead were either fighting for the pleasure of it or fighting to beat back the men attacking them.
The camaraderie Court had known while working on a paramilitary team in the CIA or around other civilian security contractors over the years was nowhere in sight with these mercs.
The armed bouncer from downstairs came through the stairwell with a gun in his hand and was immediately set upon by a pair of Russian soldiers, who both decked him and hit him with a beer bottle, sending him crawling out of the room and back down the stairs.
Court blocked a spinning bar stool with a chair, and then he slung the chair fifteen feet across the center of the room, where it slammed into the back and head of a man kneeling to pick up one of the two loose firearms on the floor. The man went down hard after taking the hit, but the attacker with the bar stool got a second swing in, and Court could only fire an arm up to absorb it.
The blow caused Court to stumble ten feet to his left, all the way over to the windows that looked out to the street in front of the club. The Russian who hit Court charged again, but this time the American ducked the swinging bar stool, causing the man to spin with the momentum. Court used the opportunity to grab him from behind, and he slammed him into the wall between the windows.
The man crashed face-first against the bricks, and the bar stool left his grasp and slammed hard against the window, sending fissures across the one-meter-by-two-meter pane.
The Russian was dazed but not out of it. Court grabbed him by the head and tried to drive him again into the wall, but the man spun and caught Court in a bear hug and lifted his feet off the ground for an instant, nearly toppling him. An elbow into the eye of the Russian short-circuited his offensive move, and while he recovered from the stunning blow, Court separated himself enough to deliver a heel kick to the crotch. He spun back around and sent a knee hard to the falling man’s nose.
The knee sent the man’s head snapping back as he fell backwards, and it slammed into the cracked windowpane, shattering it outright.
As soon as the sounds of breaking glass dissipated, Court could hear sirens outside in the street. It sounded like several emergency vehicles were just pulling up out front. This would mean guns and truncheons and handcuffs and express rides to jail, and Court didn’t want to hang around for any of that.
As the Russian dropped onto his face and out of the fight, Court turned around to see Saunders pounding a Syrian on the floor behind the table, and Anders and Broz kick-stomping the Tiger Forces soldier whose phone Court had stolen. Brunetti was bleeding from the head and face, standing in the middle of the room looking for another challenger, and Walid had miraculously staggered closer to the stairwell without taking a beating from anyone involved in the fight.
Court saw him there, legs unsteady, with the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. He wasn’t wielding the bottle as a weapon; he was holding it up to his mouth to take another swig.
Court had missed a Syrian on the floor on the far side of the table till the man pulled himself back to his feet just three feet from where Court stood. The soldier lunged at Court, but the American’s reflexes were good enough to wristlock the man’s hand, spin behind him, and yank him pitilessly back down to the floor onto his back, where he kicked the man in the head, knocking him unconscious.
Quickly Court scanned around the room for the loose pistols; he saw one on the floor and the other in the hands of a bartender, who picked the weapon up and took it behind the bar, as if to protect his bar against any attempts to steal the booze.
Court started again for the one gun he could spot on the floor, but a young bearded Syrian got to it first. He lifted it into the air and fired a single round over his head, bringing the fighting around the room to an immediate halt.
From the direction of the stairwell Court heard the whistles, the fresh shouting, the sounds of voices that could have only come from police or soldiers here to break up the fight and break the heads of anyone who resisted.
The armed man dropped the pistol, but a Russian standing near the stairwell threw a punch at the first uniformed officer through the door.
Court knew there would be a lot more cops behind that one, so he decided to make a break for it. He still planned on using the fight as a means to slip out to make a call, so he hustled to the shattered window and climbed out, careful to avoid lacerating himself in the process. He put his feet on the window’s ledge and looked down, but just as he did so he heard the police in the room behind him. A large commercial window unit air conditioner was in the next window, and he decided that if it was braced from the bottom, it should support his weight. He climbed over and up onto it quickly, shielding himself from being seen from inside the second floor.