The African American couple standing at the cooler each had a six-pack of soda, and the man selected a bag of potato chips. They had just turned to head up the aisle to the counter when the man in the back corner behind them began moving quickly towards them. Court couldn’t see the man draw a weapon because of the shelves between his position and the back corner of the market, but the female’s shout of alarm made it clear something was terribly wrong.
Court heard yelling at the front counter, then a flurry of movement there. The two men at the register pulled their knit caps down, revealing them to be ski masks, and they each produced a chrome automatic pistol from their jackets. The weapons reached out across the counter, nearly into LaShondra’s stunned face. The third man racked a pistol grip shotgun he’d strapped to his shoulder under his black jacket and he held it high, then he shoved the couple away from the freezer and pushed them ahead of him to the front of the store. He forced them down onto the ground, and they huddled together with their hands on their heads at the opposite end of the front aisle from where Court stood.
Now gray hoodie pointed the twelve-gauge directly at Court, thirty feet away.
“On the floor!” he screamed, his Hispanic accent prevalent.
Court squared his body towards the man and he raised his hands. But he did not drop to the ground.
“Get on the floor!” the man shouted again.
The woman lying facedown on the linoleum just beyond the counter wailed in terror. Her boyfriend put his arm over her to both shield her and hold her there, lest the panic in her voice translate to the rest of her body and she try to run.
The two men at the counter kept their pistols on LaShondra. She stared back at them through her right eye, but she kept her hands down low, right in front of the cash drawer.
“Get down!” Gray hoodie shouted it again at Court, and as one, both men at the counter turned to look at the noncompliant man by the door.
The white gunman said, “Don’t be a hero, man! Get your ass down!”
Court did not reply. He just began very slowly lowering to the ground. He kept his hands at shoulder height as he knelt.
Gray hoodie with the shotgun relaxed noticeably when he saw the white man across the room begin to obey his instructions.
His confidence was misplaced, however. Gentry had never willingly turned his back on imminent danger in his life, and he wasn’t going to start by lying facedown and obedient on a dirty floor in a goddamned D.C. convenience store.
He’d go to his knees, but he’d keep his eyes on the three men. If it looked like they were going to murder him for refusing to lie flat, then Court would make a play for the Smith on his hip.
As Court made it down into a low squat his eyes flicked off the shotgun across the room, and onto movement ahead on his left. To his astonishment, LaShondra had taken advantage of all the attention elsewhere, and she had produced an aluminum baseball bat. It rose quickly above the counter.
Oh, hell no.
Court saw the bat before anyone else because all three armed men still had their eyes on him. But he knew in less than a second one of the three gunmen would notice the woman behind the counter, and then, even if she managed to crack one of these kids’ heads wide open, she’d still die for her bravery.
Court was in a full squat with his left hand out in front of him as if to help him to the floor, the bag of groceries hanging from it. In full view of the three men he dropped the bag, fired his right hand down inside his open jacket, wrapped his fingers around the butt of the Smith and Wesson pistol, and began drawing it out of his waistband.
Simultaneously to this his legs spread a few inches wider and his knees softened, and he dropped to the floor in a kneeling position. As his pistol rose in front of him he lowered his body behind the gun.
The shotgun thundered, spitting fire and smoke across the front aisle of the market, over the backs of the prostrate couple. It sprayed hot lead the length of the room at a speed of 1,200 feet per second. The shot pattern expanded one and a half inches for each yard along its flight path, so when the buckshot reached Court’s position they passed inches over his head in a pattern the size of a large pizza. The lead then exploded through the glass door just above and behind him.
Gentry knew gray hoodie would have to rack a new shell before he fired again, so he shifted his sights to the men with pistols. Both were swiveling their arms to get a bead on the armed man in the raincoat on his knees in front of the door.
Just as LaShondra hit one man in the shoulder with her aluminum bat, Court fired two rounds without pausing, one into the upper torso of each man, left to right. Then he swept further right to gray hoodie, and pressed off another round. His pistol rose in recoil and arced back to the counter in a blur and he fired two more shots, hitting the first man in the left temple as he dropped and spun and the second man dead center in his throat.
Court returned his aim to gray hoodie, who was stumbling backwards into the stockroom of the market with a nine-millimeter hollow point bullet lodged in his heart.