I saw the tug of the gun barrel on the sheet and I dropped low. Her bullets punched the wall above my head, scattering particles of plaster on my shoulders. She was struggling with the gun and I went to my knees, under her line of fire, dumping the machine gun, which had become an encumbrance, and pulling out my SIG. I still didn’t want to shoot her, but that choice was taken from me in the next instant. I heard three almost simultaneous cracks of a gun and Jimena went silent. Her Sigma clattered on the floor next to me.

Snatching a glance under the bed, I could see movement directly opposite me. Rickard had gone down, tripping over a corpse, but he was already coming back to his feet. I was only a beat behind him. I stood up, my gun extended, and fired.

Rickard fired too.

I felt the tug of his bullet as it struck my SIG. Damn well near tore my hand off as it ripped the gun out of my grip. That was either the best or the luckiest shot I’d ever witnessed. My bet was on the latter.

My bullet hit Rickard high in his left trapezius muscle and he twisted with the impact, so that his second shot went over my head, struck the light fixture in the ceiling and plunged us into half-light.

I looked for my gun. Couldn’t see it. Maybe it was damaged beyond repair. The Sigma was a few feet away. So was my assault rifle, where I’d dropped it. There was no time for any of them: I vaulted up onto Jimena’s deathbed, then through the air at Rickard.

He was already bringing his gun around to shoot me again, but his angle was wrong. I landed on my feet directly in front of him, even as I swept my forearm against his gun, knocking his next shot astray. Then my momentum took me chest to chest with him and we both crashed into a wall. I punched Rickard in the face. It took everything not to scream: an agonizing flame leaped from my hand all the way to my brain. Something felt like it had broken in my hand when my SIG had been wrenched away.

Yet I couldn’t let that stop me. If I gave him even the briefest of moments to rally, he would shoot me point-blank and that would be the end of it. So, my damaged hand became a bludgeon as I drove it four times in quick succession into his body.

Yelling directly into his face, I grappled with his gun. He yelled back. Nothing either of us said made any sense: it was just the bestial roaring of two wild animals engaged in a life-or-death battle.