Max Collins - Before the Dawn

... Seth engaged in combat with two brawny Koreans in black raincoats, in front of the elevators!

To her right, she could barely make out Jared Sterling and another, older Korean, in tan and black trench coats respectively, their hair standing on end in the wind, as if they were terrified at witnessing the fight between the young X5 and the Korean thugs.

The tycoon held by its handle a large black art portfolio, no doubt containing some masterpiece earmarked for overseas, and the Asian’s right fist clutched the handle of a briefcase... the two men obviously frozen in the midst of an exchange. Kafelnikov was nowhere to be seen, though he could easily be just out of sight, around either curve of the deck; and somewhere, she knew, Morales and probably several others from Sterling’s security force would be lurking.

As for Lydecker and his TAC team, they would be emerging at some point — there was still one elevator to be summoned, after all, that she and Seth hadn’t blocked with their tables... in which case, Lydecker could make his own melodramatic entrance onto this rain- and windswept stage at any moment.

Seth was uppercutting one of the Koreans, shattering the thug’s nose, a scarlet splash in the gray night; the man fell to the cement and didn’t move, his dark trench coat making a black puddle. As the male X5 circled the second Korean; Max glimpsed Morales, his pistol drawn, coming around the wall of elevator shafts, unseen at Seth’s flank.

Max rushed Morales, which got his attention, and the Sterling guard fired off a round at her, which she ducked, and then was all but on top of him, still low, hitting him with a straight right in the groin. Morales blew out all his breath in a howl of pain to rival the wind. As he grabbed himself with one hand, going down on one knee as if praying to her, Max batted the pistol from his other hand, like the offensive metal bug it was. Then she stood him up straight with a left to the solar plexus, headbutted him, and watched with pleasure as the hollow-eyed security man dropped backward to the deck, as unconscious as the concrete he lay sprawled upon.

Max hadn’t seen it, but when Morales had fired at her, both Sterling and the Korean turned toward the shot. Each had a hand on both the briefcase and the portfolio, and the Korean apparently misread the situation as a Sterling betrayal, and tried to hold onto both items in the exchange.

When Max turned her attention to them, the two art collectors were wrestling back and forth in an almost comic tug of war, as each now tried to claim both prizes.

Seth was in the meantime mixing it up with the remaining Korean thug; he caught his opponent with a left and two quick rights, staggering the burly Korean, the man’s arms dropping to his sides as if begging Seth to strike — which Seth did, leaping, kicking him in the chest. The Korean flew backward, his skull bouncing off the cement wall next to the elevators, where he slumped to the floor, either unconscious or dead.

Then Seth took off toward Sterling and the Korean buyer, only to be cut off by another pair of oversized Asians, bodyguards who had been around the far corner of the elevators and were on their way to intercede for their employer in his tug-of-war with the American art dealer.

Rain lashing, Seth was between the two Asians, keeping them back with martial-arts kicks, when two more of Sterling’s security men seemed to materialize before Max: a gangly white guy, and a compact, muscular Latino. She did a back flip, each of her feet kicking one of the men and sending them both onto their backs, apparently out.

She leapt to her feet and headed toward Sterling; but the gangly security man reached out and grabbed her ankle and brought her down, hard.

This didn’t hurt Max nearly as much as it pissed... her... off! On her side on the damp concrete, as if doing an exercise, she kicked back, her foot taking on his face, his face losing, the nose and jaw snapping, a small crack followed by a larger one. He went to sleep, like a good boy...

Only now the Latino was back on his feet, and obviously knew better, now, than to try to match Max blow for blow; he reached under his arm for his pistol... but never made it. Max sprang onto her feet, and then swung one of those feet around, connecting with the side of the face. The blow wasn’t that hard — and merely caught his attention, his eyes rolling like ball bearings, but his feet staying under him. Max jumped and spun in the air, this kick practically tearing the nose off the man’s face as he fell unconscious, and probably glad to be.

Sterling and the Korean collector had worked their way over to the three-foot wall that surrounded the observation deck, where the wind and rain ruled. They continued tugging back and forth on the briefcase and the portfolio, each unable to gain an advantage over the other. The sky growled at them and the wind beat on them and the rain pelted them and the deck, making their footing treacherous.

Sterling jerked on the briefcase just as he let go of the portfolio, a sudden shift that took the Korean’s feet out from under him, and he pitched back against the edge and seemed to be reaching out with one hand to Sterling, even while holding on to the art portfolio with the other, his eyes pleading. But Sterling merely watched as the man tumbled over into the night, his screams barely discernible over the storm, the portfolio flapping like a big broken wing as the man fell five hundred feet to a certain death.

Coming out of her most recent spinning leap, Max caught the final moments of that confrontation, and now she whirled to find Seth, to aid him; but she saw only the two Korean bodyguards, piled on top of each other, like slabs of butcher’s meat.

Finishing her pirouette, she finally saw Seth, on the move, heading for Sterling and that briefcase of money. Beyond her brother, she could see — coming around the far end of the observation deck — the Russian, his long blond hair darker and flattened by the rain, wearing a flowing long dark coat buttoned from knee to neck; the rock-star-like gangster was pointing at Seth, but not with a finger: a nine-millimeter Glock.

Seth didn’t see Kafelnikov, and Max yelled a warning, but the Russian’s pistol barked and a bullet tore through Seth’s left shoulder, sending the X5 flying off-balance. Her brother wobbled on toward the trench-coated Sterling, who grasped a briefcase handle in one hand and held the other up as if it would stop the human freight train barreling toward him.

Sterling even shrieked, “Stop!”

As if that would do any good.

Max ran toward them, from one direction, as did Kafelnikov from the other, his pistol still raised. The Russian’s second shot went wide, just as Seth was grabbing the briefcase in the hand of his good arm. But Kafelnikov’s third shot caught Seth in the right calf, and the X5 pitched into Sterling, the boy’s momentum carrying them both to the edge of the wall.

Executing a perfect jump kick, Max knocked the pistol out of Kafelnikov’s hand and, at the same time, jarred him off-balance. Pressing her advantage, Max kicked at him again and caught him a glancing blow that sent him tumbling back. When the Russian tried to rise, she grabbed a lapel of his coat in her left hand and hit him with a hard right. His eyes closed and he sagged, the big man hanging by his coat from her tiny hand.

Dropping him to the cement, Max turned to see Sterling and Seth wrestling precariously close to the edge of the wall, wind and rain taunting them. Glad she’d held on to that rope, she grasped the coil like a cowboy prepared to twirl his lariat, and moved toward the pair. As she neared, the pair teetered, Sterling slipped on the wet cement, and they both pitched over the edge.

“Seth!” she cried.