Free Shredder by Niall Leonard Page B

unaware of Martin, now twenty paces away, slipping his free hand into the folded newspaper. I guessed the paper concealed a pistol, and saw now what was about to happen: the Turk and Dean would each take a bullet to the back of the head before they’d even reached our table, and the Guvnor would walk away, unscathed and uninvolved.
    Now Martin was eight paces away.
    Seven.
    Then the right side of his head exploded.
    Blood and brains and bone sprayed over half a dozen tourists beside him, and under the roar of the traffic and the chatter of the crowds I heard a distant
crack
echoing faintly around the square and dying. Slowly Martin’s legs shuddered and folded, and his lifeless body fell forwards, and the stunned, gorespattered tourists looked at him and each other, and the screaming started.
    The wave of panic was small at first, but it rippled outwards across the crowds like flames on petrol. Around me I saw people turn, and frown, and stare,and I felt their curiosity turn first to recognition, then to terror—but all that was on the fringe of my awareness, because I was scanning the skyline to the east, where the bullet had come from. I saw what I was looking for—a rounded shape on the hard edge of a rooftop, a hint of movement, and a tiny tinted flash as sun glinted off the glass of a scope.
Sniper
.
    I don’t even know where the thought came from, unless it was playing too many console war games, but I dived for the floor. The quickest way down brought me piling straight into McGovern, still sitting there motionless until my body slammed into his, and we both went down in a rattling tangle of chair legs. A second
crack
snapped hard in my ear, and I swear I felt the cool draft of the bullet’s passing, and then the hot granite paving under my hands.
    Behind us Gary had ducked, his fist already under his jacket, and then he was up again and there was a gun in his hand. The Guvnor grunted and gasped as I squirmed around on top of him, braced my foot underneath a table and heaved. It toppled slowly, like a falling tree, the solid slab of its mosaic top slamming against the pavement, its metal legs resounding like a bell, glasses and saucers smashing and a steel serving tray ringing and rattling as it settled onthe stone. McGovern scrambled for cover behind it, just in time—a third shot smashed into the tabletop with a bang so loud it rattled my teeth in my head. But we still weren’t safe, I realized; the Turk and Dean were behind us, and I scuttled round, expecting any second to feel bullets rip into my belly.
    But the Turk had vanished. Only Dean remained, squatting with a revolver held in two hands, blasting shots at Gary, who blasted shots back, while pandemonium broke out all around them—some tourists trembling facedown on the ground, screaming and weeping, others running in all directions, carrying or dragging hysterically shrieking children, dashing out into the traffic that was somehow still moving round the square. Gary and Dean were only a few meters apart, and I was wondering how the hell they were managing to miss each other when a bullet caught Gary in the chest and spun him to the floor, yelling and cursing. Which left Dean, striding towards us, his revolver outstretched, hoping to take McGovern and me at point-blank range.
    I felt the rim of the toppled serving tray under my hand, and without thinking I picked it up and flung it hard as I could straight at Dean’s face, Frisbee style. And just like a Frisbee, it went veering wide,but it was still enough to make Dean flinch for a split second, and in that split second I managed to cover the distance, slap his gun hand with my left so his shot went wild and grab his face with my right. I kicked his legs from under him so hard he was practically horizontal before he dropped, and I kept my hand on his face to make sure he took plenty of the impact on the back of his head. Grabbing his gun, I flung it away.
    How many seconds had passed? Ten? Twenty?