Gun.
Bashir moved forward, his massive frame eating up the distance.
Omar moved faster.
He came up behind the smaller guard and drove his elbow into the man’s kidney with surgical precision. The guard grunted and his body folding forward involuntarily. Omar grabbed the back of his head with both hands and pulled it down into his rising knee. The satisfying crunch of cartilage was followed by a spray of blood that painted the concrete platform in dark, wet spatter. The man collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
One down.
Bashir spun toward the thump as his partner hit the ground. He moved with surprising speed for a man his size. His face contorted with recognition and rage when he saw Omar. “You.”
“Me,” Omar confirmed, settling into a fighting stance.
The big man came at him like a freight train jumping its tracks—all momentum and mass. Omar sidestepped, but not fast enough. Bashir’s shoulder caught him squarely in the ribs, driving every molecule of air from his lungs in a single explosive exhale. They crashed into a metal bench, and pain spread through Omar’s back like a starburst.
He twisted, using Bashir’s forward momentum against him, and they tumbled to the rough concrete platform in a tangle of limbs.
Omar worked his right arm free and drove his fist into Bashir’s face once, twice. Blood bloomed from the man’s split lip, dark and immediate, but Bashir barely flinched.
The big man roared—an inarticulate sound of fury and pain—and heaved upward with the raw power of someone who’d built a career on physical intimidation. Omar went flying, hitting the concrete hard.
They scrambled to their feet simultaneously, circling each other like prizefighters in the fluorescent-lit ring of the platform.
From the corner of his vision, Omar registered movement. Marielle. She stood in front of Hanna, pointing her firearm at a third guard.
Two thoughts raced through Omar’s brain: thank God she brought her gun, and this third guy must be the driver, ate to the party because he’d had to park the car.
Then he turned his full attention to the two hundred forty pounds of primal anger heading his way.
Bashir feinted left, testing Omar’s reactions, then exploded forward from the right. Omar blocked the first strike, absorbed a punishing blow to his shoulder that sent pain cascading down his arm like fire, and countered with a hook to the big man’s jaw. His knuckles screamed in protest, bones meeting bone, but Bashir’s head snapped sideways. The giant staggered.
Omar pressed his advantage, not giving Bashir time to recover, driving forward with textbook combinations: jab, cross, uppercut. Each strike landed with satisfying impact. Bashir’s head rocked back with the uppercut, blood flying from his mouth in a fine spray.
The big man tried to close the distance, to use his size and strength to grapple, but Omar dodged him—barely, but he did it. He got behind Bashir and wrapped his right forearm around the man’s throat, locked it in place with his left arm, and squeezed like his life depended on it. Because it probably did.
Bashir clawed at Omar’s arm, his thick fingers scrabbling for purchase, for any leverage to break the hold. His face darkened from red to purple as oxygen deprivation did its work. He thrashed like a landed fish, powerful and desperate, but Omar held on. Every muscle in his body strained, his arms burned, his ribs screamed where Bashir had slammed him into the bench. But he didn’t let go.
Finally, after an eternity the big man stopped struggling. His hands fell away. His massive body went limp, all that bulk becoming dead weight.
Omar lowered him carefully to the ground and stood gasping for air. His ribs throbbed with each breath. His hands were a disaster of torn skin, split knuckles, and smeared blood.
He looked up, sucking air into his screaming lungs. Marielle had closed the distance between her and the third guard, her gun steady in a two-handed grip aimed at the man’s center mass.
“Put your gun on the platform,” she instructed them man.
He crouched and set the weapon on the ground in front of her feet. As he rose, she holstered her gun and and wrapped her arm around his throat, mimicking the choke hold Omar had just used. The guard struggled, his hands grasping at her forearm, his body bucking, but she had the angle and the leverage. Her technique was textbook perfect. Ten seconds of controlled pressure, and he slumped unconscious in her arms.
She released him and let him slide to the concrete, then met Omar’s eyes across the platform.
“Not bad for a desk jockey,” Omar managed, his voice scraped raw.
The ghost of a smile flickered across her face, there and, then gone, like summer lightning. “Olivia insisted I take hand-to-hand refresher courses. She can be very persuasive. She even talked your sister into joining us.”
Hanna stood frozen by the ticket booth, one hand pressed against the grimy glass. She looked from the three unconscious men on the ground to Omar and Marielle with a mixture of shock, fear, and disbelief.
Omar straightened, wincing as his ribs protested. Everything hurt, and tomorrow would be worse.
“We need to move them before they wake up so we can get out of here before the police arrive. I’m sure the ticket agent’s called them by now.”