"Knock-knock-knock." Okay, three knocks. I had barely registered the sound was when a muffled voice rang out.
"Room service."
Oh. I exhaled in relief. "It's just room―wait a minute. Did we order anything?" I asked Tanya, who shook her head. She was visibly as confused as I was. The bucket of ice we ordered had been delivered, and since we had yet to decide whether to eat in or eat out, it's impossible for there to be room service. Unless...
"They've found us," I whispered. I heard three sharp intakes of breath. Tanya looked like she was about to hyperventilate again.
"You mean the police?" Phil hissed anxiously. Lenny scrambled up from the ground with renewed vigour. Tanya cringed.
"Honestly? I have no earthly idea." I admitted, tiptoeing carefully over to the door. "But I've a feeling that we're about to find out, one way or another."
Lenny, gleaning from past gaffe, didn't forget to remind me to "look through the peephole" this time. I was about to heed his advice when I heard Phil shout out "No, don't!"
Almost simultaneously, my entire body weight shifted involuntarily to the right, causing me to lose my balance entirely. I would've crashed into the standing lamp and caused quite an indiscreet racket if Phil's supreme survival instincts hadn't kicked in in time. With a nimble curl of my neck, Phil allowed my shoulder to absorb the brunt of the fall and rolled along the carpeted floor before coming to a stop in crouching position.
Wait, did I just use the word 'supreme' and 'Phil' in the same sentence?
Having just scattered my bearings over the four corners of the world, I spluttered. "What the hell are you doi―"
Right at that moment, the doorknob exploded, sending splinters of wood and shards of metal flying in every direction. Immediately after, consecutive crunching noises were heard as the doorknob was completely obliterated by the volley of bullets sent in its way.
I shuddered. Judging by the level where the doorknob was at, if I'd been peering unsuspectingly into the peephole just now, the shrapnel and the ricocheting bullets would've embedded themselves somewhere between my balls and my belly button.
Oh, and I'll most likely be dead before I even hit the ground. Yikes.
"That's definitely not the cops," I muttered. Then I realized that I had about five seconds before the baddies broke the door down and started shooting again.
"Tanya!" I hissed urgently. "Get into the closet and stay low." Leaping up, I beeped for Phil. "Please tell me you do have a game plan, Phil."
"Game plan? I was thinking more of an escape route here."
"WHAT?!" I almost had a heart attack. What did he want us to do? Jump out the window? I might be able to make the jump, but Tanya? She'll end up with another sprained ankle if she jumped. It's impossible.
Phil snickered. "Relax, man. I'm just fucking with you. Go to the toilet."
"Wha―"
"Just get your ass to the goddamn toilet, will ya?"
With my heartbeat racing like a Maserati going at top speed, I made a dash for the toilet, which was just to the left of the door. Once I got in, it was all Phil's show. Deftly, he unscrewed the cistern cover and lifted the heavy ceramic plate from the tank.
"Do you play baseball?" Phil asked suddenly.
"Why are you asking me that?" I shouted frantically. For the record, I sounded like the typical fat guy from every Scary Movie episode, about to get his balls chopped off by a chainsaw-wielding nutjob. Yeah. I was that freaked out.
Phil gave me a sly wink. "'Cause we're about to."
Right on cue, the door burst open, and a guy who looked exactly like Agent Smith from The Matrix came dashing into the room, gun in hand, looking really badass. It was a shame that he'd barely taken three steps into the room when he was knocked into next week.
Phil was indeed a CQC pro. Slinking out from the toilet, he was completely silent and I couldn't really blame Mr Smith for not hearing a thing when Phil swung the heavy porcelain cistern cover like a cudgel and thwacked him right in the face.
Phil smirked. "Home run, bitches."
Okay, great, one down. That's the good news. The bad news is there were still two more burly Agent Smiths standing on the threshold, with their guns trained on me.
"Okay, okay, don't shoot!" Phil shouted frantically as he dropped the blood-stained cudgel to the ground, his hands flying into the air. "I surrender! Please don't―"
"What the hell are you doing?" I hissed.
The Agent Smith closest to me stared on in confusion, his gun wavering uncertainly in mid-air. Expecting a heavy onslaught from Phil, I guess he must've been pretty baffled when Phil turned out to be a knee-wobbling sissy. Well, the brief moment of hesitation was the only window Phil needed.
Quick as lightning, Phil lashed his now-empty hands forward and swiped the gun from the surprised Agent Smith. It was a total blitz attack. As Phil grabbed the gun, it snagged the finger of the hit-man, dragging the poor man along. When the man was close enough, Phil dislodged the gun from the guy's strangled twisted finger and spun him around, securing him in an arm-lock with his torso facing outwards.
Having effectively procured a shield (poor Agent Smith #2), Phil aimed the gun at Agent Smith #3 left thigh and fired a round.
"Arrgh!" Agent Smith #3 crumbled to the floor, clutching his wounded thigh and possibly-fractured femur in agony. Oh, and did I mention the cursing tirade that he was going on? It was nothing less of 'f', 'b' and 'd' words.
Then Phil released his arm-lock on the Agent Smith #2 guy. At first, I thought he was about to let him go, or at least, knock him into dreamland, but he did neither. Instead, he raised the gun and fired a shot into the guy's head.
It was a silenced round, but I yelped nonetheless.
"HOLY SHIT!" I had nearly jumped out of my skin. "You fucking killed him!"
To my horror, Phil answered me by adding two bullets into Agents #1 and #3's heads. "Yeah. It's better not to leave any loose ends."
"Loose ends?" I yelled, not sure whether to freak out or to be sick. Or both. "These guys have like...I don't know, families; brothers, sons, daughters―"
"―and so does everybody else on the battlefield. But that doesn't stop a random nobody to pick up a gun and fire a bullet into your brain, just because you're not fighting on the same side as he is." Phil retorted.
I shook my head in exasperation. "This isn't a battlefield, Phil."
Phil wasn't convinced. "Well, to me? With these motherfuckers pointing Glocks in my face? It sure as hell is."
Just at that moment, a fourth Mr Suit 'N' Tie ('Agent Smith' is getting too damned old-school) appeared at the door, gun in hand. Caught between planting bullets in Agent Smiths and debating with me over moral conscience issues, Phil had no time to react. Well, at least he calculated that he had no time to react, as I could see the numbers flash through his head:
· A handgun bullet travels at more than 700 miles per hour.
· The distance between the enemy Joe and I is around 5 metres, so it would take the bullet around 0.016 seconds to reach him.
· It would take me at least 0.05 seconds to aim the gun and fire it, then another 0.016 seconds for the bullet to reach the enemy Joe.
· Conclusion? We're fucked.
No, seriously, I never thought Phil was this good at math. All those calculations in under sixteen-thousandths of a second? That's pretty impressive.
Then, as Phil stood stock still, waiting for his (and mine, dammit) 'inescapable' death, blood spewed out from the right side of Mr Suit 'N' Tie's head, splashing all over the carpet outside. The guy's eyes glazed over, and he collapsed to the floor with a dull 'thud'.
"Jesus Christ!" Although I've seen my fair share of bloodshed in movies, this sudden live carnage scene was seriously testing the limits of my esophageal sphincter. As in, its ability to keep down my stomach contents, I mean. Goddamn biology classes.
On the other hand, Phil was not so surprised that he'd just evaded Death. I guess having shared an intimate relationship with the Grim Reaper once makes you not that afraid of the prospect of dying, nor that stunned at the prospect of deus ex machina either.
And that's probably why he grinned knowingly when Layla stepped onto the threshold with a gun slung over her shoulder, as if he'd been expecting her to save our asses all along.