by Steve Brewer
"Yeah."
"See that bulge at the back of her waistband?" Irving said. "The way the wind blew her blouse against it?"
"I saw it," Ellis said. "She's carrying a gun. No doubt the guy she's meeting has one, too."
"Sounds like you need backup," Irving said. "Maybe that Captain Pugh is on the way. You want me to check?"
"I just want to keep an eye on them for now. If they're having lunch, they'll be in there for a while."
"Then what?"
"When they come out, I'll be waiting."
Chapter 51
Jackie was glad to see Romeo safely at a table inside The Coffee Shop, facing the door, waiting for her. She'd been worried about him. She'd never spotted the black Jeep behind her on her roundabout trip here, so she figured Marshal Ellis McGuire must've chased after Romeo's car instead.
"Did you have to shake him?" she said as she slid onto a stool across from Romeo.
"Never saw him. I take it you didn't, either."
"Hmm," she said. "McGuire wouldn't quit that easily."
"I was thinking the same thing."
She looked around the sporty red-and-gray coffee shop. It was a casual place, aimed at students, with a counter toward the back and an open kitchen beyond that. A narrow, dimly lit hall on one side that led to the restrooms.
Only five people were working in the café as far as she could see – three waitresses, a tattooed cook, and one dishwasher way in the back. She checked out the other diners, but none of them seemed suspicious. Four booths were crowded with a total of ten people, but they were all young and hip and too interested in each other to give her – mid-thirties and sloppy with chopped-off hair – a second look.
The air in the café was thick with aromas – coffee and bacon and yeasty bread.
"Smells good in here," she said.
Romeo slid a laminated menu across the table to her. "You want coffee?"
"I might get something else. I drank that whole go-cup on the way here. I'm feeling jangly."
"That's no good." Romeo smiled. "We need you to stay relaxed."
"Yeah?" she said, her voice softer, teasing him. "Why is that?"
"If something goes wrong, I don't want you to freak out."
"Oh, I see. Don't worry about me. I never freak out."
"You might get trigger-happy."
"That's a definite possibility. Especially when I'm hungry. It makes me cranky."
"Soon as you're ready, we'll go order at the counter."
She scanned the menu, but it was hard to focus on the words with Romeo sitting across from her. She looked up at him, and they exchanged smiles. If only they could get some time alone—
A screech of tires outside. Romeo's dark eyes went wide.
Jackie swiveled on her stool to see out the tall windows. A midnight-blue Cadillac Escalade had stopped directly in front of The Coffee Shop. Two doors on this side sprang open and two swarthy men spilled out. One was a lean little man with a wispy mustache. The other was a huge pile of muscle and meat.
"Go out the back," Romeo said.
"What?"
"There's got to be a back door. Find it."
The two men outside paused, waiting for the driver to come around to their side. He was another expensively-dressed Hispanic man, medium-sized, and he looked to be in charge. He took the lead as the trio gathered at the front of the Escalade. In his right hand, he carried a blunt black pistol.
"Who are they?"
"The ones I saw outside my apartment," Romeo said. "Go. Now."
Jackie slid off the stool and pulled the revolver out of the back of her belt. Romeo was pulling his gun, too, as he stood.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm right behind you."
People in the booths spotted the guns about then because a woman screamed, and that set off a couple of others. To Jackie, the sudden noise was like a starter's pistol. She took off running, past the counter, down the narrow hall that led to the restrooms and, luckily enough, a fire door. A sign on the red steel door warned that it was for emergency use only and opening it would set off an alarm, which sounded like just the thing to Jackie.
She slammed through the door and into a sunny alley behind the shopping center. She took it in at a glance. Paved alley, empty except for a smelly gray dumpster parked behind the café's back door. The opposite side of the narrow alley was an eight-foot-tall concrete-block wall that screened the shopping center from a residential area.
A great clanging filled the air as the fire alarm went off. It was like a school bell that never stopped. The noise echoed off the concrete wall, making Jackie cringe.
She hesitated, leaning against the open door. Should she wait here for Romeo? Keep running?
Over the clanging alarm, she heard shouts from the front of the building. Then the sudden crackling of gunshots.
Chapter 52
Marshal Ellis McGuire knew the dark blue Escalade was trouble as soon as it braked to a halt in front of The Coffee Shop. As the doors flew open, he was already turning away from the substation window, headed for the door.
"What is it?" asked Irving, the gray-mustached volunteer.
"Bad guys," Ellis said. "Get some squad cars over here. Right now."
"Yes, sir."
Ellis pulled his government-issue Glock from the holster under his windbreaker as he went squinting out into the bright sunshine. He barely paused before sprinting across all four lanes of Monte Vista Boulevard.
Up ahead, he saw the driver of the Escalade get out of the vehicle. He had a black pistol in his hand. He joined the other two at the front of the SUV.
They jumped as a fire alarm went off in the building, a clanging bell that would summon ambulances and fire trucks and cops to the scene. But not soon enough.
Ellis trotted across the parking lot toward the Escalade, his Glock in two hands, pointed at the ground.
"Hey!" he shouted over the alarm.
The driver looked over at Ellis, who pointed the Glock at the trio and said, "U.S. marshal. Put your hands up!"
The driver crouched behind the nose of the big SUV, his gun arm slung across the hood. Flame erupted from the barrel of his pistol.
"Shit!"
Ellis threw himself to the ground between two parked cars. One bullet sparked off the trunk of the nearest car and whined away.
On his hands and knees, Ellis crawled toward the front of the parked cars. When he reached the front tires of his shielding car, he got his feet under him and raised up over the hood, firing away with the Glock. Bullets punched three holes in the fender of the Escalade, but the driver ducked away, apparently without being hit.
People were screaming inside the coffee shop. And that damned alarm continued to clang.
Ellis popped off another shot toward the blue Escalade, shattering a back window. The men shouted to each other in Spanish, but Ellis couldn't make out the words. Too bad, too, because he might've had some warning before one of the Mexicans – a little guy with a wispy mustache – suddenly appeared at the back of the Escalade, rapid-firing a semi-auto pistol his direction.
Bullets shattered windows and stripped chrome from the sedan Ellis was hiding behind. The air buzzed with bits of glass and steel and hot lead.
Ellis hit the deck, but a split-second too late. A bullet clipped the outside of his right shoulder, the impact turning him around as he fell to the pavement.
The burning pain of the bullet wound didn't reach his brain until he'd been down for a few seconds. He clapped his hand over the wound, already wet with sticky blood, and felt the hot furrow the bullet had dug through muscle and skin.
But it hadn't hit bone. A superficial wound, though it hurt like hell.
He rolled over and sat halfway up, his weight on his elbows, just in time to see the compact man with the wispy mustache step into the gap between the trunks of the two parked cars. The gunman took a second to smile at Ellis, making sure the marshal could see he was enjoying himself.
<
br /> Ellis used that second's pause to raise his Glock. Without bothering to aim, he pulled the trigger four times. The little man danced as the bullets spun him around in a fatal pirouette.
Brass clattered off the cars, littering the asphalt around him, then the slide of Ellis' pistol slammed backward.
Empty.
Chapter 53
Felipe Moreno watched through the tinted windows of the Escalade as Little Mike did his death dance in the parking lot.
"Dios mio," he muttered. "What a fucking mess."
Gonzalo was crouched next to Felipe behind the SUV, and he must've seen what happened to Little Mike, too, because he roared and started around the vehicle toward the shooter.
"No," Felipe said sharply. "Go inside and find the woman. I'll take care of this one."
Gonzalo nodded. He went inside the café, keeping low, waddling in a duck-walk that would've seemed comical at any other time.
A few seconds later, the fire alarm stopped clanging, so abruptly it made Felipe flinch. Without that steady noise, he could hear sirens howling in the distance, coming from two directions. Headed this way.
Felipe wished now he'd demanded that Pugh join them here when he'd called with his tip about the woman's location. A police captain would come in handy if they had to deal with the local cops.
They needed to get away from here quickly, but first things first. Felipe hurried around the back of the Escalade, keeping low, his gun in front of him in both hands.
He approached the shot-up cars where Little Mike lay dead in a bloody sprawl of arms and legs. Felipe stepped into the gap between cars, ready to shoot, but the marshal was gone.
He'd left behind a splash of bright blood among the glittering bits of glass and brass. So he was wounded, but had managed to crawl away. Felipe checked under and between the nearest vehicles, but found nothing.
Time was running out. Those sirens were getting closer.
He stooped and got hold of Little Mike's collar. Grunting, he dragged the body of his longtime colleague across the twenty feet of asphalt to the rear of the Escalade.
Felipe would need Gonzalo to lift the body into the SUV. Where was the big man? What was he doing in there? Had he found Jackie Nolan?
Chapter 54
Jackie pressed against the concrete-block wall of the coffee shop as patrons and employees spilled out the clanging back door. She'd gone around to the other side of the dumpster, more or less out of sight as the panicked diners ran the other direction, toward the nearest side street. She held the revolver in both hands, ready to raise up over the trash bin and shoot.
The door whumped shut, and the fire alarm stopped. That was a relief, but her ears still jangled from the noise.
She seemed to have the alley to herself, now that the screaming bystanders had disappeared down the hill toward the leafy neighborhood beyond the concrete wall.
Where was Romeo? Just like him, she thought, to send everyone else out of the danger zone first. Such a fucking Boy Scout.
The alarm sprang to life again as someone opened the door. The door swung back toward her, and Jackie lifted her revolver above the dumpster and sighted down the barrel.
First to come into view was the squarish muzzle of a black pistol. Could be Romeo's Glock, she thought, or it could be someone else's gun. She cocked her revolver as the rest of the firearm came into view, gripped in a beefy fist.
Not Romeo's hand.
Her heart pounding, Jackie took a deep breath and held it as the big man stepped into the alley. He spotted her, his brown eyes going wide, but too late. She pulled the trigger, the gun kicked in her hand, and his bald head exploded like a red balloon. He flopped to the ground, out of sight on the other side of the dumpster.
The fire door slammed shut, and the clanging stopped. But sirens shrieked on the streets nearby. Jackie didn't want to talk to the local police. Not when an APD captain was connected to the man she'd just shot.
Time was running out. Where the hell was Romeo?
Chapter 55
Felipe Moreno reached the narrow corridor inside the café just in time to see Gonzalo gunned down outside the back door. A brief blizzard of blood and brains, then the heavy red door slammed shut, blocking out the sunlight and filling the dim hallway with sudden silence.
Muttering curses, Felipe hurried down the narrow hall. The café seemed empty now, with chairs overturned and something burning on the grill, but he kept his gun up and ready as he reached the doors to the restrooms. Both doors were ajar, and no lights burned inside either room. He glanced inside each, then passed them by, focused on the fire exit.
Was Jackie Nolan on the other side of that steel door? Was her boyfriend? Were they waiting to shoot him down, as they had Gonzalo? Or were they running now, leaving Felipe behind to clean up the mess?
He took a deep breath, his hand resting on the push bar that would open the fire door and start the clanging alarm again. Just as he gathered himself to shove open the door, someone spoke behind him.
"Hey."
Chapter 56
Romeo Sandoval spoke as he came out of the darkened men's room. Just one word, one syllable, was enough to surprise the gunman.
"Hey."
Romeo already had his Glock at shoulder level, braced with both hands, as he'd been trained to do. The Mexican raised his own gun as he wheeled toward him, and Romeo pulled his trigger three times. Three hits, center mass.
One of the bullets went all the way through the man and ricocheted off the steel fire door, making Romeo duck his head.
The Mexican went down without firing a shot. He ended up on his back, staring up at the ceiling, blood spurting from his chest.
The police sirens were right outside now. Romeo was torn. Should he stay and deal with the cops? Explain the bodies, claim self-defense? Or should he chase after Jackie? Was she still outside in the alley, waiting for him?
Romeo stepped over the dead man and pushed the bar to open the fire door. The alarm bell sounded.
Chapter 57
Jackie was jolted by the sudden noise, but she appreciated the warning. She aimed her cocked revolver at the back door of the café, her finger on the trigger.
The door stopped after it was open only a foot or so. She couldn't see who was on the other side, but someone was shouting, trying to be heard over the clanging fire alarm. Sounded like he was yelling her name.
"Jackie! Jackie, it's me! Romeo!"
At least that's what she thought he said. Was it really him? Was it one of the gunmen, pretending to be him?
The door opened another foot. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Romeo peeked around the edge of the door, looking right at her as she aimed the revolver his way.
"It's me!" he shouted. "Don't shoot!"
She nodded and pointed her gun toward the sky.
"Come on!" he yelled.
He didn't wait for her to answer. He took off down the narrow alley, half-running, half-hopping on his bad leg, as he went the direction the others had gone to escape the shootout.
The fire door slammed shut. The alarm stopped clanging. Jackie chased after Romeo.
Chapter 58
U.S. Marshal Ellis McGuire nearly got shot by the first policemen to arrive on the scene.
The shooting had stopped, and Ellis cautiously stood up between two cars halfway across the parking lot from The Coffee Shop, where he'd crawled while escaping the gunmen. His hands and knees were scraped from rapid crawling on asphalt. He had one hand clamped over his bleeding wound. The other, unfortunately, still held his empty Glock.
"Gun!" one of the black-uniformed patrolmen yelled.
He and his crew-cut partner, both of them way too young, aimed their service weapons at Ellis faster than the empty Glock could hit the pavement. Despite the pain in his wounded shoulder, he put both hands up, fingers spread wide.
"U.S. Marshal!" he shouted. "I am now unarmed."
The patrolmen relaxed the tiniest bit. Ellis could see
now that their name tags said "Murphy" and "Schuster." Otherwise, the two rookies were nearly identical.
"Where's your badge?" Murphy demanded.
"Inside my shirt, on a chain. But it says Marshal's Service right here on my jacket. I'm Marshal Ellis McGuire, out of the Denver regional office, here in Albuquerque on an investigation."
The young patrolmen glanced around the parking lot before coming back to him.
"I think the shooters are still inside the café," Ellis said. "Two, maybe more. Be careful."
The cops hesitated. More sirens wailed as patrol cars came screeching to the scene.
Schuster said, "You're hit?"
"Flesh wound," Ellis said. "It hurts, but it's not bad."
"Ambulance is on the way. Wait for it over there."
Schuster gestured with his gun toward Monte Vista Boulevard, which was beginning to fill up with squad cars, their doors hanging open as more excited local cops sprang out, pointing guns everywhere.
Fuck it, Ellis thought, let these gung-ho youngsters take a crack at it. I've already been shot once.
He picked up the Glock and put it away. He made sure his badge was visible outside the windbreaker. Then, wincing against the pain in his shoulder, he put his hands together on top of his head and walked slowly toward the onrush of officers.
Chapter 59
Jackie Nolan caught up to Romeo just before he reached Dartmouth Drive, the side street next to the little shopping center. They paused, puffing, and she peeked around the corner of the building toward Monte Vista and the gathering horde of police.
She turned back to Romeo and said, "Go downhill. Go through back yards or whatever. Get to Girard. There's a fire station over there."
"Where are you going?"
She ignored the question. "I'll meet you on Girard, across from the fire station."
Jackie tried to turn away, but he grabbed her arm.