by Seth Harwood
He counted to two as he belly-crawled toward the end of the couch that was closest to the stairs. Then he closed his eyes. The grenade went off and he could hear it, if only distantly, while he felt the change in compression in the room.
He turned off his sound reduction. Silence. Crawling out from behind the couch, he saw the men halfway down the stairs. Whoever they were protecting was already gone.
The Agent jumped up and ran for the stairs. He let off a burst from the MP5 in the direction of the shooters. The group scattered: some hitting the floor, some ducking behind furniture.
One of the guards on the stairway saw the Agent coming and pushed the others forward. He raised a .45.
The Agent ducked. He dropped to the floor and rolled, came up in a half crouch, half run, and vaulted over the railing. Before the shooter could react, the Agent was on top of him, sending him into a wall with a head kick.
The Agent turned to look down the stairs, expecting to see guns pointed at him but instead he saw the backs of the fleeing men. He dove down the stairs just as the shooters near the pool table started firing at the corner he had just occupied.
Stretched out over the stairs, the Agent saw the back of El Guapo’s head as the drug lord rushed away in the lower room of the clubhouse. From somewhere below, loud music blared—reggaeton, the hip-hop of the south—and automatic weapons rang out from above, ripping into the walls and railing.
Moments like this, he believed, were what separated him from the rest. This was his meditation, his zen. Things slowed down for him instead of speeding up. He was aware of the precariousness of his position, the nature of his height and velocity as well as the stairs sloping down below him. He would have a difficult landing, to say the least. But he knew he was truly living.
There was no thinking; just simple awareness: sights, sounds, smells; targets, obstacles, threats.
Air.
He curled forward, realizing he had already let go of the MP5 and felt it catch behind him by its strap. His right hand found the wakizashi’s hilt—the short sword good for close quarters—and he flipped it out, snapped it down in front of him, and buried it in the deep muscle between shoulder and neck of the second guard. The man fell immediately, cushioning the Agent’s fall as he came down and pressed his hands into the man in a kind of spring-hop that succeeded in smashing the man’s face into the stairs. He retrieved the wakizashi and rolled off the guard, using the last of the stairs for a ramp and letting the roll carry him to his feet.
The last guard watching El Guapo turned toward the Agent holding an automatic, ready to shoot, but the range was too close for him to be effective. The Agent slid under the man’s arm and sliced him open from hip to hip with the wakizashi.
As he stepped into the room, he retrieved his tachi—the long sword—from its sheath. He stood arms wide, holding his favorite weapons, the full daisho, and faced the room.
Now he saw El Guapo; the two men stood face-to-face for a moment, and then the drug lord turned to flee.
A doorway opened on his right and shots were fired randomly into the room. El Guapo ran toward the windows, apparently willing to jump through one.
His wakizashi raised almost of its own accord, the Agent felt himself flinching as a bullet grazed his forearm. Using his momentum, he dove left, toward El Guapo. From the ground, he spun and tried a sweeping attack that missed its mark. El Guapo turned toward the door and his men came into the room now with guns blazing—on full automatic—a spray of destruction cutting at waist height in all directions.
Now it was the Agent’s turn to make an exit in the face of a bad situation. He came up from his crouch and jumped out of a window along the side of the room.
He sprang through the glass of the first-floor window, both swords forward to protect his face. Glass bit into his arms, shredded his sleeves. He knew there’d be blood, but he would survive. He hit the ground outside, rolled, and came up turning toward the front of the house.
He broke into a run, heading in the direction he had last seen El Guapo go. As he came around the corner of the house, the Agent had no idea what he would find, so he slid to the ground, changing levels to throw the shooters off. He held the MP5 with both hands as he slid, ripping off a volley of rounds at the pair of black Mercedes SUVs that he found in front of him. Car doors slammed, engines revved.
Three guys by the front door of the clubhouse seemed surprised to see him, but they were unarmed. He shook his head as they drew their weapons, and he put them down with a burst from the MP5.
The SUVs started forward, and the Agent tore into their backs with his automatic. Then the magazine was empty. He released it, flipping it around in his hand for the other end, where he had a second taped upside down. As he jammed the new magazine home, he aimed low for the wheels, the 9mm rounds doing nothing.
He felt the presence of more guards coming from behind—maybe he heard their footsteps, maybe it was something else. The MP5 was loud. So were the other shots. He ran for the nearest SUV and the shots stopped, the guards afraid to hit their boss’s car.
He didn’t know which SUV El Guapo would be inside, but he didn’t have the luxury of figuring that out; he had time to get to one truck: the closest. He caught it from behind, jumped up to hang on the rear-mounted spare tire with his feet on the bumper.
One of the soldiers behind him took a shot. The Agent felt the warmth of pain in his right side. He couldn’t let go of the tire, even though he wanted to touch his chest, feel his side above his right hip. There would be blood.
Now the clock of pain and blood loss started ticking. This was something that the Agent knew well. As the risks piled up, the odds finally got too long. Luck played its part—both for and against you. Even now he was lucky as the SUVs picked up speed and hit a turn hard, a dogleg right toward the north edge of the compound and the front gate, that kept him from a second, third, or a fourth shot.
The Agent gripped the tire. He wedged his knees between the bumper and the tire, fighting with its slick leather cover. No time to cut it off. He held on as best he could.
It was only a matter of time before the passengers would figure out how to fire at him. He had to move.
The car straightened and the Agent pushed himself upright. His options: the side of the car or the roof.
With his right hand, he reached inside his shirt and slipped his fingers into a shuko climbing claw. Clenching his stomach muscles hard, he reached up to the roof and slammed the claw down onto it, scratching the metal and breaking through. It held.
Working fast, he slid his left hand into another shuko and reached up to the roof to punch that one home. The SUV swerved and his legs came off the bumper and swung out wide into the air. The shukos held.
The Agent pulled up his right hand and slapped it down again, and now he had his feet back on the bumper, then on the tire, and then on the roof. Still no shots from inside. Maybe El Guapo was the only one in the SUV.
The other SUV pulled in front as they passed through the gate, which was wide open.
He had to close in on whoever was inside. It wouldn’t be long before they started firing.
Then he heard a shot from the interior of the SUV. The roof tore open just above the driver. It missed the Agent by three feet at least.
How many passengers could be inside?
Another shot from the front of the SUV—this one aimed at the middle of the roof—missed him by only a foot. Time was up.
He pulled his right hand out of the claw in the roof and reached around to hold on to the left claw. Then he slipped his left hand out and shoved it into the other claw. He pulled the empty claw out with his right hand and put it on the backs of his fingers, the spikes projecting from his knuckles now instead of his palm. He shifted his weight to the side of the car and stretched his leg over the edge, punching the right rear window with his fist, shattering the glass on the second try.
He reached in and unlocked the door, pulling it open against the wind. He peered ove
r the edge and saw only the driver, a panicked Mexican who fired yet another blind shot through the roof.
The Agent flipped himself down into the rear of the SUV feet first. He slid across the backseat, grabbing the gun hand of the driver then slamming it against the emergency brake until the gun fell to the floor. The driver tried to reach down to get it with his other hand, but the Agent caught him around the throat with his left forearm and straightened him up.
The SUV started to slow as the driver let up on the gas, but when the Agent squeezed on the man’s windpipe, they picked up speed again. They weren’t going fast enough to ram the front vehicle until the Agent used both arms in a shime-waza chokehold, though this method of controlling the car couldn’t last long before the driver passed out.
The Agent threw the driver against the passenger door, then flipped himself over the driver’s seat and kicked the man in the face as he dropped in behind the wheel. He swerved the vehicle back into line to follow the lead car and slammed down the gas.
The driver shook his head and came at the Agent. A fast uppercut to his neck with the shuko claw ended that attack in a hurry, reducing the man to a burbling pile on the floor, bleeding and holding his throat.
The Agent would have opened the passenger door and kicked the guy out but he had to focus on the narrow winding road that went through the sandy hills leading away from the ocean. Shrubs and small trees lined each side, growing up out of the sand like refugees wandering in the desert.
El Guapo had to be in the lead car, but with how many others there was no way to know. The Agent pushed the big Mercedes faster, testing the limits of its suspension and balance as its tall boxy frame leaned farther and farther off the road with each turn.
He had to end things here on this rural stretch of road; if El Guapo made it to the city, there were too many ways for him to disappear.
The Agent kept up speed, gunned the engine on a short straightaway, and caught the lead SUV from behind. He bumped it hard and it swerved, almost going off the road before it righted itself and started to go faster. The Agent barely watched the road as he followed the moves of the front car, mirroring each adjustment. On a hard left, he leaned in against the door and felt his right side screaming from the pain of the gunshot. Another reminder of why this chase had to end. So on the next turn in the road, when the lead SUV braked, the Agent didn’t.
He braced himself against the pedals and the wheel, then careened into the back of the lead SUV, sending it into a full spin. Both vehicles slid straight off the road. A big dune appeared in front of the Agent, his SUV slammed into it, and he bounced off the steering wheel then back into his seat. His first thought was that he had broken his collarbone.
He released the door with his left hand and spilled out onto the sand. Putting on a seat belt would have been a wise move, but he hadn’t done it. He looked back up into the SUV and saw the windshield shattered in a spider web around the place where his head must have hit. His forehead felt warm: more blood.
It was time to call in a chopper. The Agent opened the case of his wrist transponder and hit the call button, the one that would put out a beacon of his coordinates and a distress code for an immediate extraction.
The Agent pulled himself up by the door of the Mercedes, gathering his legs underneath him in the sand. Something was wrong with his right leg below the shin. It was his ankle, and it wasn’t good, but he could move on it in the sand, a mercifully forgiving surface. Once he was up, he shuffled along the side of the car until he cleared the back. The other SUV was tipped over on its side against a dune. One of its passengers lay caught under the car, his legs crushed and his upper half exposed. The man reached across his body for a gun near him in the sand. The Agent pulled the Beretta out and shot him twice in the head.
Back toward the road, two men walked away, the one on the left holding the arm of the other over his shoulder. The man on the right was limping, his slight, almost feminine frame leaning heavily on the big muscular guard. This would be El Guapo, the “pretty one” in the street vernacular of his native state.
The Agent shot the guard twice in the back of the head. Both men fell.
The Beretta’s slide stayed open, its ammo spent. The Agent dropped it out onto the sand, retrieved another magazine from his hip and maneuvered it into the bottom of the gun’s grip. Then he jammed it home against his leg. His side ached, but he could see straight. El Guapo rolled over onto his back, sat up a bit, and looked in the Agent’s direction.
He swore in Spanish, then said in clear English, “You black-masked devil!” The thin man flipped him off.
The Agent cared even less about the war on drugs and making a statement to the world than he had at the start of this op. Now, none of it mattered. He was here to finish a job, and he squeezed off two rounds from the Beretta, both hitting El Guapo in the head, exploding the top half of his face.
El Guapo fell back onto the sand.
The Agent held on to the back of the Mercedes, listening to his own heartbeat and checking his pulse. He had lost the even flow of his breath, but he would get that back now as things slowed. He started listening harder, focusing on nothing more than his breath and the landscape around him. His eyes scanned the road and the sand and the other SUV for any movement, any living threats, and saw none.
The Agent inhaled deep, feeling a wide and all-consuming rush of warmth that most men would call pain. He felt it in more places than a normal man could be expected to handle.
He was no normal man. He was the best.
He focused on his breath.
In the distance, he heard the first faint sounds of the chopper, his backup coming to take him home.
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Short Stories
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Do you like short stories?
This collection will blow you away.
You’ll love this book because it will make you feel and remember and, laugh, and even cry.