by Kara Parker
“What’s it look like, Longbow?” Steven asks.
“I count maybe eighty men with machine pistols.”
“Fuck,” Steven whispers. “These assholes don’t play around. Okay, let’s draw them into the grinder. Fire teams, hold fire until I give the signal.”
“Athena acknowledges,” Rose whispers, peering through her scope, waiting for a target to step into her sights.
The cartel moves in slowly, obviously nervous, but the Nines make no move, letting them get fully into the crossfire. “Fire teams, standby,” Steven’s voice whispers in her ear. She still has no target, but she knows where they will appear and she waits.
“Fire!”
Steven’s voice hasn’t faded from her hearing when sharp rifle cracks, roars from shotguns and pops of handguns begin to rip the air. She can hear men screaming, then the buzz saw burr of automatic weapons. “Coming your way, Athena!”
She holds her breath and squeezes the trigger, the weapon bucking against her shoulder. As the first man goes down, she pulls the rifle down, works the bolt, and acquires her next target. The men are less than 200 yards away and a man is a much bigger target than she had been practicing with. Another squeeze and a second man drops. As she works the bolt, the trees off to her right are shredded with a long burst of gunfire. With a nasty grin, Athena sends the shooter straight to hell.
“Joseph! They are about to break through. You need to get ready clear out!” Steven calls.
“Roger. Joseph moving. Athena! We’re coming out the back!”
“Hold!” Athena calls, keying her mic before her rifle barks again. “Shooters still at your location!”
“Make it fast, Athena!” Steven orders.
The gunmen from the cartel spray the trees with gunfire, trying to pin her down, but she continue to pick them off. “Working on it. There’s about ten back here!”
“Fuck! Deadbolt, see if you can help her out!” Touch says.
“Hurry up, Athena!” Joseph calls frantically, a gunshot coming over the radio before it falls quiet.
Rose feels her blood run cold but she focuses, knowing the best way she can help Joseph is to pick these fuckers off as fast as she can.
“Athena clear!” she shouts into her radio as the last gunman drops. Seconds later the door bursts open and a dozen or more Nines flood out of the clubhouse, including Melina. She stops and screams at someone inside to hurry, motioning frantically, then turns and runs into the forest. Movement catches her eye and she drops the man appearing around the side of the building.
Joseph steps out, his handgun roaring as he fires back through the open door. He turns and flattens his back against the wall next to the door. “Joseph, get down,” she hisses into her radio.
Joseph hears Athena's warning and immediately drops. There are dead and wounded everywhere, another man forfeiting his life the moment he appears at the door. Athena jerks the bolt back and frantically begins to reload.
Joseph gets ready to run. The Nines that were holed up with him should be far enough away by now to be safe. Most of the gunfire has died away, the few remaining members of the cartel inside the clubhouse, the snipers and the rest of the Nines taking a deadly toll on their numbers. Another man steps out of the building and Joseph drops him with two pulls of the trigger, the slide staying back after the second shot. He doesn’t have time to reload, and as he gets to his feet to run, another man steps out. His gun swivels in his direction and Joseph grabs the man’s gun hand, pivots, and jerks the arm hard down over his shoulder. The elbow snaps backwards with a sickening crunch as the man screams in agony. Before Joseph can bend to retrieve the fallen weapon he feels the gun at the back of his head.
He stands stock still, preparing to die, when a shot rings out and he feels a warm spray on his neck. Athena’s shot had passed so close to his head he had heard it pass. Before he can react to still being alive another man jerks him back to the door, a gun to his head once more.
“If I hear one more fucking shot from your fucking snipers, I’ll blow your fucking head off. Tell them!”
“Fuck you,” Joseph sneers.
“I’ll kill him!” the man screams into the forest.
Athena waits… waiting for her chance. All she needs is one more fucking step.
“Come out or I will fucking kill him!”
“Don’t do it, Athena!” Joseph calls.
“I was supposed to take him alive!” the gunman shouts. “But I will kill him here and his blood will be on your hands!”
“You know if you kill me, none of you will get out of here alive,” Joseph hisses.
“Which is the only reason you are still alive. What’s it going to be?” the man calls again. “You have ten seconds!”
“Wait!” Rose calls.
“Athena! No!” Joseph screams, struggling.
“Athena! Do not abandon your position!” Steven orders harshly.
“I’m coming down!” she shouts, then keys her mic. “He’ll kill him!”
“Athena, listen to me!” Touch say frantically. “Don’t do this!”
“I have to, Mark.”
“Rose, they’ll kill you!”
“Better me than Joseph. I can’t lose him again.”
“Rose! No! Don’t!” Joseph cries, having heard the entire conversation on his own radio.
As she climbs out of her hide she hears frantic orders as the Nines scramble, adjusting to the new situation. She leaves her gun behind and comes out of the trees with her hands at shoulder height.
“A woman!” the gunman shouts in surprise. By now he has been joined by the eight remaining members of the cartel. “Say goodbye, señoritaseñorita,” he snarls as he points his gun at her.
“You kill either one of us, and you’re dead,” Athena says softly. “You’re penned in this building. Once the food runs out, then what? Everyone is dead except for you. All these men you see here, I killed them myself… and there are many more of us. Your only hope of escape is to keep us alive.” Rose keeps her voice calm and deadly serious, showing no sign of fear, but her legs are shaking so hard that she can barely stand.
“Kill them both!” a man in the shadows urges. “She killed Javier. Señor Matos isn’t going to like that.”
“All the more reason to take them. Señor Matos will want to deal with them personally,” the man says. He is obviously the one in charge and he pauses to think. “Call off your men, Warner.”
“Fuck you!” Joseph says.
“Steven… Athena… stand down.”
“She’s much smarter than you, I think. Jesús, take her.”
Jesús steps out and grabs Rose by her hair, twisting it painfully. “I’m going to ask Señor Matos when he is done with you to let me fuck your dead body,” he snarls into her face.
“It’s probably the only way you can get it up,” she sneers.
The slap is quick in coming, rocking her back on her heels, only the man’s hold on her hair preventing her from falling.
“Leave her alone!” Joseph rages. “You’ve got me. You don’t need her!”
“I’m going to kill you for that,” she snarls, refusing to back down from this shit.
“Perhaps I should kill her, then, huh? She killed Señor Matos’ son, Javier. Señor Matos told me to bring you back alive if I could. He didn’t say anything about her.”
Joseph grinds his teeth but says nothing more.
Another man covers Joseph as the man in charge reaches for her, plucking the ear piece from her before roughly opening her shirt to free the cord. “This is Carlos. I know you are listening,” he says, keying the mic. “We have this woman and Warner. We are going to walk out the front doors and get into our cars and leave. If I see or hear anyone, they both die.” He releases the mic and drops the radio. “Get Javier.”
With Carlos’ gun to Joseph’s head and Jesús’ to Rose’s, they lead them out to one of the waiting SUVs. Seeing that their cars are riddled with bullet holes, they stops and retreat back into the
building. “Where are the keys?” Carlos demands, stopping in front of a newer SUV belonging to the Nines. When Joseph says nothing, he looks at Jesús. “Kill her.”
“Wait!” Joseph cries. “They should be hanging on a board by the office door. If they are not there, then someone took them.”
“You better hope they are there,” Carlos says, jerking his head in the direction of the office area that holds the four small apartments. A moment later the man returns with a handful of keys. “Which one?”
“Like a Rock,” Joseph says, identify the key chain.
“And that one?” Carlos asks nodding at another vehicle.
“The green one or the Ford one. I can’t remember.”
They wait a moment until both trucks are running. “Throw the rest of the key into the trees. Somebody open the door,” Carlos orders, looking at the big roll-up door. “Put them in the third row of the Chevy.”
“I’m going to fuck you back there, Chiquita. I’m going to fuck you good,” Jesús sneers as he shoves her toward the truck.
“Jesús, you drive,” Carlos orders.
CHAPTER FOURTY-FIVE
They drive straight through to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the Mexican city that shares a border with El Paso, Texas, and the home of the Matos Cartel. They spend an hour bouncing across the desert in Arizona to pass through a hole cut into the fence, crossing the border into Mexico before turning east for Juárez.
They are not allowed to speak for the entire trip, as a hard backhanded slap with a gun across Joseph’s face when he had tried to speak to her quietly told them to hold their tongues from that moment on. Rose has to endure a pawing from Jesús as he roughly handles her breasts until Carlos reminds him that she is being brought back for SeñorSeñor Matos and he wouldn’t want his property damaged. Jesús backs off, but he still leers at her, explaining in graphic detail what he is going to do with her after Señor Matos has his fill of her.
After more than twenty hours stuffed in the back of the SUV, they arrive at an expansive estate on the outskirts of town. It is early morning, still dark, when they are escorted to rough cells in what appears to have once been a stable. “Rose, can you hear me?” Joseph calls after their captor leaves them.
She can’t see him, but Rose sags with relief at his voice. “I hear you.”
“Why, Rose? Why did you do it?”
“Because I would rather die with you than live without you.”
“That’s stupid!”
“Would you have let them take me?”
“No.”
“Okay then. I love you Joseph. I couldn’t just let them take you or kill you. I couldn’t!”
Joseph sags to the floor, sitting with his back against the wall. “This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this.”
Rose can hear the profound sadness and remorse in his voice. “Joseph… these last two weeks has been some of the happiest of my life. I don’t regret a thing. The last few days… they have shown me how my life can be. To have you hold me each night, to have you kiss me each morning. I don’t want to live without that anymore. That is the life I want, and nothing else.”
“I would like that too.”
“If we get out of this, that’s the life we’ll have.”
“If we get out of this.”
“The Nines… they’ll come for us.”
“They’ll try. Maybe. But if Matos kills us first thing, they aren’t going to have time.”
“Then we have to buy them some time.”
“Yeah. I’m open for suggestions,” Joseph says. He admires her enthusiasm, but she doesn’t know the kind of people they are dealing with.
“I don’t know. But we held off three times our number without a single casualty. We have to try!”
Joseph sighs. He’s so tired. Tired of the responsibility. Tired of everyone looking to him for answers. But for Rose, he will try. He will try until the last beat of his heart, his last breath. “You’re right, Rose. The Nines… they’ll come for us. We just have to be here when they do.”
CHAPTER FOURTY-SIX
“So you’re the great Joseph Warner,” Hector Matos sneers. Señor Matos is a man of perhaps fifty with black hair shot through with grey. He was probably handsome once, but time hasn’t been kind. “You thought you could defy me? I’m Hector Matos, you fuck! Nobody defies me!” he roars, thumping his chest with a fist as he stands, his robe falling open to reveal he has nothing on underneath. What he does have though, Rose notes, is the most enormous penis she has ever seen.
“And you, señorita, you killed my Javier, eh? I will see that you suffer greatly for that.”
She stands tall, refusing to cower before Matos, though she is all but quaking with fear. Joseph had said his reputation was being as crazy as a shit house rat. She can believe it. As they were led in she noticed the walls are covered with paintings of nude women and couples fornicating in every conceivable position. And not all the characters in the paintings are completely human—some of the men and women sporting devil horns, claws, or tails. Even now, all around them, are a bevy of nude men and woman—all the women beautiful, all the men handsome—all with vacant eyes. Most are watching their benefactor, but a few are busy with other activities, either sexual or drug related.
“So… who should I kill first, eh? Carlos tells me you surrendered to prevent this fuck from being shot. Perhaps you would like to watch me carve his flesh from his bones, eh? You want to listen to him scream? No? How about you, eh?” he asks Joseph. “You have feelings for this woman? Maybe you would like to watch me fuck her, eh? Watch me fuck her until she bleeds before I kill her?”
Joseph says nothing, not willing to give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of hearing him beg, knowing it would make no difference.
Matos walks behind them, stepping up behind Rose and smelling her neck as he roughly plays with her breasts. “She’s very beautiful, isn’t she? Have you fucked her? I bet you have. Perhaps I will have her tied up. Would you like that, señorita? Would you like to be tied up and fucked by a real man?”
He moves to where they can see him. “And him… you love him? Eh? You like feeling his cock inside of you? Maybe I will cut it off. Use it to fuck you with? The last fuck he will ever give you?”
Matos stands there, his enormous penis fully erect, obviously turned on by the thought of raping Rose or torturing Joseph, or both. “You want to see how I fuck women, eh? You want to see what your señorita has waiting for her?” Matos shrugs off his robe and points to a woman and snaps his fingers. The woman, heavy of breast and thick of hips saunters over with an exaggerated sexiness. When she gets close, Matos grabs her by her hair and jerks her to him with a nasty grin. The pull looks painful to Rose, but the woman smiles with a “come hither” expression and pulls him to her. They kiss roughly before Matos throws her to the floor. Rose grimaces at the rough treatment and looks away.
“If she looks away again, kill him,” Matos says as Rose turns away. Rose looks back and sets her jaw, determined to watch.
Matos drops to the floor beside the woman, and takes her roughly by the throat. She smiles at him again, but then her eyes open wide as he tightens his grip. He speaks to her in Spanish and she nods. He throws her to her back before he roughly spreads her legs, taking his manhood in his hand, and thrusting hard into her… his rough entry causing the woman to cry out.
Joseph can feel his lips curl into a grimace as Matos takes the woman by the throat again, whispering at her before spitting into her face and smearing it around. He then begins to thrust violently into her while slapping her hard across the cheeks.
Rose feels sick at her stomach as Matos fucks the woman, slapping her around as he roughly shoves his cock into her over and over. There is no love, no tenderness, no compassion. Finally the woman has enough and digs her fingernails into Matos’ face. He roars as she rakes at his skin, her nails leaving behind three angry red lines.
Matos falls back, his hand coming to his face wher
e she had scratched him. The woman doesn’t follow up with a kick or doesn’t run, which is what Rose would have done. Instead she does the unthinkable, attacking Matos and knocking him from his knees to his back. With a scream the woman takes his hands and tries to pin him down, but she is no match for his strength. They tumble one over the other before she comes to rest on his chest. She rises up and steers him inside of her once more, causing Matos to snarl at her as he thrusts violently into her. With a cry of pain or pleasure, Rose isn’t sure, the woman rakes his chest with her nails, just as she did his face.
With another roar of pain, Matos peels her hands from his chest, then slaps her viciously hard, his handprint instantly visible on her cheek as she tumbles off of him into her side. Her hand comes to her cheek and the smile she had is gone, fear now clearly visible in her eyes. But she comes at him again, her hands like claws.