Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

  Once clear of the interfering car, Gavin ran across the street toward the alley. He saw Sierra Two brake hard, then accelerate forward as Marcus headed toward the next turn so he could cut the targets off at the far end of the alley.

  Gavin wedged the stock of his M-4 carbine against his shoulder and stepped into the alley. He kept the muzzle an-gled down so he could look over the gunsight with both eyes. The alley was pitch dark. Buck was in front of him, and two more of his men were behind him: Snyder, an ex-Army Ranger, and Camp, who spent three years on SEAL Team Two, but got out because, as he said, he got tired of being immersed in freezing cold fucking water. Gavin won-dered if the DEA agent and the Mexican cop had enough tactical sense to set up a hasty ambush. He hoped not, be-cause with the ambient light from the street silhouetting him and his men from behind, they were easy targets.

  Despite Marcus's mental fuckup, trying to back through traffic toward the target, Gavin wished he hadn't split Mar-cus off into the second Suburban. He should have put Snyder in command of Sierra Two and kept Marcus with him. Snyder was a good man, and Rangers were hard-charging, life-taking motherfuckers, but they weren't quite tuned up to the standards of Special Forces. Marcus had been in Special Forces and had served with Gavin in Afghanistan. As for Camp, SEALs had a great rep, especially after they whacked bin Laden, but underneath all the cool gear and training, they were still squids.

  Gavin's four-man team moved down the alley in a stag-gered column with Gavin in the number two spot behind and to the right of Buck, Snyder at number three behind and to the left of Gavin, and Camp trailing Snyder to his right in the four spot.

  "R.O.E?" Buck said over his shoulder, meaning what were the Rules of Engagement.

  "Kill that fucker and take the flash drive," Gavin said.

  "And the chica?" Snyder asked in a loud whisper.

  "Whatever you want," Gavin said. "Just make it quick." He was a man who believed in the spoils of war. Gavin looked over his left shoulder, and even in the dark he could see Snyder grin.

  "Contact front," Buck shouted. Then he opened fire.

  * * * *

  Scott heard the distinctive crack of the first supersonic bullet blow past his head an instant before the sound of the gunshots reached his ears. "Down," he shouted and dragged Benny to the filthy pavement.

  He crawled through the dark toward the nearest wall, pulling Benny with him, hoping to find cover as more bullets ripped down the length of the alley, some cracking overhead, others zinging off the bricks. Behind him he saw four sets of muzzle flashes. His hand sank into a puddle of slime that smelled like vomit. Benny retched. "Keep moving," he whispered.

  Then the firing stopped.

  Scott kept crawling until he ran into something metal. Feeling around it, he found it was sitting on small wheels. A garbage bin. "Here," he said, and pulled Benny toward him. They rose to their knees behind the metal bin. He could hear men stalking toward them. Leaning close to Benny, he whis-pered, "Are you armed?"

  "Yes." Benny pulled a Beretta 9mm from under her jacket.

  Scott pointed down the alley. "Light their asses up."

  "What?"

  He stabbed a finger toward their attackers. "Shoot."

  "Who are they?"

  "Does it matter?"

  Benny peaked out from behind the garbage bin. "I can't see them."

  "Here." Scott picked up a piece of debris from the ground, it felt like a door hinge or piece of angle iron, and lobbed it down the alley toward the men. It hit the pavement with a loud clank; a second later four rifles opened fire. "There they are," Scott shouted loud enough to be heard over the sound of the guns.

  Benny aimed at the muzzle flashes and fired off her en-tire magazine while sweeping her pistol from side to side. The shots from the four rifles stopped, and Scott knew the men were diving for cover. If they were good they would re-cover quickly and advance using bounding overwatch or fire and maneuver, techniques Scott had been taught at DEA's "mini-ranger camp" before deploying to Afghanistan.

  Then the very air was ripped apart as two of their pursu-ers unleashed long bursts of full-automatic fire. Benny screamed and pressed herself flat against the pavement, and Scott instinctively tried to cover her as a buzz saw of bullets cut through the top half of the garbage bin.

  The firing stopped again. And this time Scott heard at least two men shouting almost simultaneously, "Reloading."

  Scott pulled Benny to her feet and they ran, hunched down and keeping the garbage bin more or less between themselves and the men with the big guns. After they had taken about ten steps, Scott noticed Benny lagging behind. He turned to see if she was hit. She wasn't. She was just re-loading. When she finished, and while they were still run-ning in their awkward, hunched positions, Benny angled out just beyond the cover of the garbage bin, pointed her pistol underhand behind her back and fired off several more shots. There was more shouting behind them.

  Scott saw they were twenty yards from the end of the alley. They just might make it out, he thought, and from there they could find somewhere to hide and use the darkness to their advantage.

  Then another Suburban skidded to a stop in front of them and blocked off the alley. Two men sprang out of the front doors and a third climbed out from the back. All wore military clothing and carried M-4 carbines. Scott pushed Benny against the wall, hoping the darkness would hide them. He tried to get his breathing under control and stop his heart from hammering in his chest.

  The three men switched on lights mounted to the grips of their carbines. Scott flattened himself and Benny tighter against the wall. But he didn't feel the brick he had expected. Instead, he felt rough wood. As the powerful lights probed the dark, searching for them, Scott ran his hand along the wooden surface. His fingers found a handle. It was a door. He pressed the latch. It didn't move. He skimmed his fingers across the door until he found the crack between the door and the wall. Then he ran his fingers up and down the crack, but he couldn't find any hinges. Not on this side. Which meant the door opened inward.

  "Step back," he whispered to Benny.

  She did. He raised his leg and kicked the door as hard as he could, his foot landing just to the inside of the handle.

  The door didn't budge.

  But the noise gave away their position. One of the gun-mounted lights swung in their direction, but before it could find them Benny fired three shots. The man behind the light dropped. "Son of a bitch," he shouted. "I'm hit."

  Benny fired three more shots.

  This time Scott didn't see the result because he stepped back, took a running start at the door, and drove his foot into it like a piston. The frame split. Scott kept moving forward, using his momentum and driving his shoulder into the door. It crashed inward, torn completely off its hinges, and toppled to the floor. Scott lost his balance and fell on top of it. Just outside he heard more pistol shots as Benny emptied her magazine at the men with the lights.

  Scott rolled out of the way, and Benny charged through the doorway dodging bullets. Without stopping she reached down and pulled Scott to his feet. "Let's get the fuck out of here," she yelled, much louder than necessary. Probably, Scott thought, because all the shooting had knocked out her hearing.

  They were in a stockroom in the back of some kind of store. It was cramped and dark, with rows of high shelves, all packed with merchandise. Electronics? Auto parts? Scott couldn't tell. All he knew was that they had to keep moving. Stopping, even for a few seconds, meant death. He charged through a curtained doorway and plowed smack into a high counter. Bouncing back from the impact, he collided with Benny as she was coming through the curtain and knocked her down. He reached to help her, but she waved him off. "Keep going," she said. "Find us a way out."

  They were in the front of the store, the customer area. The counter ran from wall to wall. Scott scrambled over it. Benny was back on her feet and followed him. A heavy, old-fashioned cash register rested on the counter. Scott picked it up and hurled it through the plate glass at th
e front of the store. Then he and Benny stormed through the shattered window.

  The street outside was four lanes and still busy even at this hour. Scott grabbed Benny's hand. "Come on." They sprinted across, angling left toward a dark, empty side street. Tires screeched and horns blared. Two cars piled up. But Scott and Benny made it across. The side street was narrow and without sidewalks. Scott didn't slow down. They kept running until the darkness swallowed them.

  Chapter 29

  Marcus slid behind the steering wheel and slammed the door of the Suburban. He turned and looked through the hatch in-to the rear compartment. Cyril was helping Dwayne in through the right-side rear door. A dark blood stain covered the lower part of Dwayne's T-shirt and the top of his pants. "Bitch shot me," he said through gritted teeth. "Fucking cunt shot me."

  "How bad?" Marcus asked.

  Cyril pulled the door closed and helped Dwayne lie down on the floor in front of the space-age surveillance con-sole. He raised Dwayne's shirt. Blood, bright red against Dwayne's white skin, pulsed from a black hole on the right side of his lower abdomen, three inches above his hip. Cyril slid a hand behind Dwayne. It came back bloody. "Through and through," he said. "I doubt it hit his kidney."

  "How do you know?" Marcus asked.

  "Because he'd be dead by now," Cyril said. "Or close to it."

  "Fucking nine-mill is like a BB gun," Dwayne said. "Barely even felt it."

  "You'll feel it later," Cyril assured him.

  "Put a pressure bandage on both sides," Marcus said. "Then slap some hundred-mile-an-hour tape on it." He looked directly at Dwayne. "Charlie Mike?" Meaning, can you continue the mission?

  "Hooah," the ex-Special Forces soldier said. "Ain't the first time I been shot."

  "Probably first time by a woman."

  "Fucking gash," Dwayne said. "Can't believe she shot me."

  Cyril dug a first-aid kit out of a gear bag stashed in the back of the compartment. "What did you think she was go-ing to do, fuck you?"

  "I don't know, but I'm sure as shit going to fuck her soon as I catch her," Dwayne said. "Then I'm gonna fuck her up."

  Gavin's voice broke over their headsets. "Where are my goddamned targets?"

  Marcus keyed his mic. "We got one wounded. Standby for a location on the targets."

  "You have a man down?" Gavin said, his tone incredu-lous.

  "Roger. Nine-mill in the side. We're patching him now. He's ambulatory and Charlie Mike."

  "It doesn't take two men to patch one hole," Gavin said. "Get me a location on the targets now."

  Marcus glanced back at Cyril and shrugged. Then he climbed through the hatch into the rear compartment with the other two men. "I'll finish patching him," Marcus said. "You track the targets."

  * * * *

  Scott and Benny turned off the first side street and ran down another. After two more blocks they slowed down. Scott was breathing hard and his side hurt. He looked around. Cars lined both sides of the narrow street, but there was no one out. Almost all of the houses were dark. This was a working-class neighborhood where people had to get up early.

  Concrete walls surrounded every home, most of them topped with chunks of broken glass, and iron bars protected every door. Kidnapping and home invasion were growth in-dustries in Mexico, particularly along the border.

  They kept walking. It took Scott a couple of minutes to catch his breath. Benny had been pretty winded too, but she recovered more quickly, Scott noticed with a bit of embar-rassment. As soon as this case was over, he was going back to the gym. "You have any more mags?" he asked.

  "Mags?" Benny said.

  He mimed loading a magazine into a pistol. "Magazines. Clips."

  Benny slid a full magazine from her jacket pocket. "Just one more." She popped the empty mag out of her Beretta and shoved in the fresh one.

  "We have to get off the street," Scott said.

  "What about your truck?"

  "They'll be watching it."

  "How did they know we were at the post office?"

  "They must have followed us from your house. Maybe from the café."

  "I thought you were just being paranoid," she said.

  "Me too."

  Tires screeched in front of them. Three blocks up, one of the Suburbans barreled around the corner. The engine roared and the headlights lashed out as the SUV charged straight for them.

  "Son of a bitch," Scott said as he grabbed Benny's arm and spun them both around. But they only made it two steps before the second Suburban slid around the corner two blocks ahead and accelerated toward them. "Shoot the driv-er," Scott shouted.

  Benny raised her Beretta and fired several shots. But even as bullets pockmarked its windshield, the four-wheeled juggernaut didn't waver; it just kept coming.

  Scott scanned the cinderblock walls that lined both sides of the street. They were of varying heights and painted in an assortment of colors. He spotted one that looked clear of embedded glass. It surrounded a two-story house. "This way," he said and ran toward the wall. Benny followed him.

  On the sidewalk, Scott braced his back against the con-crete wall and laced his hands together to form a stirrup. "Climb up," he said.

  Benny turned and fired several shots at the nearest Sub-urban, her bullets punching holes in the windshield and forc-ing the SUV to swerve into a parked truck. For a few sec-onds Scott dared to hope that the Suburban would be disa-bled or the driver killed, but the crash was only a glancing blow and the big vehicle recovered quickly and continued its relentless charge.

  Benny stepped into Scott's cupped hands, and he boost-ed her up until she could climb onto his shoulder and clam-ber over the wall. Then it was Scott's turn. He looked up at the wall. It was eight feet tall with a smooth surface. He realized he might not be able to climb it. The two Suburbans were almost on him, half a block in either direction.

  Adjacent to where Scott stood on the sidewalk, an old Ford Fairmont was parked at the curb. Scott scrambled onto the hood and up to the roof. On either side of him, both Suburbans were breaking to a stop. The one to Scott's right was spinning slightly, the driver angling the passenger side toward Scott. The passenger window was coming down. The man behind the window extended his arm. There was a pistol in his hand.

  Scott sprang off the Fairmont's roof and leaped toward the wall. The eight-inch-wide coping struck him in the gut and knocked the wind out of him, and for an instant he tee-tered on top before slipping backward. He managed to stop himself from falling all the way back to the sidewalk by clinging to the top of the wall with his forearms and digging the toes of his shoes into its face, which, although smooth, had a gritty texture that gave him just enough traction to hang on.

  Then a gunshot exploded behind Scott, and a chunk of concrete erupted from the wall and struck his forehead. Ce-ment dust blew into his eyes. He kicked his right leg up and over the wall, hooked his knee on the coping and yanked himself over with one huge pull. He tumbled sideways over the wall and landed hard on his right side on the flagstone courtyard.

  A burst of machine gun fire from the street shook the wall, but the bullets didn't penetrate.

  Benny crouched beside him. "Are you all right?"

  Scott was too short of breath to speak so he just nod-ded. As Benny helped him to his feet, pain, like a hot knife, cut through his ribs, so bad it made him gasp.

  "Can you keep going?" she asked.

  "No choice," he said. But he wasn't really sure he could.

  Benny ejected the magazine from her Beretta and dropped it into her palm. She showed Scott. The indicator on the back of the magazine showed five rounds left. They were definitely in deep shit. She shoved the magazine back into her pistol.

  Scott looked at the house. It was dark and still. Gun-shots were so common in Nuevo Laredo that no one was go-ing to come outside to investigate them. Or to help. He doubted anyone would even call the police. Emergency phone calls could be traced back to their source.

  A shadow cast by a streetlight swept across
the court-yard. Scott spun around and saw a man standing at the gate. The man raised a rifle to his shoulder. Benny fired a single shot. The bullet sparked as it struck one of the iron bars and sent the man jumping back behind the wall.

  "We have to move," Scott shouted. Then he lurched down a paved path that ran along the side of the house. His ribs felt like they were on fire.

  The concrete wall surrounded the entire property. In the back yard, they found a narrow iron gate, but it was chained and padlocked. There was nothing near the wall they could use to help them climb over it. Scott nodded at the top. "I'll boost you up."

  "What about you?" Benny said.

  "There's no way I can climb it." He reached out a hand. "Give me your pistol. I'll hold them off as long as I can."

  "Bullshit," she said. Then she stepped up to the gate and fired a bullet point-blank into the padlock. The lock burst apart and fell to the ground. Benny yanked the chain off and pulled open the gate. "We stick together."

  Chapter 30

  Scott and Benny stepped through the gate and found them-selves in another back yard. The house was smaller and the walls that ran along the sides were shorter. They crept past the dark house, careful to duck as they went by the windows so they wouldn't get their heads blown off. In the front yard, Scott boosted Benny over the shorter wall; then he managed to climb over the iron gate and half-jump, half-tumble down onto the narrow sidewalk.

  The four-lane street was busier than the one they had just left. On the other side of the street and a block away was a construction site surrounded by a makeshift fence cobbled together out of corrugated sheet metal and scrap lumber.

  Pointing to the site, Scott said, "Let's cut through there. At least they can't follow us in those SUVs."

  They dodged between cars as they crossed the street. At the construction site, Scott found a gap between two pieces of sheet metal and forced them farther apart. He held them open as Benny squeezed through. Then he followed her and the two sheets of corrugated steel snapped back together.