Ricardo tried to lower his rifle so that he could cover the other guard, but the man realized too quickly that something was wrong. He whirled away from the lock, and instead of trying to unsling his rifle from his shoulder, he lunged at Ricardo instead, getting his hands on the other man’s rifle and wrenching the barrel upward toward the vaulted ceiling of the corridor. His knee came up in a vicious blow aimed at Ricardo’s groin.
Laura watched anxiously as Ricardo twisted aside so that the man’s knee struck his thigh. They struggled desperately over the rifle, lurching back and forth in the corridor just outside the cell door. Laura knew that if the other guard won this fight, he would shoot Ricardo, and the last hope she and her friends had would be gone.
That looked to be the direction the fight was going, too. The other guard was bigger, older, and more experienced at this sort of struggle than Ricardo. A vicious grin appeared on his face as he felt Ricardo’s grip on the rifle slipping. Frantically, Ricardo shoved him back against the bars of the cell door, but that failed to turn the tide of battle.
Suddenly, Laura acted on instinct. She had been saving the plastic rings off the water bottles for days now, and she had woven and twisted them together into a thick, stout plastic rope about a foot long. She’d had no plan, no real reason for doing this other than thinking that such a thing might come in handy sometime.
Tonight was the time.
She pulled the length of plastic from the pocket of her jeans and lunged forward, reaching through the bars with both hands. With one hand she slung the plastic around the guard’s neck from behind, and grabbed the other end with her other hand. With a grunt of effort, she hung on for dear life and pulled back as hard as she could.
The makeshift garrote tightened across the guard’s neck and brought his head back sharply. His skull thudded hard against the bars. Laura leaned against the bars on her side, twisting the plastic. She was so close to the guard that she could smell his sweat and the tonic he used on his hair. The frantic gurgling noises he made sounded almost in her ear.
She had never committed violence against anyone in her life, at least not beyond the level of a schoolyard scuffle. This was deadly serious. If it was within her power, she wanted to choke the bastard to death.
It didn’t come to that. Ricardo ripped the rifle out of the man’s hands and drove the butt of it into his face. Once, twice, three times he slammed the rifle butt home as the man hung there, pinned against the bars by Laura. After the third blow, the man’s body sagged and Laura smelled an even worse stench as his bowels and bladder voided in death.
“You can let him go,” Ricardo said breathlessly to her. “He’s dead.”
Laura released the plastic and stepped back. The guard’s body pitched forward to sprawl on the floor of the corridor next to the other dead man.
Panting a little from the effort of the fight, Ricardo went to the lock, twisted the key in it, and pulled open the door. “Come on,” he gasped. “All of you. You are free.”
Free of the cell, maybe, but they were a long way from being free of the Night Wolves. Laura knew that. She shuddered as she stepped past the bodies of the dead guards—one of whom she had helped to kill, but she wasn’t going to think about that right now—and looked back to motion to Carmen, Stacy, and the other girls in the cell. “Let’s go,” she said.
She didn’t have to tell them twice.
Laura’s heart pounded wildly as the other girls scrambled out of the cell. Ricardo pressed another set of keys into her hands and said, “Unlock the cells on the other side of the hall. I will get the ones on this side.”
A part of her didn’t want to get that far away from him. She wanted to stay close by his side. But she knew he was right. Time was of the essence. She ran from cell to cell, unlocking the doors and jerking them open. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she said impatiently to the other prisoners. “Everybody out!”
When she came to the cell at the far end of the hall, where some of the girls were kept who were considered fair game for the guards, they cringed away from her, as if so terrified by their ordeal that they didn’t really recognize her. Laura’s breath caught in her throat as she recognized Shannon, whose haunted eyes looked up at her from a bruised face. Obviously the redhead had been treated roughly.
But then understanding dawned in Shannon’s eyes. She croaked, “Laura?”
“Come on, Shannon,” Laura said gently. “We’re getting out of here.”
Shannon got to her feet and walked unsteadily out of the cell. The other girls followed her. Angelina Salinas was one of them. She didn’t look like she had been touched yet, but her eyes were big with fear.
“Are we getting out of here?” she asked Laura.
“We’re sure going to try.”
Angelina nodded. “Good. My father ... he’s a monster.”
Laura couldn’t argue with that. Nor did she have time to, because a scream ripped out and as she turned she saw that Shannon had gone along the corridor to the place where the dead guards lay. She picked up the rifle dropped by the first man Ricardo had struck down, and even as Ricardo lunged at her and called, “No!” Shannon fired, blasting a bullet into the already dead face of the guard. She kept firing, the shots booming and echoing deafeningly in the corridor, until Ricardo reached her and wrenched the weapon out of her hands. By then the faces of the two guards were nothing but bloody smears that no longer looked human after the almost point-blank blasts.
Laura’s nerves drew even tighter. Those shots would draw the attention of Guerrero’s men. She understood Shannon’s rage and desire for vengeance on the men who had abused her... .
But her moment of bloody revenge might have just cost them all their lives.
Thirty-six
The chopper’s rotors clawed at the shadow-thickened air as it flew toward the old mission. Its running lights were off, and only the faint glow from the instruments lit the cockpit. Behind it to the west, a narrow band of the faintest reddish gold over the mountains marked the last light of day, but ahead, darkness lay over the land and stars glittered like diamonds in the night sky.
The five people inside the helicopter were grimly silent as they leaned forward intently. A sprawl of lights on the northern horizon indicated the location of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo on the other side of the border. Down here, though, south of the border towns, the landscape was mostly dark, with only an occasional light showing at some isolated farm or ranch.
Not so the old mission that was their destination. The whole compound around it was brightly illuminated by floodlights, making it stand out starkly from the darkness around it. Tom spotted it as the chopper drew closer. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and studied the mission as best he could through the Plexiglas that surrounded them.
“It all looks quiet,” he said in a strained voice. “The attack was supposed to start five minutes ago.”
Had none of the others gotten through? Was it just the five of them, against a hundred or more bloodthirsty killers? If that was the case, they wouldn’t get very far, and they stood almost no chance of coming out alive.
But they couldn’t turn back. Not now, not this close. His niece Laura was up there only a mile or two away, along with the daughters of Sonia and Van Sant and Lambert. None of them would ever be able to live with themselves if they came this close and then abandoned the operation, abandoned their loved ones.
As for Wild Bill Elliott, that mission was where the fight was waiting for him. He had never turned his back on a fight and wasn’t about to start now.
“See anything?” Sonia asked anxiously.
“No, there’s nothing going on around the mission,” Tom replied.
Elliott drawled, “Looks like we go it alone, then. Won’t be the first time.”
Not for him, maybe, Tom thought. But the rest of them weren’t professional warriors. They were strictly amateurs.
They would have to do their best anyway, regardless of that. As Elliott had said, if they went in h
ard and fast, they might be able to bust the girls out of wherever they were being held, and some of them would have a chance to get away.
Sonia veered to the south and circled so that they could come at the compound from the rear. As they drew nearer, she announced tightly, “There’s that machine-gun emplacement on top of the wall. I can see it.”
“Wild Bill, you’d better get that toy from behind the seat back there,” Tom said. “You know how to handle it, I think.”
“Damn right I do,” Elliott grunted. He twisted around and brought out a bulky, shoulder-mounted missile launcher. It looked a little like an old-fashioned bazooka, but it was shorter.
Tom warned him, “You’ll probably only get one shot.”
“One’s all I need,” Elliott said confidently.
He lifted the launcher to his shoulder and settled it there comfortably. Coiled wires ran from the firing mechanism to the tail of the rocket that was nestled in the tube. Elliott leaned closer to the open door at the side of the cockpit and rested his face against the laser-guidance sight attached to the launcher.
“Angle just a little to the left, ma’am,” he told Sonia.
She obliged, swinging the chopper slightly to the side so that Elliott could line up the shot, and as she did so, bright orange sparks suddenly spurted into the darkness from the position atop the adobe wall where the machine gun was located.
“They’ve opened fire,” Tom said calmly. “They must have heard us coming. But they can’t see us yet, so they’re firing blind.”
“Bad luck for them we ain’t,” Elliott breathed, and then he tripped the trigger and sent the missile screaming from the launcher on a tail of flame, its targeting system sending it straight toward the chattering, bullet-spewing machine gun.
The ordnance provided by Hiram Stackhouse’s money and connections did its job. The missile flew true, slammed into the machine gun nest, and erupted in a ball of flame that not only destroyed the machine gun and the Night Wolves manning it, but also took a sizable chunk out of the wall.
“Well,” Elliott said as he lowered the launcher from his shoulder, “I reckon now they know for sure that we’re comin’.”
Guerrero tried to be polite to his guests, of course, since they would be in debt to him for millions of dollars before this night was over, but sometimes it was difficult. There was toadlike Oscar Zamora, who owned whorehouses in Monterrey, Saltillo, and Matamoros and sampled all his girls before he put them to work; Alejandro Rivas, gaunt with the disease that ravaged his body, the disease that would surely kill him in a year or less, but not before he had passed on its curse to as many girls as he could get his hands on, in an act of vicarious revenge on the prostitute who had given it to him; Yusuf bin Hamid, who had an extensive collection of whips that had caressed the soft flesh and tasted the warm blood of countless unfortunate young women; Jerry Dupre, who couldn’t go back to his native Louisiana—or anywhere else in the States—because of the blood-drenched horrors he had perpetrated there; and a dozen more evil men whose monstrous natures were concealed by the wealth and sophistication in which they cloaked themselves.
And then there was Cedric Willingham. Sir Cedric, if the truth be known, a peer of the realm. That honor had come his way before the truth about him had been discovered by the British authorities. He had been forced to flee when his crimes were uncovered, first to Argentina and then eventually to Mexico. He was not only a sexual deviant and a sadist par excellance, he was also quite an accomplished criminal and had built up huge amounts of ill-gotten gains in Swiss banks and offshore accounts scattered around the world. It seemed unbelievable that one man would spend so much money on a mere girl, but Laura Simms was worth it to Willingham. Besides, he would recoup the five million through his far-flung business interests in a matter of days.
It was Willingham who came toward Guerrero now as the buyers gathered in the chapel of the old mission, where once the priests had said Mass. The benches where the parishioners sat were long gone, of course. The place had been redecorated. Food and drink were available for the guests; nothing but the finest for men who were willing to shell out so much dinero to indulge their lusts.
Guerrero made himself nod and smile at Willingham. The Englishman’s eyes glittered with excitement and anticipation. “Good evening, Colonel,” he said. “I don’t mean to rush you, but when will the lovely young ladies be here? I simply cannot wait to see that innocent blond beauty you showed me the other day in the, ah, flesh.”
“Soon, my friend,” Guerrero said heartily. “In fact, I was just about to send Major Cortez to fetch them.” He looked around, saw Cortez standing near the wall along with several of the armed guards who were stationed around the room, and caught the major’s eye. Cortez started toward him.
“Yes, Colonel?” Cortez asked as he walked up briskly.
“I believe it is time to bring our other ... guests ... to this gathering,” Guerrero said.
It was obvious that Cortez wanted to salute, but he settled for nodding gravely and saying, “Of course, Colonel. I will be back shortly with them.”
“Muchas gracias, Major.”
Cortez left the room along with several of the guards. Guerrero could just imagine the reaction when they returned with the prisoners. Earlier, Guerrero had given orders that the girls be stripped before they were brought to the chapel. It would be a truly impressive moment when they were prodded nude into this once-holy place, to be paraded before the avid eyes of the men who would buy them.
“You seem to have an awfully large number of armed men on hand this evening, Colonel,” Willingham went on. “You aren’t expecting trouble, are you?”
“Of course not,” Guerrero said. “The presence of my men is simply a precaution. There are many very important guests here tonight, yourself not least among them. In fact ...” Guerrero lowered his voice. “I would venture to say, Señor, that no one here tonight is more important than you.”
The sick bastard preened at that, visibly pleased. Guerrero didn’t mind lying to him. And he didn’t say anything about the rumored attack on the mission compound, either. For one thing, he didn’t believe that it would actually come about, and for another, even if it did, he had every confidence that his men would massacre the raiders without difficulty. Such a thing might even be to his advantage. Once people saw how easily he crushed anyone who dared to defy him, his stranglehold on power in northern Mexico would be stronger than ever.
He chatted idly for a few more minutes with Willingham, but then began to grow impatient. The Englishman was getting impatient. “I say,” Willingham finally exclaimed, “shouldn’t Major Cortez be back with the young ladies by now?”
“Any minute, I’m sure—” Guerrero began.
The huge explosion that suddenly rocked the old mission overwhelmed anything Guerrero might have said.
And he knew in that instant that perhaps he should have been worried after all.
Ricardo had barely ripped the rifle out of Shannon’s hands when a rush of footsteps sounded on the other side of the door leading into the main part of the old mission building. He said to Laura, “Unlock the rear door and lead the girls out. Hurry!”
She hesitated. “What about you?”
He had slung his rifle over his shoulder. He unslung it now and gripped it tightly. “I will stop whoever is coming,” he said. “Now go!”
Laura didn’t want to leave him, but he had risked his life to save them, and all the rest of the girls were depending on her. Reluctantly, she turned and ran toward the rear door, pushing her way through the crowd of girls that thronged the corridor.
Ricardo turned toward the other door. As he did so, it burst open and Major Cortez rushed through, trailed by three more armed men. Ricardo leveled an arm toward the girls and shouted, “The prisoners! They are getting away!”
Cortez growled a curse and ran past him, followed by the other men. Ricardo let them go. He looked along the hall, which stretched for about fifty feet. The terrif
ied girls were crowding into the other end now, blocking his view of Laura. He hoped she was successful in unlocking the far door.
Major Cortez fired his pistol into the vaulted ceiling. The roar of the gun was deafening as it bounced back from the thick adobe walls. Several of the girls screamed.
“Stop!” Cortez shouted. “Stop, all of you! I do not want to hurt you, but I will kill the first one who tries to escape!”
“Too late, Major,” Ricardo said from behind him. “They are all escaping.”
Cortez started to turn toward him in confusion, and Ricardo pressed the rifle’s trigger.
Bullets ripped out from the barrel in a lethal burst that chewed through two of the men closest to Ricardo. They went down, their riddled bodies spouting blood. Ricardo swung the rifle and kept firing, and the third man staggered back, momentarily blocking Ricardo’s line of fire at Cortez. The pistol in the major’s hand jutted out past the jittering body of the third guard and spurted flame. Ricardo felt the slug slam into him.
The impact threw him back against the open door of the cell where Laura had been imprisoned. He let go of the rifle with his left hand and caught hold of the bars to steady himself and keep from falling. At the same time, he tried to bring the rifle up again with his right hand and fire. He was too late, though, because Major Cortez had shoved the dying third guard away and was now stalking toward him, ready to blast him again and again.
At that moment, Laura finally got the rear door unlocked and threw it open. She stepped aside and shouted, “Get out! Get out!” at the other girls. She looked toward the far end of the corridor, hoping to catch sight of Ricardo and see if he was still all right. There had been a lot of shooting up there.
The girls started to rush past her into the courtyard, and as the crowd thinned a little, she saw Ricardo slumped against the open door of her old cell, blood on his shirt, trying futilely to raise his rifle as Major Cortez closed in on him with a pistol ready to fire again.
Invasion Usa: Border War Page 24