Frank put some worry in his voice. “Look man. What’s between me and you isn’t personal. It was business. You had my boy.”
Jesus smiled. He transferred the knife to his left hand and approached.
“Dude,” Frank said. “What are you doing?”
“You’re going to pay me.”
“I got a little stash at home. We can work this out; just calm down.”
“You’re going to pay me in blood.” He raised the blade in his left hand up and across to his other shoulder for a backward stroke. It was a good powerful move. One more step and he’d bring the knife down in a slashing arc across Frank’s face. It would cut deep, slicing open his cheek, maybe slashing an eye. If Jesus hit it just right, that scalpel blade just might slice right through Frank’s nose, cleave it right in two, which wasn’t going to help Frank with the women folk at all.
Jesus took that last step, his eyes full of satisfaction.
“Dude!” Frank yelled, then lunged forward and up. The zip ties holding Frank released him like he was Superman.
Jesus flinched back; his eyes went wide.
Frank grabbed the forearm with the knife. With the other hand he struck Jesus in the groin once, twice. Then Frank slammed his big fist with all his power right into Jesus’s bandaged face.
Jesus cried out, stumbled back, but Frank kept a hold of that knife arm and stepped into him, as close as any couple on Dancing with the Stars. They did a half rumba for two steps.
Shotgun raised his weapon, a little uncertain, but Frank turned Jesus so that he was between them. Then he reached around behind and grabbed the nine millimeter out of Jesus’s waistband. It felt heavy, fully loaded. He brought it up. It was a Glock 19. No safety.
Shotgun saw what was going to happen, but he was too slow.
Frank had shot hundreds of thousands of rounds. The pistol was like another part of him. A long lost part. It felt good in his hand. It felt right. He’d missed the feel of a couple of pounds of steel in his hand. Or polymer, which this was. He pulled the trigger twice. A loud bang-bang hammered the air in the room.
Shotgun stumbled back, two holes blooming blood on his chest. He fell to the concrete floor, the shotgun smacking into the concrete.
Frank slammed Jesus in the side of the head with the butt of his pistol, still heavy with rounds. Then he hooked his leg behind him and shoved him over it, tripping him and sending him reeling to the floor. Frank shot him in the chest.
Shotgun groaned. He rolled over on his side and brought the shotgun around.
Frank still had men upstairs; he didn’t want to waste another round. Instead, he strode over, kicked Shotgun in the jaw, then reached down and took the weapon from him.
“Frank!” Tony yelled.
Frank turned. Jesus was getting up, blood staining his shirt, murder in his eyes. He tossed his knife to the floor and pulled another pistol out of his front pocket. Two points to Jesus for carrying a spare. But he was still going to lose this game.
Frank raised the shotgun with his right hand, took one step to the left so the girls weren’t directly in the line of fire and pulled the trigger. The shotgun boomed and just about kicked right out of his hand. The buckshot took Jesus in a glancing blow to the lower side of his gut. A number of pellets struck the wall and sent chips of concrete flying.
Jesus raised his pistol.
Frank pumped the gun. The spent red shell ejected out in an arc. Frank slid in the new shell and this time took better aim. The shotgun banged again, so loud in this concrete place that the sound felt like it had shattered bones in his ear. It blasted its payload into the center of Jesus’s chest. Nine pellets of lead, a couple probably churning right through him,
The air filled with smoke and the smell of burned gunpowder. Frank’s ears rang. Surely everyone down here was now deaf. He turned to make sure Shotgun wasn’t rising again, and found him on his back gasping. Frank looked at Tony for any sign he’d been hit by rogue pellets. “You okay?” Frank shouted.
“Okay,” Tony shouted, sounding far away.
Frank walked over to where Jesus’s knife lay, picked it up, then went back and cut Tony loose. Tony’s hands were red, almost blue from the lack of circulation. Frank handed Tony the knife. “Free yourself and the woman.” Then Frank shoved the semi-automatic into his pocket and crossed the floor with the shotgun in both hands to the base of the stairs.
He slid the shotgun’s pump back, sending a spent and smoking red shotgun shell flying, and racked another shell into the chamber. This was a Remington 870. Eighteen-inch barrel. Used for more than half a century by the police, the military, hunters, and home-owners who were unwilling to take breaking and entering lying down. Frank had carried the military version in a number of close combat situations. Like the military’s M870, this one was all black, made from synthetic materials. However, this model didn’t have the extended magazine tube, so instead of being able to hold seven rounds, this gun could hold five—four in the magazine tube and one in the chamber. He assumed he had one more round after this. But if Frank’s assumption was wrong, it could get him killed. He didn’t have time to check.
He arrived at the base of the stairs, knowing Stumpy was sure to come running, and began to climb. He raised the shotgun firmly to his shoulder, aimed at the open doorway at the top of the linoleum stairs. There was no use listening for Stumpy because the only thing Frank could really hear was a steady ringing in his ears.
A moment later someone came round the corner with a semi-automatic pistol in his hand. But it wasn’t Stumpy. It was a fourth man.
Frank pulled the trigger, blasted into the man’s torso. Two pellets over-penetrated and slammed into the half open door behind him, splintering the cheap wood.
The man dropped his pistol and fell back. The pistol thudded once, tumbled, and lay heavily on one of the upper stairs. The man stumbled out of sight, but he didn’t go far because Frank could hear him shouting in pain around the corner.
Frank pumped the shotgun, expelling the red shell, and slammed one more into the chamber and continued to climb. He figured he had one more shell. He kept the muzzle of the gun and his eyes on the open stairway door above and climbed to the last step before the top.
The back door beyond the landing at the top of the stairs had a small window in it. There was a wall on his left. On his right, the house opened into the kitchen, which is where the fourth man lay now, shouting something in Spanish.
Stumpy wasn’t running to the fourth man’s aid. Stumpy would be waiting for Frank to pop his head out of the stairwell so it could be blown off.
Frank moved to the left side of the stairs, as far from the corner leading into the kitchen as possible, which wasn’t much. He began an angular search, shotgun up, ready to fire. It was like sliding along the perimeter of a circle, revealing the room beyond a slice at a time.
There were cupboards, counter, a sink. He saw the edge of a kitchen table at the far end, saw blood all over the floor, and the fourth man on his knees with his back to the stairway, groaning.
Frank reached the top of the stairway. The area right past the corner was the fatal funnel where most people would be aiming to shoot an approaching threat. Frank stepped into it, then out, still swinging round the perimeter of his circle, his shotgun up, aiming directly in front of him.
Stumpy was standing in the wide entry leading from the far end of the kitchen into a living room. He held an FN P90 in one hand like a pistol, pointing it in Frank’s direction.
The P90 was a compact submachine gun that looked more like a kitchen gadget with a can opener than a gun. It utilized a fifty-round box magazine that slid in flat on top instead of sticking out the bottom. It shot the 5.7 millimeter round, the one designed to pierce body armor, the one the narcos called the Mata Policía, the cop killer.
Frank dropped to one knee.
Stumpy let loose with the P90. On full-auto, the P90 can shoot 900 rounds per minute. Fifteen per second. The muzzle lit up. The bullets flew.
The rounds came out so quickly it sounded like a monster hailstorm on a tin roof.
The bullets whistled past like angry insects, blowing into the wall behind Frank, into the stairway door, into the cupboards a foot away. They marched up the wall and into the ceiling. Then the gun clicked.
Drywall dust and splinters fell into Frank’s hair. He brought the shotgun round. Stumpy’s eyes went wide and he dashed for the entryway. Frank fired, but Stumpy was a fast little man, and the shotgun blast blew past him and into the wall of the far room in a pattern the size of a large musk melon.
Frank rose and pumped the shotgun. A spent red shell flew out, but there wasn’t another to take its place. Frank tossed the shotgun onto the counter and pulled out the Glock he’d taken from Jesus.
Around the corner in the other room, Stumpy dropped something to the carpet then snicked in a new magazine. Stumpy obviously realized his mistake in trying to Rambo the P90 with one hand.
The morning light was coming in the big front room window, casting shadows. A somewhat short man-shaped shadow moved on the floor by the entryway where Stumpy had disappeared, then stopped. The shadow showed the distinct, if distorted, shape of someone holding something like a gun out in front of him. Frank figured Stumpy was standing a few feet away from the wall and a few feet back from the corner of the wide entryway between the kitchen and living room. He was waiting for Frank to make another circle and expose himself. If Frank was a betting man, he’d lay odds on the fact that Stumpy had taken the P90 off full-auto so he didn’t spray his ammo all over creation again.
So now it was a nine millimeter Glock against a waiting submachine gun, but Frank wasn’t willing to enter that fight. He gauged where he thought Stumpy was standing, and then he brought up the semi-automatic and fired five times into the wall on the other side of the kitchen that stood between him and Stumpy. It was a quick bang, bang, bang, bang, bang in a line about two feet long. Neat little holes appeared in the wall. Little puffs of drywall dust followed. More importantly, Stumpy cried out on the other side.
Frank rushed around the perimeter of another circle, giving the corner of the entryway as wide a berth as possible. He had a two-handed grip, the gun up and ready. He’d only gone halfway around when Stumpy came into view. His face was screwed up in pain and rage. Bright red blood was spreading out and staining his white shirt just below his ribs. Stumpy looked down at it, then raised his gun to fire right back through the wall at where Frank had been, but he must have caught Frank’s movement because he whipped his head around. His eyes went wide. He snarled and swung the submachine gun toward Frank.
Frank sent two more bullets Stumpy’s way, right into the center mass. He hadn’t even had to think. His hands worked of their own accord.
Stumpy fell back, pulling the trigger of the deadly can opener as he fell. There was one bang, and a bullet blasted into the wall, but Stumpy had indeed taken it off full-auto, and so there were no more strays. Just the thump of the gun as Stumpy hit the floor.
Frank proceeded forward, gun up, expecting another shooter to pop out of one of the doors.
Stumpy writhed, looked up at Frank with extreme pain and dismay in his eyes. Knowing the girls and Tony were below, and that a nine millimeter bullet at this range had a chance of sailing right out the back of someone’s skull, Frank bent over and put the killing shot sideways through Stumpy’s head.
It was never pretty to see someone die. Back in the day, when he’d taken men from a distance, he had gloried in it. He’d talked about his targets like some might talk about targets in a video game. But then he’d been involved in some close work. He’d seen how some people mutilate their kills, and the glory and game had quickly faded.
Frank stood. A Glock 19 had a standard fifteen round capacity. Frank had shot nine rounds, but it didn’t feel like he had six rounds left. It felt like he had maybe two. So he picked up Stumpy’s P90 loaded with a brand new magazine minus one and moved to clear the rest of this floor. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and three closets. He cleared them all and found little Rosa hiding behind a dresser in one of the rooms. She was still in her pajamas. More importantly, she hadn’t been hit by any of the loose bullets flying through the house.
He smiled as gently as he could. “Es bueno,” he said. It’s good. “You’re going to be okay.”
She looked up at him with eyes that belonged on a woman that was seventy years old.
He motioned for her to stay where she was, then went to the big pane front window, looked outside, and saw nothing but flat farm fields that stretched all the way to the horizon. He opened the front door of the house, walked out and cleared the front yard. Then he walked back inside past Stumpy to the kitchen and stepped past the fourth man who lay on the floor. The pool of blood was large; he hadn’t died quickly, and his heart had continued to pump his life out onto the floor.
Frank walked to the back door, opened it, and stood out on the porch. There was a patio table with a faded umbrella to keep the sun off those who sat in its shade. Beyond it, ringing the gravel yard was a metal barn painted red, some old chicken coops, and a few other small buildings that looked like they hadn’t been used in about a hundred years. There was nobody out there. No vehicle. Nothing but an empty yard sitting in the slant light of the morning sun.
“Tony!” Frank yelled. “It’s clear. Bring them up.”
Frank went back to get the little girl. In the corner of the living room was a shrine to Santa Muerte. There was a little table. Upon it stood a two-foot-tall statuette of the skeleton saint. She wore an ornate dress made out of purple fabric. Black hair flowed out from underneath the cowl of her robe. It looked like the kind of hair you might see on a doll, although he didn’t think Mattel was going to be producing a Saint Death Barbie any time soon. Not with those red ruby eyes. And he doubted Ken would find her getup anything but village kitsch. She held a doll-sized scythe in one hand and a doll-sized set of scales in the other. Arrayed in front of her were half-a-dozen black and gold candles. Another was blue. They were burning, flickering away, carrying the prayers of those that had set them there into her ears. Standing beside the candles was an open glass next to a bottle of mescal, an apple, and an ash tray holding a smoking cigarette.
The girl was crouching behind the dresser where he’d left her. “We’re going to get you out of here,” he said. “Come on. Es bueno,” he repeated.
Maybe she spoke some English. Or maybe she read his body language; either way, she rose and followed him out.
Tony came up with the fourth’s man’s semi-automatic in his hand. Carmen and the children followed behind looking like they’d seen ghosts. They spilled into the kitchen, their tired, haggard eyes wide at the sight of another dead body and the dark pool of blood on the floor.
“I don’t know when Ed’s coming back,” Frank said. “But we need to be gone before he does.”
They needed to be long gone because the land was flat without a tree or bush to hide behind, and the visibility, with the sun high in the bright blue sky, stretched all the way to the horizon. If there wasn’t anything in that barn, they’d have to go on foot, and Ed would spot them a mile away.
14
Stolen Assets
FRANK’S EARS WERE ringing. He pointed to Tony and shouted because the boy’s ears were probably ringing as well. “Watch the front of the house.”
Carmen was telling the girls something, but he could barely hear what she was saying. Smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder filled the kitchen and living room. The iron tang of blood filled his nostrils. A memory of a house in the woods in Honduras flashed in his mind. It too had been an operation with a lot of gun smoke, a lot of burnt powder, and a lot of blood. An operation with a small old stove just like this one.
Frank pointed at Carmen. “Watch the back.”
Ed had taken Frank’s phone, which wasn’t an issue except it had Kim’s number. Frank went back down into the basement, P90 in hand, and searched the pockets of the two dead bodies, g
oing slowly and carefully because you never knew when someone using hard drugs might be carrying a dirty needle.
He didn’t find any needles, but he did find a Leatherman multi-tool on Shotgun. It was the modern day rural version of the Swiss Army knife and had everything from pliers to a small saw. But there was no phone. Nothing but lint and a gum wrapper in the rest of Shotgun’s pockets. Jesus was cleaned out as well. You’d think that between the two of them they would have been carrying something more than a Leatherman.
He climbed back up the stairs, and found Carmen ransacking the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. She was hunting methodically, dumping food and plates and knives and forks on the ground, tossing the place like a pro.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Records, phones, anything,” she said.
“Are you a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?” she said and moved to a new drawer dumping its contents on the floor and kicking through it. The fourth man and his pool of blood lay less than two feet away.
Frank hadn’t seen a landline in the house. “I’m looking for a red phone,” he said. He knew he was speaking too loudly, but his ears were still ringing.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a black iPhone. A number of bills folded in half and held by a gold clip tumbled out of her pocket and fell to the floor. Ben Franklin’s face stared up at them. The fold was thick. He wondered how many more hundreds were in there. She held the phone up.
“You get that off Jesus?”
“He didn’t seem to need to it,” she said.
Frank motioned at the fourth man. “You search him?”
“Not yet,” she said and retrieved the fallen clip of cash.
“Keep an eye out for a red phone,” he said loudly.
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