by Eric Meyer
“I died a long time ago, Juanita. When Paco’s shooter murdered my wife.”
She gasped in frustration. “Clarence, can’t you talk some sense into them?”
He shrugged. “The thing is, I’ve been boozing for too long. Pickling my liver, and each time I look into the bottom of the bottle, I see the Grim Reaper staring up at me.”
“So?”
“This makes life interesting and keeps me off the booze.” He grinned, “Besides, I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. Not since my time in the Marines.”
She stamped her foot in stubborn determination. “In that case, I’ll go with you. I can show you how to get inside. Perhaps it may give you an advantage.”
“That’s not a good idea. They could kill you.”
“If you die, I’m already dead.” She pointed at Kaz, “Like him.”
There wasn’t time to argue. Kaz nodded. “Okay, we’ll take their weapons and a truck. With luck, we may make it before they know what’s happened. You were saying about the woman he has inside?”
“Si, she is a prisoner in the basement chained to a pipe.”
“You can show us?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay, let’s do it. What about Diego Rivera?”
“I haven’t seen him. I don’t think so.”
“Another time, he won’t escape. Manuel, Clarence, time to lock and load. We’re heading for Guadalez, and we’re gonna tame the beast.”
The journey to Guadalez was short, no more than an hour, but they had time to kill. Manuel rooted around the house and came up with a few useful items, like a box of 7.62mm bullets that fitted the M-60. Kaz reloaded the spent cartridge belt, and Manuel produced several combat knives.
“A reminder of my Marine days, and this one,” he produced a savage-looking Sykes-Fairbairn fighting knife, “It took out two sentries in one night.” He grinned at Juanita’s horrified expression. “Don’t worry. I cleaned the blood off a while back.”
Kaz was checking his cellphone, and the battery was nearly dead. “I need a charger for this thing, do you have anything I could use?”
“An iPhone? I have a car charging cable, why not use it on the way, save time?”
“We’ll do that. One more thing, Manuel, do you by chance have any explosives? Just in case we need to create a diversion.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”
“There are explosives in the town of Guadalez,” Juanita said, “The local hardware store keeps them for illegal mining operations, and the men like to brag about where they get their supplies.”
“We’ll pick them up on the way.”
She frowned. “He may not sell them to strangers.”
“I wasn’t planning on buying, just helping him to leave behind a life of crime.”
They left the bodies lying where they’d fallen and drove away in the undamaged truck. The journey took a little over an hour, and they rolled into the town shortly after dark. The hardware store was a pushover. The owner had a night watchman standing outside the front door, and Kaz walked past as Manuel engaged him in conversation. He tapped him on the head, and they lowered him to the ground and dragged him inside. The explosives were where she’d said, on a shelf in the back room, and they filled two canvas packs with enough to demolish a large building, together with fuses.
They left the watchman lying inside the store, and he’d have some explaining to do when he came around. They were ready, and they drove out of town toward Martinez’s compound. Kaz had come up with a plan, and although they’d at first told him it’d never work, he’d persuaded them it was their best option, a frontal attack straight through the front gates.
“Think about it. The place is bristling with electronics, surveillance cameras, security lights, alarm systems, you name it, and they’ll all be high quality. Martinez wouldn’t want to stint on his own security. If we try to sneak in, the chances are we’ll be caught out by one of these devices. On the other hand, we have a vehicle that’s familiar to them. We drive up to the gates, and they won’t be looking for trouble, which is what we’ll give ‘em. Gun down the guards as we drive through and ram the front door of the house. We go straight inside, carrying the explosives, and plant a small charge in the hallway. Carry on down to the basement and get Eva out.”
“By which time there’ll be a score or more of his shooters looking for us.”
He nodded. “Looking for us the way we came in. We’ll detonate the explosives in the hallway and kill as many as we can. While they’re reeling in shock, we’ll go back up and try to find Rivera and Martinez. If we do, they’re mine. Then we leave by the back way and take a vehicle from the parking lot. Juanita, I guess there’re plenty of cars we can choose from.”
“Yes, there are many cars, but, Kaz, so much killing. The guards on the gate…”
“The alternative is we leave them alive, and they’ll come in behind us to try to kill us. Kill Manuel.”
“I wouldn’t want that. Not for anything.”
“I guess not. So that’s the way we’re gonna play it.”
Clarence looked puzzled. “You said something about the smaller batch of explosives in the hallway. What about the rest?”
“We plant them in the basement. Destroy the house, and any of the narcos left inside.”
He grinned. “I like it.”
They were approaching the gates, and they opened as they approached. Two men stood in the drive; hands held up for them to stop for a check. Two other men leaned against the outside of tiny guardhouse, smoking and chatting to each other, like they didn’t have a care in the world.
Unconsciously, he formed a cruel smile.
Soon they won’t have a care in the world. Sheryl, it’s been a long time, but justice starts here.
He could almost hear her reply, “When will it end, Kaz?”
The answer lay with what they found inside, and how much of a single devastating blow they could deal the narcos.
It could be a long time before it ends, baby. Maybe never.
Chapter Eight
He chose to use the Browning Hi-Power, keeping it out of sight until the last moment. A guard smiled up at the truck, not understanding it wasn’t one of theirs in the driver’s seat.
“Hola, Enrico. Como estas?” How are you?
“We’re all of us pretty good, considering you tried to kill us.”
The eyes narrowed. “Que?”
He put a bullet in him, Clarence nailed the other gate guard, and Manuel shot down the two other men with a short burst. They were inside, and the enemy hadn’t fired a shot. He stamped his foot onto the gas pedal and aimed the hood of the truck at the elegant, heavy oak door of the house. More of a mansion, and the door furnished with heavy iron reinforcements and steel studs; enough to prevent the Federales from kicking it in during a drugs raid. Against a two-ton truck it may as well have been made of paper.
They smashed through the splintered woodwork, and the front wheels lodged inside the hallway. Men shouted, a woman screamed, but they were already out of the vehicle and rushing inside. Juanita had a pistol they assumed Manuel had given her, and she stood watch at the front door.
Manuel shot the two men who rushed down the staircase, and Clarence targeted a third who followed close behind. Kaz was rushing to cover the rear entrance, more worried about the clatter of boots coming in from that direction, and he held the M-60 at his hip, waiting. They appeared around the corner, racing toward the front door, and he waited until they got close. For some reason, they hadn't understood what faced them and were within twenty feet before they realized they were up against a man armed with a Squad Automatic Weapon. Clutching their MAC10s, they took aim. He didn't give them time to open fire. He squeezed the trigger and let loose a hurricane of bullets that tore through them. They were in a narrow space no more than six feet wide, a perfect target bunched up in a tight group, and he took full advantage, raking the machine gun from side to side.
When he
released the trigger, there were no more footsteps. No more men standing, just bodies lying on the floor. He switched to single shot mode and put a bullet in each of two men who were still moving. He couldn't allow the possibility of Martinez's men hitting them from behind if they were just lightly wounded. He waited a few more seconds, not believing he’d got them all, but there were no more gunmen coming inside the house, and he pointed to the staircase. "Up there, let's go. Manuel, stay with Juanita and cover our backs."
"You got it."
He pushed past Clarence and raced up to the second floor. Four more men were coming toward him, bare-chested, unshaven, and disheveled, like they’d just scrambled out of bed. When they saw him and Clarence, they brought up their weapons. Too late, one man squeezed the trigger, but in his stupor, he hadn't taken the gun off safety, and they went down, torn apart by the gunfire. Kaz paused to cover the landing while Clarence went from room to room. He came back after a couple of minutes.
"That's it. They're all dead."
He nodded and pointed to the next staircase that reached to the top, the third floor, and they raced up. When they reached the top, a man barred their way. There was something familiar about him, and for a moment he assumed he was staring at Diego Rivera. It wasn't Rivera, although he was close enough almost to be a twin. He had to be his brother. The Mexican started down the staircase with two MAC10s spitting fire, one in each hand. Clarence took a bullet that grazed his shoulder, and Kaz felt the sting of a round crease his neck. They were lucky, the tiny MAC10 was notoriously inaccurate at anything more than very short-range, and so it proved this time. The spray and pray method of shooting, they called it, and in this instance, he sprayed but the prayers weren’t answered. The two former Marines aimed and fired in unison. The man above them jerked as the bullets smashed into his body, and he tumbled down the staircase. They stood aside and watched it fall in a crumpled heap on the second-floor landing.
Kaz regarded the face and was astonished at the similarity to the man he'd faced in the Lewes motel room. The man he'd seen on the CCTV recording and who'd almost killed him. Clarence looked at him, his eyebrows raised, but he shook his head.
"It’s not him. It’s his brother. I want Diego."
Clarence grimaced. “Juanita said he's not here, but if this really is his brother, and he finds out you killed him, he's gonna come after you, and he won’t give up until one of you is dead."
"Let him come. I can't wait to get him in my sights. We’d better check out this floor, and make sure it's clear."
They went from room to room, but there were no more of Martinez's men. What they did find was a room filled with CCTV monitors, as well as panels with warning lights with labels marking the various sensors guarding the property.
"The guy we just killed had to have been Martinez's security chief, and he’d be able to monitor everything from in here. We did it right, busting in with the truck. If we’d tried to sneak in, they’d have had us."
Clarence grinned. “It reminded me of my bounty hunting days, kicking in the front door while the felon was asleep in his bed. The good old days.”
Kaz nodded. “I’ll bet not all of them were good. Something started you on the booze.”
He frowned. “Don’t remind me, I had a coupla close shaves. Say, I haven’t had a drink for, what, two days, three days.”
“Keep it that way, pal. We’re done up here, and we need to find Eva. Let’s go.”
They raced back down the staircase, but before he could search the basement, Manuel stopped him. He looked worried.
“There’re more men out there, a lot of men. A crowd of them turned up and took cover behind a concrete outhouse. They’re planning to hit us, but how and when I don’t know.”
"What about Martinez? Has anyone seen a body?"
Manuel shook his head. "I already asked Juanita. She's the only person who knows him by sight, and she says he's not amongst the dead. So, either he wasn't here, or he got away."
Kaz nodded. "Forget Martinez, at least for now. It's time to get out. We’ve hit them hard, and we killed a guy we assume is Rivera’s brother.”
Manuel grimaced. “I’m a Mexican, and I can tell you when a man kills your brother, you'll go after him and never give up."
"Yeah, I’d figured that out. Let him come. If he so much as…”
He stopped as someone shouted from outside, "You men in there. You can't win. There are twenty of us out here, and I have more men on the way. Give it up now, and I'll let you live."
"Who am I talking with?"
"My name is Paco Martinez, and you are inside my home. Perhaps you've heard of me."
"Sure, you're a murderous, drug dealing scumbag. What do you want?"
"I told you, give yourselves up."
He forgot Martinez for the moment. "He can wait for our reply. Clarence, you still have the pack with the explosives?"
"It's in the front of the truck. In the cab."
They glanced at the hood poking through the front entrance. "I can crawl through the windshield and pull it out. Cover me in case there's someone close enough to get in a shot."
Clarence covered the rear, just in case they tried to get in that way, Manuel and Juanita were either side of the wrecked truck. He crawled through the shattered windshield and reached down to the floor of the cab. He pulled the pack out and climbed back into the hallway.
"Martinez can wait a while longer for his answer. I'm going down to the basement and hope to Christ Eva is down there. Clarence, take the M-60, and if they try to get into the house, you know what to do. If she’s there, I’ll lay the explosives. I’d guess thirty minutes should do it."
Manuel raised his eyebrows. "Forget it. There’s another truckload of men coming down the drive. He’s called in reinforcements, and I don't think we’ll get out of here in thirty minutes. To be honest, I don't see any way out of here."
"We'll find a way, trust me."
He left them and opened the door he’d seen earlier which led down a stone staircase to the basement. There were no guards, just a heavy, insulated door to a freezer supplying extra storage for the range of exotic food to satisfy Martinez’s palate. His guts churned. He’d called it wrong, and Juanita had got it wrong. Instead of finding her down here there was just the drug lord’s extra larder. He opened the door, and a cloud of cold air erupted from inside. A light had gone on automatically, and he went inside.
She was there, and she was almost dead, unconscious, blue with cold. He picked her up in his arms and carried her up the steps to the hallway. He laid her on the floor, and they watched as he began to massage her limbs to start to restore circulation. She was still unmoving, and when he put his ear to her mouth, she wasn’t breathing. He began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and still there was nothing.
Juanita knelt next to her and massaged her body, until eventually they were rewarded with the first sign of life. They kept going, and after another five minutes her eyes opened, and he eased his mouth away.
“Kaz?”
“It’s me.”
“What…who…?”
“We’re still in Martinez’s house. He’s outside with his men. How do you feel?”
Her eyes betrayed confusion at first. “I, uh, I’m not…I can’t feel my limbs. Are they…”
“They’re fine. They had you in the freezer. You’ll be okay.”
“Oh, right. How do we get out of here?”
He didn’t have an answer, not right then. Something jogged a memory in his head, and he recalled the way it worked in Iraq. “We need a medevac.”
“A what?”
The two older men exchanged glances. “It’s not gonna happen,” Clarence murmured, “This ain’t the military, Kaz. We don’t have a medevac chopper available. Not anywhere on God’s earth.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Juanita, keep working on her. I need to make a call.”
He took out his cellphone, but before he could place the call, Paco Martinez’s grating, sneering
voice shouted from outside.
“I’ve given you enough time. What’s it gonna be? We make a deal, and you give up and I’ll let you go, or do we come in and rip you apart? I’m not a patient man, and I promise you the longer you keep me out of my home the worse it’ll go for you.”
He felt a twinge of irritation.
Who does this two-bit hood think he is? Some kind of diplomat I can make deals with we all know he’ll break the moment we lay down our guns. There’s one way out of this fix, and it won’t be by negotiating with a thug.
He cupped his hands and shouted back, “Martinez, I couldn’t give a shit about a murdering scumbag like you. You’ll get my answer when I decide to give it, and not before.”
He pressed the speed dial on his phone, and the call connected. “This is Curtis Brand, at your service.” He sounded cheerful, and Kaz didn’t give a damn he was about to ruin his day.
“Curtis, I need you again.”
A pause. “Kaz?”
“Yeah, it’s me. How’re you fixed for another job?”
“Another job? Dammit, Kaz, you haven’t paid me for the gas I used the last time.”
"You'll get paid, I promise. Thing is, we're in a bit of a fix. We need a medevac, and I'm talking now. It’s Eva McCoy?"
"What's her problem? You know the local hospitals can call on helicopters to evacuate casualties."
"We're not back in Lewes, Curtis. We're still south of the border. It's a small town called Guadalez. We're trapped and she's badly hurt. The narco who kidnapped her had her stashed in the freezer, and although she still alive, she needs to get to a hospital mighty fast."
A pause. "As it happens, I'm on the ground at El Paso. I just dropped off some tooling for a local oil prospecting company, and I'm waiting to head back. Or at least I was. The Huey stripped a bearing, and they're working on it right now, but it's going to be another hour or two. If you can wait that long, I don't mind crossing the border again, Guadalez is close enough I can be there and back before they know I've arrived. No fuss no muss."
"Curtis, there's something else. It'll be a hot extraction."