The other three brutes laughed.
Flaco continued. “Why don’t you leave the chica with us? We’ll take really good care of her. Time for you to go nighty-night, Grandpa.”
Jim turned slowly, shifting Emily across his body from his left side to his right, guiding her behind him. He freed his left arm, but kept his right on her, as if he were holding her in place to shield her from the gunmen. She looked back, glancing over her shoulder. They were almost to the curb, with the parked cars only a few feet away.
Emily knew Jim was about to do something, she could sense it; but wasn’t sure what he was planning. His movements were calm, measured, and calculated. She realized that he’d shifted both of them to a position where he could see all four of the thugs at one time without turning his head in either direction.
She’d read in a defensive tactics manual at the library that you should keep your enemy in sight at all times and not allow them to out-flank you, then work yourself into a defensible position with escape routes identified and accessible. That’s what Jim was doing—following his military training. The gang didn’t seem to notice that he was slowly moving himself and her to the space between the cars.
Jim yawned. “As a matter of fact, I am a little tired. Been a long day. But before I take my nap—”
Emily felt his right forearm tense. There was something in his hand—somehow she hadn’t noticed it before.
“—I’d like to teach you boys a little something about proper ambush tactics.”
“Quit fucking stalling!” Flaco yelled, stepping forward and extending his right arm, pressing the muzzle of his gun against Jim’s left temple. “The only thing you’re gonna do, old man, is shut the fuck up and give us the chica. I’m not leaving without her or my fucking money!”
* * *
Jim made sure the triangle blade that he had pulled from the hidden pouch sewn into the lining on the back of his waistline was firmly in his hand. He slid the mini-knife between his knuckles with the razor-sharp edge sticking out. He was ready. It was now or never. He took a deep breath and launched his plan, using a series of lightning-quick moves.
“First,” Jim said as a distraction, pushing his hips hard, sending Emily between the two parked cars. Jim turned his head, allowing Flaco’s gun to slide off of his temple and slip past his face. He brought his right hand up and buried the knuckle blade into the back of Flaco’s right arm just above the elbow, severing the triceps tendon instantly, while reaching over Flaco’s now useless arm to snatch the gun with his left hand. “Your lines of fire are all wrong.”
Flaco screamed in pain as his arm fell sharply to his side.
Jim whipped his left elbow back and smashed Flaco in the face, breaking his nose with the blow. He sidestepped and wrapped his right arm under Flaco’s armpit and across his upper chest and neck, supporting him so he didn’t fall. He held Flaco’s gun in his left hand, pointing it at the remaining bandits to let them know that he had them covered. He brought the bloody tip of the blade in his right fist up until it pressed it into the soft area on the side of Flaco’s neck, slicing into the skin a quarter inch. He held Flaco’s frame tightly against his body, using him as a shield, as blood streamed out of Flaco’s nose and the wound in his neck, running down Jim’s forearm.
“Second, never set yourself up in a conflicting crossfire like that,” he added, pivoting on his right foot while turning left. His left foot lashed out and struck the bottom of the wrist of the killer to his left. The gun in the man’s hand flew into the air and landed ten feet away. “If any of you had fired, you probably would’ve hit each other.”
Jim took two steps back, dragging Flaco with him, until he was standing a foot from Emily between the two cars. He aimed the gun back and forth in a tight arc, making sure the gangsters knew they were each in his sights.
The men twitched nervously, shifting their weight side to side, glancing at each other and then back to Jim. They seemed confused, unsure of what to do. The two men with the guns wrapped and re-wrapped their hands around the grips, both with their index finger resting on the trigger. Jim could see fear swelling in their eyes, making them even more unpredictable, and potentially desperate. But he also knew that he could turn their fear against them.
“Third,” Jim said calmly, “know your enemy.” He gestured to the man he’d just disarmed. “Hands up where I can see them.”
The man stuck his chest out and raised his chin, but his hands never went into the air. “Fuck you. Know your enemy, punk. Nobody tells the Locos what to do. This is our territory. Something wrong with you? Are you loco or something?”
He spoke to Emily over his shoulder through the side of his mouth, never taking his eyes off the three men. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Can we leave now, Daddy? I want to go home,” Emily called out from behind the hood of the car.
“In a minute. Daddy’s almost done here.”
“Kill him!” Flaco yelled to his men, still bleeding down Jim’s arm.
“Not so fast,” Jim said, flaring his eyes to get the other mens’ attention. He pressed the blade a little deeper into Flaco’s neck, making Flaco call out in pain. “All I need to do is press this blade a little deeper and I’ll sever his carotid artery. He’ll bleed out in seconds.”
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Flaco yelled.
“Put the guns down, gentlemen, and walk away.”
“Fuck you, cabron!” one of the men yelled, turning his gun sideways before shouting more insults.
“Fifty-one,” Jim snapped, breaking the barrage of words.
“Qué?” the unarmed bully asked.
“That’s the number of ways I can kill each one of you right now. Fifty-one. That’s cincuenta y uno to those of you who no habla. And that’s without a knife or gun. Imagine what I can do after I take those guns away from you. Trust me, boys, you’re way out of your league here. Uncle Sam spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my training, and all of you will be dead before the first one of you dumb fucks hits the deck. Let me assure you that I was tops in my class. I eat mutts like you for breakfast.”
He waited five seconds, but the men ignored his demand. He was prepared to fire, but wanted to give the armed men one more chance to comply. “Now, listen. I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead. So put down your guns and back away. That’s all you have to do to walk away with your cajones still attached. Otherwise, your man Flaco draws his last breath, then each of you follows suit. I won’t even break a sweat doing it. In fact, I’ll enjoy it. Been a while since I got to kill me some gangsters.”
“Just do what he says and let’s get out of here,” Flaco said. “This pinche culero is loco.”
Jim shook the gun twice. “Now!” he said more forcefully.
“Vete a la verga,” the one closest to Jim said. “West Side Locos don’t back down to nobody.”
“Just do it!” Flaco yelled with a mouth full of blood. “We’ll handle this cabrone later. Quit fucking around. I need médico.”
The two ruffians bent forward and put their guns on the cement. They didn’t seem too happy to do it.
“Fourth, and finally,” Jim said, with all the anger missing from his voice. “Choose your ground wisely. You guys say you are Locos? West Side Locos? Then you must be lost, because I know these streets, too. You’re outside your home turf. This is the wrong place for you to pick a fight, not with the Glassford Gatos ruling this area. Now back up.” He gestured down the sidewalk, past the guns lying on the ground. They did as he asked.
He walked them twenty feet away from Emily, past the guns, then shoved Flaco to the ground at their feet. He kicked his former captive in the ass. “Go on. Get, before I change my mind about letting you breathe.”
Flaco crawled to his crew, holding his hand over his bloody face. “You have not heard the last from us!”
“Tell El Padrino that Jim Miller says hello. Tell him that this area is out of bounds, and that the redhead is off limits. If he has questi
ons about any missing money, then he can come see me about it. Now get the hell out of here before I bend all three of you over my knee.”
Emily stood next to Jim. She was holding a machine gun. He looked back. Only two guns remained on the sidewalk. He put his hand out, pushing down on her arm. She lowered the weapon.
“Keep it downrange. That way you don’t accidentally shoot your foot off, or mine.”
She nodded.
A second later, the same dark-colored Chevy lowrider with fancy rims from earlier careened around the corner, half a block west, with its tires squealing and engine roaring as it flew up the street. It skidded sideways to a stop directly across the road from the parked cars. The doors flew open and four tattooed, muscular men wearing wife-beater T-shirts and yellow bandanas over the lower half of their faces emerged with automatic weapons in hand.
“Gatos!” Flaco yelled.
The Gatos opened fire, spraying the area with lead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Emily pulled the trigger without thinking, shooting the cement in front of her. The gun recoiled hard when at least ten rounds shot out of its barrel, sending her arm up wildly. The sound of gunfire was so loud that all she could do was release the trigger, drop the weapon, and cover her ears.
Jim pulled her down behind the Monte Carlo on the curbside as the Gatos continued to shoot from the middle of the street at the Locos, who were sprinting away from them.
“We should run,” Emily said, feeling a strong tingle building inside. The countdown had restarted. She could feel a jump swelling deep within her, and she knew that this time she wouldn’t be able to stop it.
“They’re not here for us. It’s the code of the Gatos. Civilians are off limits.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a beat reporter, remember? It’s my job to know everything there is to know about the streets of Phoenix. Plus, I’m friends with several members of the county’s Gang Task Force. Two of them were in my unit in the Marines.”
One by one, Flaco and his men were hit, sending hunks of tissue and spurts of blood flying from their bodies. One was hit in the shoulder, another in the leg, and two in the back. Each man dropped to the ground and skidded across the sidewalk like a skier wiping out on the slopes.
The Gatos ran to their enemies’ position and pumped round after round into their bodies until all movement had stopped. Then they turned their attention to Emily and Jim, walking toward them while changing the magazines in their machine guns.
“Stay low and crawl to the other side of the car,” he said to her in a normal tone. Normal, but directive. Well, utterly abnormal, considering the situation. “If it starts, I need you to run away as fast as you can and don’t look back. Understood?”
“What about you?”
“I’m trained for this; now go!”
His confidence-filled words cut through the chaos, and she knew that he was in total and complete control. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it was going to crack through the front of her ribcage. She could feel the jump clock moving faster, building with intensity with each passing second.
Jim’s fierce little knife had disappeared from his hand. He snatched the automatic that she had dropped earlier, then grabbed one of the other guns that the Locos had tossed. He turned to face the Gatos with a gun in each hand, both pointed down and away from his body. He didn’t crouch or flinch. He didn’t hurry. He looked like a robot on a mission, walking straight into the fires of hell without a speck of fear.
Emily heard police sirens in the distance and they were getting louder. They only had minutes to finish this and get away.
The Gatos broke apart from each other and swung wide, aiming their guns at Jim. They opened fire just as he lowered his right shoulder and rolled his body into a low-profile shooting position along the ground, bringing his guns to bear. He squeezed off several short bursts of his own, sending a thundering barrage at his enemies. A second later, all four Gatos fell to the ground.
Holy shit, she thought. Who is this man? The tingle was now sliding up her back and moving fast.
The police sirens echoed off the nearby buildings, making it sound like even more of them were closing fast.
“I hate cops,” Emily said.
Jim stood up and walked to the Gatos’ position. He stood near them for a minute with his guns trained and ready to fire. One of the Gatos moved, raising his gun at Jim, but Jim fired first, putting more slugs into the masked man. He walked to the next victim’s body, rolling it over with his foot, never taking his eyes or his weapons off of the body.
A handful of squad cars flew around the end of the street with their lights flashing, laying rubber as they flew up the street and parked in what seemed like random locations across the area.
A pair of uniforms came out of each vehicle and took up positions behind them, aiming their guns at Jim.
None of them were looking at Emily, so she moved to the far end of the Monte Carlo, keeping her head down and moving slowly so they wouldn’t notice her. It seemed to work.
“Drop your weapon!” they started yelling at Jim, using different variations and intensities of the same sentence. Some added: “Do it now!” or, “Asshole!” on the end, but it was difficult to know who was saying what, with all of them jacked up on adrenaline and shouting at the same time.
Jim held his gun over his head and turned around slowly. He dropped the gun to the ground and bent one knee to lower himself to the ground.
Just then, one of the Gatos that Jim hadn’t checked for life signs aimed his gun and opened fire on the police from his position on the ground.
The police instantly erupted with a maelstrom of return fire. Emily saw Jim take two rounds in the leg and one in the back, spinning him around as he fell.
The gang member stood up and limped on one leg while holding his shooting arm up with the other. He was already covered in blood from Jim’s attack, but he kept firing at the officers. He staggered each time he was hit—once, twice, three times—Emily lost count—but the masked man kept advancing on the officers, shooting and swearing.
Her eyes returned to Jim, lying in the street, motionless. She was overcome by anger. It coursed through her veins and boiled her blood. He was one of the good guys, and they’d killed him. She had finally found someone who was going to help her, but now he was gone. She felt the thick swell of black anger inside of her turn into pure energy as it pushed through her veins and energized her body. She knew this feeling, though it had been a while—two years, to be exact. Two years in her time, just shy of thirty years in calendar time. It was back when she’d stood in the desert and faced down the hovering ship after escaping from their torture chamber.
Then words came to her mouth. She didn’t know why, just that they had to be set free. She opened her mouth and out they came. “Stop! Everybody! Just stop!”
An intense, high-pitched ringing sound flooded her ears and then faded out slowly. She looked to the street—bodies covered in blood, lying across the cement like motionless duffel bags. In front of them were the cops and the crazed Gato firing at them. All of them looked frozen in the moment, caught in mid-action, not moving.
She stood and moved closer to inspect. She could see all of them clearly now, their eyes focused down the barrels of their guns, their faces contorted in emotion—fear, anger, confusion, and even joy. A bullet casing hung in the air next to one of the cops, ejected from the chamber of his Glock semi-automatic a second before. She saw three bullets and smoke trails from the cops caught in mid-flight on their way to the gunman, who seemed to be stuck halfway between standing upright and doing a belly flop on the pavement, with blood trails sticking out like icicles from his body.
Time had stopped.
Emily figured the creatures were close. They had to be. It’s what happened the last time that time had slowed down like this. She looked up, figuring the creatures had found her. She always knew they would. That they’d come back for her and seek their rev
enge, or to continue their heinous tests. She waited for the sky to darken and the ship to hover overhead. Seconds turned to minutes while she arched her back and held her palm above her head, facing the sky, ready to unleash her fury.
But nothing happened. The ship never came. She realized that this event wasn’t the same as before. It was something else. Something new. She was changing again. Her anger was fading.
Then she felt the energy drain from her body, allowing time to resume.
The cops’ bullets took off, resuming their course for the gunman, whizzing past her and hitting the man in the forehead and cheekbone as he fell. More blood. More tissue. A moment later, his body hit the pavement and didn’t move.
“Where the hell did she come from?” one of the officers asked.
“Hands in the air!” another one shouted.
Emily put her hands over her head and let her knees buckle, hoping that the cops wouldn’t shoot her. They didn’t. Moments later, she was surrounded.
“Why is she naked?” an officer behind her asked.
She looked down at her chest and legs. Her clothes were gone. What? Had she jumped? If so, why hadn’t she gone anywhere? Where was the blue light? Did the process change?
“Wait a minute, I recognize her,” the same cop said. “She’s the naked Glassford Girl. The one who’s wanted for assaulting the cab driver and grand theft auto.”
She sighed as the last bit of energy eased from her body. There was nothing else to do but look at the night sky. The beauty and elegance of the Big Dipper soaked into her soul as law enforcement manhandled her, wrapping cuffs around her wrists and dragging her to her feet.
They wrapped a blanket around her and hauled her to the back of a police van, where two officers were waiting. They opened the doors and dragged her inside, spinning her around until her butt was planted on the bench. Someone else was sitting across from her, handcuffed, with his head slumped down.
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