by Hilton, Matt
Back at the gas station at Oasis Carbo, next to a fleapit stretch of rundown houses and derelict businesses, we’d spotted a guy taking far too much interest in us to be coincidence. He was in his mid-twenties, but his sunken, cadaverous features spoke of a tough life and meagre nourishment, and made him look two decades older. He was sitting in a rusted Impala that looked as old and infirm as he did, and had hunched down behind the wheel as we’d drawn up at the gas pumps next to him. His eyes had grown saucer-wide when he’d spotted us in the cab of the Dodge and it wasn’t out of jealousy of our ride. Without pumping gasoline, he pulled away but completed a U-turn a couple of hundred yards further along the highway, where he sat watching us fill our tank. Apparently he wasn’t as poor as he first appeared, as he had enough money to furnish himself with a cell phone.
Fearing he might be desperate enough to please his boss by attempting a hit on us, I readied my SIG as we drove towards him. Yet, if he had a gun, he wasn’t stupid enough to draw it. Either that or his cell phone bill meant he couldn’t also afford ammunition. I was glad not to have to kill him: the poor sap was probably forced into working for Molina in the vain hope of paying off some highly inflated debt. Allowing him to complete his job, we passed him by, and out of the corner of my eye I watched him hunker down so that only his eyes and tufts of unkempt black hair jutted above the window frame. After we were well past, he completed another U-turn and followed us far enough to be able to relate which direction we followed on the highway, then he pulled into the side of the road.
‘By the way that guy just pulled over he was ordered to back off,’ I said.‘My bet is that Molina or Regis are coordinating an attack further along the way and didn’t want him to alert us.’
‘Yup, that’s the way I’d play things, I was him,’ Rink said. When he’s preparing for combat, his southern drawl grows more pronounced.
When I’m facing battle I tend to grow monosyllabic, and nothing was about to change now. We had no idea where, when or how Molina’s men would come at us, so there was little point in debating it. We sank into silence for the next ten minutes or so. Once I caught a glance from Rink. He was smiling: probably because he noticed that the blood had drained from my features. I could feel the tell-tale coldness at the tip of my nose that said I’d adopted my killing face. Usually it perturbs Rink, but now he appeared to have recognised an old friend. His features didn’t look any less stern. He held his chin so rigid that the scar below his bottom lip nigh on glowed in the faint wash of light from the dashboard.
A signpost indicated that we were ten miles from the town of Benjamin Hill. The town’s name was ironic, seeing as we were planning on protecting a child of the same name. I searched the evening horizon for sight of hills, but the valley was wide here and all the landscape appeared to be of the same featureless formula as the sky. The earlier rain had stopped but the clouds still hung low, obscuring moon and stars alike. The only pinpricks of light were from one homestead way off to our right and the wan yellow lights of a train heading towards Hermosillo on our far left.
Actually that wasn’t the entire truth. When I checked the side mirror I caught the twinkle of headlights on high beam a couple miles behind us. I must have grunted or something because Rink said, ‘I saw them.’
‘Maybe you’d best put your foot down.’
‘I’ve already got the pedal to the metal. This is as fast as we get from this old gal.’
Checking the mirrors once more, I could tell that the lights were growing in size and brightness. ‘They’re coming at some rate. It’s a safe bet that it’s Molina’s lot.’
‘Well it sure ain’t Wile E. Coyote chasing Road Runner,’ Rink laughed. ‘Not unless Acme does a line of high-performance vehicles these days.’
‘We can’t outrun them. Likely they’ve seen our tail lights already, so not much hope of hiding from them either. Leaves only one option.’
‘Yup . . . we meet and greet the frog-giggers.’ Rink touched the butt of his gun, unsnapping the safety strap off his holster with a practised flick.
I began looking out for somewhere we could wait, a place that offered more cover than the undulating desert floor around us. Within a half-mile I saw a track running alongside the highway, leading across the desert to a cluster of agricultural sheds behind which towered electric pylons. ‘Can you make it over there?’
Rink made only a cursory inspection of the shoulder of land separating highway from farm track, then veered to the right. The Dodge handled the transition from asphalt to loose soil to hard-packed dirt with little complaint, and we were travelling parallel to our original route. Then the trail swung east and up a shallow incline towards the sheds. Turning so I could peer beneath the plastic shell on the back of the pick-up I saw that the speeding vehicle had covered half the distance between us now. It would be apparent to those inside that we had changed course. ‘We’ve only a couple minutes before they get here.’
‘Long enough,’ Rink reassured me.
The Dodge bounced over the rough terrain as Rink went off-road, cutting across a wedge of ground that doubled as an unofficial garbage dump. A barbed-wire fence marked the southern boundary of the agricultural site, but Rink merely ran right over the top of it and into a yard that fronted the buildings. There was no house evident, only sheds in which were parked various wagons, tractors and machines I didn’t recognise. The sheds were in differing levels of disrepair, some solid and sturdy, others almost rusted through. I took it the place was a shared compound where farmers stored their larger machinery. Chains and padlocks were strung across the entrances of the buildings. They would do little to hamper determined thieves, but judging by the decrepit nature of most of the vehicles it was unlikely a determined thief would bother with them.
Bringing the Dodge to a halt alongside a large tin structure that leaned precariously to one side, Rink baled out and I was only a second or two behind him. Rink made his way round the back of the pick-up and leaned inside, while I checked on the progress of the speeding vehicle. True to form, it too had bumped over the shoulder and on to the farm track: definitely some of Molina’s crew. Way back along the highway was a second set of lights, maybe more than one.
When I looked back, Rink had disappeared as silently as a dissipating spectre. For such a big man he could move with the stealth of a cat. I went for shelter inside the nearest off-kilter shed. As the approaching car bounced up the rutted road its headlights caught me in their glare, before I ducked into the deeper well of shadow inside the shed. As I retreated, the car swung my way. No way could they see me now, so I ran for the back of the shed where a fainter oblong of night marked an open hatch. I went out of it, and ran along the back wall, then kept low as I traversed a narrow strip of land sown with broken glass and indeterminate metal objects: it was apparent that the site was built on reclaimed landfill. Then I entered the next building along and raced for the front, having to swerve round a combine harvester that didn’t look as if it had seen much use in the past couple of decades. The air was full of dust motes and an overriding smell of rust, but I clamped down on the urge to cough. Making it to the front door, I placed myself behind a thick upright support beam. It would offer little protection if any of the men in the car came packing a high-powered rifle, but was better than the thin tin sheets to each side of it.
Remaining in the shadows, I sneaked a peek outside, just as the car – an SUV I recognised from earlier in the evening – powered through the yard and screeched to a dust-kicking halt. Doors sprang open on both sides and disgorged the passengers – three in total. In the next moment, the driver threw the vehicle into reverse and backed wildly away. Out of my line of sight I heard the SUV halt and the driver’s door come open. He was trying to set up a second arc of fire to pen me inside the sheds. Sadly for him, I wasn’t in the one they all assumed.
The three who’d decamped from the vehicle had strung out in a skirmish line, but from the glances they cast at each other, none was too eager to be first to
enter the shed I’d recently fled from. They moved from foot to foot, aiming their guns like they were juggling hot rocks. Each was equipped with a handgun, I was happy to note, but I couldn’t see the driver so he might have been more heavily armed.
One of the three shouted a challenge, telling me in heavily accented English to come out. He didn’t sound Mexican though, more Eastern European: one of Marshall’s team of mercenaries. I neglected to reply. The men were nervous. They weren’t keen on the fact that they’d been ordered into a full frontal assault on the shed, leaving them open targets to counter-fire, but glances past my position said they were more afraid of retribution levied by their boss than being cut down by me. The driver must have given a wordless command, because the three suddenly steeled themselves and began blind-shooting at the shed. Their bullets clanged off the machinery inside.
‘Hey you . . . inside the shed. This is your last chance. Come out or we’ll be forced to come inside and kill you.’ It was the Eastern European who’d shouted the challenge. Did he actually expect a reply?
I watched as they moved forward to flank the open doorway: two on one side, one on the other. They were now obscured from view by the angle of the shed wall, but I guessed that a man on each side would triangulate their line of fire while the other entered the shed low. It would be a few seconds before they realised there was no return fire, and a few more after that before they figured that I was either dead from their first volley, hiding deeper inside, or that I’d fled the building and they were wasting their time in there. By the time they computed all that and formulated a new plan the best part of twenty seconds would have passed. It was enough time for me to sneak up behind them and cut them down as they came outside. I couldn’t do that with the driver covering their retreat, though. I had to get him before he got me.
I searched for an exit that offered a way to surprise the driver. Midway along a loose tin sheet allowed me to slip into a narrow space that was chock-full of oil drums and less identifiable trash. I began squeezing my way to the front. Despite my efforts to move with the stealth that Rink exhibits, the empty drums foiled me, and one of them made a hollow thrum as my knee knocked against it. I ducked, and not a second too soon. From the front the narrow space was lit by machine-gun fire.
The drums had given away my position, yet they redeemed themselves by saving my skin. The bullets cut through the first few, but the metal barrier slowed them enough that they didn’t make it all the way to where I crouched. As the shooter reassessed his firing position, I bobbed up and fired at him. Didn’t hit him though. He sprang to the corner of the shed, and began hollering to his friends. I recognised the voice and its Scottish burr. Ian McAdam, the bastard.
McAdam leaned round the corner and fired again. The piece of shit had got his hands on an M-4 Carbine, an assault rifle. But I was waiting for him to make such a move, and calmly fired, in total disregard of the bullets tearing my surroundings to shreds. McAdam cursed, a new note of pain making his voice more whiny than usual. He ducked out of the way again.
Immediately I went forward, because he’d expect me to go the other way, and doubtless he was directing his buddies to cut me off. I dodged and swerved round the drums, then raced out of the gap between the sheds and into the open. I dived for the floor as McAdam let loose a hail of death. Only my surprise move saved me, because he was unprepared for my appearance and his shots were wild and off-target. I fired back at him and while he was engaged in scrambling for his life, I did likewise. One of the others, having given up on the assault of the first shed, fired his pistol, and the earth next to my right knee lifted in a mini-explosion of dirt. Swearing loudly I commando-rolled away and found shelter behind their SUV. A glance downhill told me that my position was growing more precarious by the second. The headlights I’d noted earlier had grown to a procession of vehicles streaking towards the battle; it would be minutes before they arrived. Fuck it, I told myself, concentrate on the immediate problem. Rushing to the front of the SUV, I propped my SIG over the hood and shot at the man who’d come close to killing me. He fell, telling me that I’d scored a hit, but not enough to finish him. He backed up, butt-shuffling away even as he returned fire. Checking for McAdam, I assumed the Scotsman had taken refuge inside the building where I’d hidden moments before.
The two other men weren’t immediately apparent.
But that scenario only lasted a few seconds. One of them was in the narrow space filled with oil drums. He shot at me, using the angle of the alley to line up his shots. His bullets struck glass and metal on the SUV but thankfully didn’t find flesh. I shot back at him, making a mental note of how many rounds I’d used. Too many had been wasted for me to have any hope of taking on the number of reinforcements coming. I required more ammo, more guns.
McAdam leaned out of the building and let loose with the M-4.
The SUV danced on its chassis as the rounds punched through it. I ran, zigzagging to avoid making an easy target. Unbelievably none of the bullets ripping through the air hit. It was that or I was dead and it was my spirit that continued the run. As I went to my knees and felt the shock go all the way to the top of my head I was sure that I still inhabited my corporeal body. Graceless, I went down on my front, before rolling side over side, bullets churning the ground where I’d been seconds earlier. Then I positioned myself to shoot at the gunman approaching from my right. It was the third of the assault party, the man with the Eastern European accent. He swore and I made him as Estonian. I’d fought his like before, listened to their guttural obscenities. I hit him in the throat and cut off his next curse. He went down, dead from a severed spine, and his gun was knocked from his fingers. Unfortunately it was well out of my reach. To go for it would make me a sitting duck for McAdam and the injured man, who’d managed to back all the way to the doorway of the first shed I’d entered. The last gunman was still in Oil Drum Alley, but from the collision of knees against metal he was ploughing forward to join his friends.
Bullets cut towards me from two directions and I was forced to move, running for the field of garbage Rink had brought us across. He’d squashed the barbed-wire fence under the tyres of the Dodge, but it had sprung back up – albeit less level than before – and blocked my passage. Rather, it tried to. I went through it, mindless of the barbs that clutched and tore at my already tattered clothes. I was sorely scored, but when weighed against a few bullets in the spine, I’d gladly take the minor abrasions, though, I stupidly thought, I might require a tetanus jab at some point. Lockjaw was the least of my fucking problems.
Beyond the wire fence was a shallow ditch, and I went into it belly first. The sides offered only meagre protection; they wouldn’t halt the bullets, but they offered concealment as I crawled away. As it was, my opponents were wary of my strategy and began shooting at various points along the ditch, hoping to pin me down while one of them could move in and finish me for good. Immediately I jerked up, fired two rounds and the slide locked back on my SIG. Swearing under my breath, I searched for the mag that held the few spare bullets I had on me. Dropping the depleted magazine, I slapped in the new one, fully understanding that I’d barely enough bullets left to kill the three here, let alone the number who must now be approaching in the convoy of vehicles. Yet I refused to be fatalistic, and reversed my crawl, worming my way back towards the original position where I’d come through the fence. McAdam and the seated man continued to fire at where they perceived my crawl to have taken me. I knew without looking that the last of my opponents would be moving in, now that he was clear of the alley, to shoot me from behind. I sat up quickly, eyes scanning, and saw the man less than ten feet away, already past my current position. He caught my movement in his peripheral vision, but before he could fully turn I shot him in the side, then as the impact twisted him, placed another round in his open mouth.
That left two enemies.
Only one bullet, though.
The odds of killing both men with one shot were beginning to look decidedly agains
t me.
Chapter 28
McAdam’s assault rifle chattered and eruptions of dirt danced overhead. I flattened down in the ditch. Huge spurts of dust, pebbles and plant life hosed my prone body, but to my relief none of his bullets hit.
Then there was a cessation of the noise and fury.
‘You can’t get out of this alive, Joe,’ McAdam taunted me. ‘You may as well give up and come out of the ditch or it’ll end up being your grave. Come out and I promise I’ll do you nice and clean. I’ll even see that you get a decent burial.’
‘You’re all heart, McAdam,’ I called back. ‘Actually, that’s not true. You’re full of shit; no room in there for a heart.’
‘If I come over there, I’ll have to gun you down. But that won’t be the end of it. You’ll be taken back, your body paraded by Jorge Molina for all the cartel bosses to see.’
Probably hung from an underpass and disembowelled, I thought.
‘So come on over, McAdam. See which one of us is left lying in a ditch.’
He must have switched to semi-auto, because there followed three shots so closely grouped that the triple rattle blended into one hit on a snare drum. Earth danced at the rim of the ditch, forcing me to squeeze my lids shut to protect my eyesight. Not for a second did I believe that McAdam was coming for me.
‘Come out, Joe. For old times’ sake I’ll be good to you. Clean shot to the back of the head. You won’t even see it coming.’ His voice remained distant. But the sound of approaching engines was growing louder. Also, I heard a shuffle of movement further to my left. While McAdam tried to distract me, the other man was sneaking in to finish me off. He was lame from my earlier bullet, dragging a leg as he moved in on my hiding place.