by Jack Murphy
The final gunman was pushing the Kazakhs forward. They had caught the brunt of the flash bang distraction device and were still suffering from its effects. Others reached through the doorway and pulled them forward as Deckard fired off a couple of rounds at the riflemen herding his comrades forward, just a moment too late.
Dashing forward, Deckard let his 1911 lead the way as he crossed through the door and into the bright light of another courtyard outside.
Something slammed behind him, causing the combat veteran to immediately go to ground. Behind him, he could see that a giant wood door had dropped down in the entrance way, trapping him in the courtyard.
With little option he continued into the courtyard.
Once outside he looked around and saw that he was surrounded by a giant wooden facade that completely encircled him. Directly to his front, standing up on a platform was Jimenez and his lieutenant, Ignacio. They had baited him into a trap.
They had lured him into their arena.
39
Deckard stood in the center of the arena.
Aiming down the iron sights along the top of his 1911, the mercenary squeezed off rounds into the center of the entourage surrounding Jimenez. Several cartel gunmen went down before the slide locked to the rear.
Jimenez tore a giant revolver from the holster on his hip and let loose a round that splashed in the dirt just inches from Deckard's booted foot. The gun in the drug lord's hand was massive, a Smith and Wesson Governor if he wasn't mistaken, chambered for .410 shotgun shells.
“Yeah!” Jimenez yelled at Deckard, glaring down at him from the elevated platform. “You just don't quit do you! Respect. But now we've got a gunslinger who has finally run out of bullets!”
Deckard let the slide slam forward and holstered his pistol. He stood in the middle of a circular wooden arena that Jimenez had constructed in the courtyard. Like a miniature Roman arena, there was stadium seating for spectators. This was where Jimenez and his boys stood laughing at him. Several who had absorbed Deckard's final barrage of gunfire were being dragged down below.
He could hear the firefight raging on the rooftops above and deeper in the converted convent but there was nothing coming over the radio headset he wore. Looking down, Deckard saw that one of his many near misses had resulted in a bullet pulverizing his radio with a neat round hole through the side of the metal casing. Unstrapping it from his kit, he dropped the radio along with the headset. It would only get in the way of what was about to happen next.
“Now we get to see what you are really made of,” Jimenez lectured. “But I don't know.”
Deckard stood with his arms hanging limply at his sides, his eyebrows pointed slightly upwards as his chest heaved. Sweat poured down his face and neck.
“You look pretty exhausted,” Jimenez cautioned. “Are you sure you don't want to call off this little war of ours until tomorrow so you can get some rest?”
“I haven't got all fucking day Jimenez!” Deckard's voice echoed off the high walls surrounding the arena.
“You're right of course,” the drug lord laughed. “We have set loose the mad dogs of war. We couldn't stop them from fighting even if we wanted to! I know it has been grinding at you how I convinced all those soldiers of mine to assault your compound the other night. How I got them worked into a frenzy like that and all.”
Deckard thought about the one they had taken prisoner, hugging his knees while rocking himself like a baby.
“We've been playing a game in this arena with the local townspeople, a game called Who Wants to Be an Assassin! I have people grabbed off the streets. Homeless bums, peasants, junkies, whoever and have them fight to the death. The survivors get to become Sicarios, my private army of crazed killers!”
“That's how you traumatize and brainwash these people into murdering priests and the disabled at a Christian mission? You sick fuck.”
“Oh, fuck no. You got me all wrong. That wasn't me or my cartel. We don't know who that was. Santa Muerta did not grant her permission for anything like that. Maybe you've been pissing off the Zeta's up north? I don't know, do you have a secret admirer that you haven't told me about?”
What the hell, Deckard whispered.
“Indeed,” Jimenez said having seen him mouth the words. “But that is just one of those unsolved mysteries in life. Some people say that aliens built those pyramids for the Mayans. Who the fuck knows?”
Through cross hatched metal bars sunk into the wooden frame of the arena on two sides, Deckard could see shadows shifting from side to side. A hand poked through the portcullis directly in front of him. The fist was holding a butcher knife, the sunlight from above reflecting off the blade. Several brown spots stained the ground around him, the remnants of spilled blood from past gladiator matches.
“So before we get interrupted by this little war of ours,” the drug lord said with a smile, “let's see what you've got for me when there is no Army at your back, when you've run all out of guns. In this arena there is nowhere to hide. This is one place where we see people for who they really are.”
“Fuck you.”
Jimenez sighed and motioned to Ignacio. His lieutenant shouted and the two Kazakh mercenaries that the cartel captured after the flash bang went off were pushed forward. They had been restrained and one looked like he had been punched in the face with purple lumps around his eyes.
“You'll fight gringo,” Jimenez said leveling the massive pistol to point it at the head of one of the Kazakhs. “Or I execute these men in front of you. Then I shoot you in both kneecaps and let our gladiators have at you anyway. Your choice.”
“Let's get this over with Jimenez.”
“I'm glad you think so.”
The drug lord used his gun barrel to indicate to another cartel gunman to raise one of the portcullis doors. Pressing a button on a remote control, a pulley system somewhere inside the arena raised the metal gate. For a long moment nothing moved, only gunfire could be heard in the background as the war continued on all sides.
The man with the butcher knife emerged from the shadows, followed by a second knifeman, then a third. A fourth staggered out of the holding cell with a cleaver. God only knew how many of their fellow townspeople they had to stab to death in order to survive this long.
Deckard moved his non-firing hand towards the side of his pistol belt and undid a buckle.
The gladiators swarmed Deckard, snarling guttural screams as they descended upon him.
In one clean movement the mercenary's arm shot out, his hand a blur of motion as he chopped upwards and diagonally. The first gladiator's head snapped back as an arc of bright red blood that sprayed into the air before he fell down on his back. Deckard took a step forward and the second gladiator dropped his knife and brought his hands to his neck, making a futile effort to stop the flow of crimson that leaked from between his fingers.
The third knifeman also dropped his blade as the fingers holding it were sliced and completely dismembered from his hand. Then something hit him in the side of the head and he collapsed. The fourth gladiator tried to bring his meat cleaver down on Deckard but the mercenary pivoted out of the way and the gladiator suddenly found himself holding his own intestines. He fell to his knees, still looking at his insides when Deckard finished him.
The cartel men watching from the stadium seats stood in stunned silence, their mouths hanging agape. The American stood more or less in the center of the arena where he had been to begin with, surrounded by four dead gladiators. Pools of blood seeped into the dirt.
Deckard held his combat blade in a reverse grip in his left hand. The sinister profile of the double sided blade was soaked in blood as was the mercenary's glove and shirt sleeve. With ten inches of effective blade, the Grayman Sub-Saharan combat knife had more in common with a Roman short sword than with other military knives.
“Where the fuck did he get that thing from?” Ignacio blurted.
Jimenez looked frustrated.
“Let the second group out!
What's wrong with you?”
The gunman with the remote control opened the second portcullis. Four more knifemen spilled out into the arena. Deckard tossed the knife into the air and caught it with his dominate hand before holding it with his thumb and pointer finger, allowing the massive knife to swing down back into a reverse grip.
The gladiators charged.
Deckard side stepped, putting the first gladiator between him and the second while the other two tried to circle around from the other side. Swatting the first attacker's knife hand away with the blade, Deckard then chopped it straight into the first gladiators face, dropping him. Gladiator number three had managed to come around on his flank. Deckard turned to meet him and dodged away from his first slash then grabbed him behind the head, yanking him down and plunging the ten inch Sub-Saharan into his enemy's clavicle.
As gladiator number two approached, Deckard repeated the same maneuver, putting number two between himself and number four, delaying the other man's attack and giving himself some stand off. When the second gladiator swung his butcher knife, Deckard brought his own knife up under the man's forearm, crossing the knife over his arm and snapping it down. Doing this he simultaneously wrenched and sliced the gladiator's knife out of his hand.
Deckard followed up with a stick between the ribs that deflated a lung and took all the fight out of his opponent instantly.
The fourth gladiator came right over the second to try to stab him in the chest. Deckard pivoted his body and swung the knife into a normal upturned grip. Bringing his arm right up over the top of the gladiator's attack, he stuck the knife in the would-be killer's throat.
Now Deckard stood surrounded by eight dead bodies.
Jimenez and Ignacio looked at each other.
Deckard looked on as they argued with each other in hushed tones. He watched the scene unfold as he struggled for more air, exhausted to the point that he had been moving and fighting based on pure muscle memory. Despite the physical training he put himself through, days in combat with little rest had taken their toll.
“Well gringo, all our other gladiators are out fighting your men so we are going to have to improvise here. I'm not going to lie. I'm impressed.”
Deckard pointed the bloody knife at the drug lord, unable to talk.
“Listen,” he shouted at his entourage. “Turn over your guns to Ignacio and select a weapon from one of the gladiator barrels.”
The drug lord pointed to a wooden barrel full of hand weapons. Knives, axe handles, baseball bats, and other killing instruments.
“You want us to get in there with that fucking monster-” one of the drug lord's minions began to say when his words were cut off as Jimenez' Smith and Wesson erased his face from his skull. The .410 shotgun round exploded and the cartel lackey was dead before his body hit the ground.
“Rules are rules. He can't fight all of you off at the same time.”
The eight remaining members of Jimenez' Personal Security Detachment turned their pistols and M-4 rifles over to Ignacio who disappeared into a back room somewhere. One by one they lined up and selected knives and clubs.
“Now get the fuck in the arena and finish this!”
Red in the face, Jimenez was infuriated.
The cartel PSD jumped off the stands, landing down in the arena.
“Hit him all at once,” one of the security detail members said. “Don't give him the chance to fight back.”
Deckard bent down and retrieved a dead gladiators knife so that both of his hands were filled with a weapon. He kept his knees loose and settled into a shooter's stance as he prepared for the oncoming attack.
They came at once. Deckard rushed forward to meet them. He heard someone screaming but didn't realize that it was his own voice.
The butcher knife found its way into someone's eye socket, the Sub-Saharan chopped down on another cartel man's skull. An upward stroke sliced under another knifemen's ribcage before the inevitable happened. He was surrounded.
Beat down to the ground, a club glanced off the side of his head. A knife was plunged down into his back but stopped by the ballistic trauma plate he wore as body armor. Deckard fell down on all fours. Something hit his shoulder.
For a moment, he lost his grip on his weapon. Reaching for it as blows rained down, his gloved hand seized around the handle of the blade. He wasn't afraid to die but he was afraid to lose.
With the knife held in his fist, he brought it down on the nearest cartel man's foot. Yanking it free in a stream of blood he brought it back down on the next man's foot, stabbing downwards again and again in a hammering motion. Slashing horizontally, he cut through someone's Achilles tendon. As his support arm was swept out from under him, he lashed out and cut into another enemy's groin, separating him from his manhood.
Thrown on his back, Deckard rolled over on top of one of his disabled opponents. Stabbing him in the chest, his hand moved forward on the blade, choking up on it for better control. Someone reached for him and he swung, cutting right up the man's forearm.
Another enemy tackled him back down to the ground. As his opponent attempted to bring his knife down on him, Deckard slashed his bicep and then swung the blade around and stuck it into his mouth and though the soft pallet.
Someone else moved next to him so the mercenary put his boot in his neck.
Two more survivors stumbled forward with axe handles. Deckard kicked the first in the knee cap and the second tripped over his comrade's prostrate form. Throwing himself on top of the squirming bodies, the cutting continued.
Jimenez looked on as the American was straddled across one of his men's chest, plunging the evil looking black blade into his abdomen again and again. Like the other gladiators that the drug lord had sent into the arena, the modern day coliseum had the desired effect. The gladiator had been driven out of his mind.
Deckard looked up, his eyes red and bloodshot, just in time to see the drug lord flee the spectator stands and run into the corridor that led back into the old convent.
He blinked, everything was black for a moment. Then he was crawling up the side of the arena, straight up the wall and pulling himself over the top. Deckard felt his body red line but his mind did not acknowledge the command. His arms and legs felt like they were filled with acid, his heart threatening to rip right out of his chest. Deckard's mind, body, and heart told him, no but something else said, yes.
Deckard blinked.
He was inside the dark corridor.
He blinked again.
He was crouched down next to one of his mercenaries. One of the Kazakhs that Jimenez had captured. His face was a bloody pulp, done in by the drug lord's shotgun shell pistol. The drug lord had only needed one hostage. This one was expendable.
Deckard blinked.
Another cartel gunman came charging through the doorway at Deckard, the first shot from his pistol flying wide due to the Mexican's nervous aim. Deckard swung the massive blade downwards, splaying the gunman's skull open like a canoe.
Chasing after Jimenez, Deckard trailed him into the bottom floor of the museum. He could hear shuffling somewhere deeper inside the cold dark room. It was being used as a warehouse with wooden crates stacked nearly up the ceiling in some cases. Deckard recognized many of them as being military in origin, containing weapons and ammunition.
Holding his knife pointing outward at shoulder height, he carried it at the ready as he stalked aisle to aisle. Deckard homed in on feet scuffing across the concrete floor. Only a trickle of light was piercing in from the boarded up windows. Jimenez' hostage was struggling with his captor.
Deckard tensed, his knife hand white knuckling around the handle.
Walking past row after row of weapons material, he strode out into the next aisle.
A sledgehammer strike knocked him flat on his back, the metal knife clacking across the floor as it fell from his hand.
Jimenez was shouting a steady stream of curses at him.
Finding that he was still alive, Deckard rolled
back behind the row of wooden crates.
“What the fuck is this! Why can't you just die!”
Laying face first against the cool cement floor, sweat and blood dripped from the mercenary's face. That was when he realized that Jimenez had shot him with a shotgun round from his revolver. He felt like Satan himself had swatted him right off his feet.
Maybe the metal projectiles had penetrated his body armor, ripped right through the trauma plate and cut through his heart. Maybe deflated his lungs. Maybe this was how he died, face down in a pool of blood and sweat.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe some other day.
Deckard reached out and grabbed the Grayman knife and pushed himself up, using one of the crates to brace himself and get to his feet.
“It looks like you are in the good favor of Santa Muerta, mercenary! You must know her well!”
He could barely hear what the drug lord was saying, not that it mattered.
“But I know you now, I saw how you fought to keep your men alive. It was too late for one but this one is still alive. If you want to keep it that way you let me pass and slip out of the museum before this war overtakes us both.”
Deckard's stomach heaved. He was feeling light headed. Swallowing, he took a quick look down the aisle at Jimenez before quickly moving back behind cover. Jimenez was about twenty five feet from his position down at the end of the row of boxes. He held the flexcuffed Kazakh mercenary in a headlock with the barrel of the revolver pointed under his chin. The Kazakh tried to scream behind the gag that had been secured over his mouth.
He looked down at the knife. There was no way he could close the distance in time. Jimenez would have ample time to kill his hostage and more than likely would have time to turn the gun on Deckard and kill him in his already weakened state.
There was a warm burning in his chest from the impact. He still didn't know if any of the shrapnel had penetrated the body armor or not and suspected that he wouldn't be on his feet much longer.