by Matt Rogers
Slater took a deep breath, and waited for the signal.
It was never going to be a long shootout. That didn’t happen in open terrain like this, with an arsenal of automatic weaponry in the mix. It was always going to be fast and violent and bloody and relentlessly intense.
He was prepared.
Then an explosion of noise sounded.
Ruby unloaded a full magazine with pinpoint accuracy as the cartel thugs spread out in the mouth of the clearing.
A couple of them who had built up enough momentum cascaded right into the sinkhole. Their bodies hit the water with twin thwacks, and the blood ran thick in the turquoise gloom. Others spiralled away or simply fell where they stood, caught with fatal shots to the face, throat and chest.
Slater heard nearly a dozen screams rise in unison.
He shuddered.
Ruby was scary accurate.
But he didn’t waste a second. He leapt to his feet, rearing out of the brush like a nightmarish vision. His veins were pumping and his head roared with the knowledge that if he mistimed it, that’d be it.
He’d be dead.
But he never, ever mistimed it.
He came up into the line of sight as every sicario still alive turned their attention to Ruby. They couldn’t help focusing on the source of the gunfire, and their guns went up to resist the attack, even as they saw their comrades fall and die in their peripheral vision. They were as accustomed to violence as Slater and Ruby were. But that didn’t help them, because Ruby vanished from sight as soon as she expended her clip, and their bullets thwacked into the trees all around her.
Then Slater was right there in the midst of them, and he raised the Glock in one hand and the Sig Sauer in the other.
He didn’t think about shooting. He’d put in thousands of hours on ranges all over the world. The weapons were an extension of his own mind-muscle connection. He simply lined up targets and intuitively pumped both triggers simultaneously, like twin macabre staccatos.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
Done.
He killed ten men with ten bullets, because he was that close, and they were helpless to prevent the metal storm. Bodies started to drop, and as soon as they realised there was another stream of gunfire coming from the side they were too overwhelmed to do anything about it. It was the old timeless adage — they were used to being the top dogs, but they weren’t used to fighting and clawing for their lives. So they wilted, and with half the force decimated, many of the remaining sicarios scattered instead of returning fire.
Because they weren’t real sicarios.
They were young spoiled brats doing their best impersonations of real gangsters. They’d inherited the power and riches that their families had fought tooth and nail to acquire, and there was a huge difference between flaunting expensive weaponry and being able to use it effectively.
Slater sensed the tide shifting.
He shot another sicario in the throat, and another through the chest. They spun and twisted away, and as their bodies fell, a third guy leapt over their corpses without hesitation.
He had a serrated combat knife in his right hand and his pupils were so swollen that he had to be under the influence of hard drugs.
Which stripped him of his inhibition.
And killed all concept of hesitation.
Slater gulped as he brought his aim around, but his neurons had been firing hard and his inhuman, laser-like focus was starting to deplete. So he was a tad slower to line up the next target.
Suddenly the crazed sicario was right there in his face, swinging wildly with the knife.
Slater had no choice but to leap backwards.
He still tried to line up his aim, but there was a root behind him and he twisted his ankle hard on it. He went down head over heels, nearly knocking himself unconscious on a hard patch of forest floor. Then there were ferns and bushes and weeds in his face, and he batted them away with the Glock and came back up with the Sig Sauer but he met the same guy charging full-pelt at him. The serrated edge of the knife missed his forearm by an inch, and with the ferocity the sicario swung it, it probably would have taken his hand clean off.
Panicking, Slater fought for balance, and the sicario swung the knife a third time, now only half a foot from Slater.
He had no choice.
He catapulted back through the undergrowth again, falling wildly to his knees, and he smashed his elbow against a pointed rock and felt a sudden jarring numbness in his wrist.
He landed on his back, and looked up to see the sicario diving at him with bared teeth.
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Slater rolled to his left, but he hit a cluster of rocks.
There was nowhere else to go.
The sicario came crashing down into the undergrowth only inches beside him, and swung the knife again. Slater used every ounce of focus he had in his body to catch the guy’s wrist, milliseconds before the blade plunged into his chest. But he was forced to drop his guns to do so — an uncomfortable yet necessary sacrifice.
He used both palms to control the knife hand, and with that threat neutralised he smashed his forehead into the guy’s nose, shattering it.
The guy howled and twisted away, the pain likely compounded by the drugs he was on.
Slater squeezed the guy’s wrist so hard that he thought he might break it, and the knife came free as the muscles in his palm spasmed. Slater kicked it away and dropped a scything elbow down on the guy’s unprotected face, bouncing his skull off the rocks, putting him out cold.
Then Slater rolled over and snatched up the Sig Sauer and the Glock.
He froze. Still sprawled out on his stomach, there was enough vegetation around him to mask him from sight. So he lay deathly still, because there were footsteps all around him — coming from seemingly everywhere at once. It was hot, and his adrenaline raced, and he was uncomfortable, but he didn’t dare budge. There could be half a dozen barrels trained on the space above his head. Best not to give them something to shoot at.
Then he heard the familiar crack-crack-crack-crack of Ruby’s carbine on the other side of the clearing.
And muttered voices, all around him, cursing and turning and firing back.
Now the worst-case scenario was unfolding.
The remaining sicarios were spreading out, embedding themselves in the trees around the clearing. The bottleneck was no more. Slater didn’t know how many were left, or how demoralised they were, or whether they were good shots.
He stayed down, and sweat dripped off his face into the dirt as he paused for contemplation.
I sleep in the storm.
He reminded himself of the old fable. Those who stayed calm at the height of hysteria, won. So he deliberately lowered his heart rate, and above all he refused to panic.
Ruby continued exchanging gunfire with…
…with how many?
Slater didn’t know.
But then he heard two shouts, right nearby — only a dozen feet ahead. There were two sicarios communicating back and forth from the cover of a pair of trees, weighing up their next move.
Slater leapt into a crouch, switched to a double-handed grip on the Glock, and fired once, then twice.
Two bodies keeled over, sporting twin holes in their backs.
Then a round whipped past Slater.
So, so close.
He ducked back down, and warm crimson droplets sprayed off the side of his head into the dirt, mixing with the sweat. Startled by their appearance, he touched a hand to his ear, and pain flared in the lobe.
The bullet had passed straight through it.
The wound started pouring blood, and he stayed down with his head spinning and reeling. He didn’t know where the shot had come from — he hadn’t been paying attention. He couldn’t focus on everything at once. He hadn’t even felt the impact. All he could do was hope the follow-up shots didn’t come close to—
The best-case scenario unfolded.
The young sicario
who’d shot him — thinking Slater had been incapacitated by the bullet — came right up to him and looped an arm around his throat and picked him up out of the undergrowth and pressed the barrel of his sidearm to the side of his head.
Taking him hostage.
An uneasy stalemate unfolded, and finally Slater could get a sense of how the battlefield was laid out.
He thanked his lucky stars that the guy hadn’t simply shot him through the top of the head.
Which is what he should have done immediately.
But the kid was young and dumb and pumped up with adrenaline and relishing the thrill of the fight. Was there anything more emasculating than wounding your enemy and taking them alive? As far as the sicario was concerned, nothing had yet been found that rivalled it. Slater knew exactly what the kid was going through — unadulterated excitement. He could hear his laboured breathing, then the kid shouted, ‘Got him! Got the fucker!’
Slater saw three men turn around, spaced out in the brush.
Only three.
The kid with the gun to his head roared, ‘Hey, bitch! Come out from where you’re hiding. I’ve got a gun to your boyfriend’s head.’
Silence.
No response.
Slater thought, Good, Ruby.
Make them wait.
Make it tense.
Make them jumpy.
The sicario yelled, ‘Do it now, bitch! I’ll count to three.’
He squeezed the gun harder into Slater’s temple, drawing blood. The crimson stuff kept flowing out of his ear, and his legs grew weak. But he held his consciousness, because it was the only thing he could control, and he’d be damned if he was going to give up.
‘One!’ the kid yelled.
He bent down and whispered in Slater’s ear, ‘I’m going to shoot you now. Just to fuck with her.’
Which wasn’t ideal.
But Slater didn’t react.
Not yet.
Then Ruby stepped out from behind the tree.
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She was halfway up the staggered rocky hill, and she had her palms out, indicating she was unarmed. Slater noticed she’d shifted her tube top down a few inches to reveal her cleavage, and lowered her pants too, revealing the smooth tanned V-line that framed her hips. There was perspiration on her hard stomach.
She was pouting, and there were crocodile tears in her eyes.
Slater smiled.
He couldn’t help himself.
It was a brilliant ploy.
Then he made the smile vanish, because there was still work to be done.
She wailed, ‘I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt him.’
Slater felt the palpable excitement building in the young sicario. The man was astonished, and he had every reason to be. Ruby was gorgeous. He would be wondering what he could do with her if he took her alive. He could taste the prospect of it on the tip of his tongue. Every part of him wanted to torture Slater in front of her then have his way with her for days on end.
The other three were no doubt having similar thoughts. Slater could feel the machismo in the air. The camaraderie. The brotherhood. These four were the survivors. They were the ones who’d battled through adversity and flourished where their co-workers didn’t. They were the ones who would receive the rewards.
They were kings of the jungle.
So they weren’t on their A-game. Not even close. They’d watched almost twenty of their friends and colleagues die in bloody fashion. This was a gruesome game, and their fantasies ran wild with the possibilities of how they could take it out on the two prisoners.
And Ruby was feeding into that by over-sexualising herself.
It was brilliant.
One of the three men in front of Slater brandished his gun and said, ‘Over here, puta.’
He was practically salivating.
Ruby stepped forward slowly. She drew it out, elongating the time it took to cross the clearing, taking her sweet time.
The guy couldn’t stand it. He wanted his hands on her now.
He was the biggest of the four — a few inches taller than Slater, with dense muscle packed on his frame in slabs. He’d pose a problem in a fistfight through sheer size alone. In competitive mixed martial arts, he’d be several weight classes above Slater, and he probably outweighed Ruby by a hundred and fifty pounds.
Slater shivered at the thought of what he could do to her if she was tied up.
But she wasn’t tied up.
Not yet.
And that was where the variables lay.
The big guy stormed out of the woods and strode right up to her, intercepting her halfway across the clearing. They stood facing each other, right next to the cenote. The gaping hole hovered there, the blue water sparkling.
The big guy reached out and snatched her by the throat.
After all, she was a slim girl, and he figured he didn’t need to hold her at gunpoint.
Big mistake.
With veins protruding from her forehead, Ruby glanced around the guy’s giant frame and made eye contact with Slater.
The fake tears dissipated.
Her expression shifted from terror to focus.
The same acting transformation he’d seen when he’d first met her in Colombia.
Brilliant in its deception.
Slater reached up with both hands and simply ripped the gun out of the sicario’s fingers, breaking most of them in the process. Before the kid could even howl, Slater threw his skull back like a bowling ball and broke the kid’s nose on the back of his head, knocking a couple of teeth loose.
Then he spun round and planted the 9mm pistol against the kid’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
He pivoted again, and shot one of the guys in the undergrowth through the back of his head. When the second man turned with wide eyes to react to what was unfolding, Slater shot him too.
The bodies dropped, and Slater looked past them to see Ruby lying on her back on the rock, with her legs wrapped around the big guy’s knee and her hands around his ankle.
A rudimentary leg lock, but awfully effective at nullifying larger opponents.
Of course, the guy could have bent down and thundered a giant fist into her unprotected face and probably broken every bone in it, but he didn’t do that, because he was too busy keeping his balance. And that proved unsuccessful, because of the leverage and the way Ruby was torquing his ankle joint, so in an effort to keep her from shattering his foot he pitched sideways and toppled over.
Straight into the cenote.
She followed him in, and the pair vanished from sight, tumbling into the water.
Slater broke into a sprint for the sinkhole.
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He didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t consider his own safety.
He leapt in feet-first, clutching the 9mm tight in case he lost his grip during the freefall. But it was a short plunge, and he broke through the surface with an almighty splash. He hovered underwater, getting his bearings, and the silence rattled him. Compared to the carnage above the surface, it was eerily quiet. Then his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he jolted in surprise at the sight of the gargantuan cave system sprawling out below him. The cenote was the start of an elaborate underwater maze, and crippling claustrophobia seized him. Then he remembered he wasn’t dead yet, and that his body wouldn’t sink into the caves forever.
He kicked upward and broke the surface.
Water ran off his head, mixing with the blood, stinging his ear.
He blinked once and looked around.
Ruby was in front of him.
Facing him.
Treading water.
There was blood all over her. Over her face, in her hair, forming crimson rings around her glowing eyes.
He said, ‘Are you okay?’
She said, ‘It’s not my blood.’
She held up her knife, lifting it above the surface. She winked at him.
He said, ‘Where’s the body?’
‘Look down.’
Slater shook his head in disbelief, and came back up to the surface. She’d washed off the blood by that point. It must have spurted all over her when she’d slit his throat. But she’d ducked underwater and come back up clean.
So did he.
He didn’t even wait. He grabbed her, and pulled her close in the turquoise water, and kissed her with the sort of rabid energy that came from surviving something you shouldn’t have survived. She had the same passion, and it burned hot between them as they treaded water and locked lips and tasted each other’s warmth.
Between tongues, she muttered, ‘We did it.’
‘Yeah, we did.’
‘Right here?’ she said.
‘Why not?’
He pulled away and treaded in a half-circle, looking for a suitable resting place. They opted for the ladder, swimming over to it and climbing up a couple of rungs, just above the surface. They could manage. They were athletic, and powerful, and in the shapes of their lives. He picked her up and placed her one rung above, and she pulled the tube top down and he peeled the wet shirt over his head and they pressed their warm bodies together and kissed harder. She trailed her tongue down his chest, and he gently lowered a finger to her nipple and caressed it. She looped her fingers around his pants and tugged them downward.
Naked and sun-drenched and alive, he adjusted his position on the ladder and slipped himself inside her, and she wrapped both arms around his neck and caressed him and moaned with reckless abandon. It wasn’t about the sex. It was the indescribable connection, the shared trauma and the shared bloodshed and the shared everything — they were one and the same and only they could understand what it was like to kill and kill and kill and try to keep your soul intact in the process.