by Scott Bell
“What are you shooting at?” Cruz screamed.
Chupa stopped shooting and looked at him, confused. “I don’t know! The bullet came from up there!” He blasted another round upstairs, emptying the shotgun.
Chupa stared at the weapon, seeming at a loss as to why it failed to fire. Cruz had seen that look before, men in combat so jacked up on fear and adrenaline that they turned stupid and forgot simple things, like taking off the safety.
Or retreating to a safe position to reload.
Chips of gore-covered concrete exploded behind Chupa’s head. The big man stumbled into the wall, his face twice its normal size from the pressure wave of the bullet that had passed through his forehead. He fell in a heap, wearing a wide-eyed look of surprise.
Cruz screamed and pointed his CAR-15 around the corner of the stairs, keeping his body out of harm’s way. He let off a full magazine up the staircase, fire-hosing thirty rounds in a matter of seconds.
When the magazine ran dry, he popped in another one and retreated back into the shadow by the door. He fixed the CAR’s sights on the corner where the trucker would have to appear if he wanted to come down. Fidel crouched beside the open door, eyes wide and a white-knuckled death grip on his shotgun. Juan shouted from farther away, wanting to know what was happening.
Frustration and anger clawed at Cruz’s throat. “You motherfucker!” he bellowed up into the stairwell, which stank of blood and gun smoke. He could barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. “I will fucking kill you and piss on your dead face, you fucking piece of shit!”
After a heartbeat of silence, a quiet chuckle drifted down, followed by an ice-cold voice. “Bring it.”
CHAPTER 14
A trickle of moisture ran down his face, and Yeager swiped at it. The back of his hand came away streaked red. A bullet fragment or concrete chip had cut a groove from the side of his nose to his cheekbone. He hadn’t noticed when it happened, but once he knew about it, the wound began to sting. He counted himself lucky that was the only damage he’d taken.
The loudmouth who had promised to piss in his dead face—and it had to be Cruz—continued to scream curses up the stairwell, but he had switched to Spanish after Yeager’s taunt. Yeager sat on the bottom stair directly above the second-floor landing and listened to the rant. Nice technique, he decided. He would give it a seven or eight for style and enthusiasm, but Cruz couldn’t hold a candle to Martina, who could jumpstart a nuclear reactor with the volume, language, and venom of her cussing.
Yeager switched out magazines. Slipping the partially spent one into his hip pocket, he took stock. He didn’t feel too bad about his position, and time was on his side. The longer he held off the invaders, the better. Cruz would want to end this little adventure quickly, but he wouldn’t have counted on or planned for a siege situation. He had to be shitting bricks down there, expecting either cops or witnesses to show up at any moment. Since he’d whiffed on the quick kill, he might cut his losses and go away.
Yeah, and pigs might fly to the moon in cherry-colored rocket ships. I just hope these guys didn’t bring grenades.
Humberto Cruz. Revenge for his daughter had brought him here. Charlie, David, and Maria were in danger because of Yeager. More debt to add to his ledger. Charlie. David. Maria. These guys won’t touch a hair on any of the Buchanan family. Not. A. Hair.
Several seconds ticked away in silence. Dust blown loose in the flood of lead twisted and curled in the weak yellow light, tickling Yeager’s nose. He pinched back a sneeze. The stairs were covered in grit, new and old, and it crunched under his butt when he shifted position.
Cruz started issuing orders in Spanish, and Yeager strained to listen. The man spoke in the kind of overloud voice that old people used when they couldn’t hear. His ears must be ringing worse than mine.
Something, something… “Sprinkler valve off…” Something… Then a word came through loud and clear: “Fuego.”
Fire.
“Shit,” Yeager muttered. “I wish he hadn’t thought of that.”
All that Cruz and his gang had to do was shut off the water to the sprinkler system and light a fire in the warehouse. They could then sit back munching popcorn while they watched the place, including the inhabitants, go up in flames. Or they could pick Yeager and his friends off when they rushed outside in a panic.
Think, Abel. His instincts screamed for him to take the offensive, but charging downstairs into a crew of gunmen, from the lighted stairwell to the dark warehouse, would get him killed quickly and messily. Had he made it down earlier and played hide-and-seek in the dark, it would have been a different story, but the crooks had the advantage there. No, direct assault won’t do at all.
Yeager rose onto the balls of his bare feet and crept across the landing to the apartment’s second-floor door. Cruz shouted something, but Yeager couldn’t make out the words.
Yeager inched through the apartment door like a teenager sneaking home after curfew. The stairs to the third floor were on his left, and directly in front of him, a hall led to the front of the building. Two doors on each side, bedrooms on the left, workshop and storage room on the right. Silver light gleamed from the casement window at the end of the hall. Get a look at the street? Or go upstairs first? Yeager debated. Window or warning?
He started up the stairs. “Charlie!” he stage-whispered. “It’s me—Abel.”
“Okay. Come on up.”
He poked his head up far enough to see Charlie standing behind the sofa, revolver dangling.
“What happened?” she asked. “I heard shots.”
“Two down.” He bounded up the remaining stairs and crossed the room. “But listen, they’re planning on lighting a fire and burning us out.”
Her eyes widened. “A fire!”
“Yeah. I heard ’em talkin’. So I’m going out front to try to get around back before they figure out how to turn off the sprinklers.” He touched her arm and slipped past her, heading across the living room for the hall. “I don’t know how many are out front, so I need you to cover me from the window while I flush ’em out. When they go for me, lay down some cover fire so I can… eliminate the problem. Then you grab David and Maria and follow me out. Get to safety. Where’s that other fire stair?”
“Here,” she said, opening the last door on the left.
A business office lay beyond: desk, chairs, a computer monitor glowing with a spiraling screen saver. The office window overlooked the street. An exit sign glowed over a plain utilitarian door in the room’s far corner.
“Good. Cover me from here,” Yeager said. “Keep back from the window. Shoot through the glass if anybody makes a move on me.”
“But—”
“Oh, and watch your back. If they figure out I’m gone, they could come up the stairs.”
“Wait.” She grabbed his arm.
“What?” Yeager could feel time bleeding away, and he was itching to move.
“Don’t go around back. There’s nothing in this building worth you getting killed over. I’ll cover you from the window like you said. Then we’ll go down and all get away. We can call the police—”
“No.” Yeager shook his head, pulling away. “This guy’s after me, not you. I brought this problem to your door, so I’m not going to let them hurt you or burn your house down. Besides, they’ve tried to kill me twice now. They don’t get to try anymore.”
Yeager stopped at the exit, one hand braced on the push bar. His adrenaline spiked. The world dialed into focus like a camera lens being twisted. His hearing turned up, and time slowed to a carnivore’s rhythm. He knew the feeling well. What he hadn’t realized was how much he missed it.
He pushed open the door and slipped out, not looking back.
The door swung closed, and Charlie shivered. She had never been tested by violence. Physical confrontations were so far out of her comfort zone, she struggled to think clearly. Hyperventilation threatened to take over her breathing. Her pulse hammered, and her skin felt c
old and clammy. Ants seemed to be crawling on the back of her tongue.
She crept up to the window, stood to the side of it, and scanned the street below. She saw a few parked cars but no passing traffic or loitering pedestrians. Hunched down, she crossed to the other side of the window. Looking west on Fifth, she found the scene pretty much the same. Puddles of amber light reflected off car windshields, concealing any potential occupants.
Yeager would hit the door any second. An alarm bar on the street-level door would scream holy hell when pressed, something she’d found out by accident when she forgot to unlock it before going out. Wish I’d thought of popping the alarm on the door to attract attention. Too late now, though, and it might not have helped anyway.
She cocked her revolver and steadied her grip with both hands, holding the piece low, muzzle down. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her nerves, but the pounding in her chest threatened to reach overload. She had to wipe her hands, one at a time, on her shirt to dry them off.
Even though she was waiting for it, she jumped when the door alarm squealed. Sucking in a shuddering breath, she tried to focus on the street. She moved in front of the window. In her desperation not to miss anyone coming for Abel, she forgot about showing herself as a target. For tonight at least, she’d negotiate from behind a Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum.
There! A car door opened across the street, and a dark-haired man jumped out. Focused on something below her, possibly Abel, he started to raise the radio or cell phone he had in his left hand, while pointing a pistol with his right. In an instant, all the jittery nervousness flushed away, and she brought the Magnum up in a shooter’s stance, nerves calm, hands rock steady. The red tab on the front sight snapped into perfect block with the rear, and she placed the target on top of the sight-picture, as if she stood at the firing line on the range, facing nothing more dangerous than a paper target.
Letting out a half breath, she squeezed the trigger with a gentle caress.
CHAPTER 15
Book Finders
Austin, Texas
Hector Castillo squirmed and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Cruz entered the building across the street twelve minutes ago, and since then, Hector hadn’t heard a word. The leather creaked as he shifted again, trying to find a comfortable position for his aching bladder. How long did it take to break in and kill two people in their beds? They should have been finished, everyone long gone before the cops showed up.
He checked the clock again. Thirteen minutes. Hector liked the little dial-type clock, along with all the other amenities in the big Chrysler. It was a real gangster car, black and shiny and tough on the outside, creamy leather on the inside. If the cops ran the plates, the car would come up clean. But the stainless steel Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol on the seat would be a problem, as would Hector, a Mexican with an arrest record in two countries.
Hector had the motor running, blowing the air conditioning to keep out the muggy air and mosquitoes. The AC fan and the engine made so little noise that he had no problem hearing the shriek of the emergency exit when it sounded. The trucker burst out of the building and curled into a crouch, his handgun tracking like a turret from left to right.
Hector’s bladder clenched in pain. What? Why is he out here? What happened to Humberto?
The trucker apparently didn’t spot Hector behind the tinted glass, since he jogged for the corner across the street to Hector’s left. The man wore jeans but no shirt and no shoes.
He’s going around back! Hector jerked the handle and butted his shoulder into the door. He grabbed his gun and radio on the way out. Each hand filled, Hector’s heart thumped. His tongue buzzed with fear. Aiming one-handed, he swung the weapon to bear on the trucker. His thumb stabbed for the push-to-talk button on his radio.
Boom! The concrete at his feet exploded. The trucker skidded to a stop and spun to face Hector. The passenger window next to Hector crunched and shattered. He never even heard that shot.
“Fuck this.” Hector dived back into the car.
Another round from the cannon slapped into the roof, blowing a hole through it and thudding into the upholstery. He tossed the gun and radio on the floorboard and slapped the shift lever into Drive. Huddled behind the dash, Hector stomped the gas pedal before the transmission engaged, causing the car to leap ahead. The rear window starred from another impact. Hector didn’t know which gun had caused it, and he didn’t care.
He floored the accelerator, and the big car flew, engine winding up with a powerful hum. He peered over the dash enough to keep the car in a straight line but didn’t sit all the way up until he was six blocks away from the bookstore.
Twelve blocks away, blowing through another stoplight, he realized his pants were soaked.
Yeager paused, making sure Hector wasn’t coming back and none of his friends were coming out to play. The taillights of the big Chrysler bobbed up and down as it bounded over a dip in the road, sparks scattering from the undercarriage. He jogged halfway into the street and looked up at the shattered third floor window and waved an “all clear.” Charlie appeared, waved back, then disappeared.
Not every day that you ran across a woman who’d back you up in a gunfight, he mused as he trotted for the street corner, and with a gun big enough to launch a space shuttle.
On his first tour in the sandbox, a grizzled sergeant from Alabama with service medals dating back to the Spanish-American War had taught Yeager about tactics in a firefight. Once, seeing a squad pinned down in a box canyon, Yeager had scrambled up, ready to charge headfirst into the firefight.
Sergeant Masterson had grabbed Yeager’s arm and pulled him back down. “Hold up, boy.”
“Fuck ‘hold up,’ Sar’nt,” Yeager, then a Private First Class, screamed back. “We gotta bust those guys out.”
“And we will, son. But one thing you gotta learn is how to hurry carefully.”
That lesson became Law Number Five: Hurry carefully.
It came back to him from time to time, especially when he forgot something important, like reconnaissance. He rounded the corner and sprinted for the alley. He was already past the second watcher before he realized there was one. Stepping out of a dark gap between two buildings on the other side of the four-lane street, the slender, dark-haired man wasn’t much more than a flash of motion in Yeager’s peripheral vision.
Sergeant Masterson had once addressed the platoon. “In most firefights, civilian and military, the number of rounds expended exceeded those few that make contact with their intended target by an order of magnitude. In the grip of adrenaline, even trained marksmen can blow through entire magazines at astoundingly close ranges and hit nothing more than dirt.” Then he spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the dusty Afghanistan road. “If I see any of you pussies wasting ammo, shooting without looking, going full rock ’n’ roll, or trying any Wyatt Earp trick shots, or using your weapons in any manner except aimed, disciplined fire, you better hope the Tally-ban gets you before I do.”
Yeager was glad his old sergeant couldn’t see him being a total jackass. Yeager registered the movement to his left and classified it as a threat, processing the information through his combat-trained mind at overclock speed. Before the thought had fully transformed from recognition to conscious reaction, he was sliding to a stop and pivoting left, weapon locked in both hands, torso rotating. The target picture coalesced over his sights, and Yeager instantly confirmed “threat” and “weapon,” at the same moment his finger took up slack on the trigger. It was the most heinous violation of Masterson’s rules that Yeager ever committed: a snap shot in the dark, at a moving target more than thirty yards distant.
But it hit the would-be ambusher—dead, solid, perfect—center mass. The guy spun backward and landed in a pile.
I wish Por Que had seen that shot. He’ll never believe it, not for a minute.
Yeager shook off his own shock and continued his run for the alley. He paused at the corner—better late than never—to
check for more watchers.
Book Finders occupied the entire corner of Fifth and San Jacinto. The alley behind the building extended a short way before the cut-out for the dock indented to the right. Yeager’s rig took up most of the free space. He had left it backed up to the overhead door, parked parallel to the alley. A van, presumably the assailants’, blocked the lane.
Yeager skirted the van, checking the interior for the enemy before moving past it. He winced as sharp bits of gravel and other debris jabbed at his bare feet. A can tinkled down the alley when an unexpected gust of wind rattled through the night. A bite of cooler air followed, blowing off some of the muggy heat and chilling the sweat on his bare chest.
Moths battered the single, murky sodium vapor light mounted over the dock. A car horn blared, followed by a squeal of brakes, the sound muted by the intervening distance of several streets. Close by, nothing moved, and no traffic passed. Fifth and San Jacinto were unaccountably empty.
Where the hell is everybody? Downtown Austin on Friday night, even at three o’clock in the morning, there ought to be people. Kids partying, delivery drivers, cops, something. It was a mystery he didn’t have time to solve.
He checked around the front of his rig and found the warehouse door mangled, hanging open at the top of a short stairway.
Fidel and Juan couldn’t find the sprinkler riser anywhere inside the warehouse perimeter. When they looked outside, they finally found a door on the exterior wall labeled Authorized Personnel Only.
“In here,” Fidel said and popped the door with his pry bar.
Pay dirt. The room was a simple square of concrete, reeking of dust and cobwebs, containing two standing pipes with a huge valve in the middle of each. The valves, mounted about waist high, were controlled by large wheels, like those on a submarine hatch. Each wheel had a padlocked chain running through it, locking the valve open to prevent the kind of damage they intended to inflict.