Ballistic (30 page)

Ernesto rose to a knee to pull a third M1 carbine magazine out of his hip pocket, he leaned to shout something into Diego's ear, and then he spun ninety degrees, dropped the rifle, and clutched high on his right shoulder. He slid halfway down the stairs on his old back, shouted from the shock of the impact, which felt as if he'd been kicked in the shoulder by a mule.

At the bottom of the stairs his wife appeared, a candle in her hand; she began climbing up to him, shrieking and crying; he yelled at her, ordered her back to the cellar, told her that he was fine.

Through the numbness in his arm and a fresh cold chill that now sloshed across his body like a high, cool wave over his little fishing boat, he began climbing the stairs again to fight alongside his grandson, reaching for the wooden rifle on his way.

Ramses Cienfuegos had fought off two men on the second-floor south
mirador
. At first he'd been alongside Colonel Gamboa's sister, Laura, but a flash-bang grenade had been tossed into the upstairs parlor from the
mirador
itself and exploded between them. Laura had stumbled back into the hallway, out of sight, but Ramses had recovered quickly enough to charge forward instead of back. He saw two men on the
mirador
, they were preparing to attack, but Ramses surprised them with his aggressive tactics. The men escaped from him by leaping over the balcony towards the patio below, and when he arrived at the railing and looked down, he saw the marines disappear into the night around the west side of the casa grande. He was certain the assassins would regroup and try to breach from the ground floor, so he sprinted to the staircase, ran down it, and turned into the hallway towards the west wing.

He ran down the hallway, passed several rooms, and then turned sharply and entered a courtyard, made of long open colonnades that formed a box around a garden of weeds with a huge garbage-strewn fountain in the middle. The open sky shone into the space and illuminated it just enough for him to see his way forward down the stone tiles. He ran towards a doorway on the far side.

He cleared the room beyond with his submachine gun, found it to be an old storeroom, and also discovered a wide open door to the outside.

He knew in an instant that the men were already in the house.

Somewhere behind him.

Ramses Cienfuegos retraced his steps. He still heard gunfire on the far end of the house, but he also knew that the men he'd seen earlier could not have made it that far in such a short time. He reentered the courtyard, followed the east-west colonnade back to the east, and then turned to the north to go back into the hallway that led to the main portion of the casa grande.

As he jogged, he looked away for an instant, out into the garden, wondering if someone was hiding in the tall grasses and weeds.

When he looked back up, a man was there, thirty feet away and running up the tiled colonnade towards him.

A
marino
in full battle dress, carrying an MP5.

Both Mexicans saw each other at the same time. Both raised their weapons as their eyes widened in surprise and fear.

The
marino
fired his MP5 up the hall, spraying bullets towards the
federale
. Ramses fired his Colt 635 down the hall, spraying bullets back at the
sicario
.

Ramses Cienfuegos went down first, a hot snap into his right biceps, another to his right shoulder, and then his helmet shattered and smashed and leapt straight off his head into the air. He spun away while firing his weapon, supersonic lead arced from the muzzle and nailed the
sicario
in
his
right arm, then across his chest plate, tipping him backwards and knocking him down.

Both fell flat on their backs on the cold tile, only twenty-five feet apart and bleeding in the dark colonnade hallway. Both men's primary weapons were empty, and both men sat up and struggled to reload, encumbered as they were by their wounds and the slick blood coating their weapons and their spare magazines.

“¡Cabrón!”
Ramses shouted as he rolled onto his right hip, ejected the spent magazine from the well of the rifle, used the same arm to retrieve a loaded spare from his assault vest, and struggled to reload.

“¡Chingado federale!”
The marine shouted as a reply; his voice echoed in the hallway and across the courtyard. He'd given up on reloading his rifle; instead he pushed the weapon away, reached across his body with his left hand, and with a shout of pain drew his pistol from the drop-leg holster on his right hip. He fought his inertia to roll back to his left to line up a shot.

Ramses gritted his teeth against the searing burn of the bullet wounds, screamed another obscenity at the assassin, and realized he was beaten. He struggled to pull back the charging handle on the rifle with his one good hand; he looked up to see the black pistol emerge at the end of the
sicario
's arm, saw the assassin scoot on the tile in his expanding blood pool to get his weapon around for the killing shot.

Ramses knew he could not ready his weapon before his enemy could raise his. He could not pull back the charging handle one-handed without propping the butt of the gun on the tile, and he had no time to do this. He wore no handgun, he'd given it to Major Gamboa's sister, and without a loaded rifle he had no way to engage his foe. So he let the rifle fall to the floor, sat there on the cold tile. His legs splayed out in front of him, and he relaxed, thought of his family, and waited to die.

The marine leaning on his side ahead of him grimaced in pain as his weapon rose. He clearly saw he would get the drop on the
federale
, and his face, contorted in pain, morphed into a smile.

Ramses Cienfuegos drew a long breath and sighed. Watched his killer enjoy the moment.

“¡Come mierda!” Eat shit!
Ramses shouted.

And then, as silent and as fast as the predawn breeze that drifted through the hacienda, the American sprinted from around the corner and into the tile colonnade behind the marine. He carried the long, old, side-by-side double-barrel shotgun, and his eyes were down at the open breach of the weapon. He was trying to reload it as he ran, but when he recognized the scene in front of him, the gringo's eyes widened. Ramses watched the gringo discard the two fresh shotgun shells back over his shoulder, and then the wounded Mexican
federale
watched the American toss the big shotgun into the air in front of him while he ran forward as fast as he could.

The marine assassin knew nothing of the danger behind him. He took his time to level his Sig Sauer pistol at the injured man sitting ahead of him on the tile.

The wooden-stocked scattergun spun through the air backwards, the gringo caught it with both hands around the barrel near the muzzle as he neared the unsuspecting marine on the floor in front of him. The American took hold of the weapon by the barrel, reared back as he ran, and swung the shotgun with all his might—like a baseball batter swinging for the fences, like a golfer forcing every ounce of energy behind the head of his driver—and the hickory butt stock of the shotgun connected with the back of the
sicario
's head, just as the Mexican began to pull the trigger on his pistol.

The impact of hard wood on flesh and bone was sickening, the smack of a melon impacting the street after falling from a truck at speed. It echoed across the courtyard and blood splatter showered the tile and stucco column just ahead of where the assassin sat.

The
sicario
would have died no faster had he been decapitated. He tumbled forward behind a spray that shone in the moonlight, and he fell on his face. His pistol disappeared under his body.

Ramses blew a long sigh of euphoric relief as the American dropped his shotgun and ran up the hall to check on him.

Just then two more
marinos
appeared behind the gringo; they made the mistake of first looking right instead of left, and Ramses saw the men before they saw their two targets. They recovered in a second though and began turning towards the left, began raising their rifles.

“¡Atrás!” Behind!
Ramses screamed at the American while sliding his stubby rifle hard down the tiled hallway towards him.
“¡Cárgalo!” Charge it!
he screamed, and the bearded gringo understood immediately, dove headfirst with his arms out, slid forward on his chest to reach the weapon.

The cracks of rounds and the concussion of the withering gunfire of two weapons rocked the narrow hall. Stucco and stone ripped from the walls just above both men, sending sharp shards of two-hundred-year-old building materials through the air like jet-powered hornets. Gentry grabbed the blood-smeared sub gun not ten feet in front of Ramses, he rolled onto his back while racking the bolt back on the little rifle, and began firing before he'd even found his targets.

As the two
sicarios'
bullets stitched lower along the walls on either side of Court and Ramses, Gentry's return fire advanced on the tile floor, creating a fault line–like fissure that chased towards the two men forty feet on. Terra-cotta exploded in sparks and smoke closer and closer to the men, until both marine assassins reeled backwards, spinning and jolting from multiple gunshot wounds as they stumbled and died.

“Fuck!” shouted Court, but he could not hear himself. His ears rang. He kept his eyes and the sights of the nearly empty Colt trained on the two forms slumped in the smoky moonlight ahead. Behind him he heard Ramses crawling forward.

“You okay, amigo?” asked Court without taking his eyes from the gun sites.

Ramses crawled up next to Court, lay on the tile on the American's left side. Ramses spit out a mouthful of stucco and terra-cotta and sweat. He answered back in English that was delivered in some sort of poor impersonation. “Yeah, dude. That was awesome.”

Court just laughed. He knew the adrenaline running through him would make him edgy for about as long as his ears rang. And after that he would crash hard.

Most of the surviving defenders gathered back in the living room fifteen minutes later. A crowing rooster told them the dawn was near, but the sky outside remained coal black.

Gentry stood, his hands on his hips, bloodstains drying on his denim jacket from his chest to the top of his pants. His beard sparkled with perspiration. He'd just returned from the driveway outside, where he'd found Eddie's brother's body lying across the front seats of the old farm truck. Wearily, he announced to the room, “Ignacio is dead.”

“He died trying to rescue us,” said Luz.

“No doubt,” Court replied, though he had every doubt in the world. A quick glance to Ernesto confirmed Gentry's suspicion that Ignacio's own father didn't believe his son had gone out like a hero, either.

But neither man spoke up.

The five remaining members of the Gamboa family were huddled together on the sofa, sobbing and crying now. Ernesto seemed lost in space at this point; there were tears in his eyes, but he was not as energetic in his misery as were the rest. His wife diligently bandaged her husband's shoulder. Ernesto just kept his chin high and ignored the pain as he gazed off into the darkened corners of the room.

Court continued with the bad news, and Elena translated for those who did not understand. “Ramses is wounded, shot twice, but he's a tough little bastard. He'll fight if we get hit again.” Ramses was in the kitchen just now, pouring clear tequila from a bottle all over his arm and shoulder. It hurt like a bitch, but it served as a decent anesthetic. The bandages that Elena had created by tearing bedsheets would help stanch the blood flow.

Court next looked at Laura. “Inez is dead, too. We found her in the chapel.” He paused. Tried to think of something “right” to say. “She went quick. No pain.”

Laura nodded distantly. Fatigue and shock had blunted the blow. Court noticed she did not even cry.

Court continued. “There's more, I'm afraid. The truck is not going anywhere. It's riddled with bullets and smashed. And . . . ”

“And?” asked Diego. He held the M1 carbine in his hand like a security blanket. He'd fired it twenty times at the man who'd been here in this room twenty minutes prior, and although there was neither a body nor a blood trail leading away from the room, Diego felt like he'd protected his family by holding off the attacker.

“And when I was outside, I heard trucks out in the distance, out past the walls of the hacienda.”

“Trucks?”

“Yes. They sounded like big armor-plated trucks.”

Laura stared through her bloodshot eyes. She understood. Nodded
. “Federales.”

Court nodded. “I'm going to assume they are not friendlies. A half dozen trucks, maybe. I'm guessing there could be fifty men out there past the wall.”