No Room for Mercy (7 page)

Only in town for a total of four days, Carmella Lapiente` was now
putting her plan in motion. Toodie and Phoebe had completed the first
phase of the organized hit by spraying a kids’ birthday party
in their own neighborhood with automatic gunfire to preoccupy police
throughout the city in order to go after their main targets, which
were nine drug traffickers on the northwest side of town.

“Who was that lady you shot, Toodie?” Phoebe asked as she
looked back at the carnage.

“Who the fuck cares? She was an easy target. She kept me from
having to shoot up the entire front of the home.” Toodie
answered while sliding another clip into her Heckler and Koch MP5 as
the driver sped up the street.

The three silver Hummers cruised through town toting a dozen hired
female killers through the streets of Valle Hermoso shortly before
midnight. It may have been late down in Mexico, but it was the middle
of summer and the town’s people often hung out into the wee
hours of the night grilling, playing dominoes and listening to music,
but what had just happened on the southeast side of town was only the
beginning of a night of mayhem and massacre.

Toodie and Phoebe’s crew wheeled into the northwest side of
town and entered a neighborhood just east of Highway 53 where there
were numerous two story bungalows with neatly trimmed front lawns and
backyards. Custom-designed swimming pools and driveways containing
Mercedes, BMWs and Ferraris belonging to the town’s wealthiest
were mainstays. The people here felt immune to the violence that
often plagued the southeast side of the city, but some were about to
receive a rude awakening—literally.

Turning down one dark street, the Perez sisters and company slowed to
a creep as they came upon a house in the middle of the block whose
occupants seemed to be settled in for the night. The Hummers hadn’t
stopped completely before Toodie, Phoebe, and several more soldiers
hopped out and ran up to the front of the home where one of the
soldiers aimed her twelve gauge and blew the double wooden doors wide
open with a single gunshot blast. Screams began to be heard inside
the home as the Perez sisters and their gang charged into the home.

“
Carmella Lapiente` dica hola! Carmella Lapiente` dica
hola!”
(Carmella Lapiente` says hello! Carmella Lapiente`
says hello!) was sung constantly amidst the gunfire as the agonizing
screams of men, women and a couple of children slowly subsided.
Amidst the smoke and gurgling sounds of the dead and dying, Toodie
and Phoebe emerged a couple of minutes later with their soldiers
trotting behind them and jumped back inside their rides and the crew
rolled on towards their next destination about four miles away.

“
Qué horas
son?”
(What time is it?) Toodie asked as she
slid another clip into her MP5.

“
Doce cuarenta y cinco.”
(Twelve forty-five.) one
of the soldiers responded as she grabbed two hand grenades and passed
one to Phoebe.

“
Tres abajo, seis más
que ir.”
(
Three
down, six more to go.) Toodie said as she reached for the bottle of
tequila once more.

Putting in work down in Mexico was nothing new for the Perez sisters.
In fact, they preferred murdering here because they could use more
crucial tactics and do things on a scale that would undoubtedly bring
about a Congressional Hearing if they were ever perpetrated on
American soil. An entire family consisting of a husband, a wife, two
children and two other soldiers had been killed. Everybody in the
house, with the exception of the kids, was key members of the Gacha
Cartel, but they’d just been wiped out in a matter of minutes.

Entering another neighborhood just north of their previous locale
several minutes later, Toodie noticed that a party was still underway
out in of front the house they were planning on hitting. It wasn’t
a problem, however, because Toodie actually wanted people around for
this third attack so as to strike terror in the hearts of those who
may have wanted to aide Gacha; thereby deterring them from deciding
to retaliate against the Lapiente` family in Valle Hermoso once they
left for America.

The vehicles slowed to a halt a ways down from the celebration where
Phoebe hopped out, pulled the pin on the grenade and lunged it into
the belly of the crowd. The small, green metal ball bounced on the
ground and rolled a few feet and paused in front of a Mexican man who
was laughing and sipping Sangria wine and he quickly took notice.

“
Bomba de mano! Bomba de mano!”
(Grenade!
Grenade!) the man yelled as he and the crowd scattered.

Several seconds later the grenade exploded and gunfire erupted. A
couple of soldiers returned fire and Toodie saw one of her soldiers
go down as a second grenade, thrown by one of the Perez sisters’
soldiers exploded. Two Lieutenants belonging to the Gacha Cartel lost
limbs in the blast and their shrapnel-filled corpses now lay sprawled
out on the well-sculpted lawn.

Windows had shattered on cars and adults were shielding the young as
the gun battle intensified. While running for cover, a second soldier
belonging to the Perez sisters went down. The people here weren’t
going to go down easy, Toodie understood, but the crew still had
managed to kill two more of the men on Carmella’s hit list.
When she saw the last four marks jump into a white Cadillac Escalade
and speed off, Toodie yelled aloud, “
Vuelven a caer! Los
cuatro en que jeep es que estamos! Let’s go!”
(Fall
back! The four in that jeep is who we’re after! Let’s
go!)

The gang of seven ran back to their rides while steadily firing off
rounds to keep their enemies pinned down. When Toodie and Phoebe
reached their Hummer, they eyed their dead driver slumped over in the
front seat, the top of her skull missing and her body trembling in
rapid, jerking motions. Phoebe ran around to the driver’s side
and pulled the young woman out by her feet and hopped in behind the
wheel. “
Que manera de escaper! Veamos!”
(They
getting away! Let’s move!) she said as she brushed shattered
windshield glass off the dash.

Toodie and two of her soldiers hopped in and continued spraying the
home’s front lawn from the passenger side as Phoebe sped off in
the direction of their intended victims. They left in their wake
three dead men, a wounded woman, a dead little boy and a score or
more of children and adults who would all be scarred for life after
witnessing such carnage. It was a miracle more weren’t killed
at the hands of these vicious banditos.

Inside the Escalade, the last four survivors were in a state of
confusion. They’d been hit on their home turf and were trying
to put the pieces together as they headed east out of town down a
dark and lonely four lane highway. The two men in the backseat were
tending to their wounds while trying to reload their handguns while
the two guys in the front passenger seat were on the phone with
Rafael’s bodyguards.

During the chaos, a silver Hummer pulled alongside and a grenade
landed in the lap of the man in the back driver’s side seat.
“
Bomba de mano! Bomba de mano,”
he cried. “
Oh
mi Dios detener el automovil!”
(Oh my God stop the car!)

The Escalade swerved violently from the right lane to the left lane
and skidded out of control, going into a spiral spin that left if
facing the three Hummers when it finally came to a halt. The man with
the grenade in his lap had tossed it into the front seat in a state
of panic as all four men hopped out of the Escalade upon its
detonation. The driver’s midsection was ripped open by
shrapnel, but he continued running away from the chaos while holding
onto his mangled entrails. The soldier in the passenger seat was
decapitated by the explosion’s shock, his head blasted off
completely. The gang of nine emerged from their Hummers and
surrounded the last two survivors and opened fire, riddling their
bodies with hot lead.

“
Obtener los machetes.”
(Get the machetes.) Toodie
commanded as she stood amongst the mangled corpses.

*******

The following morning, Quintessa and Carmella were over to their
villa milling around their kitchen. Carmella was scanning images of
the gruesome shootings the night before and the decapitated bodies of
four men along the highway on the east side of town that had been
printed in the newspaper. “They’ve done just as I’ve
asked, Ma-Ma,” she said happily.

“Don’t they always?” Quintessa smiled as she spoon
fed a little girl a plate of eggs and sausage. The nine year-old
child was undoubtedly terrified, having been snatched from her bed
just before dawn while her mother and father and two sisters sat on
the living room floor of their home handcuffed and blindfolded. She
sat blindfolded and handcuffed while being spoon fed by her
kidnappers, but she was so nervous, she’d vomited some of her
food into her lap just as the spoon touched her lips.

Quintessa jumped up and kicked the little girl’s legs. “
Usted
descuidada puta!
” (You sloppy, whore!) she
yelled aloud. “
Mira el
desastre que has hecho en mi piso caro!”
(Look at the mess you’ve made on my expensive floor!)

The little girl was heaving uncontrollably with tears streaming down
her face. “
Quiero ir a casa. Quiero ir a casa,”
she cried.

“You’ll go home soon enough! So long as your father does
as we say!” Quintessa snapped just as her daughter’s
cellphone rang.

“
Hola?”
Carmella said.

“The mayor says he will do as you ask, but he wants to make
certain his child is still alive,” DeAngelo remarked.

“Is he with you?”

“Si.”

“Ma-Ma? We have the mayor,” Carmella said.

“Put him on the speaker phone,” Quintessa said as she sat
down beside the little girl. “Your father wants to hear your
voice,” she told the child.

“Pa-Pa?” the little girl cried.

“
Rita, estoy aquí.
Usted estará bien. Usted estará de acuerdo.”
(
Rita,
I’m here. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.) the
mayor said as he sat at the kitchen table of his home surrounded by
four women toting machine guns.

“
Estoy asustado,
Pa-Pa.”
(
I’m
scared, Pa-Pa.)

“It’ll be okay.” the mayor told his daughter just
before Quintessa’s voice came across the phone.

“
Se me cruzan nunca
ves a tu hija otra vez y vamos a matar a ella y al resto de su
familia, entienden?”
(
You cross
me you never see your daughter again and we will kill her and the
rest of your family, understand?) Quintessa asked calmly as she sat
beside the mayor's daughter.

“You’ll get whatever you ask. Just don’t hurt her.”
the mayor pleaded.

“She’ll be okay so long as you do what we ask. We hold
her a week until we cross the border. If anybody comes near me your
daughter will most certainly die. And then I’ll have the rest
of your family murdered before I kill you.” Quintessa said in
Spanish before she nodded towards Carmella, signaling her daughter to
end the call.

*******

A few hours after she and her mother conversed with the mayor of
Valle Hermoso and stated their terms, Carmella was back in her old
neighborhood where she’d met up with the Perez sisters.

“Good job last night.” Carmella told her girls as she
entered the front yard of the small brick bungalow that was used as a
safe house.

“That shit was fun actually,” Toodie said through
laughter. “We lost three of our own, but the job is done.”

“I heard. I will pay their families for their troubles before I
leave here. You and Phoebe need to go and cross the border now. I've
paid our guys on both sides so while they are there you must go.”
Carmella told Toodie.

“Okay. You not coming? We were waiting on you, boss.”

“I’m awaiting our first shipment, Toodie. DeAngelo is
meeting our supplier later today and we still have the mayor’s
daughter in our possession. I’ll be here about another week
until our shipment crosses over. This business with your Somali
friends is your next job in America, Toodie. I want you to set up a
meeting a week from Sunday. Get that done before I get to Saint
Louis.”

“Si, boss,” Toodie answered as she and Phoebe began
making their way inside the house to prepare for their trip back to
America.

“
Me dijo que nos vemos, Carmella!”
(She told me to
see you, Carmella!) a little girl yelled aloud to Carmella just as
she was about to climb back to her Jaguar.

How this little girl had gotten up close to her had left Carmella
puzzled, but she had seen the child’s face before and knew she
wasn’t a threat. She emerged from the backseat of her car and
looked down at the little girl and asked, “
Dónde
está tu madre?
” (Where’s your
mother?)

“
Estuvimos en una
fiesta anoche.”
(
We
were at a party last night.) the little girl told Carmella as she
pointed up the street to where yellow tape surrounded a house on the
corner. “
Me dijo que
asegurarme de que te veo bien antes de los ojos cerrados.”
(
She
told me to make sure I see you right before her eyes closed.)

Carmella eyed the corner and quickly realized that her crew had
killed the woman who’d asked her the same day that she’d
first returned to the old neighborhood, if she could take her
daughter to America to have surgery on a heart murmur. She’d
actually forgotten about the promise she’d made to the little
girl’s mother, but she was going to see to it that the little
girl and her mother made it to America to have the surgery and send
them back home anyway had they reminded her, so Carmella went ahead
with her promise. She had the little girl wait outside and she
returned to the safe house in order to notify Toodie and Phoebe of
the change in plans.