Target Deck - 02 (46 page)

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.

Years ago he had picked something up from a couple Croatian soldiers, something he could hardly do on a good day much less today. As Deckard dug into his bag of tricks, he only had seconds to act and what he had in mind was the only tactical gambit he could come up with.

Readjusting his grip on the knife, he took a deep breath.

“Get out of the way gringo! We can both walk away from this, you and me-”

Deckard stepped out into the middle of the aisle with the Sub-Saharan held over his head.

“What-”

The drug lord's words were cut off as Deckard hurled the knife through the air in an overhand throw. The blade rocked across the distance between Deckard and Jimenez, the Kazakh's eyes went wide as the blade shot towards him.

Deckard had fucked up the throw, although it was on target, the blade spun in the air and the handle impacted the drug lord's face and glanced off. Jimenez bucked backwards in surprise as the blow struck him below the eye.

The Kazakh felt the arms around him go slightly limp as Jimenez was distracted and managed to tear himself away.

Jimenez tried to bring the Smith and Wesson back into play but Deckard was already on top of him. His fist hammered Jimenez in the nose, spraying blood down his shirt. A knee slammed the drug lord in the groin and then in the face as he doubled over. Once again he tried to align the pistol with his antagonist but it was torn from his hand.

Sprawled on the ground, Jimenez looked up at his attacker. What he saw was a nightmare of war. What he saw wasn't human.

Deckard reached down and picked up his weapon.

Reaching for the drug lord he clenched the hair on the top of Jimenez' head in his fist. Deckard held the black blade into the air.

“Wait, wait!”

As the blade swung down, Deckard began to chop.

40

“Order the offensive on the black side of the objective to fall back.”

Pat triggered a burst of AK fire before finding cover behind a stone pillar. It was Deckard. His voice sounded like sandpaper. By now everyone thought that their commander was dead. He'd been radio silent for twenty minutes or so.

“Six, is that you?” Pat radioed back.

“Have our forces on the far end of the museum pull back. Give the cartel fighters a way out.”

“Let them retreat?”

“Let them find their exit strategy. Set up a linear on Gurrion Street. I'm going to flush them all towards you.”

“By yourself?”

“Make it happen.”

The former Delta Operator did as he was told. Kurt Jager had arrived with Commadante Zero and his Zapatista rebels just as the Samruk mercenaries were going to be overrun. Kurt had taken the rebels through the botanical gardens on the back side of the museum turned cartel fortress and engaged the enemy. Talking to Jager on the assault net, he now explained Deckard's plan to him.

The German was unconvinced but acknowledged the instructors and began carrying them out.

“What was that?” Sergeant Major Korgan asked him as they waited for the next surge of fire from the cartel gunmen.

“Deckard,” Pat answered. “He's alive!”

One by one, the black masked Zapatista rebels began falling back, abandoning their positions behind the walls and statues in the museum gardens where they had the cartel gunmen pinned down. Trapped between the Mexican revolutionaries on one side and the mercenaries on the other, the cartel men had found themselves in a double envelop. Before the rebels had shown up they were confident in a victory, now that reinforcements had arrived, they were certain to be cut down where they stood.

It was just a matter of time.

Now they had an opening, a way to walk away from the firefight but no one dared to defy The Beast. Many were survivors of the gladiator arena and had no desire to go back. Others were trusted cartel gunfighters and knew better than to betray Jimenez unless they wanted to be dangling under a bridge come nightfall.

A solitary figure came walking out of the first floor of the museum. He had what looked like a short sword in one hand and a clump of something in the other. The cartel men were still receiving some fire from the mercenaries but the two forces had basically reached a stalemate. From the windows, alcoves, and rooftops, the cartel gunmen craned their necks around to look at the newcomer.

His desert camouflage uniform was torn open at the knees and other places on the legs and arms, some of the holes exposing bloody wounds. His clothes were also stained red with blood. His equipment was torn and frayed, magazine and grenade pouches hung empty.

“Jimenez is dead!” he shouted at them in Spanish.

Thrusting his hands in the air, the cartel men could now see the bloody knife and the severed head of Jimenez, the one they knew as The Beast. The decapitated head was ragged around the neck from chopping blows that separated it from the body. The jaw hung down as flies were already beginning to accumulate inside his open mouth.

The knifeman threw the severed head in the dirt.

“This war is over!”

The cartel men didn't need to be told twice. If the mercenaries and the rebels had gotten what they came for and now they were giving them away out, they would gladly take it. Dropping their M-4 rifles, some held on to their pistols, some didn't, most just ran without giving it another thought. They dashed out of the museum, leaving their posts and fighting positions and ran past the guy with the giant knife without daring to look him in the eyes.

Close to fifty gunmen flooded out the back gate and out on the street.

Deckard waited until he heard Kurt Jager initiate the ambush as the cartel men ran right into the kill zone before moving on.