The Colombian Rogue Page 25

  Lightning flashed, revealing a blocky figure outlined in black on the other side of the bedroom window.

  “Get down!” she said as the bulletproof glass started spiderwebbing and splintering. It was a rapid-fire weapon, probably a small-caliber submachine gun.

  She got up and grabbed the witness by the elbow and dragged him after her toward the hallway.

  The witness screamed, and he fell against her into the hallway. “I’ve been shot!” he said. “I’ve been shot again . . .”

  Cali dragged the heavy policeman’s body out into the hallway, too, and closed the bedroom door. Then she fell on Juan’s lifeless body, straddling his waist. His eyes were closed.

  She traced her gloved fingers over the three gunshots in Juan’s vest. She wormed her finger into the one closest to his shoulder.

  Juan’s mouth opened and sucked in a painful gasp. His eyes simultaneously shot open, his torso came up like the old game Don’t Wake Daddy!, and his head knocked against Cali’s.

  “Ow,” she said, and got off him.

  Juan rolled over onto his side and propped himself up, vomiting. He wiped his arm over his mouth and then threw up again. Lightning flashed, illuminating the hall in blinding white. “What happened?” he said, sweat dripping from his face.

  “The policeman shot you.”

  He remembered. He clambered over to the policeman’s body and started to slap the man’s face from side to side. “Wake up, damn you.”

  The man gasped and opened his eyes.

  “How many are out there?” Juan asked.

  “Uhh—”

  Juan jabbed his gun up under the man’s throat.

  “Nine . . .”

  “Plus a sniper,” Juan said.

  “ . . . no sniper . . . just nine . . .”

  Juan slammed the butt of his gun against the man’s temple, and he blacked out again while Juan’s mind processed what he’d just heard. It meant Paul was on his own out there, and if they survived the onslaught of sicarios, he’d then have to deal with his brother. He was sure that was Paul’s plan. Let them soften him up and then finish the job. It was smart.

  The sandwich policeman looked back at them from his position at the other end of the hallway, peeking out into the living room. “Ten shooters out there?”

  “Looks like it,” Juan said. “Stick with Cali and me, and we’ve got a chance.”

  “What about me?” the witness said.

  “Stay out of our way.”

  “They shot me. I’m bleeding. They’ll kill me. Then they’ll kill my fam—”

  “Get in the bathroom and lock the door,” Juan said, knowing there weren’t any windows in the bathroom. It was the most structurally secure room in the house.

  The bathroom door closed behind the witness only a moment before the bedroom door started to open. Juan and Cali both fired through the door, and a man stumbled backward, his hand pulling the door in after him. Another man stood behind the one they had just shot, and Cali fired once. The man’s head snapped backward, and he fell, his gun erupting in an arcing line of rapid-fire bullets that ate into the bed, headboard, wall, and ceiling.

  Juan stepped into the room and made for the first guard, who was struggling to get up. Juan slammed his pistol into the man’s face, sending his nose backward into his skull, and wrestled the submachine gun from his hands. When a third man tried to climb through the window, Juan let off a barrage of multi-burst fire. The man didn’t try to get in again.

  “They’ve broken through the living room window!” Cali said from the other end of the hallway.

  “You both hold the hallway,” Juan said over the stutter of gunfire. Juan peeked back into the bedroom. Lightning flashed, and he saw a hand wave at the open window.

  What the hell . . . Juan thought, and then he heard the whistling of an object hurtling toward him in the darkness.

  He spun into the hallway, closing the door as he went into a crouch.

  Something ricocheted off the door as he cupped his hands to his ears, and a moment later there came a blast so loud it tossed dust on his head and partially toppled the left side of the hallway into a smoking pile of debris.

  Through the dust and smoke, he could now see there was no way in or out of the bedroom. The submachine gun lay buried under the rubble, so he raised his pistol and inserted a fresh magazine. He heard a man cry out from the living room.

  “How we doing?” Juan said as he crouch-walked behind Cali and the sandwich policeman, both of them taking turns firing around the corner.

  “Got one, I think . . .” the policeman said.

  Cali wiped her face on her sleeve. “There’s too many. They’re going to overrun us eventually.” She glanced over her shoulder. “This hallway is a death funnel.”

  “Get behind the island,” Juan said. “It’s solid. It’ll hold.”

  “You crazy?” the policeman said.

  Juan edged the pistol around the hallway opening and fired twice into the living room, waiting for a gap in the return fire. Then he dashed out and to the side, zigzagging behind the island.

  He waited for Cali’s gunfire from the hallway to draw the attention of the two men standing in the living room. Juan raised a few inches and fired a well-placed shot into the closest man, who fell backward in a heap. The other man fired a rifle at Juan, cracking the marble countertop, while Cali leaned out and dropped the man with another well-aimed shot.

  “Come on,” Juan said, ducking back behind the island. His shoulder accidentally popped open a cabinet door at the bottom, and Juan gasped.

  He was staring at a cache of guns and ammo.

  He started reaching in and pulling out guns as Cali and the policeman joined him behind the island. To Cali he tossed a black combat shotgun. He handed a scoped rifle to the policeman stock-first.

  “Hot damn. We might survive this yet,” the policeman said as he stood and raised the gun to his shoulder, sighting through the open window.

  A whizzing sniper’s bullet smacked into him, and he spun, his face and arms collapsing into the kitchen sink.

  His shoulder against hers, Juan could feel the anger and tension welling in Cali’s arms as she clenched her jaw and gripped the bottom rail of her shotgun.

  There was an explosion, and the front door fell inward. Smoke entered the room as a large man rushed forward with a riot shield out in front of him.

  Cali yelled as she rose and fired, buckshot embedding into and deflecting off the shield. She could sense him grinning behind his visored helmet.

  She fired again as he reached out and grabbed her around the throat. He easily lifted her over the island and slammed her back against the marble countertop with such force it rattled the contents of the island drawers.

  Juan rose, his fingers probing into a drawer. His hand came out with the chef’s knife, and he thrust it into the man’s neck as he leaned over the countertop.

  The man gave a surprisingly shrill scream from under his helmet.

  Juan grabbed Cali’s arm and yanked her from the man’s sausage-like fingers.

  Feeling for the large knife protruding from his neck, the large man spun, showing his back to the island.

  Juan raised his pistol and fired.

  Cali was gasping and shoving another shotgun shell into the chamber of her gun.

  The sky outside now cast an eerie greenish light into the room, and in the glow, Juan could see the bruising already forming around Cali’s throat and neck.

  She looked at him looking at her. “How many’d we take out so far?”

  “Five?”

  “Damnit, Paul. I was hoping you’d say nine.”

  Juan rummaged through the bottom cabinet of the island and exchanged his pistol for a submachine gun, stuffing his pockets with fresh magazines. With the rain outside, visibility would be low; they wouldn’t be doing any long-range shooting, so they were better off with shotguns and submachine guns.

  They both stood and moved to the side of the island so that the
sniper, no matter where he might be, did not have a line of sight on them. They stood shoulder to shoulder, Juan watching the open front door, Cali the window in the living area.

  “Look Paul, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “I’ve got something to say, too,” Juan said. “You go first.”

  “No. You go first—”

  A man’s head rose above the window sill, and Cali squeezed the trigger.

  The head was no longer there.

  “I’d rather you . . .” Juan said, trailing off as he heard a gun blast outside the house, and then another. He and Cali shared a confused look as a gurgling sound spilled out from just around the doorframe.

  A man stepped into the house, the gun dropping from his hand as he clutched at his bleeding throat.

  Juan held his fire.

  A sudden force ripped the man backward through the open doorway, where he raised both hands and tumbled over the railing.

  A new man stepped into the room, grim as death.

  It was Sam Merin.

  37

  Foe

  Water sloughed off the man’s broad shoulders and floppy hat, ran along the down-tilted barrel of the sniper rifle strapped to his back.

  “Sam?” Juan said.

  “Well, someone’s gotta save your ass.”

  “Sam,” Cali said, sighing and crossing around the island and clapping his shoulder.

  Juan still raised his gun cautiously at the open doorway. “How many men were out there?”

  “Three. They were out front about to coordinate a final assault.”

  Juan wished he could relax, but Paul was still out there behind a sniper rifle. How was he going to handle it? Paul could come rushing in at any moment, creating the confusing scene he had been hoping to avoid . . . He kept his gun raised.

  Cali massaged her bruised neck with her palm. “You couldn’t have timed your arrival any better.”

  “Yeah,” Juan said. “How’d you know to come?”

  “Because you said Vaquero would strike either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. I wasn’t going to let you get all the action when it turned out you were right.” Sam gave a chummy smile that unnerved Juan.

  “What about the sniper?”

  Sam patted the rifle slung on his back. “I wounded him. He couldn’t have been much of a threat with all that wind and rain.” He surveyed the carnage in the room: the bullet holes, the smashed walls, the blood.

  Juan knew it was Paul out there in the rain.

  And he might be bleeding out right now.

  For all Juan knew, Paul might be dead.

  He gritted his teeth. “I’m going after the sniper.” He made for the open doorway.

  “You’re not going alone,” Cali said.

  Juan was surprised to see the sky outside starting to lighten, but it was still raining. He was also surprised to see a fist swinging upward at his chin. He tried to duck, but was too late—the back of his head had already whacked the exterior doorframe with a crack like a rifle shot.

  Juan’s vision wavered as he tried to crawl back through the doorway. In front of him, a figure dashed inside and sank a fist into Sam’s muscled neck. Sam collapsed, and Cali raised her shotgun but was too slow. The figure high-kicked it from her hands and chopped her in the throat so that her feet stutter-shuffled backward, and she fell.

  Juan got to his feet, disregarding the pain in his chest from where the dirty policeman’s shots had struck his bulletproof vest earlier. “You,” he said.

  “You?” Cali said. She tried to get up with one hand clutching her throat, and the figure jump-kicked her in the chest and sent her backward, her body skidding across the floor and coming to a stop next to one of the dead mercenaries.

  “I knew it was you,” Juan said.

  The man turned to face Juan, a smile growing on his lips. The shaggy blond hair on the man’s head whipped around as he turned, and he had to brush it out of his eyes. “What gave it away?”

  His words were quick and calculated, just as they had been back in the day.

  “A lot of things. The assassinations in Getsemaní, the fuel-air explosive in the salon, and the way you moved in the yoga studio. Your face, though . . .” Juan said.

  “Plastic surgeon. Panama.”

  “I figured as much,” Juan said.

  Cali wheezed from where she sat up on the floor. “You know this man?”

  Juan raised his submachine gun at chest level, but the man was already in front of him, his hands wrestling for control of the gun, guiding Juan’s wrists toward the ceiling and then to the floor as the muzzle exploded to life. When the gun clicked empty, the man pivoted on his heels and slung Juan across the room into Cali as she raised one of the dead men’s sidearms. Juan’s sideways airborne body struck her, knocking the gun from her hands.

  The man strode toward them silently, with the grace of a proud mountain lion.

  Cali gritted her teeth. “Why are you doing this, Enrique?”

  The yoga instructor tsk-tsk’ed as he stepped up to her and grabbed her chin in his hand. The fingers of his other hand straightened and pressed stiffly together as he jabbed his fingertips into her abdomen like a knife.

  Cali doubled over at the waist, and he caught her.

  “You showed so much promise. You’re so flexible.” He let her fall to the floor as his long legs took measured steps over an outstretched corpse.

  Juan dove at him, and Enrique negated Juan’s hands, slammed him into the floor.

  “It was you who sprayed me at the witness’s house.”

  The man smiled. “Guilty.”

  “How did you do it? I specifically heard Boraita’s footsteps behind me. You make no sound when you walk . . .”

  “Practice. When you know the body as well as me, you can make your body do all manner of things most cannot.” He crouched in front of Juan and quick-jabbed him five times in the gut.

  Juan groaned and rolled over onto his stomach. “All this so you could get to the witness?” Juan tried to prop himself up, and Enrique slammed a heel into his back, squashing him flat. The lower half of his body went numb.

  “A job is a job.”

  “You lost a lot of men.”

  “Ah, that . . . Not my men—not my problem. I was just backup in case they all failed. Which they did.”

  “Vaquero?”

  “Who else? He really wants that witness dead.”

  “What’s going on?” It was Cali. She was clutching her head.

  “This isn’t Enrique,” Juan said. “His real name is Ezequiel Sabate. A thug I knew fifteen years ago.”

  “You were in Colombia back then?”

  Zeke stepped behind her and folded his arm around her neck, pinching off her air supply.

  “Let her go,” Juan said, unable to move where he lay upon the floor. Whatever Zeke had done to his back, it seemed to have disabled his nerves’ ability to send messages to his muscles. Juan slammed a fist against the linoleum floor as he watched Cali’s face flush red and Zeke’s free hand exploring the front of her body as she began to lose consciousness.

  Juan fought back angry tears as he scanned the room for help. Sam’s inert body sat propped up against the wall a few feet from him. He didn’t appear to be breathing.

  There was a thud as Cali’s body hit the floor.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Zeke said. “I’m taking her with me when I leave.”

  “Why?”

  “To recondition her, of course. She’d make a good sidekick—among other things, I think. With a body like that.”

  “Recondition?”

  “I don’t have to answer your questions,” Zeke said as he searched for the witness.

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “Until I snap that man’s scrawny neck. Then I’ll come back out, and we can finish our little game. Believe me, you’re not going anywhere. I know the human anatomy—I can cripple a man with a single touch.” He nodded in Sam’s direction and
then headed for the hallway.

  Juan pushed his palms against the floor and tried to push himself up, but his lower back still wouldn’t cooperate. He dropped his gaze to the floor just in front of him and gasped at what he saw.

  Claw marks in the floor from Mika.

  He clenched his jaw and listened to the sounds of the two men trying to force their way into the collapsed bedroom.

  I’ve got to find a way to get my legs moving again . . .

  He reached behind his back and felt for the spot where Zeke had struck him.

  “Agh.”

  He lifted his fingers and massaged the surrounding area, fearing another lightning bolt of pain. Already he was starting to regain some feeling in his legs. If not for a lower back injury incurred in his youth, he’d probably be paralyzed.

  There came a crashing sound from the hallway that could only be the bathroom door. Juan heard the cabinet doors, mirror, and toilet lid being opened and slammed shut in frustration.

  I hope the witness is smart . . .

  He could now wiggle his toes, but he was in no condition to stand and fight.

  “He’s got to be here somewhere,” Zeke said. “Check all the bodies. We’re not leaving until we comb the entire jungle if we have to.”

  The dirty policeman stumbled out into the living room and started to turn over the bodies of the sicarios, a pistol in his hand. “I’m telling you, he’s not here.”

  Zeke emerged from the dark hallway. “Where did he go?”

  “I said I don’t know—”

  “Not the witness. The other man. The one I crippled. He was just here.”

  “I don’t see him.”

  The dirty policeman bent over a man sitting in the corner with a visored helmet on his head and a riot shield propped against him. He squinted, feeling that something wasn’t right.

  Then the dead man in the corner raised a pistol and pulled the trigger.

  Juan rose from behind the shield as Zeke raised his own gun and fired at him, the shield and helmet deflecting the bullets.

  “How the hell . . .” Zeke said. “Your nerves . . . You shouldn’t be able to move right now.”