Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  An hour later, and Anna had emerged from her room. She and Rudd were sitting at the table, eating a sandwich lunch and talking through the various stages of airport security and customs. Rudd was telling her that just because she was through the scanners did not mean she could let her guard down.

  Munro was pacing up and down the small living room. She looked up at him in annoyance. Rudd looked up too.

  “Please sit down Jack,” he said. “You’re making everyone nervous.”

  “Sorry,” replied Munro, sitting on the edge of one of the stools, “I don’t like being cooped up, that’s all.”

  “Go for a run or something then, do us all a favour,” said Anna not looking at him.

  Just then Munro’s phone rang again. It was Eduardo. He stood up to answer it.

  “Eduardo?”

  “Jack, are you in Acapulco?” He sounded nervous, hurried. That was bad. Eduardo never sounded nervous.

  “Yes, but how.?”

  “Are you in apartment 347, 165 El Costera?”

  “Yes again…but Ed, how the hell do you know that?”

  “Informants, Jack, informants. And if I know, then so do the men you’re hiding from. You need to get out of there, and fast. My informants say that Hector Ortega himself is in Acapulco. Get out of your apartment and get to Cancun. Now.”

  “Understood, Ed, we will.”

  “Don’t try and leave by car, they will have blocked the entire city. Go to the domestic terminal of the airport. The federal police control domestic terminals, and they don’t check id as rigorously. Get on a plane and get the hell out of Acapulco.”

  Munro was now out on the balcony, Rudd had followed him, alerted by the urgent tone in his voice. Eduardo hung up, and Munro quickly relayed the conversation to Rudd. Just then they both looked down, onto the streets below, alerted by flashing lights and sirens in the corner of their eyes. Four police cruisers had pulled up outside their building, along with three large black SUVs. Scores of armed men, uniformed and un-uniformed were getting out of all the vehicles and heading into their building.

  34

  Hector stepped out of the large Chevy Suburban and let the Acapulco sun warm his face. He smiled, it was good to be out of the villa. The confinement of the place had been giving him headaches, making him hear things. This was where he liked to be, on the street, surrounded by his men. He looked around at his crew. His boys. Six cops, fat incompetents by the look of them, but still cops. The MS-13 men, young and taut, they looked ready for action. He liked the way the sun caught their new Steyrs. Glistening and shiny. Teodoro, the oaf, had done well finding El Ingles. Perhaps he was not as stupid as he looked. The call from the cab driver had not come soon enough.

  As well as the Salvadorians and the police, there were some local men. Not Los Negros, but cartel men all the same. They looked like nightclub hustlers, all slicked back hair, tight jeans and cowboy boots. But they also looked like killers, and they were armed. Their pistols too glistened in the sunlight. Hector looked at his men. Over twenty of them, all armed. More than enough to take El Ingles. More than enough. He put on his mirrored sunglasses and lit a cigarette. All around him, the street went on as if nothing was happening. A busy street in a busy resort. A passing couple of gringas looked at his men, looked at their guns and then looked away quickly.

  As he walked through the large glass doors of 165 Avenue Costera, one of the police officers approached him.

  “Jefe, what are your orders? This is a crowded street, we must be subtle.”

  Hector looked at the cop. Obese and slow from a lifetime of taking bribes and writing reports.

  “Have your men form a cordon around the building. No-one is to come in, no-one is to leave. You men!” he said to the small group of hustlers standing by the lobby desk. They looked like pimps, Hector noted with slight disgust, their pistols looked new and unused. Two of them seemed to have engraved handles. Vanity guns for nightclub pimps. “You men stay down here, with la policia. Anyone comes out of that elevator or down those stairs, shoot them.”

  “Si, jefe,” said one of the men, running his hand through his heavily gelled hair.

  “And you,” said Hector turning to his new deputy, the oaf Teo, “you lead the charge my hijo. They are in apartment 347, on the fifteenth floor. Take these boys,” he said pointing to three of the Salvadorians, “and take El Ingles. Take him alive, hijo, take him alive.”

  “Si, Hector,” replied Teo. He got into the elevator, followed by three of the small gangsters. In their baggy clothes and next to Teo, they looked even more like young boys, thought Hector.

  “Six of you, run up the stairs,” he said to the remaining Salvadorians. “The rest of you stay here with me. We need to plan what to do with this hijo de puta.”

  Fifteen floors up and Munro sprang into action. Any sloth that he had felt was gone. Alerted by their urgent tones, Anna had come out of her room.

  “Rudd, Anna, grab your stuff.”

  Rudd was already packing his computers into a slick looking bag.

  “What’s going on?” asked Anna.

  “They’ve found us,” said Munro opening the front door. He peered out into the half lit empty corridor. The elevator was just to the right of their room.

  “They’ll be coming by elevator and stairs”, he said to them, “they’ll come up the stairs slowly, but the elevator is a different matter.” He looked at the digital floor indicator above the elevator door. It was already at 3.

  “Time to see if that old pistol of yours works partner,” said Munro walking out into the corridor followed by Rudd and Anna. “Charles you take this side of the elevator. It’s small, so they’ll have a maximum of four or five in there. As soon as the doors open start firing. Anna, take the bags and wait around the corner, by the stairs.”

  Without saying a word, Anna took Rudd’s bag and went and stood by an open fire door.

  “Is this a good idea Jack?” said Rudd taking position on the other side of the small steel elevator door.

  “It’s the only idea,” he replied, “we need to strike first, take them by surprise. Once we take out the guys in the elevator, you go up a floor and get into another apartment. Use those lock picking skills you’re so proud of. They’re not looking for you, you should be fine.”

  “Where will you go?”

  Munro did not answer him immediately, his mind was clear. He knew what he had to do. He looked at the elevator floor indicator. 7,8,9. It was coming up fast. They had ten seconds.

  “I’ll lead the others up to the roof.”

  “The roof?”

  “The roof Charles. The only way is up.” He smiled to himself. 12, 13, 14. “Get ready.” Munro had his Chinese 9mm drawn. He and Rudd both instinctively went into a crouch two meters back from the elevator door. Both men raised their right arms, their firing arms. Both men rested their right arms onto their left hands, locking it.

  “Start in the middle, fan out,” said Munro quietly to Rudd. The elevator had come to a stop at 15.

  Everything went into slow motion for Munro. The gears and levers of the machinery behind the doors made the elevated cabin stop with a clunk. Every sound was amplified in the absolute silence of the empty corridor. There was a hideously long pause as the doors engaged and made as if to open. Both men slightly adjusted their positions, locking their arms tighter. The steel outer doors engaged first and began to slowly open. They were followed a millisecond later by the inner doors of the cabin itself. After a few inches they joined and started to open in unison. Both men waited. One inch became five, five became eight. Eight became ten.

  They saw two midriffs. One of a tall man, dressed in black, the other of a small man in baggy jeans and a white vest. Rudd and Munro acquired their targets instinctively, without speaking. Rudd the large man in black, Munro the smaller man in the white vest. Just before he fired his first shot, Munro noticed a tattoo on his target’s arm. It was a pair of devil’s horns with ‘Mara 13’ carved into the skin below.<
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  They started firing and did not stop. Slow steady shots. Aim, fire, aim, fire. Each of them bent away from the other as they fired, so as to get a better trajectory for their bullets to find their targets. They turned so that their angle of fire went right into the far corner of the narrow elevator cabin. Everything remained in slow motion for Munro as he kept his firing arm level. The doors that had started to open so slowly, sped up as they continued their course. Both men kept firing: aim, fire, aim, fire.

  But they were not fast enough. The two men at either end of the lift were fast and they had automatic weapons. Milliseconds before either Rudd or Munro could hit them, both managed to raise their weapons. Munro saw what was happening and managed to fire two bullets into the stomach of his target, another small man with a baggy white t-shirt and lots of tattoos. As the impact of Munro’s 9mm bullets threw him against the back wall of the cabin, the gangbanger’s finger stayed on his trigger. As he fell back his gun fell up, spraying 9mm rounds into the cabin puncturing all three other bodies in the cabin. But Rudd was not as quick. Milliseconds before his target went down from the stray bullets, his target – yet another small dark man in baggy jeans and a white vest - managed to squeeze off three rounds. Straight at Rudd.

  Ten seconds after the lift doors had begun to open, there were four bloodied bodies in the elevator cabin and one in the corridor.

  As soon as the doors were fully open Munro stood up and stepped over the bodies, checking any of them for vital signs. Only the bigger man in black looked alive. But he had taken three in his stomach. He wasn’t a threat. Munro turned to Rudd. He was lying on the floor, there was blood everywhere.

  “Charles?” he said grabbing his partner and turning him over.

  Rudd opened his eyes and groaned.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I think.” Munro tore open Rudd’s shirt, it was soaked in blood. He pulled out a penknife and cut through his shirt, quickly and adeptly. He ripped it open, exposing Rudd’s side. There was blood seemingly everywhere. But Munro knew what he was looking for. He ran his fingers along Rudd’s ribs, tenderly, barely touching him. Rudd screamed in pain as Munro came to the entry wound. Ignoring Rudd’s scream he pressed the wound, and then used his shirt to clear away the blood.

  “You’re fine…and very lucky,” said Munro. “The bullet literally just grazed your side. Two inches over and it would have gone straight through your aorta.” He looked up and saw Anna, who was staring at both of them with her eyes wide and her mouth open. He picked up Rudd under the arms and steadied him so that he could stand on his own.

  “Right, get into an apartment down the corridor, and hope it’s empty. Get straight into the shower and hide those clothes. Even if they come into the apartment, they’re not going to be looking for a middle-aged gringo in a bath robe.”

  “You,” he said to Anna, “come with me. Charles, see you in London.” He looked at his partner and felt a well of emotion seeing him there, bleeding, still in his socks and sandals. He was injured but he would be fine.

  “See you in London old boy..good luck,” said Rudd, the colour returning to his face slightly as the shock of having missed death by two inches began to wear off.

  “Thanks Charlie, I really do owe you one now,” he said to his partner, before turning away. Rudd did not say anything. He grabbed his bag out of Anna’s hands and walked fast down the corridor in the other direction, one hand pressed hard against his still bleeding side.

  Munro grabbed Anna and they went out onto the uncarpeted landing of the stairs. Below them, about five floors down, Munro guessed, they could hear voices. Strange guttural sounds being yelled in a dialect Munro could not quite make out. Anna was standing there, staring at him in the same way she had been in the clearing.

  “Ok Anna,” he said to her softly, “you just need to follow me. Ok?”

  She continued staring at him. “You killed them,” she said.

  He did not answer her. Instead, he grabbed her and hauled her up the stairs. She followed him, as they ran up the remaining three flights. At the top, they got to a fire door and Munro kicked it open. They ran over to the beach side of the roof. The sun was still high, it was oven hot on the black tar that lined the roof floor. Lying there, propped up against a low wall was a huge pack, over two meters long, bright blue nylon with bright yellow streaks. Munro took out his pistol and checked the magazine. Three bullets left. He handed it to Anna.

  “Point this there,” he said making her grip the pistol with both hands and raising her arms to point in the direction of the door. “Anyone comes through that door, shoot them.”

  Anna said nothing but held the gun as he showed her, her hands gripping the gun so hard that her knuckles went white. Munro turned to the pack and emptied out a mass of poles, straps and nylon. He crouched down and quickly went to work, sticking the poles and straps together to make a harness. He spread the huge sheet of nylon out, which revealed itself to be a huge parachute. He bent down and attached the harness to the parachute. In less than three minutes, a paraglider had been set up on the roof of 165 El Costera. He turned to Anna, who was still facing the roof door, gripping the pistol with all she had. He lifted the harness and climbed into it, before holding out a further set of straps for Anna to sit in front of him.

  “No way,” said Anna. “No fucking way.”

  Munro smiled and adjusted the straps slightly, “It’s the only way,” he said.

  He strapped Anna in front of him and turned towards the corner of the roof, where the low wall that ran around the edge of the roof stopped. It was a perfect launch point.

  “Now all you have to do is run,” said Munro, “run and don’t look down until we’re in the air.”

  Pulling the parachute taut with two straps that held either end of it, Munro started to run towards the end of the building and so did Anna. They got into a pace quickly and hit the edge at speed. Anna screamed. Munro pulled hard on the two straps and the parachute rose up above them, immediately catching some wind. It lifted them up off their feet and they soared into the sky. She stopped screaming as they caught a thermal and turned to face out to sea. The parachute felt strong and completely secure. Munro turned the nylon wing above them and they flew further out to sea, away from their building and the people below. As they glided on the thermals and started to gain height, the forced intimacy of the situation occurred to them both. Anna was strapped close to Munro, between his legs.

  “Hi there,” said Anna, shouting into the wind. “Please don’t tell me this was a coincidence.”

  “Not at all,” shouted Munro. “Always have an escape route. Especially if you’re fifteen floors up in a tower block. I bought this thing when I went for a jog this morning. It’s very popular with the tourists here, although they normally jump from the hills above us, not the roof of a building…I didn’t think we’d actually have to use it.”

  They both looked down at the scene below them. They were high, but not high enough that the sounds of Acapulco did not reach them. They heard gunfire below them. Feeling himself far enough away from the tower to be safe, Munro turned the glider to see what was going on. The roof was empty. That was good. But the scene at the bottom of the tower was one of complete chaos. People were running in all directions and traffic had ground to a halt. What looked like two military Humvees had pulled up on the other side of La Costera. The soldiers in them, in dark green military fatigues, had jumped off and were crouching behind their vehicles, firing at their building. Firing back at them, Munro could make out men in the blue uniforms of the local police, and others in plain clothes. It was chaos, there were several bodies lying prone on either side.

  “Looks like we just started world war three,” shouted Anna.

  Munro did not answer. He was thinking about Rudd. He turned the glider and they caught a thermal that he hoped would take them to the other side of the bay. They were beginning to lose height, but at an acceptable rate. When he thought he had covered enough distance from the building,
he started to take the glider lower and lower, turning in ever tightening circles until eventually they were only a few metres above the beach. He chose an empty patch near the wall dividing the sand from the pavement and brought it in to land.

  “Bend your legs,” he shouted to Anna as they went towards the sand, at some speed. They landed, surrounded by a crowd of bemused looking hawkers and tourists, looking up from their books and trays of knick-knacks. Munro unhooked Anna and they both walked up onto the pavement to a long line of waiting cabs. He walked up to the first one.

  “Aeroporto domestico por favor.”

  Hector walked up the stairs slowly, his Salvadorians in front and behind, covering him. They were good, he noted with satisfaction. Not military trained, but they knew what they were doing. He felt more confident with them around him. The elevator was stuck on the 15th floor, not moving up or down, which was not good. Not a good sign. Still, Hector took his time going up the stairs. He would not hurry for El Ingles. He would hurry for no man. Especially not a puta Ingles. Eventually they got to the fifteenth floor. Immediately Hector knew something was wrong. Some of the men he had sent ahead were there, but none of them would look at him. They just stood around staring at their shoes. They suddenly looked very small and young in their baggy jeans and white t-shirts. Hector pushed through them and went into the carpeted main corridor. Straight away he could smell gunpowder, like a lot of bullets had been fired. He walked past apartment 347. The door had been shot open. It hung half off its hinges. He looked inside. Two of the Salvadorians were standing there, smoke still rising out of the barrels of their Steyrs. One of them looked up at Hector and simply shook his head.

  Hector did not go inside, in the corner of his eye he had seen something. He turned back into the corridor and came to the elevator. The doors kept trying to close but were being stopped by the mass of legs that splayed out. Three MS 13 men stood in silence by the bodies, their heads bowed in what looked like prayer. The sound of the doors trying to open and then close was the only sound there was. Quietly, calmly, Hector opened a small hatch door that had been built into the steel frame surrounding the elevator doors. Inside a small key was stuck in a lock. He turned the key and the doors stopped moving. There was silence in the corridor.