The Colombian Rogue

by Matt Herrmann

  “Ow.”

  “That’s a Barranquilla businessman,” Rockwell said.

  “Toro Playa.”

  Juan saw Rockwell arch his eyebrows.

  “What? Had to know all the players,” Juan said. “I have—had big aspirations.”

  “There’s a lot of players out there.”

  “More added to the board each day,” Juan said as he sipped from his drink. He’d tossed the pink umbrella into a trash can at the foot of the stairs.

  “What I can’t figure out is why Paul’s going after top players in both Colombian and Ecuadorian cities?”

  “Someone else is making him do it, obviously.”

  “Maybe. But why? What are they hoping to achieve?” Rockwell asked. He was really starting to nurse his drink now that he could almost see the bottom of his glass again.

  “It’s got to be connected to the new third party that’s passing drugs out of Cartagena now that Ricky and me are out. For the time being,” Juan added quickly.

  Rockwell acted as though he hadn’t heard.

  “Unless it’s the snake people?” Juan said. He watched as the vein in Rockwell’s neck tensed. Maybe he’s got a tell, after all . . . “But wait, Toro isn’t even in the drug trade. He’s strictly weapons, from my understanding.”

  They both watched as the businessman disappeared through a small door at the back of the second floor perhaps thirty yards away.

  “From mine, too,” Rockwell said.

  “Maybe the new player is diversifying right out of the starting gate?”

  “There’s no one on our radar with the resources for a takeover like that. I don’t like it. Something big is coming, and Paul’s got himself right in the middle of it.”

  “Yeah. That Paul. But what’s our play? We don’t have guns. What are we going to do when he shows and the bullets start flying?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Damn, I’m empty.”

  “You want me to get you another one?” Juan asked sarcastically.

  Rockwell set his empty glass on the floor against the wall so it wouldn’t be obvious. He instructed Juan to do the same even though he still had half his drink left. “It’s about to happen.”

  “How do you know?” Juan asked, scanning the faces of the dance crowd below them and the people mingling on the second floor.

  “Because it’s when I’d make my move.”

  “And you figure that’s what Paul would do since he’s your star pupil?”

  Rockwell nodded.

  It happened.

  8

  Roof

  It started with the lights going out and progressed to the shattering of windows along both second-floor balconies. Disoriented screams pierced the darkness.

  Juan felt completely blind—the only source of light seemed to come from a few EXIT signs along the walls. So it was odd when Rockwell thrust what felt like a pair of glasses into his hands. The frame felt blocky and plastic.

  Sunglasses?

  Was Rockwell playing a trick on him?

  Juan donned them and was surprised; he had limited visibility now versus no visibility a moment before. The world was tinted in a pale greenish light, and a couple moments after his eyes adjusted, he started seeing the contours of chairs and tables and people. He could even see the shattered outlines of the glass in the windows along the wall.

  He saw people rushing about, hands in the air, tripping over each other. It was a sloppy affair. People were shouting everywhere, and the bulldoggish roaring of the bouncers sounded somewhere down below at floor level.

  Ahead of him, Juan saw the compact form of Rockwell pushing forward, waving at him to follow.

  Juan did so, wondering how the second-floor windows had been broken. Suppressed gunfire? He hadn’t heard any, and they all appeared blasted inward. It had to have been explosives.

  Rockwell stopped at the door the businessmen and their bodyguards had entered by. Rearing back, he kicked the door in with the heel of his boot. Secured from within, the door merely shook in its frame.

  From inside, Juan could hear muffled cries and suppressed gunfire.

  “Goddamnit, he’s already in there,” Rockwell said, picking up his foot and slamming it against the door again. After the third attempt, he and Juan both kicked, and the door finally splintered open a few inches, a chain still barring it from opening completely. Rockwell shot his hand inside, his fingers searching for where the bolt connected to the door.

  “Yeaargh!” he cried out as he withdrew his hand, cradling it against his chest. By the suddenness with which the door had slammed backward against the frame, someone from inside had kicked the door closed, smashing Rockwell’s forearm and wrist.

  Juan raised his own boot and kicked a final time as Rockwell cussed and spat on the balcony floor. The door opened wide, and Rockwell drew a three-inch blade from his boot. Juan was about to step into the room when the door flew back at him, propelled by another vicious kick from within.

  Juan was already standing over the threshold, so he had two options: throw his shoulder forward to brace against the swinging door and be sandwiched, or leap to the side into the unknown depths of the room.

  Not too worried about the pain part, but not keen on having his shoulder broken by a door, he chose to dart inside the room to the right as the door slammed shut in front of Rockwell’s face. He would have to rely on pure reflexes now.

  The first thing Juan saw before his night vision glasses were smashed against his head by a flying kick was a chemical mask below a pair of glowing, red-tinted eyes looking back at him from a few feet away. It was only a quick glance, but the sight resembled the headgear an optometrist placed in front of your head to test your vision. Juan’s eyes also had just enough time to take in a large rectangular table strewn with bullet holes and wood dust still puffing up into the air and mingling with acrid gun smoke.

  Numerous bodies in various stages of dying writhed facedown over the table, slumped backward in their chairs, or crawled on the floor. Smashed picture frames either hung crooked on the walls or lay with bent frames on the floor. The two windows in the room were both devoid of glass, the hot night air sucking out the fumes of a teargas canister lying on the table.

  All this Juan’s brain managed to process in a second and a half as his body careened toward the table. He leapt up at the last second, performing a sort of sideways rag-doll cartwheel over the back corner of the table and then grabbing at a leather chair before sliding through the air and into the wall against a fallen picture frame. The chair flipwheeled up and on top of him as a chorus of suppressed gunfire ground through the plastic and faux leather like angry hornets.

  Juan crawled under the table as he started to choke on the teargas now sputtering to a climax.

  There were a few more rapid gunshots, and then Juan heard the assassin leap upon the table.

  The door swung open, and Rockwell lashed out with his three-inch blade, striking the black-clad assassin as he leapt through an open window. Rockwell played a flashlight around the room hot with the smells of smoke, teargas, urine, and blood.

  “Get up!” Rockwell said. He swatted the teargas canister off the table with the back of his hand while holding the crook of his injured arm against his mouth. “Was it him?”

  “I don’t know.” Juan peeked out the window; he didn’t see the assassin on the ground, so he figured he must have ascended the iron ladder attached to the fire escape up to the roof.

  “Get moving. Lights’ll be coming on any moment, and we can’t be seen here,” Rockwell said as he put the knife between his teeth and urged Juan toward the window.

  Juan pulled himself through the window and reached back to assist Rockwell, but the other man knocked his hand aside.

  When Rockwell was standing outside on the fire escape platform as well, he handed Juan a black facemask as he donned one himself. “Find him, damnit. We might still have a chance.”

  No longer needing them, Juan took off the night vision glasses and
donned the facemask. Then he surveyed the city around them. It wasn’t difficult with the moon fat in the sky. The club behind them was nearly completely dark, but most of the other multi-storied buildings in the city had a sprinkling of lights on even though it was pushing midnight.

  Wasting no more time, Juan climbed the ladder to the roof two rungs at a time, throwing himself upward with his arms instead of just relying on his legs.

  As the top of his head cleared the roofline, he ducked back down as bullets tore chunks of masonry from the edge of the building.

  “Wish I had a gun,” Juan called down to Rockwell.

  Rockwell tossed up a handgun, which Juan caught.

  “Where the hell . . .”

  “The bodyguards in the meeting room, if you’d pay attention to your surroundings.”

  “Right.” Juan reached his hand over the edge of the roof and fired in the direction of the assassin. When he didn’t hear any answering fire, he hauled himself up and onto the roof, rolling behind the nearest object—a bulky air conditioning unit. Gunfire clanged against the metal, and bullets lodged themselves between the fins of the grill.

  Juan fired once around the side of the AC unit, and then he heard the scrabbling of boots on the far side of the rooftop. He peeked around the side in time to see the back of a black figure leaping to the next building over. It was a courthouse, a tan stone building with gothic architecture and gargoyles on the crenellations. Black, spike-tipped wrought iron stretches of fence decorated each floor of the building, adding to its old-world vibe.

  The assassin landed against the side of the courthouse, gripping an iron ladder attached to the wall next to a gargoyle guard dog with demon horns.

  Juan ran across the rooftop, stopping halfway to the edge and raising his gun. He fired a warning shot from twenty feet away, severing the head of the gargoyle just beside the assassin. Sparks fireflied into the man’s face as he raised his gun and sent a couple shots Juan’s way. Juan threw himself flat against the rooftop as the horned goblin’s stone head turned sideways—tongue sticking out—and fell to the street below with the cracking sound of a large rock falling from three stories.

  Shit. Hope that doesn’t land on someone . . .

  The assassin steadied himself against the courthouse and fired again as Rockwell climbed onto the roof and dove behind the AC unit.

  “Looks like the courthouse is our only way down,” Rockwell shouted. “It’s the closest building.”

  “You think you can make the jump?” Juan asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be behind you. Get him.”

  Juan waited until the assassin climbed over the headless gargoyle and shimmied along the five-inch stone ledge behind the wrought iron fencing. Then Juan sprinted the rest of the way across the rooftop and jumped off the building’s edge.

  The distance between buildings was perhaps six feet, and as time slowed for him, Juan had to wonder how the club had come to be located so close to a public government building. There had to be some ordinance against that.

  The alleyway passed beneath him as forward momentum carried him into the wall of the courthouse building, and he found himself clinging to the metal ladder.

  Just how old is this building? he wondered as his hand left the metal ladder, and he entrusted his whole weight to the five-inch stone ledge. He felt the ladder creak and give way as his weight left it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the right side of the ladder had come free of the wall.

  It’s not going to be able to support Rockwell.

  There was a time when Juan had considered killing Rockwell himself to try to escape Paul forcing Juan to take his place on the task force. That was when Juan thought his only option was to flee the country. He had since found somewhat of a family in the team, even if it made him softer, weaker, more vulnerable.

  And while Rockwell irritated Juan to no end and they seemed to disagree and argue about everything, he didn’t want to see the man fall to the alleyway floor like the powdered remains of the gargoyle head.

  In his periphery, Juan saw the assassin edge around the corner of the courthouse. The gun came up, and Juan reached out with both hands, awkwardly straddling the front of the now-headless gargoyle, clinging to it, praying the statue would support his weight as his body hung suspended over the alleyway, protected by the gunfire from a protruding buttress of solid stone leaning out from intervals along the building.

  Bits of stone and gritty masonry sand skittered over the stonework and pelted Juan’s facemask. He turned in time to see Rockwell launch himself at the destabilized metal ladder a few feet from Juan.

  Juan felt the gargoyle’s body give way as he distributed his weight back to the ledge and heard the cracking of stone as the heavy statue plummeted to the alleyway in a smattering of broken rubble which was surprisingly loud.

  Rockwell’s hands and feet landed upon the rungs of the ladder, and with a terrible screeching the ladder turned outward, the metal bending under Rockwell’s weight as the man cried out.

  Juan scooted along the ledge and reached for the ladder, his chest pressed close to the wall, his hand finding the ladder and steadying it just enough for Rockwell to gain his footing and then climb off onto the ledge on the opposite side of Juan.

  The ladder broke from its remaining hinges and fell to the alleyway as well, landing with a horrible twanging of bent metal. Juan thought he saw an alley cat inspecting the remains of the gargoyle scamper off into the night.

  “I’ll find another way down,” Rockwell said, waving his hand at Juan. “Keep after him.”

  Juan maneuvered over the gap where the gargoyle had been and climbed over the stone buttress, then stopped as he stared down at the other side. Where there should have been a stone ledge, there was nothing at all.

  The assassin had shot it off with his last round of bullets.

  This gap was too wide to jump across, and Juan couldn’t walk across the spiked barbs of the metal fence.

  Suddenly, Juan felt his back illuminated by a giant circle of light. He blinked as he twisted around and saw a chopper before he heard it, its searchlight passing over the cityscape below.

  Seriously?

  He wondered if it was the assassin’s getaway vehicle.

  Since the only way down was the pavement below, Juan’s only option was to go up. He tucked his gun into his pants and jumped upward from the stone buttress, grabbing onto the iron fencing along the third story. Grunting with the effort, he pulled himself along, suspended above the dagger tips of the iron fence below him. If his grip gave out, the fence points would pierce the rubber of his soles, impaling upward into his ankle and leg for seven or so inches before his body either fell forward against the gap between the building or backward into the alley.

  The sound of the chopper grew louder.

  When he was about halfway across, Juan’s shoulder flared up with the pain from an injury incurred a couple months ago. It hadn’t fully healed and now might be the death of him. The spotlight passed over him again as he dangled over the black spikes and the alleyway floor two stories below that.

  “Stop where you are,” an official-sounding voice said in Spanish over the amplified speakers of the helicopter’s rotors.

  “What?” Juan asked aloud, even though there was no one to hear him. “How am I supposed to . . .”

  The pain in his shoulder sapped at his strength, and he felt his grip loosening. He forced himself to reach out and grab the next fence post, felt the entire fence frame start to give as his other hand came over to meet his other. Gritting his teeth, he skipped a fence post with his right hand as he reached for the next one. The pain was nearly unbearable now.

  “I repeat: Stop where you are. It’s over.”

  Juan risked a glance downward and to the side, noticing for the first time the people starting to gather at street level and point up at him.

  What do they think this is? A circus act?

  It would be over if he stopped, Juan knew. He
shouted as if that might give him strength, and reached out again with his weakening grip. His right hand caught hold of a fence post, but during the transition the grip in his left hand gave out, and he fell.

  9

  Descent

  The hard surface of the pavement below rushed up and into Juan’s side quicker than he had expected. And while his left hip cried out with additional pain, he hadn’t heard or felt any bones break.

  He realized he hadn’t even had time to think about what he’d miss most when he died—not that you’d miss anything when you were dead, he knew, but still. Wasn’t he going to get the chance to see his life flash before his eyes like in the movies?

  Juan drew in a gasping breath and opened his eyes. He still seemed to be about two stories above the alley. Blinking rapidly, he saw that his scraped-up palms were pressed against the edge of the stone buttress on the other side of the iron fence. It seemed he had made it to the other side just as his grip had given out.

  “Stay where you are. I’m warning you,” the loudspeaker voice said.

  Juan looked behind him; the lights were already back on at the club. People were dashing out the front door at street level and walking in a dazed manner, oblivious to the fact that several shady businessmen and their bodyguards had been violently torn apart by gunfire in a back room on the floor above them.

  “We will shoot,” the police voice said again.

  On the other side of the courthouse building, Juan could just make out the form of a rusted fire escape around the back corner of the building that would take him to ground level. But if the police weren’t bluffing, and there was a sniper in the helicopter, chances were that Juan wouldn’t be quick enough. He wouldn’t be breathing when his body touched the pavement below.

  He needed a distraction . . .

  Slowly he raised both hands behind his head as if complying with the instructions.

  “Steady now,” the magnified voice said.