by Joe Gazzam
In front of me, Jorge slapped the computer closed. He grabbed a leather roll and flipped it open. Inside were rows of silver knives. All shapes and sizes. They sparkled and shined. He held one in the air and ran his finger gingerly along the serrated edge, then tapped the tip like an exclamation point.
Time seemed to slow down. I heard the rain again, not just as a dull background thump, but really heard it—the manic, wild thrashing of the storm. It beat furiously on the windows and on the roof, almost in time with my heart. I glared at Jorge as he turned toward me, suddenly finding it hard to swallow.
“I like knives,” he said. “Some people like guns, I prefer knives. It’s more personal. More intimate. However, to do it right, rule number one is...you must tenderize the meat first.” He grabbed a pair of brass knuckles and slipped them on. “That’s why I have these.”
“Yes, do it...” Rico said. The hook-nosed man swayed in place, a huge smile spreading across his face. He was clearly getting off on the whole thing as he rubbed his hands together and widened his eyes.
Jorge turned to Mitch. “You, being younger, and seeing as you haven’t annoyed me...I will show mercy. It will be quick. I will open your carotid artery and you’ll bleed out in less than five minutes.”
“Yes, yes...” Rico said. He giggled and moved closer to get a better look.
Jorge turned to me. “You...I’m going to take my time with.”
As he stepped closer, my gaze flickered to Mitch who noticed I had one hand entirely free. He glanced up at me realizing I still needed more time for the other.
“How’s it feel?” Mitch blurted out.
Jorge turned back to him, squinting. “What?”
“To be a slave to a scumbag like Castillo instead of having the balls to step out on your own?”
“Ai Carrico, kid! I take back what I just said.”
Mitch saw me desperately rocking the bolt on my other hand. He cleared his throat and continued. “Collecting scraps like a pigeon. Preying on people trying to earn a living—”
I watched in horror as Jorge staggered Mitch with a right hook. The brass knuckles split his lip.
“Stop it!” I cried out, my hands bunching into helpless, despairing fists. But then I went quiet, stunned by Mitch’s reaction to the punch.
He didn’t cry, he didn’t whimper. He didn’t even seem to be scared. Instead, he shook his head and smiled. He pressed his tongue to the gash inside his lip, almost impressed with himself, then spit blood back in Jorge’s face. “You couldn’t even do that right. Loser.”
Jorge went psychopathic with anger. Rage fumed from his body like heat as he grabbed Mitch by the throat. So consumed, Jorge didn’t see me free my second hand. I rose up, kicked Rico backward, then wrapped the chain around Jorge’s neck, positioning myself behind him.
Jorge managed to retrieve the gun from his waistband, but I pulled the chain, yanked him close and trapped the gun with my free hand. We struggled for leverage, but I managed to turn the gun toward Jorge’s chest, ensuring I was out of the bullet path. When it discharged he went slack, dropping with a thud. I let go of the chain and unwrapped if from his neck as blood pooled beneath his body, seeping into the cracks of the already stained wood.
I spun and saw the gun Jorge had dropped still skittering across the room. Only as I rushed for it, Rico stepped in between, his own gun aimed. He flicked his safety three times and was about to pull the trigger.
“That’s four!” I cried out. “Your safety. Four times, not three.”
Rico bit his lips, wanted desperately to shoot, but couldn’t. As he quickly tried to perform his O.C.D. ritual correctly, I was on him. In one quick movement, I twisted the gun away and pivoted with a hammer-strike to his face. His nose caved like wet clay. Before Rico could cry out, I finished him with a left cross that sprayed teeth. He dropped to the ground like clothes falling off a hanger.
“Holy...” Mitch said, both stunned and impressed.
I ignored him and rifled through Rico’s pockets. After finding the keys, I unlocked my metal cuffs, then ran to Mitch. His face was the bloody mess Jorge had meant for me.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said as I freed him. Then I headed back to Rico. He was barely lucid as I jammed his own gun against his head.
“Where’s Castillo?” I asked.
Rico could barely speak. His nasal cavities filled with blood. “I...don’t know. I’m too lowly, I’ve never even met him in person.”
I cocked the gun and a bullet filled the chamber. “Then you’re no use to us.”
“Wait, wait. Please.”
“I’m gonna put this in terms you can understand. You’ve got three seconds to give me somethin’ useful or you’re dead. One...”
“Okay, okay. I...I know where you can find Nefasto. I don’t know where Castillo is, but Nefasto does. Only he knows Castillo’s location.”
“Then where’s Nefasto? Two seconds.”
“He is supervising a delivery,” Rico answered in a desperate rush.
“Weapons?”
“Yes, Castillo’s latest batch.”
I ignored how violently Rico was shaking. “How’s it work?”
“The customer docks the boat, they exchange payment and load the boat. That’s it. The boat leaves with the weapons.”
“What dock, what time? One second.”
Rico closed his eyes, and answered with a whimper. “Puerto de El Cochinito. Just before dawn.”
I lowered the weapon, but as I shoved the man back, Mitch stepped up, pointing Jorge’s gun at Rico.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Think about it. That weapons deal is the only thing we have left to go on. The only thing that might lead us to Dad. They can’t know we’re coming.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, we can’t risk him talking.” Mitch leveled his gun at Rico, but I shoved it down.
“Just hold up a sec.”
I stared at Mitch who gripped the gun tight. The sight was so completely disconcerting, it took me a moment to process. But this was the situation we found ourselves in. Standing in a rundown barrio shack with a man dead on the ground at our feet. Whatever innocence I hoped my little brother would hold onto was long gone. I’d seen a lot of guys only a couple years older getting shot and killed in combat. Boys in the second World War as young as thirteen were forging documents to join the fight. But this was different. This was my little brother.
A barrage of chronological images flicked through my head, Mitch as a five-year-old, dressed as a Power Ranger, then at ten, building a fort in the backyard, then again at fifteen with his learner’s permit, almost driving into the neighbor’s fence.
Mitch jabbed the gun at Rico. “He’ll warn Nefasto that we’re coming. I have to do this, right? Dad’s life or his. I have to...”
“No,” I yelled as Mitch fingered the trigger.
He paused and we locked eyes. Everything he’d said was true, but I couldn’t let him do it.
Instead, I turned and fired myself, pulling the trigger without a second thought. The bullet struck Rico in the head, killing him instantly. He stayed upright for a split second, then accordioned in on himself, wavering like a shimmer of heat before dropping to the ground. I stared at the gun, a tendril of smoke curling around the barrel. My stomach sank with the sick feeling that only comes from taking a life, but I quickly swallowed down any hint of remorse and looked away.
“We need to go,” I said.
Mitch stood stone-faced and stunned, but I headed for the door, pausing by the rack of weapons I’d noticed earlier. There were several types of rifles, but my hand jumped to a Remington 870 shotgun with a pistol grip. It had been sawed-off to a 12-inch barrel. I handed it to Mitch. “Hold this for a sec.”
As I turned back to search through the rack, I heard something. Car doors closing, low voices, the shuffle of feet. I eased the door open just a crack, and less than fifty yards away, a phalanx of Castillo’s men desc
ended on the house like starving birds, pecking and fluttering, breaking formation and then gathering again. My heart caught as one of the men spotted me. He shouted something indiscernible and suddenly, a mad dance of lead ensued.
I slammed the door and threw down the lock bar. “Get down!” I yelled, grabbing another sawed off Remington and dragging Mitch to the floor.
Gunfire detonated around us as the men unloaded automatic weapons. When the shooting let up, I could see them through the windows flanking the sides of the house. I fired a few rounds to the right to slow them, grabbed a backup rifle, and pulled Mitch to the other end of the room, behind the wooden bar. As we waited, my heart ticked like a clock, keeping me present and alert to every sound, every movement.
“We’re surrounded,” Mitch said, clutching his gun like a security blanket.
I adjusted it and gave him a wide-eyed look forcing him to focus. “Point and shoot. Don’t hesitate.” Survival trumped preserving his innocence.
Mitch glanced down at the space between the wooden floor slats. There were two silhouette shadows moving. “Two more below.”
I fired the shotgun down as the thugs underneath unloaded automatic weapons upwards. The dual blasts immediately disintegrated a large section of the floor, but I took out both men.
Mitch fired through the resulting hole a second too late, but struck a supporting beam stilt that held the structure up off of the hill. The wood ruptured and snapped, causing the entire house to drop down. It teetered at nearly the same angle as the hill. The remaining supports below held, causing the floor to bend. The two of us stumbled backward as the sides of the house split at the base and wood exploded in a perfect horizontal line. It rocked back and forth twice, but finally held.
Suddenly, the front door splintered off its hinges and more of Castillo’s men boiled inside, MP5-Ks in hand. Before Mitch could regain his balance, I was back on my feet, gripping my shotgun. I took out several of the men, but a wave of bullets forced me into the kitchen.
Fear followed me into the small space, tightening my chest and slicking my palms with sweat. But over the years I’d learned to make her my friend. She’d never failed to keep me alive, to quicken my feet and sharpen my senses.
Tossing the empty gun aside, I reached for my rifle. The men lit up like targets in a shooting gallery. Using the wall as cover, I fired twice, dropping two as bullets shattered their knees. I fired more rounds into a third man, hitting his gut and shoulder. Another three men through the door were down, but this only bought me the split seconds I needed to get back to Mitch and take cover once again behind the thick wooden bar.
For a moment, I froze, my brain transporting me back to Iraq. To the firefights, the explosions and raining dust. As sweat dripped down my neck I remembered the way Fallujah seemed buried in heat and dirt—a city swallowed by the desert. Every crumbled building looked like this, abandoned and cluttered with debris. My eyes glazed over as I looked at the bloody mess of bodies on the floor and saw the squalid streets of Fallujah, littered with death. In a blink, Mitch became Dobbs, alive again, screaming for me to take cover.
“Tara!” he shook my shoulder and things blinked back to the present.
People were trying to kill us. They’d captured, tied up and tortured our father. These men and their allegiance to Castillo were responsible for killing an untold number of innocent people. Iraq was in the past. I forced myself to focus on the task at hand: survival.
“We’re trapped,” I said, looking around, thinking through scenarios and angles. “And I’m almost out of ammo.”
As Mitch started to respond, a hailstorm of bullets raked the interior all around us. More men flooded inside and even more surrounded the house. I lifted my gun above the wooden bar and blind-fired to keep the men at bay.
Mitch breathed hard next to me; his hands shook at his sides as if infused with static electricity. The smell of burnt powder hung hot and savage in the air. “We can’t shoot our way out of this, can we?” he asked.
The men yelled something in Spanish and I blind-fired again.
“No. Time to put that big brain to work.”
Mitch was way ahead of me. He turned and stared at the floor, measuring something in his head.
“Maybe...” he said, squinting.
“Maybe what? What are you—”
Mitch aimed his shotgun and discharged into the floor. The blast took out another huge chunk and revealed the remaining large wooden stilt that held up the house. He turned to me. “That should be the last load-bearing beam.”
“Okay, but what’s that mean exactly?” I asked, ducking as another wave of bullets streamed overhead.
“It means...hang on.” Mitch fired on the last beam. It fragmented, separated and the entire structure snapped from its supports. I braced myself against the wooden bar as the whole house ripped completely free. With an enormous crackle and groan it broke away and slid down the grassy hillside behind us. The house gained speed and plowed through every obstacle in its way. My fingernails clawed at the bar as we hit a cement partition, sending shattered shards of wood in all directions. I screamed as a telephone pole exploded through the middle of the wall, taking out several thugs, passing within inches of us and splitting the entire house in two.
One side pinwheeled laterally and careened into another barrio house, slicing it like a buzz saw. Which left us on the remaining half, sliding down the hill. I hung on with a white-knuckled grip and spun around to see we were fifty yards from the edge of the cliff.
Tossing my weapon, I lurched forward and grabbed a hold of Mitch with both hands. Just as the house was about to go over the side of the mountain, I leapt out, yanking Mitch with me. We hit hard onto the grassy knoll and slid, our momentum carrying us right to the edge, rolling, tumbling, before we finally straightened out and ground to a halt. We both looked up in time to see the last section of the house and all the remaining thugs inside, drop over the cliff. It arced slowly as it plummeted and finally disintegrated onto the rocky vista below.
I dragged Mitch to his feet and we looked at each other. I was sure his shocked, wide eyes mirrored my own, but after a moment he laughed and pulled me into an unexpected bear hug.
I smiled and hugged him back, the relief still washing over me.
“Holy...shit!” Mitch said, but I hushed him.
“We need to go. Before anyone sees us and realizes we didn’t go over that cliff.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I SAT ON THE COUCH in the safehouse, letting out a deep breath. Every inch of my body ached. My tattered jean shorts and T-shirt were covered in dirt and stained with blood. Miraculously, we’d made our way back here without incident, even after Mitch’s cell phone died and we had to navigate based on familiar landmarks. Anyone else would need sleep, a bath, a meal. But all I could think about was the next step. Urgency sat trapped in my chest like a penned wolf.
“I’m going to check the bathroom for a first aid kit,” Mitch said from the hallway.
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the worn sofa cushion. “I think I saw one in the medicine cabinet.”
After a few minutes of rummaging, he stepped back into the living room. “Here.” He threw a red zip-up bag onto my lap. “I got what I needed.”
“Thanks.”
I opened it and began dabbing peroxide on a myriad of abrasions up and down my legs and arms, then glanced outside. The sky was draining quickly, the horizon just a cuticle of pink. Mitch stopped at the sink to fill an enormous glass of water, then sat down at the tiny dining room table, his posture rigid and tense.
I finally broke the silence. “We have about ten hours till dawn. That’s when the deal goes down. Given the nature of the transaction, we can assume Nefasto will have a lot of men there. Which means we won’t have the firepower to take ’em head on. On top of that, we need Nefasto alive so we can, somehow, get him to tell us where Castillo is.”
I waited for a response but didn’t get one.
“
If Nefasto’s vehicle is a standard police car, we won’t have the armor issue,” I continued. “We can’t just wing it, though. I need you to help me come up with a plan.”
I stared at Mitch who downed his water in silence and wouldn’t look up. As he got to the bottom, he tilted the cup vertical, catching the last few drops, then went right back to the sink and poured another glass.
I held my arms out. “Well?”
Mitch sat back down at the table. “Well what?”
I shrugged. “Would be nice if you helped me talk this through.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured.
The room felt swollen with humidity, and I swept the hair off my neck. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? This is our last shot.”
“Dad thinks Castillo has us. How long will he be able to hold out when they’re threatening our lives? And once he talks, they’ll kill him.”
“We still have to try.” I rubbed the back of my arms, trying to shake the anxiety creeping along the surface of my skin. “I took a lot of lives today so we could. I’m not backing down now.”
“I just don’t know how we can go up against another mob of his guys and not lose.”
“You’re right. But we don’t have to do that. The Tiger, remember. We just have to get Nefasto alone. If we can get him to give up Castillo’s location—”
“Sure. In theory. But we’ll die trying.”
“Maybe,” I answered. But I’d come to terms with that possibility more times than I could count, with a lot less at stake than there was now. “You don’t have to come.”
Mitch kept quiet for a second. “I can’t let you go alone.”
Silence hummed between us.
“All of this still feels like a bad dream,” he said. “I mean, a few weeks ago we were installing drywall in our backyard. How is the really happening?” He looked up at me, as if I had the answers. “Did you have any idea?”
My mind shuffled through past memories. There were subtle signs, but none of them obvious. Dad joined the Army when he was eighteen. Then, unlike me, he’d actually had a successful career in special forces after that. He kept a gun safe next to the bed and knew his way around a pistol. He’d taught me how to load and fire one at the shooting range, and instead of signing me up for dance, he spent an hour a week teaching me self-defense when I was thirteen. I’d always just assumed it was his way of bonding with me after Mom left. I’d chalked it all up to him not knowing how to relate to a girl.
