Arch Enemy

by Leo J. Maloney

  The three men pulled the crate off the pickup truck, holding it by its rope handles. They strained and grunted at the weight of the thing and set it down, too hard, on the cobblestones.

  “Cuidado!” Paco yelled.

  He took a crowbar from the backseat of the Silverado and pried open the crate with a crack of the wood. After the men pulled off the lid, Paco swept aside the packing straw. Underneath was a neat row of black AN-94 rifles—Russian military standard, confiscated from an arms dealer two months before. Under Paco’s instruction, the men removed the top rack, which held the rifles, and placed it on the driveway next to the box.

  One of the men took a rifle to inspect it. White did the same with another. Saavedra just watched.

  “You got these in,” he said to Morgan. “Why do you need my guy?”

  “Cost too much, risked too much,” said Morgan. “And that’s just for this one crate. I can’t get the entire shipment in by myself.”

  “This is crap,” said White, tossing the rifle to clatter on the cobblestones. “Third-world knockoffs. If this is what you’re looking for, I can get you the same for half the price.”

  Morgan glowered at him. It was bullshit—he knew these were the real deal, and far better than what Saavedra’s foot soldiers were used to. The asshole was sabotaging the deal. And if Saavedra had no more use for Morgan—

  Saavedra looked to Morgan, questioning. “This is quality hardware,” said Morgan, without taking his eyes off White. “He doesn’t want competition.”

  “This is good stuff,” Paco broke in, and then spoke in frantic Spanish until Saavedra held up one hand and looked at his other man, who was inspecting a rifle, for his opinion.

  “Es bueno,” the man said.

  “My man says they’re good,” Saavedra said.

  “Señor Saavedra,” said White, “could we speak in confidence for a moment?”

  Saavedra motioned for White to follow him down a small path toward a set of wrought iron chairs under a sprawling Mexican elm.

  Goddamn it. The Acevedo bastard didn’t bite. He was going to blow the whole deal. Morgan kept an eye on Saavedra’s reactions as White spoke.

  “What’s happening?” asked Bloch through the comm.

  “What do you think Saavedra and White are talking about over there?” Morgan asked Paco, for Bloch’s benefit.

  “Maybe they are negotiating terms for transporting the guns.”

  Idiot. White was speaking, a hand on Saavedra’s shoulder, and the drug lord was nodding. “No. That is the sight of us losing this deal.”

  “You don’t know that,” Paco insisted.

  “Steady,” said Bloch. “We’re not getting Acevedo this time, but you can still ID this Mr. White for us. It’s progress.”

  Yeah. Progress.

  Morgan looked at the drying blood on his boots. He couldn’t get the image of the dying kid, Miguel, out of his head. He was hardly much older than Morgan’s daughter Alex, come to think of it. Twenty, maybe twenty-one. Probably had a similar headstrong idealism, too.

  Saavedra and White returned from their little conference. White shot him a self-satisfied smirk.

  “Señor Bevelacqua,” said Saavedra. “Your offer is appreciated, but we do not have a deal. I apologize for making you come all the way here. I will have my men put your sample back on the truck.”

  “Keep it,” said Morgan.

  He would survive, at least. Whatever White offered him, Saavedra needed Morgan alive if he was to be a bargaining chip with Acevedo.

  “Just get out of there, Morgan,” said Bloch.

  Paco was still pleading with Saavedra, the idiot. Morgan’s eyes were drawn to the tree stump, some fifty yards away, where Miguel had lost his head. A maid had brought a hose and was now washing away the blood, as if it were nothing more than a spilled drink. Morgan turned back to the smug, tranquil face of Saavedra and then cast his eyes down to his blood-spattered boots.

  Paco was bent over the crate, nestling the F1 grenades to make room to repack the rifles, the pearl handles of his Desert Eagles sticking out on their hip holsters.

  Oh, hell.

  Morgan grabbed the two guns, pulling them from their holsters. He undid the safety with a flick and, before anyone had any time to react, opened fire.

  Chapter 3

  The IMI Desert Eagle Mark XIX is among the most powerful semiautomatic handguns money can buy. Paco’s particular ten-inch variant carried eight .44 Magnum rounds each. Its extra-long triangular barrel makes it an iconic gun, popular in movies and video games and, as a result, among idiots like Paco.

  It packed a hell of a punch.

  Morgan took out the bodyguards first, one shot each, close range to the head—he couldn’t miss at this distance. Then he turned the twin hand cannons to the other armed enforcers, six shots fired, three men down, too fast for anyone to do anything about it.

  As for Paco, Morgan settled for breaking his leg with a well-placed downward kick to his knee.

  White ran off into the house. Much as he might want to, Morgan wasn’t about to shoot him down in cold blood. He could still be useful.

  That left Saavedra, frozen in place.

  “Need backup!”

  The gunfire drew others from the house. Men with AK-47s, coming out to the veranda.

  “Morgan, report!” said Bloch.

  Morgan discarded the gun from his left hand and grabbed Saavedra by the collar, holding him hostage with the remaining semiautomatic in his right—four rounds left against the small squadron of gunmen that was approaching. Morgan counted eight, and more emerging from the house.

  “Stay back or el jefe gets it!” Morgan called out. He didn’t know whether any of them spoke English, but the Desert Eagle pressed against the boss’s temple seemed to be getting the message across just fine.

  Of course, this still didn’t put him in a great position.

  “You will die,” Saavedra hissed.

  The men were creeping forward, all eager to save the boss and just as scared of putting a bullet through his skull by mistake. Through his peripheral vision, Morgan felt them flanking him. He could only hold the stalemate for so long.

  “Back! Move back!”

  “Chopper’s on its way,” said Bloch. “Hold tight.”

  What he needed was time. Morgan inched forward, prodding Saavedra toward the crate of weapons.

  “Back!” he screamed against the small army gathered around him. Sweat trickled down his forehead and from the back of his neck under his shirt. He pulled on Saavedra’s collar. “Tell them to move back.”

  “Screw you.”

  Morgan knelt before the crate, yanking Saavedra down with him. Nine pairs of eyes were on him, eighteen hands gripping their weapons. The only sound was Paco moaning in pain on the ground.

  Releasing Saavedra’s lapel, Morgan reached in and drew out one of the lemon-shaped grenades. The cartel lackeys tensed up, raising their rifles. He stood, pulling Saavedra along with him.

  Here goes.

  He pulled the pin and released the grenade back into the crate with its twenty-three brothers. It seemed to fall in slow motion. For a split second, there was no reaction at all. But before the grenade had covered half the distance to the crate, some of the men were turning around to hightail it while the most loyal or reckless lunged forward to help the boss.

  Morgan took two steps back and kicked Saavedra in the spine, forcing him to stumble forward, against the crate. Then Morgan spun around and darted like hell in the opposite direction.

  Gunfire cracked as bullets whizzed past him, and then yells to watch out for Saavedra. Counting off the five seconds to detonation, Morgan ran as far as he could and dove headfirst onto the grass behind an ornamental stone.

  Then came the fireworks. An eruption of death and mayhem.

  Feeling the wave of heat pass, Morgan didn’t even turn to look at the damage. He just ran, feet pounding the grass, now scarred with grenade fragments. Ears ringing and legs unstable, he d
ashed into the vast field of coconut trees.

  After a three-second lag, renewed gunfire. Others were coming out of the house, drawn by the explosion. A Jeep packed with security guards was driving in from the gate.

  Morgan stumbled. He had misjudged how competent he was to run—the blast had compromised his balance. He lost and regained stability only to step on a coconut, which sent him flying to the ground, kissing the grass.

  Saavedra’s men surrounded him. He waited for the bullet that would kill him, but instead what came was a kick to the gut and another to the face. Morgan spit blood. Four heavy arms picked him up and dragged him back.

  Morgan surveyed the scene of destruction as they passed. The driveway was riddled with bodies around the blackened bloom of soot radiating from the splintered crate. One belonged to the poor bastard Paco, unable to run away with his broken leg. The Dodge and the pickup truck had caught a hail of shrapnel and were as torn up as any of the corpses except for one.

  Saavedra. There wasn’t much left of him.

  They hauled Morgan all the way to the bloody stump where Miguel had lost his head. Elvis, Morgan was less than thrilled to see, had survived the explosion, with a couple of nasty cuts on the right side of his face. He was already standing by the chopping block, brandishing the machete that was to cut his head off.

  Morgan knew the drill.

  They kicked the back of his knees and forced his head against the stump. A heavy boot came down on his temple, sodden with blood and dirt, to hold him in place.

  Elvis came forward, the rage in his eyes not quite eclipsing the relish he had in the prospect of his second beheading of the day. A short stride at a time, running a finger against the cutting edge of the machete, he approached until all Morgan could see were his hairy, blood-spattered shins.

  “Adiós, gringo,” he said, raising the blade.

  And then Elvis’s head erupted in a mist of blood and brains.

  Morgan had to admit, Diesel was one hell of a shot.

  The boot came off Morgan’s head as the men scattered, looking for the source of the bullet. Morgan ran low as the chopper burst onto the scene and Bishop rained beautiful death from the sky from the side-mounted M60D heavy machine gun. Crouching next to him, Diesel loosed single shots from his custom H&K PSG1 Precision Rifle, a surgical counterpart to Bishop’s hack-and-slash approach.

  The two other members of the tac team rappelled down, providing covering fire as Morgan ran, head low, toward the chopper. As he came closer, he made out Spartan’s more slender outline to his right, made bulkier by her Kevlar vest, her close-cropped blond hair hidden by her black ballistic helmet. To Morgan’s left was Tango, thickset, face painted with black streaks, gritted white teeth showing through a grin as he shook with the recoil of his Colt M4 Carbine.

  “I have to hand it to you,” said Spartan, between three-round bursts from her FN SCAR MK 17, “nobody raises hell quite like you do.”

  The landing skids of the UH-72 Lakota touched down on the grass, the scream of the rotors punctuated by cracks of gunfire. Bishop held out his hand, and Morgan, wincing against the wind whipped up by the blades, took it and hopped onto the corrugated metal floor. He held onto an overhead strap as Tango and Spartan boarded after him. They lifted off, Bishop spraying bullets at the handful of men who were still shooting at them from behind the carcasses of the cars. Within a few seconds, the chopper was out of range.

  They circled around and flew north over the Caribbean Sea as a thin billow of smoke still rose from the mansion, leaving the world one drug kingpin lighter.

  Chapter 4

  Alex Morgan opened her eyes and was assaulted by the light glaring in through the unfamiliar window. She screwed her eyes and blinked, trying to get her vision to functional sharpness, but everything remained blurry and her eyelids seemed to stick together. Her head pounded, and her breath was absolutely heinous.

  Hangovers. She was still getting the hang of those.

  She shivered and noticed she had no shirt on. Only then did she feel the bulky presence boxing her in against the wall, emitting faint wheezy snores.

  Oh, right.

  Alex felt an immediate desire to get the hell out. Normally she’d be able to get up and out without as much as a creak of the bedsprings, but the blue fiberglass cast on her right leg wasn’t helping. She’d have to wake him up.

  At least she still had her pants on.

  She pulled up the sheets to cover her bare chest. “Hey,” she stage-whispered. “Hey, Devin.”

  He stirred and mumbled, but gave no sign of waking.

  “Devin, wake up,” she said in her normal speaking voice.

  He opened his dark brown eyes, startled, and smacked his lips. He turned his head to look at her and smiled, crinkling his half-closed eyes.

  Damn it.

  “Good morning,” he said, meaning it just a little too much for her taste.

  “Hi,” she said, tipping cheeriness into the word to the point of saturation, avoiding, she hoped, any hint of sexiness.

  He stretched his arms, yawning, and stroked her hair, curling the frayed tips between his fingers. “That was amazing last night. I’ve never been with anyone so . . . passionate.”

  “Ha. Right,” she said. “Yeah, I haven’t—yeah.”

  He leaned in to kiss her, mashing his lips against hers, morning breath and all. Nausea rose in her stomach and Alex had to hold back vomit. She lay a hand on his chest. “Listen, I really should get going.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment was palpable in his puppy-dog blue eyes.

  “I just really need to get to the library at some point today, and with this thing”—she motioned toward the cast that enveloped her leg with a nod of the head—“it can kind of take a while.”

  “Sure, okay.” He got up off the creaky bed and stood as far away as he could in the cramped bedroom, flat against his dresser. Inching her bad leg over the side of the bed, she sat up, holding onto the sheet covering her chest.

  “Could you . . . ?” She indicated the door with her eyes.

  “Come on. It’s not like I haven’t seen it already.”

  “It doesn’t mean you get to see it again.”

  He shuffled out into the hallway in his boxers, closing the door behind him.

  She fell back on the bed, exhaling in exasperation. From the ceiling, a banner depicting the creepy baby from Family Guy leered down at her.

  As a junior, Devin had a right to a single room, which he had decorated floor to ceiling with posters paying homage to various TV shows and bands as well as to the concept of drinking. She scanned the floor among the many shirts and Bermuda shorts for her shirt and bra, diminutive, vanishing next to his enormous dirty shirts and pants. Finding both at the foot of the bed, she stretched her arm, nearly toppling to the floor in the process. She clasped her bra and pulled on her shirt. She adjusted the bobby pins in her hair, which kept her bangs, long overdue for a trim, out of her eyes. Next were her crutches, resting against the footboard. Everything ached as she hoisted herself to her feet.

  She opened the door to find him waiting just outside. He held it for her as she came out into the hallway of his dorm, all fluorescent lights and ratty blue carpeting. She paused to say good-bye, and he leaned in for a kiss. She didn’t have the energy to stop him, but when he tried for tongue, she kept her lips sealed.

  “I’ll text you, I guess,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said, packing in as little enthusiasm as she could manage. “Why not?”

  She turned around and walked down the hallway without looking back, passing a jaded junior girl in her towel, headed for the bathroom with toothbrush in hand. With her limp, Alex’s fifty-foot toddle to the elevator seemed interminable. At least her own dorm, Prather House, was right across the quad. The walk of shame would be a short one.

  She never heard him close the door. He must have watched her until she disappeared into the elevator.

  Alex cast a guilty glance at the fresh fruit that made u
p her breakfasts in the beginning of the fall semester, back before she had broken her leg. On this day, she loaded up on bacon and pancakes, acutely aware of the tightness in the waist of her pants. Healthy living seemed like another life for her. She took her tray to the tables, where she spotted her roommate, Katie, sitting alone with a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a cup of diet cola, clad in her usual yellow sweatpants–Springhaven University hoodie combo, wild brown hair reined in by a pink headband. She waved her spoon in the air when she saw Alex, sending droplets of milk flying at a passing girl who looked down at her and scowled. Alex set her tray down and began the laborious task of lowering herself onto her seat.

  “A little birdie told me you disappeared with Devin Monroe last night.” Of course, Katie somehow would have heard about it already.

  “All we did was make out.” She played with a slice of crispy bacon on her plate, running it along the syrup.

  “Yeah right, you slut.” Katie said the word with sibilant relish. She shoveled a spoonful of cereal into her mouth, milk dribbling down her chin, and spoke with her mouth full. “So, how was it? Juicy details now, please.”

  Alex didn’t bother to argue. “It was . . . meh.”

  Katie swallowed through her indignation. “I cannot believe you, Alex Morgan. Do you know how many girls would kill—kill—to hop into the sack with the star pitcher of the Springhaven baseball team? I mean, those arms.” She emitted a sort of shudder-groan.

  “He’s kind of a . . . sloppy kisser.” Alex felt the heat bloom on her cheeks as she blushed. “And he didn’t really seem to know what he was doing. He would take his—”

  She was interrupted by the clatter of a tray being set down next to Katie’s. A skinny, smooth-faced boy in a plaid button-down open over a plain white T-shirt, the standard uniform for suburban alt kids.

  Simon Burczyk. Sweet, innocent, and head over heels in love with Alex.

  “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Alex was just telling us about her scandalous escapades in a young gentleman’s bed last night.” Katie somehow always knew the exact wrong thing to say.