by Mark Greaney
More gunfire barked from ahead, and the crowd shrieked. Men, women, children all running and fighting and screaming to get away from the bloodbath. Court searched for the origin of the fire as he ran, blading his body and using his free hand as a spear to knock the shocked and stunned out of his way as he advanced on the threats ahead. He arrived at the first of the victims now: bullet-riddled dead bodies and writhing injured civilians whose misery continued as others tripped over them trying to escape the pandemonium. Court pushed his way with the crowd towards the long staircase leading up to the road and the church above; in front of him an utter logjam of panicked and shrieking humanity fought its way up the steps towards safety.
* * *
By now Chuck Cullen had moved Elena and her family off the stage; the Captain quickly ushered her, Laura, Ernesto, and Luz towards the staircase leading away from Parque Hidalgo. Moving with them, either behind, alongside, or in front, depending on the chaotic flotsam and jetsam of the crowd, were the other eight members of the Gamboa family: Eddie’s two uncles, two aunts, his two older brothers, a sister-in-law, and his sixteen-year-old nephew. Along with them, family members of other PF officers killed on La Sirena fled the stage to the stairs. But the crowd was thick, and Cullen’s hasty escape plan bogged down immediately. The steady rhythmic gunfire seemed right on top of them, but they could barely breathe, much less move away. After what seemed to him to be an eternity of shoving, Cullen finally got the Gamboa family to the wall alongside the staircase. He began pushing and fighting his way along it to make the turn to go up, but the swarm of horrified protestors moving in the opposite direction pushed back at his scheme.
Finally, he turned at the base of the stairs, and he led the way, held Elena by the hand, and alternated between looking back to make sure the rest of the family had not been left behind and scanning forward up the stairs towards more pandemonium, searching to avoid threats or discover opportunities to hasten their flight from the danger.
More gunshots from behind, from different areas of the park and the street, and from different types of weapons. Laura trailed her parents, pushed at her father who, along with his wife, was suffocating at the bottom of the stairs, packed like cordwood amongst the others.
From just above them, “Go! Go! Move! Move!” Cullen spoke excellent Spanish, but he shouted in English, certain his meaning was obvious to all.
* * *
For much of his slow and arduous progression through the gridlocked park, Court could not see more than a few feet in front of him. He fought against the masses, punching and pushing and scratching to make his way. “¡Muevate! ¡Muevate! ¡Muevate!” Move! Move! Move! Nearing the staircase, stepping and leaping over dead and wounded along the way, he caught up to three sicarios federales, their backs to him. These men pushed forward, reloading their smoking submachine guns, completely unaware that an armed enemy was behind them.
The men wore big bulletproof vests, so with cruel determination the American assassin knelt to the hot pavement, thereby creating a flight path for his bullets that would not send them through his targets and then into innocents. He carefully fired a short burst into the back of each man’s head below the helmet. They pitched and tumbled forward into fleeing civilians; their Colt sub guns and Beretta pistols flew from their hands and fell silent. Court held his rifle in his right hand and fired again at the men on the ground, double-tapping the forehead of each man as he pushed past them.
He came to a group of terrified civilians frozen in fear; they were obviously a family, a father nearly hysterical as he tried to shelter his wife and three children from the flying lead and thrashing and kicking bodies as he attempted to get out of the way of it all. Just as Court caught the terrified eyes of the man, the Mexican’s head lurched to the side, and blood erupted from his jaw. Gentry spun his head to find one of the plainclothes agitators in the crowd re-aiming his big silver revolver, having missed Court with his first shot. Court ducked and rolled on the ground, crashed into others around him like a bowling ball, but he successfully dodged another pistol shot that no doubt struck an innocent person behind him.
The Gray Man emptied his Colt 9 mm into the fat man’s gut at twelve feet, sending him into spasms before he tumbled back dead.
Court dropped the spent submachine gun, crawled forward on his hands and knees, and hefted the dead man’s smoking pistol.
He rose, sprinted forward towards the stairs; his new weapon dripped blood, and he shoved and pushed and even pointed the gun at innocents so they would get the fuck out of his way. He did everything within his power to catch up to Cullen and the fleeing Gamboa family, obscured still by the hundreds pushing in both directions on the wide steps running up to the street in front of the Talpa Church. At one point he found himself climbing onto a bench, jumping high onto the backs and heads of the crowd, literally bodysurfing over a particularly tight gathering of Puerto Vallartans too terrified to move.
SEVENTEEN
Chuck Cullen was eighty feet above and ahead of Court, just more than halfway up the stairs with the Gamboas and the other GOPES family members right behind him. The crowd ahead thinned suddenly on his right, so the retired captain decided to shift his entourage in that direction. He led Elena forward and past him so that he could take Luz by the hand to pull her through the surging riot of screaming people all around.
At the top of the stairs, another thirty feet away, three federal policemen on Suzuki motorcycles drove through the mob and dismounted; they drew pistols from their drop-leg holsters and looked down the stairs towards the gunfire. They waved the escaping memorial attendees past, encouraging them to run for their lives, and they seemed to cover them with their guns, scanning for threats down in the plaza.
More gunfire. More honking horns. More screaming and shouting.
More cries of agony.
Elena Gamboa led her family up the stairs now. She slowed when she noticed the federales, but she saw their motorcycles, just like Eduardo’s; their uniforms, just like Eduardo’s; their ski masks and sunglasses, just like Eduardo’s. She ascended the crowded stairs just as fast as her pregnant body would allow.
The policeman directly above her at the top of the stairs beckoned her forward with his free hand as he furiously searched the crowd for threats.
More gunshots from behind Elena as she hurried towards the safety of Eduardo’s colleagues.
* * *
Chuck Cullen got Luz moving again, checked quickly to see that Laura held Ernesto around the waist and kept him pressing forward behind his wife. The aunt and uncles and nephew and brothers had pushed on ahead; they passed Cullen on the left-hand side of the staircase. The seventy-two-year-old retired American naval officer turned to see Elena advancing quickly up on the right; she’d gotten ahead of him while he helped Eddie’s mother. He rushed to arrive at the top of the stairs at the same time as she so he could protect her from any danger there as well as direct her up the alley behind the church where his car was parked.
He was still a few feet behind her and to her left when he saw the policeman, at the top of the stairs and seven steps above Elena.
The two other federales stood to his left. They all held automatic pistols out in front of them. As one their weapons’ muzzles left the threats at the bottom of the stairs and leveled instead on the families of the dead GOPES men rushing up towards them.
These men weren’t protecting anyone. They were assassins.
Chuck watched in utter horror as a handgun’s barrel pointed directly at Eddie Gamboa’s pregnant wife.
Captain Cullen moved faster than he’d moved in forty years, hurtling himself upwards, throwing himself up the four steps, and jamming his body between the weapon and the woman.
The pistol barked, pain tore into the old man’s gut, still he grabbed at the cop, pulled him tight in a bear hug.
The other masked police began firing as well, pouring lead down the stairs into the Gamboa family as they approached the top of the staircase.
&n
bsp; Captain Cullen was shot again in the ribcage by the man in his grasp, his arms relaxed the hug, and he slid slowly down the cop’s body, onto his knees at the top of the stone staircase. Slower still he slumped forward onto his chest as Elena screamed.
* * *
To avoid the crowd on the staircase Gentry leapt high in his stocking feet onto the wide and steep stone railing that ran up the right side of the steps; he began running upwards with his arms out for balance and the revolver he’d taken from the plainclothes gunman jutting out from his right hand. He looked away from his feet for an instant and up towards a new commotion in the thick crowd at the logjam at the top of the stairs. Before his eyes could fix on the action a pistol round cracked and Court saw Elena. In front of her was the captain, and in front of him stood a black-clad federale.
Court understood everything in an instant. The cop had been gunning for Eddie’s wife and unborn child, and old Chuck Cullen had thrown his body over the gun.
More gunshots, rapid-fire pistols blazing, and Court saw the other two officers murdering the families of the special operation’s group as they ascended towards them.
Gentry sprinted upwards on the stone railing. He raised the silver Smith and Wesson revolver and put the weapon’s front site on the back of Elena Gamboa’s head, shifted aim a fraction to the right, and fired a single.357 Magnum round.
The bullet left the weapon, tracked up and over the crowd on the stairs, passed two inches to the right of Elena Gamboa’s ear, and struck the killer of Chuck Cullen on the left collarbone above his Kevlar vest, blasting bone and blood and muscle out of the man’s shoulder and spinning him away and down to the ground as his pistol flew out of his hand and twirled in the air above him like a whirligig.
Court was still thirty feet from the top of the stairs. Gunfire continued, and the crowd behind the Gamboas turned as one and began running down now, away from this new danger above them. Some of the younger and more ambulatory on the steps jumped over the railing, falling fifteen to twenty-five feet to the concrete Parque Hidalgo below just to escape the flying lead. Some of these people crossed Gentry’s line of fire, kept him from getting clean shots on the two remaining police assassins.
Court was near the top now; finally, he got a sight line on a target ahead. Both cops were kneeling behind their motorcycles, reloading their pistols. Court aimed at the first man, began pressing the trigger as he leapt off the railing and onto the steps, but again someone got in his way. In half a heartbeat he took his finger from the trigger.
It was Elena, she was falling backwards; the crowd had cleared the top portion of the steps and behind her nothing but hard concrete for ten feet awaited her.
Gentry threw himself at her, dropping the revolver to free both hands. He landed behind her and caught her; he slid his arms around her head and belly, and the two of them slid with the other bodies cascading down the stairs.
Court took the brunt of the impact as they fell; he kept Eddie’s wife safe and her head and belly protected as they slid.
A long blast from an automatic rifle below him focused Gentry’s efforts on stopping his slide, getting back on his feet, and pushing back upwards. He lifted Elena into his arms, cradled her, struggled with her weight as he ascended, pushed through the pain in his back and arms caused by bumping down the steps. He shifted his ascent to the left, doing his best to keep other civilians between him and the gunmen below.
To his left, men, women, and children fell; from the corner of his eye he saw both of Eddie’s uncles and one aunt in a pile of dead and wounded flowing down the stairs, smearing long splatters of fresh blood across the steps as they tumbled and slid.
He kept climbing with Elena in his arms. He put his foot on the revolver he’d dropped and took a moment to kneel and pick it up; his thighs quivered with the effort of raising back up while holding Eddie’s pregnant wife. Soon the sheer number of civilians, an unrelenting stampede of humanity, shoved forward from behind Court, and those with nowhere to run but straight through the killers pushed the hit men at the top of the staircase back, knocked them down, and by the time Gentry arrived at the sidewalk above, the cops had abandoned their cycles and had begun retreating north, reloading their depleted weapons again as they did so.
Court looked down at Chuck Cullen’s body. He lay facedown and violently contorted, splayed along on the top three steps; his USS Buchanan cap had fallen off his head and lay beside him. Gentry put Elena down gently, looked for the loose weapon dropped by the man he’d shot in the collarbone, but he could not find it.
“Fuck!” he shouted, surrounded by the dead and the wounded and the terrified, and now more bursts of gunfire cracked at the bottom of the staircase.
EIGHTEEN
At the road above the Parque Hidalgo, just in front of the church, Gentry held Elena Gamboa’s hand, his head swiveled back and forth, searching for anyone in her dead husband’s family left alive. Screaming civilians ran off in the distance, but he did not see any of Eddie’s loved ones among them.
Finally, a voice called to him from the front door of la Iglesia de la Virgen de Talpa. “Joe! ¡Estamos aquí!” It was Diego, Eddie’s sixteen-year-old nephew, beckoning the American into the church. He and Elena crossed the one-lane street and ran together inside.
The sanctuary was big and dark, and the cries and shrieks of those who’d sought shelter there echoed like church bells. There were twenty or so people inside the old building, many of them GOPES relatives, standing and shaking together near the altar. They cried and hugged and comforted one another. A priest stood above them in his white robes, his hands on his hips and his face a mask of confusion, uncertainty, and fear. Gentry took a moment just inside the doorway to check Elena out. Understandably, she suffered from shock. There was no color in her face; this he could tell even in the candlelight and the meager sunlight that filtered through the stained glass windows. But she did not seem wounded. He held her hand, began moving through the pews with her; Diego was speaking to him but too fast and frantic for him to understand.
“Are we safe?” Asked Elena softly. “Is it over?”
“I seriously doubt it,” Court answered honestly, and kept moving with her towards the altar.
There was no time for a head count; Court would help whoever was here to get out of here, but there was no way in hell he was going back out front where the snapping gunfire continued. He was certain most of the Gamboas were dead, but Luz and Ernesto were standing at the altar unhurt, as was Eddie’s younger sister, Laura. Court blew a quick sigh of relief when he saw her.
“They killed my parents!” Diego shouted, and this Court understood.
He did not know how to respond. What came out was cold and efficient Spanish. “We’ll worry about that later.”
When he looked back up, he saw many of the survivors at the altar knelt in prayer. The elderly frocked padre stood above them still. He did not participate.
Idiots! Court thought to himself.
“Hey!” He interrupted their prayers. “What the hell? We’ve got to get the fuck out of…” He switched to Spanish. “¡No hay tiempo para eso!” There is no time for that! Those kneeling turned back to him, eyes still wide with the shock of the event.
He began running up the center aisle towards them.
Laura rose from her knees and turned; Court realized she had a Beretta pistol in her right hand, likely the weapon he had not been able to find by the cop he’d shot at the top of the stairs. She raised it quickly towards him, and he stopped dead in his tracks. He lifted his arms slowly.
“Laura. It’s okay. Put it on the ground. It’s going to be okay.” Instead he saw her sinewy forearm flex as she pulled the trigger, Court dropped flat on the floor of the center aisle as two shots rang out, right over his head. Through the echo in the sanctuary and the ringing in his ears, he heard a body hit the floor behind him at the entrance to the church. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a federale fall flat on his face in the open doorway forty feet behin
d, a Colt SMG skittering along the tiles next to him.
She’d shot the man in the head.
“Okay,” Court said as he slowly crawled back to his feet. “Why don’t you just hold onto that for now?” She nodded blankly. She was clearly in shock, as bad as Elena. But she sure as hell could shoot.
“Everybody, listen up!” Gentry said in English, then again caught himself and switched to Spanish. “Where are your cars?”
Ernesto Gamboa, Eddie’s father, spoke for the group.
“They are in the garage below the Parque Hidalgo.”
Court cussed aloud. They might as well be on the dark side of the moon. They were not going back down there. And there was no way he could transport everyone in Chuck’s little two-door parked behind the church, even if he had the keys for it, which he did not.
He stepped up to the priest, who stood as still as Jesus on the crucifix behind him. “We are going to have to borrow your car, Padre.”
The elderly man shook his head emphatically. “Out of the question! The church van belongs to my parishioners, and they need their van!”
Without hesitation Court pulled the hammer back on the revolver, still held at his side. The metallic click echoed in the dark sanctuary. “Your parishioners can have a van, or they can have a priest. It’s your call.”
The priest stared at the weapon. Slowly, he reached into his robes, pulled out his keys. Handed them over.
Gentry nodded. “Good call, Padre.”
Out of the corner of his eye Court caught a vicious look from Laura Gamboa. He assumed her Catholicism was clouding her pragmatism at the moment. But he did not have time for niceties. Ignoring her disgust, he lowered the hammer on the gun and shoved it into his waistband, and he led the civilians out the back of the church and into the van. He thought about running back for the Colt Shorty dropped by the dead cop at the door, but he did not know how long it would be before another team of assassins entered the church to finish off the survivors.
