This is how we could monitor them. This is how we confirmed that, damn it, they were still there.
“They’re following us way too well to be drunk,” replied Rita.
Indeed, they were. We picked up the pace. We fast-walked down the tiny streets, turning abruptly, turning again, crossing, crossing back. Not exactly in a full-fledged sprint to evade them, no. We didn’t want to take it to the next level just yet, not without further information, like whether they were armed, what they were armed with, whether they had friends up ahead of us. We didn’t even know if they were using cell phones.
Every time we turned, we’d lose them for about a half block, and then we’d see them come around the corner right behind us. Still on track. It was eerie.
“They might have eyes above,” said Kyra.
Yes.
Overwatch. A situation with one of those old ladies, a native, pretending to reel in her laundry line, squeakity-squeak, while actually scouting the three of us from her third-floor window. The majority of the neighborhood was two stories, so anyone with any kind of additional height could see us gringas from a mile away.
“Turn here,” I said, as we then ducked behind a tight alley. “Definitely caught sight of a handgun on the pudgy one. I’m guessing the others have knives.”
The fastest-moving of the four guys was a youngish looking chap, maybe twenty years old. He looked agile. Probably good at parkour. Probably just dying to impress his buddies and get extra violent with me and my lady friends.
“Do you think they’re connected to Diego?” asked Rita.
I quickly peeked my eye around the edge of the wall and took a brief look at each one.
“Worse,” I replied. I was starting to realize we were in for a rough trip. “I think they’re cops.”
I needed to take us into the smallest possible area. The problem with cops is they’d have a very close network of radio communication. Probably the best in town. I was already dismayed by the presence of four dudes tailing us—but then there was the prospect of another, let’s say, ten joining in…
“I dunno that we can ditch ’em,” said Rita, “here in their own backyard.”
“This place is like a maze,” agreed Kyra.
“We’re not trying to ditch ’em,” I replied.
I repositioned the ballpoint pen in my clenched fist. The one General Dolan dropped in my lap. The one I now had gripped like a dagger.
“We’re about to start the party,” I said.
Chapter 31
We rounded the corner into a narrow alley, wide enough for maybe one horse or one cow or moose or whatever-the-hell transport animal this stupid ghetto was founded on. It was narrow as shit. One horse on a diet. There were stoops and inset doorways. Those were perfect for us. We readied ourselves in three separate positions. Rita and I tucked ourselves into two different doorways while Kyra kept walking toward the deep dead end in plain sight.
Visual bait.
I could hear some commotion just around the corner. The four men were approaching. We had no weapons except my pen, but we had the element of surprise. What we wanted was the first guy to be well ahead of his pack. He would then round the corner alone, and we could ambush him and take his gun or knife. Then do the same thing to the next person.
I was calming my breath. Listening. Staying loose. I was planning to deliver a swift pen stab to the clavicle.
But that clavicle never arrived.
Whatever lone-vulnerable-pursuer-Disney-perfection-scenario I’d envisioned did not come to fruition at all. Kyra was correct. These guys knew their backstreets like the back of their hand. Instead of us trapping one of the four guys in these tight quarters, those four guys had trapped us in a small city alley.
I could hear the pudgy one yell to his buddy down the block. Something about “staking” it. They were positioning themselves at the four sides.
Kyra finally checked back over her shoulder to see how we were doing. She saw the cancel signal from Rita and quickly returned to us. No talking, no making sounds—we signed each other the following:
Four enemies. Surrounding. We run. That way. One mile.
That was it.
That was our entire plan. We were going to improvise the hell out of this. Because I had no idea if those four guys were packing machetes or if they all had firepower. We braced ourselves. And then I nodded.
Let’s do this.
We all three ran through the back door of a small taqueria in a dead sprint and emerged onto another street. It became instantly clear that I was wrong about there being only four guys.
Now there were twenty-four.
And they had submachine guns. And they were using them.
Chapter 32
We ran as low as we could with as much zigzag as efficiency would allow. We were dodging every kind of third-world-Kalashnikov bullet they had in stock, from seemingly every direction.
We ran hard, directly into the first open door we could find, a laundromat, with zero time to assess anything at all, just banking on the possibility there might be a back door and that, through it, there might be another tiny alley like the previous one.
There was.
We ran down the alley, and I skidded to a stop along the gravel to try to open the first back door that looked accessible. It wasn’t, and neither was the second, but the third—the door to a dive bar—was, and I burst it open just as Kyra and Rita ran in behind by me, just as a wash of thirty more bullets embedded themselves in the wall where my head had been merely two seconds prior.
We were back out on the streets.
At this point there was no way to survive by continuing to flee. Soon, very soon, statistics would catch up with us and the law of mathematical probability would dictate that a random round from a random gun fired by a randomly aiming shooter was going to find its way into one of our torsos. That is, if we kept exposing our torsos to submachine-gun fire while running in a straight line away from young men who have memorized every straight line in the neighborhood.
I was desperate to recreate the setting for the failed ambush we tried earlier but I was too scared to sacrifice our current velocity. After about five minutes, I think we’d seriously traveled one entire mile. You’d be shocked to learn just how damn fast you can run when guns are behind you. We had emerged out of the heart of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world: Iztapalapa, a barrio of Distrito Federal. Poor, run-down. A virtual playground for criminals.
“If we can cross into the center of the city,” shouted Rita as we sprinted, “I seriously doubt they’ll follow us.”
“No, no, no,” yelled Kyra. “They’ll go anywhere. They’re not allowed to lose us. That’s their pride.”
“So we have to square up with them,” I yelled back.
“With all twenty? All twenty of these guys?” shouted Rita.
“No,” I replied. “The first four. The cops.”
We were running down a gradual hill. To our right was the legendary Cerro de la Estrella, a national park with a small, remarkable mountain of history. Actually everything around here is charming to look at if you simply subtract the poverty, misogyny, oppression, depression, pollution, corruption, and daily violence.
None of the locals would help us. Doors were closing ahead of us. We could see curtains being drawn. Cars turning away from our direction. Pedestrians ducking into shops.
As soon as anyone saw us, fear governed their next move.
I don’t know how fast word can spread in a city of sixteen million people, but this neighborhood had its own little ecosystem. Its own self-sustaining misery. Welcome to Iztapalapa: Three Days Since Our Last Lynching.
“The last corner on the left,” I shouted to Rita and Kyra.
Still sprinting, we rounded yet another corner. I think we had logged three miles in fifteen minutes. We were close to Avenue Río Churubusco, which meant we were on the way to downtown. To “civilization.” Close to exiting the Iztapalapan war zone.
; But instead of finding an area to trap our captors, we found ourselves trapping ourselves. Again. In a dead-end corridor. With no alcoves or inset doorways for cover. Not even a cardboard box.
Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s cleanest damn back alley.
And I managed to find it. And I managed to lead Rita into it and somehow managed to lose Kyra at the same time. We weren’t together! Jesus.
And then, finally, as if on cue, at the worst time possible, those first four bastards showed up. Guns ready. They were looking to shoot the living shit out of us. In tight quarters.
Perfect.
Chapter 33
“Hands up!” yelled Officer Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Was.
“¡Los manos, puta!” said his sidekick. “¡Levante los manos!”
Rita and I were cornered.
There was obviously a huge reward paid to whoever captured us, but something sinister, something ulterior, could be seen growing in the eyes of officer number three. Let’s call him Señor Sleazy, muscling his way to the front row. He had some stripes on his sleeve, so I guessed he was the local captain and the three guys around him were his sergeants and fluffers.
“On your knees,” said Captain Sleazy.
Rita and I traded a look. We knew what this one meant.
“On your knees, puta,” he said again.
The guy behind him, let’s call him Officer Double Chin for obvious reasons, started murmuring some inaudible crap into his radio. They were telling the rest of their gang to do whatever. I didn’t like the sound of it—directions to hang back. I hadn’t seen Kyra since two blocks ago. If these slimy reptiles had their hands on her, a pretty girl like her, I can’t even imagine what they’d already be doing.
“Estamos solo turistas,” I protested. We’re just tourists. “Queremos visitar, er, the museum.”
Wham, I felt a kick into the back of my knee, which sent me down onto the pavement in a forced kneel. Double Chin didn’t like my Spanish conjugation.
Rita immediately knelt alongside me. Cooperating. She knew that defiance was my prerogative, not hers. She knew to follow my lead. We were down, execution style. Would they do it right there? I was the political prize, I’m sure, but would they maybe shoot Rita right in front of me? Was she expandable? Collateral? Had they already shot Kyra?
This was scary. If they were connected to Diego Correra, which, c’mon, how the hell could they not be, there’s no way the bounty on my head wasn’t astronomical. These bastards were willing to shoot my eight-year-old daughter in bed. In Texas. In the United States. So I seriously doubted there would be any sort of moral hesitation about destroying lives out here.
“Take off your clothes,” said Captain Sleazy to Rita.
I knew it. He had a few minutes alone. A few minutes before his police chief would arrive. He knew his bounty was already in the bank, and he wanted to get the most out of this rare assignment.
“Your pants, bitch,” said the Captain.
“Don’t do it,” I told her.
“I’m going to count down from five.”
He clicked the hammer on his revolver and aimed it at the back of my head. His leverage against Rita.
“Take off your clothes,” he said to her again.
“Don’t do it,” I told Rita again. “He’s bluffing.”
“Five.”
I just wanted to picture my daughters. Just them. Just to tell them I was about to be with Daddy really soon.
“Four.”
I pictured the old living room. The one Christmas when the tree fell over and we all started laughing because the star landed in a bowl of oatmeal. But my daughter—she was now saying something to me. In my head.
“Three.”
She was saying, “Not yet.”
“Two.”
Not yet.
“One…”
And just as, I swear to God, I saw his finger begin to tighten on the trigger, a door swung open.
Kyra.
And she grabbed Sleazy’s muzzle.
And, bam, the gun of Double Chin went off and fired a bullet at the left shoulder of Lieutenant Rita Ramirez. Within two steps Kyra had broken her opponent’s neck with a judo move, had pulled someone down, flipped him forward, and his body along with his head hit the unforgiving pavement at such an incredibly wrong angle, he was done. Forever.
And we were just getting started.
I rolled backward, trying to move in whatever way my enemy least anticipated, and grabbed the leg of Sergeant Double Chin while still on my back. My foot cocked under his left kneecap just before kicking upward along his thigh as hard as I could, dragging the arch of my foot along his leg, taking his kneecap along for the ride.
He gasped in pain.
His day was over.
Kyra had already grabbed the revolver from the captain and aimed it the throat of the third guy as the fourth guy was trying to wrestle it from her. She was fighting two men at once.
I finished Double Chin with as many forearms to the nose as my controlled rage would allow, which soon rendered him inept so that I could turn to help Kyra, who had already finished off both of her assailants, freeing me to help Rita. So we could get the hell out of there.
Rita didn’t look good. Her shoulder was pretty much a half-serving of lasagna thanks to the horrendous gouge of the gunshot. But she was focused. Maintaining her breathing. And was already up on one knee. Ready for me to yell the cue.
“Move out!”
We got up underneath Rita’s good arm, her right one, and helped her rise for what just might be our final sprint. I grabbed a pistol from one of the unconscious hombres, and then we were dashing back through the doorway that Kyra emanated from. A small house. Heading out through the owner’s front stoop, muchas gracias, where we now had at least a one-minute head start on the rest of the gang. There was nobody in front of us. Nobody behind us. A three-person hydra—we were running our six-legged asses off.
Then I looked over at Rita.
She was smiling.
Not ear-to-ear. But a slight smirk. Smiling.
Kyra and I traded the uh oh eye contact. Was she delirious? Losing consciousness?
No.
Rita had something in her hand. Something precious that I forgot to grab from the alley in my adrenaline haste, something that was going to revolutionize our situation for good.
She had Double Chin’s cell phone.
Chapter 34
On the move, running, sprinting, losing a little speed (because, let’s face it, we’re not goddamn Terminators, although Kyra’s a suspected candidate), we were now covered in Rita’s blood, some of my blood, and a whole lot of blood from the four inert hombres back in the alley.
It was time to make the call.
I took Double Chin’s cell phone and dialed the only special number I had that might function outside the United States. “Bakery Blue Three,” I said after the line connected, then paused and slowly stated the following, “The wedding should be held in Mexico City.”
We were still running. I was doing my best to enunciate.
“Repeat…the wedding should be held in Mexico City.”
This was the evacuation code. It would supposedly—if it worked, which would be a certified miracle since the goddamn number was issued to me two years ago—identify who I am, how many people needed rescuing, and where that rescuing needed to happen. It would thereby elicit an immediate one-time no-questions-asked response consisting of either a ten-thousand-dollar cash deposit to the nearest Western Union, or a ride in a Learjet.
I was waiting on the reply. The wedding planner has to check on the budget. That means money is coming. The wedding planner has to check on the weather. That means the jet. It’s an SOS call that I was never supposed to make. It represented the last favor I could ever ask of anyone at the Pentagon. I’d earned it, trust me, years ago, but the person who felt I’d earned it was probably not at the same desk anymore. Probably didn’t answer the same line. In fact, I didn’t even hear
either one of those code phrases stated back to me.
Instead I got a long pause and then the following:
“Rooftop. Hilton. Nineteen minutes.”
It was a man’s voice. Meek, almost. Definitely not jolly. Definitely not open to a chat. And then the call ended.
Of course, I tried to dial it back. You’re not supposed to, but I tried. And of course my efforts got me the infamous number is no longer in service message. In Spanish.
“The Hilton?” questioned Kyra.
There could be two million Hiltons in Mexico City. Or three. Or ocho. Or…I don’t know. This town is, after all, the second largest damn city in the Western Hemisphere. Why would there be just one stupid Hilton?
“Nineteen minutes,” said Kyra, glancing at the clock on the phone. “Eighteen,” she corrected herself, as we apparently just spent a full minute worrying about how many minutes we had.
“Gotta be the downtown,” said Rita. Her last gasp of verbiage before slipping into delirium again. She was losing blood.
“We need a cab,” I said.
No cab would stop for us. Fortunately, we did have enough mileage laid behind us to be within running distance of the downtown hotel location, which meant, yup, more running.
With two minutes to spare, we limped into the hotel’s lobby. We were promptly greeted, or should I say, intercepted, by the concierge, who took one look at our triple serving of bad news and already wished we were pre-deleted from his average Tuesday.
“I need roof access,” I told him.
“Uh…roof…?” questioned the concierge, before telling me, “I’m sorry, señora, but there is a private party on the terrace right now and the only way to access the roof is to walk through the—”
My gun pressed into his dick. Secretly. So no one else could see. Just me and him, near each other. With my gun. Quietly aimed. And everyone still smiling that fake vacation staff smile.
Kill or Be Killed Page 22
