by Mark Russell
Ildefonso Carrasco ran up the stairs in a determined, soldierly manner. He knew what he had to do and why. He had no qualm about killing a DGI perro. Truth be known, he was largely contemptuous of most norteamericanos. How blindly they consumed and borrowed to keep their ugly dream alive, with the brow-sweating Latino only too victimized by it. Yes, Carrasco was keen to do the hit for Guttierez and the Commando C companeros back east. Gripping his weapon, he came off the stairs and stormed into the room.
Luis Ramirez followed closely behind but hardly shared Carrasco's righteous sentiment. There was simply no place for idealism in his fevered state. Consequently his mind was besieged by tortuous memories: ... nerve-fraying screams, damp stone dungeons, the cloying fetor of rats' roost, Castro's henchmen brandishing hammers and acetylene torches, cheerless shadows engulfing twisted bodies ...
Ramirez's chest bulged like a wind-blown sail and his thick finger crammed the trigger guard of his Uzi. Ticktock. Ticktock. His Seiko sports watch sounded like small detonations in his ears. He was higher than the sun and amped to the max. The killing hour was at hand.
Carrasco shouted FREEZE! to everyone in the room. Martinez and Gacha stepped either side of him and jabbed their weapons at the startled occupants of the house. Gacha glanced about him and saw the house phone on a stylish telephone table. Keen to establish authority, he fired a muffled burst of bullets from his MAC10. Bullet casings dropped about his feet as the telephone was reduced to plastic shards and fractured circuitry.
'Holy shit!' Aaron exclaimed from her place at the card table. Carrasco smiled inside. This motley group of youths looked genuinely frightened. Madre de Dios, who could blame them? A hooded man firing an automatic weapon inside their house was nothing to scoff at. Michelle gasped from behind the divan, but Trinda was more vocal. A shrill cry escaped her (which caused Scarlett to wake on her lap). Ramirez spun towards the dark-skinned girl, his crazed eyes bulging in their sockets.
Thirteen stood near Sorenson at the coffee table and looked shrewdly at the gunmen. He was waiting for the crowning moment to grab the .38 Detective Special holstered under his Apache-style suede jacket. He knew Eighteen (also packing iron since the war of words with The Black Scorpions) was awaiting his cue. Fast Cash Boys wasn't new to shootouts. One newspaper-making incident a while back had been serious, as the circular scars on Thirteen's torso proved. Yes, the leader of Fast Cash Boys could count on Eighteen, if no one else, to back him up once shooting started. Thirteen was already selecting his targets, close-range chest shots that would give him a fighting chance to reclaim his home.
Nineteen year old Christian Robinson, aka Sixteen (who with his cards partner was trying to thwart Aaron and her partner's contract of seven diamonds when the gunmen burst in) knew Thirteen's sawn-off shotgun was hidden behind a bookcase close by the card table. With six beers under his belt, the gang-wise youth was primed to make a move for the loaded gun. He was the troubled, short-tempered product of a broken home, of an abusive alcoholic father who liked to knock his kids from one end of the house to the other. From an uncompromising life on the street, Sixteen wasn't one to back down from a fight. His only concern lay in getting his hands on the shotgun and blowing apart the nearest hooded gunman.
Gripping her Cartier lighter, Holly slipped down inconspicuously from her seat in front of the TV. She tried to slink away across the floor without anyone noticing, but there was little chance of that.
'Hey,' Gacha barked at the stringy libertine. 'Get up.'
He glared at Eighteen and Trinda at the far end of the divan. 'You two! Stand up, get up! Now!' All three stood. Gacha motioned with his MAC10 for Holly to move closer to Eighteen and Trinda. He ordered a pale and frightened Michelle to stand close to the others, the better to cover all four. Scarlett also stood, only to spin round and nibble her skinny tail.
Carrasco was happy with Gacha's performance thus far. He wasn't sure how Ramirez's men would take to being under his command. But Gacha and Martinez were proving themselves worthy soldiers. Of course they probably wanted to make a good impression in front of Ramirez.
Damn! Carrasco cursed under his breath. Why hadn't Ramirez stayed behind in the car? Well, as long as the smelly brute butted out for the rest of the operation, what did it matter if he were here? But a part of Carrasco couldn't imagine the operation running without a hitch – especially with a wild card like Ramirez tossed in the deck. And the unshaved ruffian looked more crazed than when outside. Had he taken some drug or other? Carrasco certainly hoped not, and could only pray the haggard LA leader would remain in the background until the hit was done.
Deuce sauntered out of the hallway, head down, lost in thought. He looked up. 'Jesus H. Christ!' His eyes bulged from behind his round glasses. Wholly panicked he tugged repeatedly at the hem of his flannel shirt. How could armed men have commandeered the living room without him knowing?
Gacha pointed his gun at the long-haired youth. 'Hey, yanqui perro! Over there! Vamonos.' Deuce did what he was told, stopping beside Michelle at the back of the divan, his mousy hair brushing her shoulder.
'You yanqui escoria.' Martinez marched into the room and pointed his 9mm Uzi at the card players, stopping just short of the bottle-littered table. 'Up, up. Now!'
Aaron and the others at the table got up from their seats. Sixteen edged closer to the sparsely stocked bookcase beside him.
Carrasco was confident the house's occupants were covered. It bugged him, though, that the other gunmen weren't in the house. They must have had trouble unlocking the back door. Once the other gunmen were inside he would have them search each room. From what he'd been told he was up against a bunch of petty criminals. It seemed a good many of them were already in front of him. So he didn't expect trouble should other youths be found.
'Are you Scott Goldman?' Carrasco aimed the question at the man seated in front of him. Rick Sorenson shuffled together the pages of the drug formula, then placed it on the mug-ringed surface of the coffee table. His girlfriend Pamela was huddled against him, shaking with fear, and praying repeatedly under her breath: ... Oh Mary, Blessed Mother of God ... Oh Mary, Blessed Mother of God ... Sorenson stroked her dark hair in a consoling manner and looked defiantly at Carrasco.
Carrasco was confident he'd found his man. Approximately the right age and build, with reddish hair no less. Moreover, the man had been studying pages of chemical instructions; this much obvious even to Carrasco's lay eye. Even so, Carrasco reached inside his leather jacket for the head-shot photograph of Goldman.
Louis Ramirez's heart thudded against his ribs and a nervous clicking sound rose from the back of his throat as he swayed back and forth like a cobra readying to strike. His vision was crammed with delusional imagery; then he was overcome with something akin to apocalyptic revelation. He saw torrents of blood crash into the room and everyone, bar himself, being swept away. The Angel of Death was preparing a harvest. A harvest of blackened souls who deserved to die. None of them would be spared and rightly so, Ramirez seethed. Disembodied voices demanded that he kill the bevy of souls before him. He needed scarce encouragement. All about him would certainly die.
'Are you Scott Goldman?' Carrasco repeated with the authoritative air of a SWAT commander extracting an arrest warrant from his Kevlar flak jacket, in this case the photograph of the wanted Australian chemist.
Sorenson stared down Carrasco. With outright disrespect, he asked, 'Who the fuck wants to know?'
The senior gunman paid no heed to the insolence. He sensed it wasn't the first time this scruffy fellow had looked down the wrong end of a barrel. The man was obviously a criminal of sorts. Carrasco studied the head-shot photograph of Goldman in his hand. But looking from Sorenson to the photograph and back again, he realized the man before him wasn't the target of the operation. The faces didn't match. The face before him was too pointed, the cheeks too sunken. Furthermore, he remembered Guttierez saying the mark was an Australian. And this man had an American accent. Damn! The hit wasn't going to be
as straightforward as Carrasco had hoped.
Who the fuck wants to know? Who the fuck wants to know? The words formed a tape-loop inside Ramirez's unhinged mind. It was surely an admission. He glared at the seated DGI perro then stumbled back as a galaxy of light exploded behind his eyes. He blinked rapidly and shook his head. Beads of sweat jettisoned from his dreadlocks as he finally found his feet, his work boots resounding dully on the hardwood floor. He was filled with homicidal urges, demonic incitements, and the voices inside his head rose to a deafening crescendo.
“DO IT! DO IT NOW!”
The fragile axis of Ramirez's reality tilted beyond recall. He stepped up to Sorenson and shouted, 'Who the fuck wants to know? Ildefonso Carrasco! That's who, you stinking son of a whore!'
His perspiring face gleamed like rain-splashed rock as he fired his Mini Uzi. The volley of x-tipped bullets disfigured Sorenson's head and shoulders. Sorenson spasmed as if strapped to an electric chair. Blood jetted from his body like water from a garden sprinkler. Fragments of skin, skull and brain spattered the sofa and Pamela Gonzalez's face and arms. Covered as such, Sorenson's Puerto Rican girlfriend pitched a terrifying scream. She brought her hands to her red-grimed face and shrieked, her mind shutting down like a decommissioned machine. Ramirez spun towards her and fired his gun. She jerked madly in her seat then shot sideways with a string of blood trailing her tattered head.
Michelle and Trinda screamed in unison. Holly dropped her Cartier lighter and couldn't breathe. Enraged, Carrasco turned and smashed his elbow into Ramirez's mouth.
Ramirez dropped to the floor as if he himself had been shot.
Goldman was upstairs towelling himself dry when he heard the women's muted screams (he hadn't heard, of course, the muffled shots of the sound-suppressed weapon).
'Michelle.'
He panicked. The screams had sounded fearful, not the larking merriment of partying girls. Damn, anything was possible in this accursed house. He threw on his undershorts and jeans and grabbed his shirt. Adrenalin surged through him like a hot rush of injected stimulant. He only hoped the downstairs cries would prove a false alarm. He did up shirt buttons and grabbed his runners.
Trinda could only scream. Tears ran down her cheeks like lancing summer rain against a window. Seeing his girlfriend as such spurred Eighteen into action. No dreadlocked sonofabitch was gonna kill Sorenson and live. He whipped out the Taurus handgun from the shoulder holster under his jacket. Like many in the house he'd thought the gunmen had come for Fast Cash Boys, but as he disengaged the Taurus's safety catch he knew differently. The gunmen had come for Goldman.
Eighteen's hatred of the Australian was now incalculable, and he promised himself that at the end of this fight he would put one in Goldman's head. Cap the red-haired sonofabitch good and proper. But now the dread-locked brute in the flannel jacket had to die.
Eighteen flicked back hair and fired at Gacha who was supposedly covering him. Gacha was looking over his shoulder at the shot-up bodies on the sofa, and at Ramirez rising up from the floor. Eighteen steadied himself and squeezed off three rounds, the handgun's discharge loud in his ears. Two bullets went wide, but the third bullet connected with Gacha's right shoulder. The hooded gunmen growled with pain as blood sprayed from his shoulder.
Gacha snarled like a savage beast and turned toward his attacker. With an unsteady hand, he fired his MAC10 in Eighteen's direction. The sweeping wall of bullets struck down Eighteen, Trinda, Holly, Deuce and Michelle. Eighteen cried out as pockets of pain peppered his chest. Life-sustaining blood jetted from him as he dropped to the floor. He watched in disbelief as his companions flew every which way like tossed-aside rag dolls. In his final moments, the room darkened and his heart slowed. He saw Scarlett leap from the divan and bolt for cover.
Thirteen's chest was locked so tight he could hardly breathe. He couldn't digest what his senses reported. Holly flew backwards onto the divan, her cover-model looks butchered by a string of high-velocity bullets. She quivered as blood pumped from her chest and stained her garish top. She slipped from the divan and thudded onto the hardwood floor, twitching spasmodically in spreading pools of arterial blood.
'Holly!' Thirteen exploded with anger and whipped out his .38 Detective Special. He fired two bullets into Gacha's head and chest. Gacha flew backward with his machine pistol firing wildly as he went down (which shot out the domed light illuminating that end of the room). Stray bullets punctured wood rafters and the plaster ceiling. Light from the other end of the room cast long shadows across the bodies strewn about the divan. Meantime pungent electrical smoke drifted out from the front of the shattered television.
Thirteen boiled inside like a god of war denied retribution. If only he had an automatic weapon and a pocket of mags to kill these intruders. In any case, he aimed his handgun at Ramirez, who was back on his feet and wiping his bloodied mouth.
Goldman heard the noisy report of Eighteen's auto-pistol, and was overcome with gut-wrenching panic. The Chicano gang must have made a play for Fast Cash Boys. Forsaking his socks, he slapped down the velcro strips of his runners, only to hear the muted roar of Thirteen's .38. Two quick shots. His heart climbed up his throat as he pushed open the bathroom door and raced down the stairs.
Thirteen fired at Ramirez. The Cuban stumbled backward and laughed like a madman as a plume of red mist sprayed from his shoulder. Thirteen shot at him again, but this time missed. He spun round to shoot at Carrasco. But alas was too late.
Carrasco fired his MAC10 before the twenty-five year old leader of Fast Cash Boys could squeeze the trigger of his unlicensed handgun. Carrasco's bullets flew true and Thirteen took a crippling number in the chest. A stray bullet tore off his lower left ear. A blood-flecked silver sleeper tinkled onto the hardwood floor as the gang leader writhed in pain like a mishandled string puppet. Before he hit the deck proper, he inadvertently squeezed off two rounds. One bullet hit Martinez squarely in the calf muscle. Martinez screamed from shock and escalating pain. He staggered to stay upright, wanting to keep his eye on the youths at the table.
Carrasco could see the operation was going to hell in a hand basket. The worst of it: he was yet to find the mark. Ramirez's men were being killed about him and the target of the operation was nowhere in sight. Where in God's name were the men who’d stormed the back of the house? He remembered Pelayo Guttierez's threatening words at Baltimore-Washington airport. He steeled himself to kill everyone in the house. It was the only way to guarantee the success of the operation. All these americanos had to die.
Sixteen lunged at the bookcase. Tottering from his painful leg wound, Martinez interpreted the youth's move as life-threatening. A second later he sprayed bullets at those he guarded. Aaron and two others at the table were mowed down. Empty beer bottles and a fresh bottle of Southern Comfort shattered smartly from the rapid fire of Martinez's 9mm Uzi.
Runaway Aaron fell forward with blood gushing from multiple chest wounds. Her head hit the tabletop and her mouth jerked open and shut like a fish out of water. Southern Comfort pooled with her blood, and the liquid mix soaked into playing cards with 777 SALOON, LAS VEGAS printed on their backs. Aaron slid off the table and thumped ungraciously on the floor. Dead and tomorrow's statistic.
Carrasco ducked down and moved like a phantom in the room's muted light. He saw the blond youth crouched behind the splintered wood table, close to the dead girl. With a shaky but resolute hand, the youth cocked a shotgun (Remington's 1979 1100 Tournament Trap, from what Carrasco could make out). Before Carrasco could move on him, the youth jumped up and shot Martinez squarely in the chest. Blood geysered from Martinez as he flew backward from the thundering blast. The Remington's powerful recoil knocked the raggedy youth to the floor.
Carrasco's ears rang from the shotgun blast. He squeezed his eyes shut and made a fist. He wanted to yell from a choking amalgam of frustration and anger. Clutching his MAC-10, he edged cautiously toward the card table in the south-end of the room.
At the other end of
the room, Louis Ramirez growled like a tormented beast from the underworld. He wanted to kill these young misfits. He wanted to avenge Gacha's death ... and now Martinez's. That these norteamericano youths had harboured a DGI stooge was enough reason to kill them. But now two of his best street soldiers were dead, Ramirez brimmed with homicidal fury. The remaining norteamericanos were going to die by his hand, every stinking one of them.
Scarlett snuck out from behind a speaker box. The cat scampered round the divan and stopped in front of Trinda. It sensed there was something altogether wrong with its human owner. Trinda's eyes were open and unseeing as she slouched lifelessly against the seat (her copper-skinned beauty relegated to the memory of those who knew her and to the photographs and home movies which would document her cut-short life).
Scarlett pressed her front paws onto Trinda's sticky red stomach. The Birman Siamese cat was hungry. Like most times its food bowl was empty. Earlier on Eighteen had fought with Trinda over feeding Scarlett a can of salmon, pretty much the last of the house's edible food. Eighteen had eventually eaten the fish on less than fresh toast. Now, Scarlett lapped tentatively at Trinda's blood. However the blue-eyed creature soon stopped. As if in reverence of its former owner, the cat scampered off in search of another body from which to feed.
Goldman jump-landed at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes quickly adjusted to the room's overall gloom. He gasped at Michelle sprawled on the floor behind the L-shaped divan. Her chest was soaked with blood. Deuce lay close beside her. Eighteen, Trinda and Holly were sprawled on the other side of the divan. They all seemed lifeless. His eyes moistened and a nausea engulfed him to the point he had to stop from dry retching. He gulped down air and raced over to Michelle, cradling her upper body in his arms. Blood spilled from her slack mouth and multiple chest wounds. She was pallid and pale but, he saw, still breathing.
Unaware of Goldman's arrival at the darkened end of the room, Ildefonso Carrasco edged along the south wall of the spacious living area, stopping just short of the panelled extension. Bodies and shattered bottles were strewn about the base of the table, while pools of blood threatened to claim the floor proper.
