Jim did a quick spot check on his gun then moved forward, but stopped as he heard gunshots explode just around the corner. He ducked and ran forward to the edge of the hedges and past a thick tree that looked half dead. He heard a burst of yelling and what sounded like a fight, more gunshots and then silence.
Peering around the tree, he saw several gang-bangers standing in a semi-circle. No sign of Gil. Jim went back around the tree in the other direction and jumped over a knee high chain link fence, moved around a child’s tricycle and up against another trailer.
Majoqui Cabrera stepped off a porch directly across from him and walked slowly between the men who parted for him like he was some kind of king. He stopped in the middle of the small hoard and looked down. A few people stepped aside and Jim saw Gil Mason lying on the ground. Gill looked like he had been run over by a truck. His clothes were ripped and torn and his hands and face were a bloody mess.
Oh this was bad. Jim did a quick count and thought there must be at least twelve, maybe more bangers. Gil was out of the fight and Jim had no backup. That had to change. He pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed his partner, Randy Nolan. He answered it immediately.
“I’m in Byers, Majoqui Cabrera is here with a bunch of bad boys. Get the cavalry here quick.”
“Where in Byers?”
“Trailer Park on the north side of I-70.”
“Which trailer?”
Jim saw a gun in Majoqui Cabrera’s right hand, riding the seam of his pants. Suddenly Jim heard laughing. It sounded like Gil Mason.
“Just listen for the gunfire,” Jim said as he clicked off.
Jim thought the odds might be too great, even for Chuck Norris. He pocketed his cell phone as Majoqui Cabrera lifted the gun and pointed it at Gil’s face. A revolver, not big, but big enough.
…Jim saw the holes open in the man’s chest and the vacant look of death glaze over his eyes as he fell back. His sights moved and the second man, still shooting lined up perfectly…
He slammed his eyes closed, then back open. His gun was pointing across the expanse at Majoqui Cabrera’s heart. A last vision of black holes filled with eternity stabbed at his brain.
Fine, he thought as he took up the slack on the trigger, let’s go all Star Trek and make us some singularities.
The gun barked and he felt that familiar jolt to his wrists.
63
The nothingness exploded into a bolt of pain as the boot connected with my temple, detonating like cannon fire inside my skull. I awoke to see Majoqui Cabrera standing over me. I couldn’t have been out long because everyone still stood around me. He looked down into my eyes, pointed a gun at my face. I laughed, not because I was brave, but because I knew that no matter what he did, I would kill him. He could empty that gun into my face or heart or brain and still I would drag whatever was left of me to him and claw my way to his throat before I let myself die.
I rose my shoulders up off the ground, bending at the waist, coming for him. He clicked back the hammer. I didn’t stop, nothing would stop me. As I pushed my palms against the hard packed dirt, I saw his index finger slowly pull back. The gunshot broke the sudden silence that had fallen over the battered men and boys surrounding me, but I felt no impact. Instead, a bright spark flashed off the cylinder of the gun and Majoqui Cabrera’s hand snapped to the side like it had been cracked with a whip. Two of his fingers went spinning through the air in a spray of blood.
Before anyone could react I was on him, my hands gripping his throat, my body pushing him down to the ground. He hit hard, me on top. The breath evacuated his lungs and my fingers stopped him from finding another. His eyes bulged grotesquely. I squeezed in, feeling the flesh pulp and bones grind and pop. For an instant, a high pitched squeak slipped past his lips and then I crushed in even harder and nothing escaped at all.
A man fell next to me, blood squirting through his fingers in an arterial spray as he tried to clamp it shut at his throat.
I ignored him.
Gunshots — a lot of them — a gun battle raging over me.
I ignored it.
Majoqui Cabrera twisted and turned beneath me, his life fleeing his body as I dug my thumbs into his Adam’s apple, destroying the tissue and fibers that made up the muscles and tendons of his neck.
A screech of tires and shouting and screaming and bursts of automatic weapons. Men falling and fighting and shooting and dying; ballistic missiles scorching the air and screeching past the ears.
I ignored everything… everything but Majoqui Cabrera. I had him. Here. Now. Within my grasp. In my hands. I saw my wife’s face, my daughter’s smile. Tears poured down my cheeks. An inarticulate scream burst from my soul and I gathered all the strength in my shoulders, biceps, triceps and forearms and brought the tips of my fingers together around his neck. I felt his spinal column, saw his lips go from blue to purple-black. His eyes rolling back till nothing but the whites showed.
And then something crashed into the back of my head.
I ignored it.
Blood dripped down my forehead and I was hit again… and again… and again. The dripping changed to a flow and then a river.
The world grew dark and dizzy, mixing with my wife’s face and her voice and Marla’s sweet fingers and lips and hair, and Majoqui Cabrera, so close to death, and someone yelling for me to stop and to let go, and that crashing of metal against my head. I turned and saw Jim Black, pulling back his hand, a bloody pistol in his fist as his lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. I could hear only the sound of the blood pulsing in my ears. I snarled at him as he struck me in the ear with the gun and I forced my hands tighter and tighter. It felt so good, so right, so just, and then the heavy metal hit me in the temple, in the same place the boot had caught me and I was falling and falling and falling.
64
Thirty-Eight’s seven cars worth of soldiers poured into the park and entered a war zone. A squad of MS 13 warriors were shooting at a white man dressed like a detective who was shooting back at them as his men jumped out of still-rolling cars and started blasting. The 13ers backs were to them and 38’s troops first volley took out a good five of them before they realized they were in a crossfire and adjusted.
He saw the cop he’d made the deal with on top of The Crow, his hands around the smaller man’s throat. Still, the cop looked like he was one foot out of the grave and Thirty-Eight didn’t know if he could finish the job. He decided to give him a hand. A big guy slashed at him with a machete and Thirty-Eight pumped three bullets into his stomach and chest. The big guy folded, blood gushing from his mouth. Another Mara shot at him, missing. He tried to shoot again, but his gun jammed and Thirty-Eight calmly put a round into his forehead. He still had it, that ability to stay cool in the midst of chaos and death. It was this more than anything else that had kept him alive through the decades when so many others had died.
His men were doing well even after that first edge of surprise had worn off. But they were taking casualties. He saw Little Bee take a bullet in the cheek and Tre-Tre get hit in the shoulder with a machete that flayed his flesh like butcher’s meat. Thirty-Eight fired at the man with the machete, missed, took better aim and hit him in the groin. He didn’t go down, but he limped away from Tre-Tre and was quickly lost in the fog of battle.
The cop still maintained his position on top of The Crow, but he didn’t look good. Thirty-Eight emptied the cylinder of his pistol and reloaded. He felt a sting just above his belly button and looked down. A neat little hole stared back at him. And then an ever growing red flower began to spread from around the hole, staining his shirt. Thirty-Eight couldn’t quite figure out what had happened. Where had the hole come from and why was his shirt wet and red? It just didn’t make any sense. He closed the cylinder of his .38 and walked over toward the cop and The Crow. Something punched him in the back of the shoulder and it made him a little mad. He touched the hole in his shirt with his left index finger, still walking toward the two men fighting on the ground, and
saw that his finger came away bright red. So strange. He was close now, maybe ten yards away. He lifted the gun and pointed it at The Crow.
A bullet swept past his face and he thought, that was close, and then he felt another punch, this time to his right kidney, painful, but not terrible. He felt weird, he couldn’t exactly explain how, but sort of unfocused, not dizzy, but out of it. He saw the gun in his hand and he couldn’t remember why he was holding it or who he was pointing it at. Something about a bird, or was it a cop?
He looked up and saw the sky and realized he was lying on his back. He didn’t know why or how he’d gotten there, but he didn’t feel like getting up. It was nice here. Quiet and cool and peaceful. An airplane left a contrail way up high and he thought how beautiful it looked. He’d never been on an airplane and wondered what it must be like.
The .38 fell to the grass as James Arthur Washington Jr.’s eyes closed for the last time.
65
Majoqui Cabrera felt the gun rip from his hands. A fragment of metal hit him in the chin and two of his fingers disappeared. Before he could react, the Americano police officer was on him. Fingers like steel bands wrapping around his throat and crushing off his breath. Then he hit the ground and lights flashed behind his eyes, his air gone. He fought to suck in a breath, but managed only a sip and then the pressure turned into a living vise. He felt the bones creak and bend in his neck. Pain, greater than anything he’d ever imagined, exploded as vertebra compressed against nerve bundles.
The warrior inside his soul tried to rally and he struck at the man’s elbows and wrists, but Majoqui was an infant facing a giant. The man’s strength was that of a demon from Hell itself. Desperately he tried to reach for the sword belt, but the man was pressed too tightly on top of him and there was no room and no time as the pain multiplied a thousandfold. Sparks and flashes popped like exploding light bulbs in his brain and things grew bright and dark at the same time.
His mother’s face came to him from long, long ago. Long before the men that kicked him and used her, before Mara, before death and blood. She smiled at him, kissed his face and sang soft words, her breath like a gentle breeze that soothed and relaxed and promised hope. He wanted to touch her, to tell her he was sorry and that he loved her and that he wished he’d protected her, but the police officer’s eyes burned through the image of her face and he saw Mason above him, blood dripping down his forehead and into Majoqui’s face. In a darkening haze, he saw a thin man behind him, hitting him again and again with something. There was no sound now, just popping flashes as his synapses snapped closed like circuit breakers, one after another.
Death swept over him. He felt its cold dark fingers, like the American police officer’s, around his throat, pulling him closer and closer and not all his amulet’s or blessings or curses could stop it now.
The man hitting Gil Mason could not hope to stop him. The saints could not stop him. Even the blessed Virgin herself could not stop him. He was death and he was unstoppable; a juggernaut of immeasurable power, devoid of feelings or mercy or pain. Majoqui remembered that he had considered just driving away from the American police officer on that first night and now he understood that he should have headed his instincts. No one could stand against a will like this.
Something gave in his neck and spine and another shard of pain speared his being. His vision blurred around the edges, sweeping in with horrible speed. And suddenly, the fingers around his throat were gone and the weight on top of him vanished. He saw the thin man that had been hitting Gil Mason stand over him, pointing a gun. A breath made it into Majoqui’s lungs and he coughed, a racking horrid grinding sound that caused agony to spike and flair and burst in his back and neck.
The man was saying something, but before Majoqui could make it out, the man took a step back, as if off balance, and blood spread from a hole high on the left side of his chest. Majoqui turned, even though the pain it cost him was considerable, and he saw Tamera Sun standing on the porch, a smoking pistol held tightly in both hands.
Majoqui smiled and forced himself to his feet.
66
Tamera Sun heard the gunshots as Majoqui left the trailer. She went to the window and saw the man that had said those horrible things about Majoqui. That Majoqui had killed his wife and daughter. He was a muscular man and he held a gun, aiming it at her man and then he was tackled by Majoqui’s friends and the threat seemed to be over until the shooting started again. Then the men in the cars arrived and it sounded like the fourth of July back in Kansas. People were running around and shooting and being shot. She saw people die. There was blood and screams and giant knives.
Now the muscular man was on top of Majoqui, choking him. She ran to the couch and picked up the gun Majoqui kept in the crease between the cushions. Throwing open the door, she lined up the sights just like Majoqui had taught her. The only real target was the man’s head, so that’s where she aimed. But then another man started hitting the muscular man in the head with the butt of a gun and she didn’t know what to do. Majoqui writhed beneath the man and it looked like he didn’t have long. She squinted one eye, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, just as something ran between her legs. The movement upset her aim, and instead of hitting the muscular man on top of Majoqui, she saw the thin man with the gun jerk back, blood spreading and wetting his white shirt.
The muscular man fell to the side and Majoqui groggily looked toward her..
Tamera looked down and saw Miranda shivering between her ankles, frightened to death at all the noise and confusion.
She leaned down to pick her cat up when she noticed that the thin man she’d accidentally shot was standing over Majoqui and that he still held the gun, the blood sopping his shirt all the way to his belly. He looked at her as she gripped Miranda in one hand and stood back up.
Tamera hadn’t meant to shoot him; she didn’t even know who he was. She held the gun up and was going to say she was sorry when he pointed the gun and shot her in the throat.
Miranda jumped from her arms and landed on the other side of the railing before running under the trailer.
Tamera looked at Majoqui… saw the horror on his face. She’d never seen him look like that before, he was always so self-composed and confidant. It scared her. She tried to tell him it was okay, but blood gushed from her mouth and she couldn’t take in a breath. It felt like she was choking… drowning.
The gun still sat in her hand, heavy. She wanted to show the man she hadn’t meant to shoot him and raised it toward him. He fired again and the bullet hit her low on the cheek at an angle. The impact took her vision in the left eye and the hearing in the left ear. She fell back against the trailer, hot liquid spilling down her front. She tried to speak again, but her teeth were shattered and her jaw wouldn’t work right. It didn’t hurt exactly; there was just that strange feeling of blunt force concussion and disorientation.
Majoqui screamed. She heard it in her right ear and he sounded so sad and hurt. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that she was okay and that they would be okay, but nothing seemed to work quite right and she saw Majoqui turn on the man, whipping the sword belt from his pants. He swung, and the blade, suddenly long and stiff, sliced into the man’s hip, just above the thigh.
Tamera Sun wondered where Miranda had gone to. She needed to make sure the little cat was safe. She thought she should ask Majoqui to get her; Majoqui would always keep them safe. He loved them, and he would always keep…
67
I hit the ground on my shoulder, feeling dizzy and confused. The blood ran down into my face from my hair and into the dirt making it muddy and dark. I saw Majoqui roll over to his knees, coughing and hacking, and he looked toward the trailer and screamed. I reached for him with one hand, but he was too far away and he was sliding that sword belt from his pants. He swung around and I saw the steel slice into the meat of Jim Black’s hip. Jim yelled and staggered away a few steps, the sword sliding soundlessly free. Jim’s leg buckled and he flopped awkwardly to th
e earth.
Majoqui Cabrera tried to stand up, fell, tried again. I pushed myself off the ground, blood pouring down my neck and face. I made it to my feet just as he did. He saw me from the corner of his eye and swung that three feet of flexible death at me. But I was close, so instead of trying to evade, I stepped into him, wrapping his wrist and forearm up in the crease of my elbow, trapping it tight. The sword continued its momentum and cut me just above the left kidney. Not deep, but it stung. I wrenched down — hard — and heard his forearm snap. His eyes went wide and the blood left his face. I came in with an overhand right, catching him at the back of the jaw below the ear. The bone crumpled beneath the blow. I pulled back, still trapping him with my other arm, and hit him in the eye — the bad eye. The cheek shredded and blood flowed. I hit him again and again and again and again — not hockey punches — every one starting in my thigh and hips and building force as they rocketed up through my body, past my shoulder and into my fist. His head flopped back and forth, loose and boneless as though his neck was no longer connected. I hit him once more and the sheer force of it ripped him from my grip. He landed face first in the dirt and lay there, completely still.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 67
