NO EASY WAY OUT a gripping action-packed thriller (Johnny Silver Thriller Book 4)

by PAUL BENNETT

  Added to Chico’s shouting was the sound of screams from Rosa. I burst through the door and saw Rosa on the floor. One man was on top of her tearing at her clothes.

  Another stood over her, laughing. The first man had ripped the front of her dress away. Her breasts were exposed and she tried vainly to hide them. The man standing over her was unzipping his trousers, ready for his turn. The man sitting on her had his trousers rolled down past his bottom. He put a hand behind Rosa’s bottom and lifted her up into the position he desired.

  ‘Freeze,’ I shouted, not caring whether they understood or not. There was an inevitability over what was to come. ‘Step away. Put your hands in the air.’

  The one pinning Rosa down looked behind him over his shoulder. The other man’s hand went towards the inside pocket of his suit. I shot him between the eyes. Pieter shot the other man in the back. He would take no surrender for a crime like this. The man slumped down on Rosa and Pieter pulled him off. He then took off his jacket and, lifting her up, put it around her shoulders and covered her naked breasts. Then, with two dead men on the floor, Pieter put a bullet in each of their genitals. Blood oozed out immediately. He’d given the message he desired for those who may have felt like doing the same at any point in the future.

  ‘Wish I’d been able to do that before we killed them. They deserved a slow death.’

  The others came in. Bull was in boxer shorts and had his gun levelled at the two dead men, just in case they showed the smallest signs of life.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Stan asked.

  ‘We’ve just got our excuse to visit Rojo.’

  * * *

  Pieter and I waited until the others had got dressed and brought our armoury of weaponry. We each carried a handgun and an assault rifle, except for Red who had his sawn-off shotgun instead of a Kalashnikov. Red led the way and, picking up an arm each, the remaining four of us dragged the bodies along the street and out to Rojo’s citadel.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Bull said.

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a plan,’ I said.

  ‘Well, what exactly would you go so far as to call it?’

  ‘More an idea,’ I said.

  ‘Does this idea involve us getting shot at?’ Bull pressed.

  ‘There is that downside,’ I said.

  ‘Swell,’ he said. ‘No plan and we might get shot at.’

  ‘That sort of sums it up.’

  ‘I have to give you full marks for honesty, Johnny, if not for strategy.’

  ‘But don’t you love the thrill of the unknown?’

  ‘What do you mean “unknown”? It always finishes up with someone shooting at us! What’s unknown about that?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to get picky . . .’

  ‘Picky!’ Bull shook his head in resignation.

  By this time we had arrived. The searchlights on all four towers were swivelling round, lighting up their quadrant of the surrounding land. Red put a shotgun cartridge into each of the front two. There was a satisfying bang and a shattering of glass as each exploded.

  ‘Open the gates,’ Red shouted. ‘Open the gates or I’ll blast you to hell.’

  The sentry in the left watchtower gave him the finger. Dumb move. One he would come to regret all the rest of his life — which wouldn’t be long if he continued in that manner. Bull shot the finger off. The man screamed and clutched disbelievingly at his bloody hand.

  ‘Now will you open the gates’ I said. ‘We have two of your people down here and will deliver them only to Rojo. Get him.’

  Red had reloaded and had the shotgun pointed at the man in the right tower. Bull made a back and Pieter jumped on it and peered over the wall. He watched and gave us a running commentary as the guard with a finger missing climbed down and ran towards the ranch house.

  ‘All the lights have gone on,’ Pieter shouted down to us. ‘There’s guys coming from all over the place. Inside the house, round the back, everywhere. Must be at least twenty of them. Maybe thirty — there’s still guys arriving. A big man is getting them organised. They’re coming this way.’

  The gates gave a buzz and started to swing slowly back on their hinges. Revealed for us was, as Pieter had said, a big man, six foot three or so, in a black dressing gown, silk by the shimmer in the moonlight. He was too old — forties, somewhere — to be Rojo. This had to be his second in command, what the Italian mafia would call the consiglieri — the counsellor. The man had grey hair cut short and neatly in place, even when he would have been sleeping on it. He was surrounded by the foot soldiers, too many to count at this critical stage, hastily dressed and bemused by what was going on at this hour.

  ‘What do you want?’ the big man said.

  ‘We want to talk to Rojo,’ I said. ‘We’ve two corpses for him and more if that’s the way things turn out. We have a proposition for him.’

  ‘Put down your weapons and I’ll see about waking Senor Rojo.’

  ‘Nope. We’ve just killed two of your men for trying a rape a woman from the village. Even if we mark it as justifiable homicide, there’s no way we’re going to stand here defenceless.’

  ‘You’re not coming in here with weapons.’

  ‘Then we have a good old Mexican stand-off,’ I said. ‘How fitting.’

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ the man said.

  ‘Then I suggest a compromise. We meet on neutral territory. There’s a deserted shack by a dry ravine ten miles into the desert south-west of here. Bring Rojo there at ten o’clock. You can bring ten men, no more. That gives you the advantage of numbers. When we see Rojo we will put our proposition to him. It will be an offer he can’t refuse. Trust me.’

  The man gave a dismissive laugh, but nodded his head. ‘Ten o’clock it is.’ With that he turned and walked back to the house.

  ‘Don’t forget the corpses,’ I shouted after him.

  ‘Let them rot. They’re no use to us anymore.’

  Always good to have a caring employer. It must have made the surviving members of his guards feel really valued and gave us the psychological advantage of commitment. The man was doing our job for us. Till the morning then pilgrim. Till the morning.

  Chapter Ten

  It was Monday morning, six days before our deadline. We went back to the house and left Stan to gather what we needed to last us the few hours until our meeting in the morning — water predominantly, spare ammunition, something to eat, some blankets — and the rest of us headed straight to the desert. We weren’t going to give them a chance to outflank us or set up an ambush. Be prepared was our motto, although we would have been a disgrace to the Boy Scout movement, what with the drinking — oh, and I suppose the killing: those were two badges they didn’t award.

  There was no way to tell when the shack had last been occupied. This was a stretch of desert that, I suspected, had once been fertile land, but had been over-farmed and turned into a dust bowl that had amalgamated itself with the desert until there was no distinction between the two. There was a small ravine that once would have had a stream running through it, but that had dried up and no longer held the life-giving water. Still, the ravine suited our purposes. It would be a hiding place and one of our main firing positions. One of us would be in the shack, as expected by Rojo’s men, and that honour fell to me. Bull and Red would spread out in the ravine to counter any dirty tricks and provide an exit route if things went badly wrong. Pieter and Stan were to be at the secondary firing position behind the shack.

  The shack itself was missing much of the roof and there was a gap where a door had once been. There were two narrow windows hacked into the mud-brick wall at the front as a means of getting some air circulating. It had never been intended as a permanent dwelling, but would have made an acceptable storehouse and overnight accommodation on a temporary basis.

  One of the other advantages of the location was that you could see for miles around, no building or natural feature to get in the way of 360-degree vision. No one was goin
g to sneak up on us. We parked Red’s car at the back and Stan’s, when he arrived, alongside. This gave us the two extra firing positions behind the shack. We stashed water and extra ammunition behind each car and at two points in the ravine. Pieter volunteered to take first watch and the rest of us settled down to a catnap. One thing was for sure, they weren’t going to be late. If they had any sense they would be early, very early, trying to beat us to the rendezvous site and gain an advantage. Fifteen love to us.

  I took second watch and stood in the doorway looking at the sun rising over the desert. Around the shack were cacti and other plants that grew without need for much water: short, spiny agave which would be used to make tequila; tall, tree-like giant cereus with multiple long stems rising from a single trunk; spherical barrel cacti covered in spines; and tall boojum trees. A lizard zig-zagged its way into the sun and regarded me with a tilted head and hooded eye. The eye winked. I winked back. You never know when a friend will come in useful.

  I drew the 9mm Browning from its shoulder holster and checked for the umpteenth time that it was fully loaded. I took off the safety catch and replaced it in the holster and then went through the same routine with the Colt .44 Magnum that I placed in the waistband at the back of my trousers — the Magnum was for close-up work, the Browning for medium-range accuracy. I lent the assault rifle against the wall. Now all there was to do was wait.

  They were lazy. They didn’t get to us till eight o’clock, their arrival signalled from afar by the plumes of dust and sand rising into the air. Their second mistake was not thinking about the terrain. We were dressed in desert-camouflage clothing in shades of yellow and brown, and heavy boots to keep out the sand and protect us from rattlesnakes; they were dressed like city folk — suits and loafers. Step on a rattler in those and you’re dead.

  I stood in the doorway watching them as they got nearer, the Uzi cradled in my arms and pressed close to my chest. They came in three vehicles, two jeeps and a small truck. They slewed the cars to a halt around thirty yards from my position at the front of the shack. At least fifteen men got out of the cars and the truck. Never trust a drug lord.

  They had assault rifles and dived down onto the sand facing me. Two figures stood back by one of the jeeps, shielded by it: one was the big man with the grey hair that we had met the previous night, the other was a tall, slim man — boy, almost — in his early twenties wearing shades, ice-blue designer jeans and a white T-shirt. Joe Cool. He said something to the big man and got back in the front of the jeep to watch the spectacle. The big man shouted an order to his troops and all hell broke loose.

  As the bullets started spraying, I dived to the floor and took cover by crawling inside the doorway of the shack. I let off a long burst then several short ones from the Uzi to make it look and sound like we were all holed up there. I heard a deep grunt that told me I’d hit someone. Dead, or merely injured, the first blood was to us. I kept spraying bullets to maintain the illusion that the shack was our only firing position. I reloaded when the 40-cartridge magazine was empty and sprayed some more.

  Rojo’s men started to fan out like the horns of a buffalo — an old Zulu trick that was too well known by tacticians to be effective any more — so that they were beginning to encircle us — or so they thought. Of course it could be a double bluff, but if you start going down that route you tie yourself in knots of your own making. I fired some single rounds from the Uzi at their flanks to continue the deception. I clipped a man whose head had popped up too far as he was shuffling sideways and I saw him slump down and go still. Another one not to worry about.

  You hear a battle, not see it — or at least not take it in consciously. With the devastation that modern weapons can cause, battles nowadays last minutes rather than hours or days. This one was no different. As Rojo’s men started to fan out in their encircling movement, Bull and Red stepped out from the ravine and fired at the men on the right and Stan and Pieter fired at the left wing from the cover of our vehicles. The boom from Red’s shotgun strikes fear in the heart of even the bravest enemy. The Uzi was out of ammunition again so I kept up firing at the middle using the Browning, since I only needed single shots to bring my targets down. I shot three men and saw them fall to the ground, blood pouring from wounds in their chests. Others were going down like ninepins under the fire of my four friends. Those not dead stayed down in a gesture of surrender. I walked out of the shack and stood surveying the now tranquil scene. From behind me, one of the men I had shot had been lucky. I’d missed his heart and he was still alive enough to put up a fight to save his life. He jumped up and pressed his gun in my back, intending to use me for a hostage, I assumed, or maybe he just wanted revenge. Whatever, the prognosis wasn’t good.

  There was little time to react. The natural instinct when someone has his arm round your neck choking you is to pull forward, but that is futile, there being no way to break the purchase, increasing the pressure instead. What you must do is turn your head sideways, giving more room for manoeuvre. I dropped the Browning to the ground, moved my head ninety degrees to the right and swung up my right elbow to hit him on the side of his head. I then flung my elbow back again and hit him under the chin. He gave a grunt of pain and the pressure from his gun fell away with that around my neck. I spun round and took the Magnum from the waistband of my trousers and shot him in the head, blowing all his brain away at that range. The Magnum doesn’t leave pretty pictures — it’s a brutal weapon — and, at that range, the result ranks as one of the worst you could care to imagine. A Magnum is not for the squeamish, even if you are not on the wrong end of it. When I got back it would be a hard choice as to whether to wash the blood- and brain-spattered camouflage shirt or just burn it.

  It was silent now. The big man reached into his pocket and brought out a white handkerchief that he proceeded to wave in the air. I picked up the Browning, retrieved the Uzi, loaded it and walked towards the people carrier. My colleagues emerged from out of their hiding places and joined me.

  ‘Not my idea of Mister Big,’ Bull said to me, nodding at the young man.

  ‘Are you dissing him because he looks like a male model?’ I replied.

  ‘Yep. Sure am.’

  ‘Shame on you.’

  ‘Yes, massa. Inbuilt prejudice. Experience tells me that you often can tell a book by its cover.’

  ‘Well, let’s judge him after we hear what he has to say.’

  ‘Who are you guys?’ was what he had to say. Not a bad start. Know your enemy before you engage in battle.

  I introduced us and he did the same. The grey-haired man was called Paco and the slim guy was in fact the ill-famed Miguel Rojo. His face had a tinge of green about it, as if he was controlling the need to vomit. His hands were shaky, too. This was a guy going through a new experience.

  ‘So, now you know who we are. In case of any doubt, we’re the guys you need,’ I said. ‘The men you have haven’t been up to the job of guarding you. You don’t have many still alive either. We’re available for hire. For a big fee, that is.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, as if the fee was irrelevant.

  ‘We’re guns for hire. That’s why we are so good. Been through every situation and still here to tell the tales. With us it’s a job. You get the expertise and the temporary loyalty with the contract.’

  ‘And what are you doing here in this little village in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Let’s just say we’re here on vacation while the air cools down back in the States.’

  ‘On the run, huh. Give me a moment,’ Rojo said, gesturing his counsellor to go out of earshot behind their jeep.

  ‘How’s the plan going so far?’ Red asked. ‘Us simple Comanches would like to know if all this has been worth it. Not that we’re averse to killing, you understand. Got civilised, though. We just don’t scalp anymore.’

  ‘We’ve established our legend,’ I said. ‘If he buys it, we should get access to his house without having to storm it. He’s still got
men left and I’d prefer to walk straight in rather than getting into another shoot out. Every battle has its risks and I’d like to minimise them.’

  They returned from their secret conversation.

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ the counsellor said. ‘We can get more men any time we want. Agreed? Men are cheap where we come from, but let’s say we’re momentarily embarrassed for numbers. Agreed also? You might be able to fill a gap.’

  I nodded. ‘We can move in any time you like.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Paco said. ‘You say we can buy your loyalty. You have to prove that to us. We have a temporary job for you. Do that successfully and we will hire you on a permanent basis. The job shouldn’t take more than a day or so. After that you get all the comforts of our ranch.’

  ‘What’s the job?’ I asked.

  ‘There is a consignment that we are interested in. At the moment that consignment is in somebody else’s hands. Your job will be to deliver that merchandise to us.’

  This was not going quite as planned, a fact Bull, I was sure, would remind me of later. ‘We work for a fistful of dollars,’ I said, having to maintain the illusion of the legend. ‘The amount depends on the degree of difficulty. What are the opposition’s numbers and what are their skills?’

  ‘They are experienced in what they do,’ Paco said. ‘Five men at most. More would attract too much attention. They won’t be expecting a problem. It’s a routine they’ve done many times before. You will have the element of surprise. They will be armed, but that doesn’t seem to worry you.’

  ‘We will charge a fee, based on a day’s work, of twenty-five thousand dollars.’ It was a number I had plucked out of the air. Their reaction would tell me the scale of the task we faced.

  The counsellor looked at Rojo and raised his eyebrows. Rojo nodded. ‘We have a deal,’ Paco said.

  ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘You will pay us in cash and in advance. We don’t know whether you can be trusted.’