The pregnant fool sacrificed her life and the life of her unborn child to save the stupid tight-eyed bitch who had fired on them. Sisters. They had to be idiots spit out of the same womb.
The dead man was either a lover or a relative.
Either way, that dumb fuck was leading them into the next life.
Scamz yelled, “Get her back to the car. Get her back to the car now.”
The women held each other and moved back toward the car, the wind and rain soaking them as they hurried back toward the safety of a bulletproof automobile.
The Beast fired shots that landed at their feet, refused to let them get away.
The assassin who looked like Cary Grant returned fire, his shots good, despite the wind and rain. Whoever he was, he was a well-trained shot.
He’d die next. Kill the strongest, and the rest would piss their panties and surrender.
Señorita Raven screamed, “Where is that sonofabitch Gideon?”
The Beast said, “Soldiers, stand down. Follow my command. Do not take another shot until I give the order. Scamz? You heard. I have ordered my men to stand down.”
The British accent replied, “I heard exactly what you wanted me to hear. Exactly what that means to your soldiers, well, that remains to be seen.”
“Where is Gideon?”
No one answered.
Medianoche looked through the storm. There was no sign of Gideon. If that son of a dead whore was here, he should’ve shown his gun hand by now. Now wasn’t the time to be coy.
Scamz said, “We will give you the package. We will bring you the package.”
“Bring it to me.”
“But first you have to let the women go.”
“Such a fucking gentleman.”
“The women leave first.”
“No one leaves before I have the package in my goddamn possession. Time is not on your side. And it is not on mine. Ten seconds. Ten seconds or this will become a bloodbath. Look to my other soldiers. The girl. She is holding an M16 grenade launcher. Either we get the package, or no one gets what Hopkins died to get. You die or you get nothing. Your call.”
The Beast made a motion, and Señorita Raven aimed her M16, launched a grenade as a warning shot, and a second later, there was an explosion across Avenida Sarmiento near the Planetario Galileo Galilei and its artificial lake, an eruption at Palermo Vivo that created more horror and car accidents.
Traffic halted, glued by fear.
Buenos Aires trembled like a child having a recurring nightmare.
The Beast said, “My soldiers are cold, angry, and restless. Five seconds.”
The pregnant woman hurried, reached inside the car and took out a black briefcase. She moved her hair from her face, held the briefcase in front of her stomach, protected her baby.
He’d seen it before, killers and cons, terrorists and mercs, all wanted to be good mothers.
But war was war. War wasn’t pretty. War was about winning.
Medianoche yelled, told his team to keep on eye on their gunman.
With each step the pregnant woman took, the sensor’s beep quickened.
A beep every three seconds. Every two seconds. Then one long beep.
Then she was two feet away, a sliver of light across her tight eyes.
Medianoche said, “I should kill you right now.”
She didn’t say anything.
Medianoche said, “Drop it. Drop it or that pretty girl behind you gets one in the head.”
Her jaw tightened. Anger. Hostility.
He barked, “Last warning.”
She swallowed and dropped the briefcase to the pavement. A knife with a six-inch blade fell from behind the briefcase. A weapon she had tucked away. Same type of blade that had been shoved in Señor Rodríguez’s chest. A blade she had wanted to put in one of their guts.
She was willing to take out one of them and die.
She trembled, but not out of fear. Medianoche saw a fire in her eyes that said she wanted to kill.
The Beast said, “You must be Arizona.”
“Fuck you.”
“I take that as a yes.”
“Fuck you.”
“You sure you want to play it like that?”
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry about your boyfriend.”
“He’s my brother. You killed my brother.”
“So you thought you would get close enough to get revenge.”
“Fuck you.”
“Try anything, you will be able to have a family reunion with your bro in the spirit world.”
“Fuck you.”
Medianoche looked into the cold brown eyes of the angered pregnant woman.
The tight-eyed bitch brandished her anger, didn’t mask being pissed off.
Her face covered with frigid rain, her clothing soaked, she owned an evil expression.
Eyes dark, frowning, shivering, her teeth chattering, she extended the package.
The woman was a killer. Medianoche saw it in her face. She had killed before.
And she wanted to kill now.
The Beast shoved the sensor inside his coat pocket, needed a free hand but wasn’t going to put down his weapon, and took the handle of the briefcase with his left hand.
With his gun hand, he knocked the pregnant woman to the asphalt. Pistol whipped her hard enough to make her wet hair stand on its ends as it flew away from her face.
Her team screamed, threatened to kill them all.
Scamz made threats as he stayed hidden behind a bulletproof car door.
Medianoche didn’t flinch. He knew what was going to happen. Knew The Beast would knock the anger and attitude off her pretty face. She had brought a knife to a gunfight, then uttered six disrespectful curses too many. The Beast stepped up to the downed con woman, put the bottom of his shoe against her face, pushed grit and filth against her face, shifted his weight, snarled, and pressed her face like he wanted to shove it through the wet concrete, pressed down on the woman as she yelled out in pain, her legs kicking, her hands struggling to push his weight away. She fought to get that shoe off her face. Concrete dug deep into beautiful skin and marred vanity. Pregnant or not, to get the information he wanted, Medianoche knew The Beast would treat her to a rendition. Or pass her over to Señorita Raven, let that loon do what she did best. Maybe order a death by a thousand cuts and make Arizona regret the last few days of arrogance. When he needed to be, The Beast was a beast. A man who would win a war by any means necessary.
Medianoche held his position, kept his weapon trained on the enemy, searched for Gideon as The Beast stood over Arizona with his gun pointed at her head.
The Beast pressed harder, made her scream into the freezing rain, left deeper scars as he pushed like he wanted to crush her skull, then moved his foot from her bloodied face.
Bleeding, hair tangled, soaking wet, Arizona raised up on one elbow, spat at The Beast.
“Fuck you.”
The Beast fired two shots.
Both shots barely missed her head. He had missed on purpose.
She held her stomach and pulled into a fetal position.
Now she was terrified. Now fear painted her face.
The Beast smiled. He had victory. They had both packages.
Arizona snapped, “
Andá a cagar
, sonofabitch.”
Then he shot the pregnant woman in her leg. Made her roll and scream.
Her wounded sister tried to run to her, came in their direction stumbling.
A bullet from Señorita Raven took her down.
The Beast growled down at Arizona, said, “And fuck you too. Slant-eyed Asian bitch, fuck you too. Double-crossing, swindling bitch. You might’ve gotten lucky and blown Hopkins the fuck up, but that fucking shit does not fucking work where I am in charge, you fucking fuck. Your fucking deceptions end right the fuck here.”
The men on her team stepped out like protective lions, Scamz and the man who looked liked the dead movie star fired on them. But Medianoche’s and Señorita Raven’s gunfire was too quick, accurate, and powerful, sent them scattering back behind bulletproof doors.
At that moment, Medianoche heard The Beast’s cell phone ring.
A goddamn Frank Sinatra ringtone in the middle of a goddamn war.
Medianoche kept his eye on the downed women, saw the man with Cary Grant’s face wasn’t making any foolish moves, did those checks while The Beast stood over the downed pregnant woman and answered his goddamn phone in the freezing rain.
Whatever The Beast heard on the other end made him curse like thunder.
Medianoche knew that meant that there was a problem in the
villa
.
And Medianoche knew that problem was Gideon.
In the distance, on the other side of unmovable traffic, he heard sirens.
Medianoche hurried, opened the trunk of the BMW, and Señorita Raven did the same with the vehicle she had been driving. The Beast ran into traffic, approached a dull-colored commercial van, a Renault Traffic. The Beast put two shots into the window of the van, exterminated the driver, who refused to open the door, reached through the broken glass, and yanked the driver’s body out into the streets.
Medianoche fired on the tangos as he carried his duffel bag. Señorita Raven did the same. When they made it to the van, The Beast covered them, fired on Scamz and his crew. The Beast continued firing, kept Scamz and his team at bay while he and Señorita Raven grabbed Draco and threw his lifeless body inside the commandeered Renault.
Medianoche regrouped and covered The Beast as he backed away, covered The Beast as he turned around and prepared to rush inside the Renault under fire. Medianoche remained focused on the gunmen, men who had spread apart, found difficult angles to track.
No one watched Arizona.
No one saw her fight her pain, grab a bumper, and battle to stand up.
By the time Medianoche saw her produce a second knife, it was too late.
It was a throwing knife, a blade he knew couldn’t do any harm.
Not in a gunfight. Not in the rain. Not with the winds blowing. Not from a pregnant woman who had been beaten and shot and left on the ground, moving like a dying snail.
As she held her fat belly and struggled, wobbling, with one hand, it looked like she threw the blade and lost her balance, fell as the blade went tumbling, headlights causing it to gleam slivers of brightness as it went end over end. She had thrown the blade with awkwardness and desperation.
The Beast was at the door of the van, Draco’s unmoving frame blocking the entrance from inside.
Medianoche tried to move, tried to block the blade as it spun through rain and headlights.
His gun hand missed the blade by inches and he stumbled, fell into the side of the van.
The blade hit The Beast hard, sunk into his back up to the handle.
First, The Beast grunted like he had been punched, then his eyes widened as the pain registered. The Beast screamed and lost his balance, fell backward out of the van, but his hand gripped the door, that powerful and pissed-off soldier refusing to go down on the battlefield.
Medianoche grabbed the wounded soldier, pushed him back inside the Renault.
Then Medianoche rushed behind the wheel. Time was not on their side.
The Beast, blade in his lower back, blood spilling, in severe pain, cursed and yelled, asked about Draco. Unable to move, he was more concerned with his soldier than himself.
Señorita Raven yelled, “Sir, let me see your wound.”
“Answer me, dammit. How bad is Draco injured?”
“I can’t detect a pulse, sir.”
The Beast panted. “No pulse.”
“You have a knife in your lower back, sir.”
“Is he dead?”
“No pulse, sir.”
“
Is he dead?
”
“He’s gone.”
“Who stabbed me? Who fucking stabbed me?”
“The pregnant woman.”
“A fucking pregnant woman.”
“She threw the knife like she was raised in the goddamn circus.”
The Beast shifted in insult and injury, gritted his teeth, and suppressed his deepening agony as he snapped, “Kill those fuckers. Make sure they’re all fucking dead.”
He screamed, a wounded emperor demanding revenge for the death of a catamite.
Señorita Raven aimed her M16 at the con men, at the pregnant woman, at the man called Scamz. She fired rounds at the fleeing cons and killers, then sent two consecutive grenades, left a duo of beautiful explosions at the base of General Justo José de Urquiza, devastation that hit targets and left Peugeots exploding and creating wicked balls of fire, gruesome flames that heated a chilling night and rose up into the mouth of the winter rain and the brutal darkness. The explosions shook Palermo and lit up the area surrounding the planetarium, gave a wonderful luminance to artificial lakes like it was the glorious Fourth of July in the United States.
Chapter 40
village of death
The winds picked up.
They blew the scent of fresh killings across damp air that smelled like death.
Six more Peruvian gunmen had shown up.
Now six more Peruvian gunmen were dead.
They had left their posts in the rain. Men who had assumed only a fool would attack them in weather this bad, so they had taken a break, gone to have
cervezas
and smokes.
I’d put down four, and Shotgun had added two more to his tally.
The shoot-out had cost us three more minutes.
I had to move before more assassins came running.
Had to get up the stairs to the dwelling that had the yellow Daffy Duck poster on its door.
Freezing rain tried to numb my hands as I sloshed through mud that felt like quicksand. Looking for more shooters, I headed up to the second level of a structure made of ten different types of wood, wood from trees, wood from desks, every scrap of wood nailed at odd angles, the heads of some nails sticking out while other nail heads were broken off in a way that left sharp edges of metal sticking out like knives. Shotgun had grabbed the gear I had left behind, my duffel and top clothing, splashed through mud and over the newly deceased, followed me, guarded me, and made sure my heart didn’t get lead poisoning or my brain didn’t experience abrupt ventilation. The music remained deafening, the rain relentless, and the Spanish chatter had risen in volume.