Then came a second explosion.
They had a fucking grenade launcher. Mud, filth, parts of DIRECTV dishes, parts of bricks, tin, cockroaches, parts of exploded rats and dogs, all kind of debris and filth mixed with South American contamination and the freezing rain, it all fell from the sky.
It seemed like we were under attack by the Taliban.
I looked at Shotgun. Blood trickled down his face. A wound was open on his muddied cheek. If the explosion had sent shrapnel to any other part of his body, it was too hard to tell.
I yelled at Shotgun, “Can you move?”
“Just tell me which way.”
“Claro. Have to get to the building with the Claro sign on top.”
“I’m with you.”
The natives panicked, some yelling from home to home, some screaming that the military had returned, that this was the government attacking, once again engaged in social cleansing.
They were closing in on us.
The gunshots that hit the ground behind us verified that fear.
I asked Shotgun, “You hit?”
He grunted out his pain. “Just keep shooting.”
Shotgun kept blowing off rounds. Kept slugging it out.
One of those Horsemen had tracers, bullets that ignited and burned, lit up the night and told the other shooters what trajectory to follow, told them where to put their shots.
Two more explosions rocked the
villas
.
One explosion was twenty yards behind us, the other, twenty yards off to the left.
Each boom shocked our systems, added a streak of fear to Shotgun’s face.
Another grenade overshot us, hit a cell tower that was in the center of the slums.
The tower rocked, vibrated, then leaned forward. It fell slowly at first, metal screeching like a wounded monster howling out in agony, then picked up speed and landed hard.
Debris mixed with the chill from the sky and rained down on the back of my head.
Pickup trucks roared our way, loaded with Latin hooligans, all with guns.
Then one of the trucks exploded. The other careened through a pile of trash, flipped, and landed upside down in a pool that was a mixture of waste and viruses. When the headlights had hit their eyes, our enemy thought the hooligans were on our team.
There was the screech of incoming, and another grenade hit the flipped truck.
Whoever was injured was dead.
We ran, the fire from those burning trucks brightening the night.
More people ran too. They ran through mud and stumbled across potholes, fell in lakes and made it back to their feet stumbling, screaming, and scattering in all directions. Others stood in doorways, terrified and curious as they watched the explosions like it was a John Woo movie.
A group of men standing at the edge of the roof of one of the dwellings started firing down at us. We were trapped. Snipers were in front of us. The Horsemen behind us.
Shotgun fired back toward the Horsemen while I shot up at the roof. We shot fast, shot often, had to get firing superiority in every direction. I focused on that rooftop, had to send up more shots than were coming down from those made-in-the-U.S.A. weapons.
One of the snipers dropped, tumbled, bumped over shabby construction, ragdolled from the fourth level of that building, and crashed headfirst on a section of broken concrete.
I kept firing and hoped more fell the same way.
The others ran in the other direction.
We had an opening, an opening we took without hesitation.
I asked Shotgun, “You okay?”
He grunted. “I’m okay.”
I shoved the package into his arms. Then I pointed toward the bright lights.
I told him, “Run. I’m going to be right behind you. We’re almost there.”
“You hurt?”
“Run, Shotgun.”
“You keeping up with me?”
“I’ll be right behind you. Get to the spot, give that to Arizona.”
“Where you gonna be?”
“Behind you, big man. I’m going to keep them off your ass.”
Shotgun struggled and took off his heavy coat, dropped everything except for the package and took off. Moved like an injured football player. He ran toward railroad tracks that led to the designated end zone. Ran by the flags all over Villa Miseria. Chile. Bolivia. Paraguay. Brazil. Uruguay. Colombia. Peru. Shotgun ran through flags for every country and subculture like he was running out of South America until he got to Georgia.
I was right there with Shotgun until we ran beyond the last of the darkened structures that had no electricity; the explosions had killed sections of the pirated power. We passed the last of the tents on the edges of the settlements. We struggled to keep our footing as we hit a strip of uneven concrete and stumbled over loose ground, then splashed through infectious rivers, struggled to make it to the railroad tracks. It was wide open for at least two hundred yards.
That would be dangerous. If they sent up another flare, we’d be easy targets.
I told Shotgun to sprint while I covered him. I’d keep them busy.
He followed my orders and raced as hard as he could, his injured stride not losing any pace, his left arm pumping like a piston, a mountain of muscles on a desperate mission.
Behind us, the sections of the
villa
were trying to burn, only the rain refused to let it go up in flames like Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. But the
villas
did have a dangerous glow.
I fired shots toward the enemy.
Shotgun fled over two dozen train tracks, ran over them, pulling his knees up high, like a footballer in training camp running an agility drill over empty tires, and when he made it to the end of the tracks, his run cut to the left, where he ducked behind a wall of train cars, used them as shields as he made his way to the outskirts of the
villa
and vanished into the center of darkness.
I arrived at the wall.
I stopped running.
Rodents were all around me, terrified out of the empty containers by the explosions.
My breathing was labored. I was wounded. Could barely hear. Could hardly see.
I coughed over and over, struggled to catch my breath, then I nodded.
I had done what I had promised.
I’d retrieved the package.
My debt to that sonofabitch Scamz was paid in full.
Shotgun was safe.
Warmth covered me. A powerful adrenaline rush that replaced my blood with liquid fire.
I was finished running.
North America. Catherine. Steven. X.Y.Z.
Being blackmailed for two-point-five-million dollars.
It all rushed back inside my head, and I shoved it all away.
My mother had told me that my father was a military man. An army man. She had said that while he paid her to do what whores did, he bragged that he used to jump out of planes, took sniper training, and made Delta Force. She told me that they drank and got high and she did to him the kind of things a woman in her profession did, all for a price. Said he ran his strong hands through her pretty hair and held her close, treated her like a lady, told her his secrets. She had said that my father was strong, that he fought bulls with his bare hands.
The night I had killed that evil man, my mother had remained calm.
She had put sheets over his body. And we had left him dead on the floor of that whorehouse in Mecklenburg County.
I’d asked my mother, “Did I do a bad thing?”
She had shaken her head, then said, “Some people deserve to die.”
That day lived inside me.
I trembled, shivered.
Rain had numbed my hands, but I held my guns and turned around. Covered in mud and sewage, marked by shrapnel, I moved through the area where the rats had claimed territory, limped back toward the glowing
villas
and The Four Horsemen.
Anger rose like a balloon filled with helium, the string unreachable, unable to rein back, and now anger had to fly until it couldn’t fly anymore.
In agony, as freezing rain struggled to wash mud away from my body the way the River Jordan washed away sins, I jogged back toward the slums. I headed back toward Midnight.
The bastard child went in search of the vile father.
Capítulo 42
paseo por el infierno
Man was a desperate animal.
Medianoche ran through
asentamientos irregulars
, a shantytown that blazed with incredible noise and fury, like the Great Fire of London and the Chicago Fire united. A sea of flames licked the skies behind his charge and cast long shadows as destruction littered his every step. Inside dwellings, he imagined people had fallen to the floors, a Pavlovian response to hearing gunfire. Others fled into the weather like it was the end of days.
The Book of Revelation come to life.
Medianoche frowned at the wet sensor and jogged on treacherous terrain made of potholed, flooded roads, his breathing labored as he inhaled toxic fumes.
The sensor remained bright green.
The enemy was within one hundred yards, maybe as close as thirty.
Players had switched packages like teams switching fields at half-time, but the game wasn’t over, was never over for a battle-hardened warrior.
Medianoche moved through the chilling rain with Señorita Raven’s fury at his side, the shadows of Gideon and his oversized compadre the target of every obsessive shot from his 5.56.
The Four Horsemen down to two, but twice as deadly as four.
Medianoche’s ragged breath fogged in front of his face as the temperature dropped.
His feet were numb from the water, his Italian shoes soaked in liquid refuse.
Señorita Raven ran like a furious psychopath and decimated the shantytown like a trooper from the 1st Cavalry Division instructed to burn a village on the Bong Son plain in central Vietnam after soldiers had been wounded and killed by the enemy.
Hombres
,
mujeres
,
chicas
,
chicos
,
hijas
,
hijos
,
abuelas
,
abuelos
,
tíos
,
tías
,
primos
, everyone with common sense fled as vermin scattered, the noise and fury overpowering.
The beeps on the sensor told him the target was fleeing at a faster pace.
Medianoche yelled, “They’re running. We didn’t stop them.”
“Give me the sensor.”
“Why would I do that, soldier?”
“Because I’m faster than you. I can catch them.”
“What, you expecting another chopper to drop in after you obtain the package?”
“You’re breathing like you’re hypoxic.”
“I’m fine.”
Medianoche picked up his pace, his breathing labored as he carried his SWAT-style rifle and XD45 pistols, his wet combat gear weighing him down as his steps sank into soft ground.
Medianoche slowed, his 5.56 sweeping the area. Señorita Raven did the same with her M16, being aggressive yet cautious. Medianoche expected one of the targets to stop, try to pick them off. Because that was what he would do. The rain had washed away all footprints, but they were on the right track. Gideon and his team had lightened their loads. Weapons and spent ammunition shells littered the flooded terrain. Shell casings had become bread crumbs from the tormented
villa
into the mouth of darkness. Señorita Raven tossed her M16 to the ground, lightened her load, and pulled out XD45 pistols, same as Medianoche had ready to bring into action.
The Beast was wounded, unable to stand on his own, unable to walk.
Señor Rodríguez had been KIA. And that unqualified piece of shit Draco had been killed faster than the first line of men who had stepped off the boats at Normandy.
Medianoche was stuck working with the arrogant slag who had accused him of rape.
A woman who didn’t have what it took to be a soldier, let alone a Horseman.
Medianoche asked, “Can you be trusted, soldier?”
“I’m a loyal soldier. My record speaks for itself.”
“Does it?”
“We’re on a mission. That package is my first priority.”
“Is it?”
“I can run a five-minute mile.”
“Maybe on a sunny day in Mendoza. Not in this weather and not on this terrain.”
“Two things you learn how to do in East Saint Louis, run and fight. And no matter where I am, I’m good at both. In the gear I have on now, I can manage a mile in about six.”
“You’re soaking wet.”
“Give me the sensor and pull up the rear. We have to get to them before they get reinforcements. And we have to do that now before this turns into our Iraq and Vietnam.”
Winds blew frigid rain into Medianoche’s face, each drop like being stabbed with ice.
She said, “At the moment, we have a common enemy. We are on the same team. You’re hot-blooded and stubborn and full of yourself. But we are on the same team.”
Medianoche growled as they ran through ramshackle strips of human agglomeration, cursed as they ran though ankle-high rivers of stench and litter, as they took aim at every cat or dog that ran by, chasing prey through a darkened labyrinth inside an inaccessible fortress.
He hated what he had to admit. Señorita Raven was right.
Tonight she was faster.
Tonight
.
The leader didn’t have to be the fastest. He only had to know how to lead.
And with The Beast off the front line, he was the leader.
He had to push his anger to the side.
And do what was best for the team.
Every war and battle became an end to itself. At some point, it would no longer be about the package. It would simply be about winning. And they were beyond that point.
Medianoche knew that The Four Horsemen, despite the casualties, had to win.
He stared at Señorita Raven like they were among the
milongueros
and
milongueras
in a
cabeceo
, held strong eye contact, maintained that eye contact as they faced each other.