Ballistic

It was well past the prime time for an attack in normal situations. At first the American was pleased; he hoped that by repelling the first wave his little force had caused the enemy to back off, to leave the hacienda for a while in order to regroup.

But no, that was not it at all. The three a.m. time for normally hitting an enemy position was based on standard guard rotations.

His enemy knew there were not enough here to guard this entire complex in the first place, much less rotate in and out for rest and food.

Yeah, Court realized, his enemies were smarter than he was. He had not even considered the possibility until now. They would hit again before first light. No matter how many or few there were.

Come on, Ignacio, you drunk bastard. Get that truck going!

TWENTY-EIGHT

There were only twelve in the second wave, but they had better training, better equipment, better intelligence, and a better plan of attack than that first failed attempt. All twelve were marinos, Mexican marines, and they’d driven up to the hacienda from their base in Guadalajara on orders from Spider Cepeda himself.

Though they were regular military men, they moonlighted as sicarios for the Black Suits. They were well trained in small-unit assault tactics and armed with HK MP5 submachine guns, flash-bang grenades, body armor, and olive drab uniforms that blended well into the green black predawn landscape of this part of the Sierra Madre Mountains. They’d debriefed the survivors of the first assault over the back wall of the casa grande. The shell-shocked “fence posts” who’d scrambled back over the wall to safety without shotgun pellets or 9 mm rounds embedded in their bodies had been ordered to stick around to tell the next crew what they were up against. The marines began gearing up alongside their two-ton truck while the cops nervously smoked and told them all they had seen.

The military men had then given their weapons and radios a final check, broken into three four-man squads, excused themselves from the exhausted and overwhelmed amateurs, and began walking towards the walls of the hacienda.

The four men of Team A, “Antonio” in the Spanish phonetic alphabet or “alpha” in the English phonetic alphabet, breached the hacienda by climbing over a chained gate on the western wall, deep in the tall grass and wild blue agave. They bound towards the darkened house in teams of two, with one pair covering for the other pair while they moved. They made it to a broken-stone grain silo and approached the chapel that jutted out from the western side of the casa grande.

Team Barcelona scaled the rear wall, near the area where the first wave had gone over three hours earlier. Once inside the hacienda grounds, they pivoted to the right, climbed through the wooden fence of the corral, moved behind an old stable of rotten wood, picking their footfalls carefully to keep from stumbling over the stone and lumber and refuse.

Team Carmen breached the hacienda to the east, landed inside the grounds behind the willow trees near the pond. They moved around to the side and then to the front of the building, directed their attention and their progress towards the old stone and wood barn from where they heard an internal combustion engine desperately trying to internally combust.

Within minutes Barcelona had arrived at the trellis that ran along the eastern side of the patio. They checked in by radio with Antonio and found them in position to the west of the casa grande. This team had sent one of its men towards the freestanding chapel near the house to investigate a light that could be seen through cracks in the old stone.

Seven minutes after breaching the wall, three teams of four men were ready to hit the hacienda’s defenders simultaneously from three positions.

Court rubbed his eyes again. Started to look down to his watch.

A shout from the other side of the house. A man—Martin?

The crack of a rifle.

Gentry’s discipline allowed him to keep his position and to watch the trees and the driveway in front of him.

Only the tips of the pine trees swayed. There was no more movement on this side of the house.

Damn, damn, damn. All his training told him to hold his ground, not to turn, to trust his plan and his fortifications and his fellow defenders to each stay responsible for his or her field of fire.

If Martin’s sector was attacked, Ramses and Laura would be on either side, they could see what was going on, and they could respond much better than he, here on the opposite end of the building.

Trust them. Don’t leave your post. Just trust your plan.

Another shot. And then a full automatic burst from a submachine gun.

Gentry focused his worry, turned it to a concentrated stare into the dark before him.

Nothing. No movement, no attack. Nothing at all.

Trust your plan, Court.

More gunfire, more shouting behind him.

Trust your plan, Court!

An explosion. A flash-bang grenade detonating inside the house on the second floor.

Shit! Trust your plan, Court!

Then Laura Gamboa’s voice. A shout.

A scream.

Fuck the plan.

Court Gentry rose to his knees, leapt to his feet, hefted the heavy shotgun in his right hand, and he turned and ran back into the house as fast as he could, leaving his post behind.

Only by pure dumb luck did he see the first assassin. Court ran into the dark living room along the western wall; the archway to the kitchen was just ahead and on his left, on his right the archway to the formal dining room. He’d planned on shooting past this room to hit the stairs to make his way to the landing and Laura’s position down the hall.

But there in the dark, not ten feet ahead in his path, the black tip of a weapon’s barrel appeared from the dining room. Gentry reacted in a single bound, let his feet fly out ahead of him, and he dropped to the cold stone tile like a ballplayer sliding into home plate. He slid on past the dining room’s archway on his right side, his long shotgun barrel up high towards the threat. As he slid into the archway, he saw the sicario in the dark; the man had obviously heard a noise, but he had not yet lowered his weapon towards its source.

Court pressed his shotgun’s muzzle into the marine’s belt buckle as Court stopped there on the ground, pulled one of the triggers, and pumped nine .33-caliber rounds into and through the man’s midsection, nearly ripping him in two and sending him flying backwards through the air behind the echoing boom and short, wide flame. His shredded body landed flat on the dining room table. There it bucked and spasmed as the electrical current from his central nervous system trickled out to his dying muscles.

Gentry rolled up to his knees before the man even came to rest on the table. He had not seen which way the sicario’s weapon had flown, and he did not want to waste time searching for it in the darkness, so he got back up and ran on, reloading the smoking barrel of his big gun as he reached the staircase.

He ascended three steps in a bound.

More firing, from two locations now. At the top of the stairs he turned right, heard an incredible blast ahead in a room off the hallway. Through smoke and dust and darkness, he saw Laura Gamboa backing up quickly from the master bedroom. Her pistol was out in front of her, but Court could plainly see it had locked open after firing its last round.