Ballistic

shadows across the walls in a back-and-forth jolt.

She stiffened in surprise and fear, but she did not turn back to look. Only lowered her head and quickly made the sign of the cross over her body.

A marine sicario shot her once in the base of the skull with a Colt .45 pistol. Her tiny, aged, frail body lurched forward across the altar, came to rest at the foot of the crucifix, the candle in her hand spun through the air and extinguished with the movement.

Diego and his grandfather lay at the top of the staircase into the kitchen, and they fired their carbines at a figure in the living room. The man had shot at them first; Diego knew with certainty neither tia Laura, the bearded gringo, nor the two federales who’d worked for tio Eduardo would do that, so he determined this man in the dark behind the sporadic muzzle flashes to be their enemy.

The sixteen-year-old boy and the seventy-year-old man did not have any training in such things, so they did not space themselves apart properly. Their shoulders literally touched as they fought, affording their attacker the luxury of a single target at which to shoot. Also, they did not know to cover for each other as they reloaded; instead they just fired when they saw fit, stopped when they saw fit, and reloaded when they needed to do so. This created long, dangerous lulls in the fight, during which their enemy could creep closer to find a better angle of fire.

Ernesto rose to a knee to pull a third M1 carbine magazine out of his hip pocket, he leaned to shout something into Diego’s ear, and then he spun ninety degrees, dropped the rifle, and clutched high on his right shoulder. He slid halfway down the stairs on his old back, shouted from the shock of the impact, which felt as if he’d been kicked in the shoulder by a mule.

At the bottom of the stairs his wife appeared, a candle in her hand; she began climbing up to him, shrieking and crying; he yelled at her, ordered her back to the cellar, told her that he was fine.

Through the numbness in his arm and a fresh cold chill that now sloshed across his body like a high, cool wave over his little fishing boat, he began climbing the stairs again to fight alongside his grandson, reaching for the wooden rifle on his way.

Ramses Cienfuegos had fought off two men on the second-floor south mirador. At first he’d been alongside Colonel Gamboa’s sister, Laura, but a flash-bang grenade had been tossed into the upstairs parlor from the mirador itself and exploded between them. Laura had stumbled back into the hallway, out of sight, but Ramses had recovered quickly enough to charge forward instead of back. He saw two men on the mirador, they were preparing to attack, but Ramses surprised them with his aggressive tactics. The men escaped from him by leaping over the balcony towards the patio below, and when he arrived at the railing and looked down, he saw the marines disappear into the night around the west side of the casa grande. He was certain the assassins would regroup and try to breach from the ground floor, so he sprinted to the staircase, ran down it, and turned into the hallway towards the west wing.

He ran down the hallway, passed several rooms, and then turned sharply and entered a courtyard, made of long open colonnades that formed a box around a garden of weeds with a huge garbage-strewn fountain in the middle. The open sky shone into the space and illuminated it just enough for him to see his way forward down the stone tiles. He ran towards a doorway on the far side.

He cleared the room beyond with his submachine gun, found it to be an old storeroom, and also discovered a wide open door to the outside.

He knew in an instant that the men were already in the house.

Somewhere behind him.

Ramses Cienfuegos retraced his steps. He still heard gunfire on the far end of the house, but he also knew that the men he’d seen earlier could not have made it that far in such a short time. He reentered the courtyard, followed the east-west colonnade back to the east, and then turned to the north to go back into the hallway that led to the main portion of the casa grande.

As he jogged, he looked away for an instant, out into the garden, wondering if someone was hiding in the tall grasses and weeds.

When he looked back up, a man was there, thirty feet away and running up the tiled colonnade towards him.

A marino in full battle dress, carrying an MP5.

Both Mexicans saw each other at the same time. Both raised their weapons as their eyes widened in surprise and fear.

The marino fired his MP5 up the hall, spraying bullets towards the federale. Ramses fired his Colt 635 down the hall, spraying bullets back at the sicario.

Ramses Cienfuegos went down first, a hot snap into his right biceps, another to his right shoulder, and then his helmet shattered and smashed and leapt straight off his head into the air. He spun away while firing his weapon, supersonic lead arced from the muzzle and nailed the sicario in his right arm, then across his chest plate, tipping him backwards and knocking him down.

Both fell flat on their backs on the cold tile, only twenty-five feet apart and bleeding in the dark colonnade hallway. Both men’s primary weapons were empty, and both men sat up and struggled to reload, encumbered as they were by their wounds and the slick blood coating their weapons and their spare magazines.

“?Cabron!” Ramses shouted as he rolled onto his right hip, ejected the spent magazine from the well of the rifle, used the same arm to retrieve a loaded spare from his assault vest, and struggled to reload.

“?Chingado federale!” The marine shouted as a reply; his voice echoed in the hallway and across the courtyard. He’d given up on reloading his rifle; instead he pushed the weapon away, reached across his body with his left hand, and with a shout of pain drew his pistol from the drop-leg holster on his right hip. He fought his inertia to roll back to his left to line up a shot.

Ramses gritted his teeth against the searing burn of the bullet wounds, screamed another obscenity at the assassin, and realized he was beaten. He struggled to pull back the charging handle on the rifle with his one good hand; he looked up to see the black pistol emerge at the end of the sicario’s arm, saw the assassin scoot on the tile in his expanding blood pool to get his weapon around for the killing shot.

Ramses knew he could not ready his weapon before his enemy could raise his. He could not pull back the charging handle one-handed without propping the butt of the gun on the tile, and he had no time to do this. He wore no handgun, he’d given it to Major Gamboa’s sister, and without a loaded rifle he had no way to engage his foe. So he let the rifle fall to the floor, sat there on the cold tile. His legs splayed out in front of him, and he relaxed, thought of his family, and waited to die.

The marine leaning on his side ahead of him grimaced in pain as his weapon rose. He clearly saw he would get the drop on the federale, and his face, contorted in pain, morphed into a smile.

Ramses Cienfuegos drew a long breath and sighed. Watched his killer enjoy the moment.

“?Come mierda!” Eat shit! Ramses shouted.

And then, as silent and as fast as the predawn breeze that drifted through the hacienda, the American sprinted from around the corner and into the tile colonnade behind the marine. He carried the long, old, side-by-side double-barrel shotgun, and his eyes were down at the open breach of the weapon. He was trying to reload it as he ran, but when he recognized the scene in front of him, the gringo’s eyes widened. Ramses watched the gringo discard the two fresh shotgun shells back over his shoulder, and then the wounded Mexican federale watched the American toss the big shotgun into the air in front of him while he ran forward as fast as he could.

The marine assassin knew nothing of the danger behind him. He took his time to level his Sig Sauer pistol at the injured man sitting ahead of him on the tile.

The wooden-stocked scattergun spun through the air backwards, the gringo caught it with both hands around the barrel near the muzzle as he neared the unsuspecting marine on the floor in front of him. The American took