When we figured we were within a mile of the place, LQ and I got out of the car. He carried the BAR and the shoulder bag of extra magazines; I had one of the shotguns and one coat pocket full of extra shells for it, the other pocket full of .44 cartridges. The road was still closely bounded and deeply shadowed by brush and mesquite. I headed up the road with LQ ten yards behind me and Brando easing the Hudson along behind LQ, far enough back that I couldn’t hear the motor.
About eighty yards from the compound the trees and taller brush abruptly ended. LQ came up beside me and we crouched in the road’s last portion of darkness. We had a clear view of the compound gate and the guard posted there, but between us and the compound it was all moonlit open ground and there was no shadow at all on the long front wall. Brando was still in the car, about thirty yards behind us.
The wooden gate was tall and double-doored, the left door open inward, the right one shut. The guard sat in a straightback chair in front of the closed door. We could see the red flarings of his cigarette and it looked like there was some kind of long gun propped against the gate beside him. The wall was about twelve feet high and we could see the glitter of the broken bottles cemented along the top of it, a safeguard common to every walled residence, large or small, we’d seen in Mexico. The open gate door was dimly yellow with light from the courtyard within.
We talked it over in a whisper and came up with a plan. I went back down the road to tell it to Brando and then stood on the running board as he very gingerly brought the Hudson up to about fifteen yards from the shadowed end of the road and stopped. We could see LQ’s crouched silhouette up ahead.
“Keep your eye on me,” I told Brando, then I hustled back up to LQ.
“Okay,” LQ said, handing me his hat and the BAR. “Here goes nothing.” He slipped into the brush to the right of the road and vanished. I slung the BAR over one shoulder, the shotgun over the other.
It took nearly half an hour for him to move around to the east side of the compound. I kept watching the far end of the front wall and finally saw his blond head poke out from behind it.
The guard was sitting with his back to him. He’d been chain-smoking and he lit another cigarette as LQ started toward him, walking steadily and sticking close to the wall, his shadow short and leaning a little ahead of him. If the guard turned around and saw him coming LQ would probably have to shoot him—and the ones inside might get the gate shut on us.
LQ was almost to him when the guard jerked around in his chair—maybe he heard LQ’s footsteps. He jumped up and spun around to grab for the long gun but then LQ was on him, clubbing at him with his pistol. I heard the guy hollering—and figured they sure as hell heard him inside—and then LQ had him down and shut him up.
I was already running for the gate and beckoning Brando to come on. I heard the Hudson roaring behind me and I looked back as it shot out into the moonlight and swerved around in a tight circle and Brando gunned it back into the narrow mouth of the road and braked hard—the car now facing back the way we came and blocking the mouth of the road. The door flew open and Brando came on the run, shotgun in hand.
LQ was standing in the open gate pointing the .380 at somebody inside and yelling, “Put it down, man, put it down!” A pistolshot sounded from the courtyard and the round ricocheted off the stone wall. LQ crouched beside the closed door and opened fire with the .380, snapping off three or four rounds in a row, the muzzle flashing yellow, then took cover behind the door.
I ran up and gave LQ his hat and the BAR and whipped the shotgun off my shoulder. Somebody inside was crying in pain and praying to the Holy Mother.
“Map’s got it right,” LQ said. “Driveway goes straight to a pool fountain some seventy–eighty yards off and the house is just the other side of it.”
Brando ran up, grinning big.
There was a lot of shouting in the compound, mostly unintelligible, some of it demanding to know what was going on, some of it informing that Julio had been shot and needed help. Somebody ordering somebody to shut the fucking gate and somebody yelling back for
LQ peeked around the open door and jerked his head back quick as several pistols fired and bullets whacked the thick wood.
“There’s a bunch coming from the right,” he said. “Let’s do it if we’re gonna do it.”
I told him to cover us from the gate—we didn’t want them shutting the door and trapping us inside. “Keep behind me, Ray—straight for the house. I’ll go upstairs, you hold the front door. Shoot anything you aint sure of.”
I slapped LQ on the shoulder and said, “Do it.”
He stood up and leaned around the door and fired a long sweeping burst of the BAR, the rifle pumping out rounds in
Brando and I ran up the driveway. It was wide and cobbled and flanked on either side by torchlights and low hedges, stone benches, various statues. The diagram hadn’t mentioned all the trees on the place. The courtyard was straight ahead, a circular stone fountain in the middle of it with some kind of sculpture spouting water in the center of the pool. The house just beyond it was blazing with light. From the shadowy area off to our right voices shouted, “Por alla! Alla estan! Por alla!”
I ran in a crouch as gunshots cracked. A bullet struck a statue close to my head and stone fragments pecked my cheek. Rounds hummed through the hedges. Then LQ’s BAR was hammering again and there was screaming and it sounded like LQ shot up an entire magazine before he stopped firing. There were anguished cries, shriekings for help.
The courtyard hedge was higher than the one along the driveway and as I ran around the fountain a man came rushing out of a hedge pathway with a pistol in his hand and seemed astonished to see me. I blasted him in the chest with the ten-gauge and he flew backward into the hedge and hung there in a bloody tangle.
“Right side!” Brando yelled, and I turned and saw two more with rifles coming out of the other hedge. Brando’s shotgun took half the head off one of them. The other fired at me from the hip and I heard the bullet pass me. I gave him a load in the belly and he bounced off the base of a horse statue and left a red mess on the stone.
The BAR was rapping again and there was more screaming—and then Brando cried out. I turned and saw him on the ground, clutching his side and cussing a blue streak.
Two guys came out of the hedge on the other side of the fountain and I fired at them and one spun around and went down and the other ducked behind the fountain. Brando sat up and pulled his revolver and the guy never knew Ray was there until he peeked around that side of the fountain and his hair jumped when Brando shot him in the head.
“Go on, go on!” Brando yelled.
I started for the house and spotted a man looking down from the balcony—a guy with long white hair and a black eyepatch. I raised the shotgun and he darted away just as I blew fragments off the stone rail where he’d been standing. I thought I heard a woman scream up there. Daniela.
The shotgun lever seized and I flung the weapon away and drew the Mexican Colt and ran up the front steps. A man in an apron and gripping a meat cleaver came at me from a side door—brave but stupid. I shot him and he fell down, blood spurting from his neck. I ran into the main parlor and damn near shot a pair of terrified maids hugging tight to each other.
I raced up the wide stairway, taking the steps two at a time, but as I reached the middle landing a large man suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs and shot at me and my right foot kicked out from under me and I fell sideways on the steps. His next bullet gouged a hole in the carpet under my nose. Then we fired at the same time and my cheek burned and he flinched and his gun hand drooped. He started to raise the revolver again and I shot him in the chest and he discharged a round into the wall and dropped the gun and came tumbling down the steps to the landing and lay on his back without moving.
I sat up and checked my foot and saw that the heel of my boot had been shot off. I raised my other foot and whacked the heel with the Colt barrel a half-dozen times before it broke off. I wiped blood from my right cheek, then stood up and looked down at the guy and saw that he was still alive and staring at me. He had a pencil mustache and a bandaged ear.
“Te doy un recuerdo de Felipe Rocha,” I said. He opened his mouth to speak but never got it out before I shot him in the eye.
I reloaded the Colt and went on up to the top landing, moving warily now. I heard the BAR again—and then froze at the sound of a submachine gun, firing rounds faster than LQ’s Browning ever could. It was a long
