Dead Six

else fails, negotiate.

LORENZO

Please, don’t let them have any grenades.

“Hey! Why don’t you come out and die like a man?” one of them yelled. Despite his raised voice, he sounded very calm, almost conversational.

“Why don’t you come down here and get me then?” I shouted around the corner. The closet was decent cover, the walls were solid, and if they wanted me, they had to come down that fatal funnel of a hallway. The first one to stick his head down here was going to die, and they knew it.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of them yelled, clearly agitated. Apparently they weren’t used to somebody speaking English. He was obviously a Southerner.

“Nobody worth dying over,” I responded. “You better hurry. Somebody had to hear all that shooting. You don’t have much time.”

“We’ll make time,” stated the calm one.

Carl came over the earpiece. He was out of breath. “Some skinny guy saw me coming in the market and tried to stab me, so I broke his head.” So Jalal’s man had tried to stop my friend. That was a fatal mistake.

“There are at least three shooters. They’ve got me pinned down.”

“I’ll circle around,” he said. I could hear the Dead Six men talking back and forth in hushed tones down the hallway. The nearest two were speaking in Spanish, but they shouted at someone else in English that they would take care of me.

“We’re on the way,” Reaper said. “But I’m stuck behind some trucks.”

“I’m coming to help.” The female voice over the radio took me a second to process. I could hear the van door open.

Idiot. “Jill, stay put!”

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

I jerked away from the doorway as the walls shattered. The giant .44 Magnum slugs tore through the building materials with unbelievable fury. The smell of solvents filled the air from leaking containers. I stuck my gun around the corner and fired several wild rounds in response.

“Val! Holy shit, look at all this money!” They’d found the backpack.

“That’s mine!” I shouted. “Assholes!”

“Not anymore, motherfucker!” shouted the obnoxious one. “Ha!”

VALENTINE

“This is taking too long,” I said, dumping a fresh speed loader into my .44. “C’mon, man, we gotta go!” Tailor nodded, slung the backpack full of money, and led the way. I backed down the hallway, keeping my gun trained on the closet at the end of the hall. We’d already told Hudson and Byrne to head back to their vehicle, and the cops would be all over Hasa Market before too long.

“Control, Xbox,” Tailor said, speaking into his radio. “Target neutralized. Egressing now. Will update as I can.” Sarah acknowledged him on the radio as we reached the door at the other end of the hallway.

“It’s your lucky day, asshole,” I said to the man in the closet, even though I doubted he could hear me. Tailor and I then turned and bolted back through the warehouse.

LORENZO

It was quiet. I risked a peek. I couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t just waiting quietly to blow my head off.

“Lorenzo, there are four of them. Two came in the back. They’re heading west toward the street.” Carl said. “Those two fodas from the video just walked out the front. They’re heading south through the market, trying to play it cool.”

The ones with the box were the ones that mattered. “Tail them. I’m on my way,” I responded, already heading for the exit. I shoved the STI back in its holster as I hopped over the bodies of Jalal and his men. There was no way I was going to let them get away.

The market was continuing as normal. The walls of the old warehouse and the music must have muffled the gunshots enough not to spook the crowd. I walked quickly, as running would have drawn too much attention. A woman gasped and pointed at me. Glancing down, I realized that I was still splattered with Jalal’s blood. “Shit,” I muttered.

“They’re moving south,” Carl reported. “I’m on them.”

“Where?” I hissed. The woman was pointing at me and pulling on her husband’s sleeve. I ducked my head and turned, moving deeper into the throng.

“By the fountain.”

“Reaper, move up on the entrance. Be ready to roll. Carl, we need one of them alive.”

Carl came back. “I’ve been made.”

Then there was a gunshot.

VALENTINE

Guns holstered, Tailor and I pushed our way back through Hasa Market, south, where our vehicle was waiting for us. We nervously eyed the crowd as we walked, checking over our shoulders for the guy in the soccer jersey. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he wasn’t just another militant asshole.

There wasn’t time to worry about it. We’d been lucky, so far, in that no one had heard the shots or called the police, but I didn’t want to find out how long that luck would hold. All we had to do was make it back to our truck and we were home free.

Not necessarily, I thought bitterly, remembering the night Wheeler died. We cleared the tangled mess of the marketplace and came upon the open area that surrounded the old fountain at the center. Like the rest of the market, it was choked with people, but it wasn’t nearly as claustrophobic as the maze of shops and carts.

Gun. I noticed it so instinctively that I almost didn’t realize it. Everything slowed down as The Calm kicked in again. On the other side of the fountain there was a man with a gun. He was short and squat, with a dark face and a scraggly beard. He was staring at me intently, and through the bustle of the crowd I could see him trying to bring a pistol to bear. He was dressed in local garb, but, like the man in the soccer jersey, I didn’t believe he was some random Zubaran citizen.

Before I’d finished processing that, I realized my gun was clear of its holster and that the front sight was aligned on the man with the gun as he brought his own pistol up. His eyes grew wide as a gap appeared in the crowd; I had a shot. I fired.

I missed. My bullet struck the edge of the fountain, blowing off a small chunk and ricocheting off into the distance. My revolver’s roar echoed through Hasa Market, and all at once everyone froze, heads turning to see what was happening. People around us stared at us wide-eyed, mouths agape.

“Oh, shit,” Tailor said, his .45 already drawn. More shots rang out as the man with the gun fired at us, using the edge of the heavily constructed fountain as cover. Tailor and I shot back, moving laterally as we fired, trying to hit the gunman without killing anyone in the crowd.