The SUV kept on coming.
A shot tore a hole through the top of the middle of the windshield, passing so close to Septiembre that he could feel it whizzing past his head.
Sancho squeezed off some bursts but missed his targets; he held down the trigger and burned off one continuous rapid-fire blast. That took down one of the gunmen, and then the SUV was rounding the corner of the back of the building.
The second gunman broke to the right of the vehicle, running for cover and instead running into gunfire from Ramon's machine pistol.
The SUV slewed around on the gravel and loose dirt of the lot, the wheels on its left side lifting off the ground, threatening for a breathless instant to overturn the top-heavy machine.
They touched ground again, the machine skidding to a stop in a plume of pebbles and dirt clouds. It stood broadside at right angles to the loading platform.
For a few beats, the vehicle was hidden behind a curtain of dust. By the same token, the back of the building was obscured, too. The sectioned metal door of the loading dock bay was raised and thrown open.
Winds blew, dispersing the dust cloud. The murk cleared, revealing a machine gun just inside the loading bay. A.50-caliber machine gun, mounted on a tripod, manned by two defenders.
The gunner sat with crossed legs behind the weapon, gripping the twin rear handles with both hands, his thumb poised over the firing button. The other stood on one knee beside him, holding the cartridge belt lightly in his open hands. His job was to feed the belt steadily into the machine gun, avoiding snags.
Fierro, sitting on the right side of the backseat, flung back the sliding door and threw himself out of the SUV before the firing began. He hit the dirt, belly-crawling behind the right rear wheel for cover.
The others in the vehicle lacked his hair-trigger reflexes. They sat frozen in place for the split-second before the gunner opened fire.
The machine gun streamed big-caliber, high-velocity slugs into the SUV, making a sound like a jackhammer tearing up pavement.
It tore up the SUV, ventilating it at high speed, sieving it with rounds that tore through its shell like it was so much cardboard. Septiembre, Sancho, and Ramon were shot to pieces.
The machine gunner was an enthusiast. Standard doctrine stated that the weapon should be fired in a succession of short quick bursts, but he was having none of that. He held down the firing stud, loosing a continuous blast of bullets, swiveling the machine gun back and forth on its tripod, working over the SUV like he was spraying it with a fire hose.
Peppering it with hundreds of rounds in less than a minute. In that time, the gun barrel turned red-hot.
Fierro lay flat and at right angles to the right rear wheel, hugging the ground, eating dirt. The machine gunner was shooting high, the rounds passing harmlessly over Fierro's prone form. The SUV rattled and rocked on its chassis like it was throwing a piston rod.
The sideman handling the cartridge belt feed got so excited by the havoc wrought by the machine gun that he got careless and allowed the belt to get twisted. Causing the weapon to jam. There was a sudden silence as it ceased to operate.
That was what Fierro was waiting for. He had a couple of grenades stowed in the side pockets of his utility vest. Rising, he took out a grenade, pulled the pin, and counted to three before tossing it overhand at the open bay door. Throwing himself flat on the ground as soon as the grenade left his hand.
The machine gunner and sideman could see the grenade coming at them, fat and sassy. It hit the floor a few feet in front of them, then blew.
In front of the building, Aguilar and Carrancha had piled out of the Explorer, weapons in hand. Paz stood on one knee, fitting a grenade into the launcher sleeve below the barrel of the Kalash.
Aguilar moved up beside him on his left, only to step into a burst fired from inside the building. He wore no flak jacket and the gunfire chopped him in the middle, spraying Paz with blood spatter.
Joaquin, the big Supremo bodyguard, stood framed in the open front door, working a leveled assault rifle. Standing there outlined in the doorway, he made a sweet target for Carrancha, who returned fire.
Joaquin jackknifed, falling back into the interior and out of sight.
Paz shouted, 'The window!'
Carrancha's big, bearish form dropped into a crouch as he poured some slugs into the hat company's big plate-glass display window. It came apart, glass shards falling like sheets of ice.
Paz fired a grenade through the hole where the window had been, into the showroom. The blast was satisfyingly spectacular.
Around back, Fierro reached into the rear of the SUV, grabbing a sawed-off riot shotgun from the floor where he'd left it.
It was his personal weapon — it cleared out a room with authority. It was fully loaded and there were more twelve-gauge shotgun shells stuffed in the front pockets of his vest. Along with another grenade in a side pocket.
The shotgun seemed to have survived the fusillade intact and unharmed but he checked it to make sure. It worked fine.
He caught a glimpse of Septiembre, Ramon, and Sancho. They looked like they been put through the human equivalent of a paper shredder.
Smoke poured out of the loading platform's open bay door. Fierro slipped around the rear of the SUV, charging the platform from the side, out of the direct line of fire of anyone who might still be left in the back of the building.
On the left side of the platform was a flight of stone steps. He climbed them, flattening his back against the wall to the side of the open bay door.
He peeked around the corner, inside. Just beyond the opening, there was a mess on the floor that had been the machine gunner and his sideman.
Fierro stuck a little more of his head around the wall edge, craning for a view.
Someone inside shot at him, the rounds tearing off pieces of concrete and spraying his face with stinging stone chips.
He ducked back, covering. The shots had come from deeper inside the space. He dug a shotgun shell out of his pocket and tossed it into the building, drawing another blast of gunfire.
Now he had a better idea of where the shooter was. He pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it in, underhand, in the appropriate direction.
A blast boomed, red and white light flashing out of a roiling smoke cloud.
Fierro rushed inside, moving off to one side, taking cover behind a head-high stack of wooden pallets. Waiting for the smoke to clear before continuing with the cleanup.
The showroom was a shambles of smoky wreckage. Overhead light fixtures swung at the end of loose wires dangling from the ceiling; clouds of plaster, sawdust, and straw hung in mid-air.
Colonel Paz prowled around, holding a leveled pistol at waist height, looking for Beltran. The big killing was done, and for close-in work, a pistol was better than a rifle.
The Supremo defenders were dead, all but one or two of them in the back of the building who were only critically wounded. Carrancha and Fierro were finishing them off, delivering the coup de grace of a bullet through the brain.
Vasco was outside, guarding the Explorer and keeping watch.
Not much mopping needed to be done in the showroom area. Joaquin lay just inside the front entrance, where he'd been cut down. Mrs. Ybarra lay sprawled nearby.
She'd been standing in front of the display window when Carrancha had shot it out.
Slugs had stitched her across the middle, nearly cutting her in half.
Paz went through the reception area, into the front office. Smoke clouds drifted across his field of vision, obscuring his view. Holes gaped in ceiling and walls, revealing broken wooden latticework and cratered plaster.
