The Devil's Elixir

I bent down and kept going.

Bullets whizzed by me, but within seconds I’d reeled them in, aiming straight at the gunmen, and I plowed straight through one of them, hitting him with a jarring thud. He bounced off the front of the bike and disappeared behind me, and I hit the brakes while spinning the handlebars as far as they would go. I leapt off the quad before it had even slid to a stop and, with my gun already out, just charged at the other gunman. He fired off a couple of rounds at me, then I saw him flinch sideways as Munro cut him down from his bike.

I rushed up to the chopper, with Navarro and Alex almost at its door, the rotor wash beating the air into us and kicking up an infernal dust cloud.

“Stop,” I yelled.

Navarro turned and glared at me—

Then he pulled Alex right up against him, a four-year-old human shield—not a very effective one, given that Alex only reached his waist, leaving his entire torso exposed. I had a shot, clear and true—but Navarro had a blade pressed against Alex’s neck, and visions of what happened to Corliss’s daughter froze my trigger finger.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone calm down here, all right,” Munro shouted as he sauntered up close to me, his gun arm also held straight out at Navarro, his other hand making a staying gesture. “Let’s all take a breath here, guys.”

“Put your guns down or the kid dies,” Navarro yelled back, edging backward, closer to the chopper’s cabin.

I felt my limbs go rigid with dread, but from the corner of my eye, I caught Munro’s impassive look and something was very wrong about it.

“No one’s going anywhere,” he told Navarro. “Just put the fucking knife down and get your ass over here or I’ll take the kid out myself.”

He lowered his aim.

His gun was now leveled at Alex.

68

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and swung my gun over at Munro. “What?”

He turned, his face cracking with that grin I couldn’t stand. “Sorry, buddy. He’s worth a hell of a lot more to me alive.”

He seemed to be getting a real kick out of my utter confusion. My mind bounced through a maze of permutations, and since we didn’t have a reward out on him—until a couple of days ago, he was assumed to be dead—and since this was Munro we were talking about, the sleaziest option leapt out almost instantly.

Navarro had run off with three hundred million dollars of cartel money.

“How much are they paying you?”

He smiled. “Five percent.”

Fifteen million dollars.

He kept silent as if to let it sink in, like he was really getting a kick out of this, then added, “What, you think I went through all this bullshit just so some cranky old man could get his revenge?”

And then it all went very fast.

I saw Munro grin at me, like he really didn’t need me around anymore, and his gun panned slowly away from Navarro, heading my way—

I glimpsed Navarro’s face broaden in a smug grimace and noticed his hand relax and move away from Alex’s neck—

And despite some disturbing visions of Corliss’s daughter falling to the ground with a fountain of blood coming out of her neck, I whipped my gun back at Navarro and took a shot—

I saw his right shoulder flinch back like it had been pounded by a sledgehammer—

And my eyes zeroed in on Alex’s terrified gaze and I shouted to him, “Run, Alex!” while launching myself at Munro.

My arm grabbed his MP4’s muzzle just as he pulled the trigger, and I just managed to push it off target as it erupted, my body weight bulldozing into Munro full-on.

We fell to the ground, kicking and punching as we rolled together across the scrub. Munro caught me with a vicious right hook to the jaw then threw a lightning-fast combination at my kidneys. It was enough to make me release the grip I had on his jacket. He pushed himself to his feet, and had already pulled back his right foot, ready to kick the toe of his boot into my head, when I rolled to my right, his boot slicing through the air where my head had just been.

I clambered to my feet and took a couple of labored breaths, and got a quick glimpse of Alex. He hadn’t run. He was kicking and punching as though he’d gone completely feral, but Navarro had a firm hold on him and was shoving him into the chopper. Then Munro got my attention back by sending a roundhouse at my chest. I stepped inside the arc of his boot and hammered my right elbow up into his chin, absorbing the force of his kick with my already battered back.

I took an uppercut to my own chin for my troubles, but he put too much force behind the punch and lost his footing for a moment.

Stepping forward, I stamped my left boot into Munro’s right knee. As he tipped forward I threw a piledriver into the back of his neck, which sent him sprawling to the ground.

I leapt onto him, straddling his torso, pummeling his head with punches from both sides, but the bastard wouldn’t stay down. He lashed out with his knee and caught me full in the back. Right where Navarro’s man had caught me with the metal pipe. I grunted loudly with agony. Munro clearly liked the sound of that, and channeled all his remaining energy into driving his knee into the same spot, again and again, seemingly oblivious to the punches I was landing on his face, even though his nose was split right open and blood was gushing down his face.

I felt a spasm rip through my lower back. For a second I thought I was going to black out from the pain. One more knee directly on that bruise and I would have to throw myself off him, and at this point that was going to give the fight to Munro, with no chance of a rematch.

He swung out his right leg as far as it would go, in preparation to land the killer blow to my back, but before he could drive his knee back in again, I grabbed his head with both hands, wrenched it up, and crashed it back against the ground.

I slammed Munro’s head against the soil, and again, battering him to submission—

Then I heard the chopper’s turbine grind up deafeningly before it lurched off the ground.

And in that instant, all I could think was, I’m not about to lose my son forever.

Not a chance.

And like in all of life’s most important decisions, my brain had already relayed its decision to my central nervous system before deigning to let me in on which way it had voted. By the time I realized what I was doing, I had scooped up my Glock and stuffed it in my pants, and I was sprinting at the rising bird and launching myself into the air and onto one of its runners.

My left hand hit the metal tube and slipped right off again, but my right hand held firm. With the chopper banking away and air rushing against me, I swung my right leg up over the runner and hooked it around.

My mind was leaping from I can ’t believe I fucking made it to What now? when a hail of bullets slammed into the helicopter. I spun around to see Munro, standing again, blood all over his face, MP4 in hand. He’d obviously decided that dead was better than not at all.

Another volley strafed the chopper, punching a streak of ominous holes through its fuselage and sending the engine into a high-pitched wail. I hoisted myself up around the runner, hooked my left leg over my right, pulled my Glock, and emptied the entire clip at the rapidly diminishing figure who was intent on bringing us down.

Somewhere before the clip ran out, Munro jerked backward, staggered, then toppled to the ground, saving whichever cartel he was working for the trouble of severing his limbs one by one with a machete.

Navarro and his pilot were now well aware they had a stowaway, but they didn’t seem too keen to credit me