He doesn’t die quickly. His body convulses first. He makes a sound like he’s choking. Then, after a minute, he goes still.
I stand back up, pull the rifle off my shoulder. I flick off the safety and start toward the guards’ house. I can still hear them inside. They haven’t heard a thing. None are wondering where their friend has gone.
The main door is open, only a screen door protecting them from me. Light spills out onto the dirt. I place my hand on the door, wait a moment to breathe, then open it.
Inside three men sit around a card table. Bottles of beer litter the table, along with bags of chips and pretzels. First someone says, “Rico, what took you so long?” and then that man looks up, sees me, throws his cards down and pushes back his chair. The other men follow suit.
I shoot each man three times. Two of them get hit in the chest and go down without any trouble. The last man moves too fast and my bullets hit him in the shoulder. He goes down, but he’s alive, and he reaches for his weapon, tries to come back up with it aimed.
I move closer, aiming for his head just as the brings his gun up. He’s fast but I’m faster, and I shoot him right between the eyes.
For a moment I don’t do anything but just stand there. My heart is racing. I can smell their sweat and cheap beer as well as the bile that has been released by my killing them. I start with the man whom I killed last. He doesn’t have any keys on him. The next man does. He has a ring of jangling keys and I take them back outside and hurry over to the ranch house.
I try a number of keys, come up with the right one, open the door and step inside. I reach out, fumble for the light switch, flick it on.
The place is lined with cots. There are at least twenty of them. More than half are filled. In those that are filled, battered-looking women peek out from beneath their sheets. They’re expecting one of the guards, not a woman with a rifle strapped over her shoulder. Rosalina said that most of the girls there were Mexican, so first I speak Spanish.
“It’s time for all of you to leave. Hurry and get your things.”
None of the girls move. They must think this is some kind of dream.
“Now!” I shout, and like that they blink and realize this is no dream. They scramble out of their cots. They start running around. Many are smiling. I just stand there, watching them, while one girl with a black eye walks up to me.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here to save you.”
“What about the others?”
“Rosalina is fine.”
I expect her to smile in relief, but she still gives me that look of worry. She says again, “What about the others?”
“What others?”
The girl’s eyes go wide, quickly filling with fear. The other girls stop what they are doing. In the sudden silence I can hear what the girls can, what they are no doubt used to hearing every night: vehicles, what sounds like two of them, approaching quickly.
Twelve
On the drive up here, Rosalina mentioned something about how the girls are transported. Every night they are taken by one or more of the men in SUVs to specific areas around the city. Usually a guard is posted somewhere to ensure the girls don’t try to escape. Rosalina admitted she tried this once and they broke her pinkie fingers for the trouble of tracking her down.
So that’s what these vehicles are now, the two SUVs filled with armed men and the girls who had been requested tonight. They’ve returned, and very soon the armed men will enter the guards’ house and see what has become of their friends. They will be angry. They will be fucking pissed. And here I am, trapped in a building with over a dozen women who have no weapons.
I flick the lights back out, shut the door. I tell the girls to get back in their beds. Some are murmuring, some are crying. I raise my voice, speak in Spanish and English forcefully, telling them to move it. Act like nothing’s wrong.
Outside, the vehicles stop, their engines shut off. There is the sound of doors opening, the voices of men.
My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet but I hurry forward, trying to find a vacant bed. I pick the first one and lie down on it, pull the covers up to hide the FN 15. At once the reek of body odor hits me, and I wonder just how many nights pass before these girls sleep on clean sheets instead of lying in their own filth.
In the dark, one of the girls speaks in Spanish. “What are you doing?”
“Quiet,” I say.
Outside, the crunch of feet on the ground.
“They will kill you,” another girl says.
“Shut up,” I whisper.
A key slides into the lock. There is a pause, and then the key slides back out. A voice murmurs something, another voice answers.
I close my eyes, take a breath.
The doorknob turns.
I take another breath, tighten my grip on the rifle.
The door pushes open.
One of the girls is still sobbing. My grip tightens even more.
Someone flicks on the lights. I have to squint, turn my head slightly like all the rest of the girls. Here they come, stumbling on their stilettos, all in skimpy dresses. One of the girls is chewing gum, making me think of Scooter for an instant, and it’s in that instant the girl’s gaze and my gaze lock and she stops walking altogether.
Two men have entered with the girls. Though neither of them carry a gun, it’s clear they’re
