escape: up the narrow road running directly east and away from the marketplace.
Indeed, the group turned in that direction as Salou glanced back over his shoulder, spotted Moore, and shouted to his men.
But Moore was already in the air, leaping toward a dirt mound ahead and firing with both pistols, the stench of gunpowder both familiar and welcome and making him grimace tightly. Salou had detached himself from the group, which was his final mistake. Even as the old Special Forces veteran leveled his AK-47 on Moore, he took two rounds in the chest, one in the neck, and a final one in the thigh that brought him to his knees, his rifle twisting to one side, his rounds stitching into the ground ten meters ahead of Moore.
Whether there were any more men inside the house, Moore wasn’t sure, but they needed to know. “Take the house!” he told Fitzpatrick, as the two men holding Miguel shoved him toward Sonia, broke away, and dropped to the deck so they could return fire.
The incoming drove Moore deeper into the mound before he could roll to his right and answer their shots. His first three rounds all missed.
Music from the parade wafted up from the valley, heavy drums and guitars and trumpets amid more pops and booms of fireworks, and for a few seconds, Moore wasn’t sure if the guys ahead were still firing at him.
Either way, he launched himself up from the ground and began running toward the house, dropping in behind Fitzpatrick, his boots heavy on the earth, his breath uneven and raging in his ears.
Miguel, Sonia, and the three guys left were hustling up the back road, as Moore had anticipated. He bolted around the house while Fitzpatrick rushed inside.
Gunfire rattled and glass shattered.
That was it. All he needed to hear. He couldn’t change what had happened that night on the oil platform, but maybe he could prevent the same thing from happening again. Sonia would not be left to die.
Tensing with an anger that had been simmering since that fateful night, and with a heart swelling with rage over his inability to forgive himself, Moore charged at full tilt up the hill, toward the sound of the screaming, with the breath of a ghost on his back.
As he rounded the cars, he saw that Sonia had broken away from one man and was being held only by a single guy, who now spotted Moore and put his pistol directly to Sonia’s head.
The other two guys had their guns pointed at Miguel’s chest, and the young man was now crying and begging for his life.
This wouldn’t be a standoff, a negotiation, a moment where he talked the men into surrendering because their boss was already dead and they had nothing left to gain, no. The dealmaking was over, the bets off.
With the adrenaline pumping through his veins like molten lava, and with the years of training and experience he’d earned as both a Navy SEAL and a CIA operative — the hundreds of hours spent listening to instructors shout at him and direct him and reward him — Moore took in the entire situation in the better part of one second and reacted like the man he was: a combatant with the muscle memory for killing.
Gritting his teeth, striking out at the guilt now personified as three members of a Guatemalan death squad, he looked at the guy holding Sonia and cried, “Hey!”
The guy widened his eyes.
That the other two guys would probably kill Miguel was of no concern. It was all about Sonia.
That the Guatemalans decided to engage Moore instead of killing the kid was the kid’s good fortune.
Moore fired his pistols, hitting each man in the chest. They staggered away from the kid, even as Moore nearly tripped back. He recovered his balance enough to lean forward, step toward the two thugs, and finish them with another round each. As his Glock went silent, police sirens clashed with the trumpeters of Carnival, and for just a few seconds, Moore paused, his head spinning, the adrenaline now making him feel as though his chest would explode.
“Who are you?” cried Miguel.
Moore answered him in Spanish: “I work for your father.” He reached into his hip pocket for a karambit, a hawk-billed blade whose edge curved like a slice of melon. He hurriedly cut Sonia’s bonds, then Miguel’s, then waved them over. “I have a car down below. Keys under the mat. It’s right down there. You get it. You take it. You get out of here and don’t look back. Go to the airport. Fly out. Now!”
“Let’s go!” Sonia shouted to Miguel, then led him away.
Moore stood there for a few seconds to regain his breath, then he holstered his pistols and raced back toward the house, leaping over Torres’s body to enter the living room, where he found Fitzpatrick lying on the floor with two gunshot wounds to his head.
“Aw, fuck …Buddy, no way …”
He dropped to his knees, but it was damned clear that the DEA agent was dead. He ripped off his balaclava and just remained there.
A phone was ringing somewhere outside. Moore rose, shifted over to Torres’s body, and withdrew his cell from the fat man’s hip pocket. It was Zuniga calling.
“Hello?”
“Luis, is that you?”
“No, Senor Zuniga, this is Senor Howard. I have very bad news. Luis and Flexxx are dead. Rojas’s son and his girl got away …”
“What is this?” Zuniga shouted. “You told me your group was very powerful!”
“I’m coming back to Juarez. I need to meet with you.”
“If you’re smart, you will not do that, Mr. Howard. You would not survive that meeting.”
“Listen to me. We’re not done yet. I’ll call you when I get back up there.” Moore hung up, pocketed Torres’s phone, then jogged over to Salou’s body and fetched his phone as well. As he headed back into the house, he dialed Towers, told his boss what had happened.
“I need to get the fuck out of here with Fitzpatrick’s body.”
“Get up into the hills, due north. I’ve got an extraction team on the way.”
He sighed. “Thank you.”
Moore reached down and picked up Fitzpatrick’s body in a fireman’s carry. His eyes began to burn. “Hang on,” he whispered. “I’ll get you out of here.”
He shifted outside and around the house as the damned sirens quickened his step. A car came roaring up, and two teenagers jumped out, gaping at the bodies.
“I need help!” Moore cried, then reached into one holster and drew his Glock. “Which means I’m taking your car.”
They lifted their palms and backed away. Moore opened the sedan’s rear door and lowered Fitzpatrick onto the seat. The boys could have jumped him then, but they were wise enough to read their futures in his expression. “Don’t worry,” he assured them. “You’ll get your car back.” He hopped in and floored it, the little engine whining and struggling to get them up the hillside road.
28 INSOMNIO
The local police had thoroughly searched the hotel for Miguel and Sonia. They’d received digital pictures of
