Except he did not like how it felt to kill men, and especially did not like how it felt shooting men in their backs. Not even men who had set themselves up to kill him.
His watch again. Its digital second readout ticking down the seconds.
Eleven left. Ten. Nine. Eight.
His heart pumped. He breathed through his front teeth. His finger steadied on the trigger.
Six, five, four, three, two…
His eye to the sight, the carbine rattled in Ricci’s hand, its stock bucking against his shoulder.
Beneath him, his bullets ripped into their bodies, knocking them forward into the dirt, snuffing out their lives before they could have possibly known what hit them. And as he fired, Ricci could hear coordinated shots from the opposite slope.
But then, he was listening for them.
On his belly in the dirt, Lathrop relaxed his grip on the sound-suppressed SIG-Sauer SSG’s trigger.
It had been neat and precise, just how he liked it. Three cracks of the rifle, three more pieces of dead meat to feed the crawling, wriggling, and buzzing local scavengers.
And making it all the more perfect, he’d ended up with a leftover round of ammunition in his clip.
Moments after he heard the stutter of the rifles, Pedro entered the hut and glanced knowingly at Cesar. Then he let his eyes sink slowly down to Marissa Vasquez and meet her own disconcerted gaze.
“Gunfire,” he said. “Do you recognize the sound of bullets spat from a gun?”
She kept silent.
“Perhaps you have never heard it in your town’s favored streets. Or at the university you attend, eh?” He grinned, reached for his tin of whiskey, and uncapped it. “Let me know,
She looked at him.
“I told you your father sent a rescuer,” Pedro said. “And now I can tell you the rescuer is dead.”
Marissa’s gaze, filled with increasing dismay and confusion, finally lost its determined steadiness.
“No,” she said, finally averting it from him.
Pedro’s own eyes stayed on her, roving up and down, lingering in places. Then they went to Cesar.
“Go outside and tell the men to bring their bloody carcass in here when they arrive,” he said, and swigged deeply from the flask. “After that I want to be left alone… The other gringo can wait, am I understood?”
Cesar nodded, left the hut, and Pedro turned back to Marissa.
“You would not believe me when I said someone was coming for you, but now you’ll have a dead man for proof… and to keep us company,” he said, taking another long drink, his eyes studying her again. “Who knows what may occur before his unseeing eyes? What acts we will perform that his mouth cannot speak of? Who, indeed, knows,
“What’s happening?” Manuel asked Cesar. He had emerged from one of the other thatch shelters upon hearing the submachine gun salvos.
Cesar paused on his way toward the brambles screening the trail head.
“They’ve got the one her father sent,” he said. “
Manuel looked at him.
“Why in there?” he said.
“I don’t think about it,” Cesar said. “You shouldn’t either.”
He started forward, but Manuel reached out and grasped his arm.
“Let go of me,” Cesar said.
“Pedro’s lost his mind,” Manuel said. “He’s turned this into something it wasn’t supposed to be.”
Cesar’s eyes bored into him.
“It isn’t up to me what he does,” he said. “I told you to let go.”
Manuel held onto his elbow another moment, sighed, and then released his grip.
“We’re all bastards,” he said.
“And well-paid ones,” Cesar said, shrugging away from him to step toward the fold of brush.
As he did there was a muffled pop from behind it, another.
Cesar grimaced and collapsed to the ground dripping blood, Manuel going down inches behind him.
And then the brush parted.
Pedro turned from Marissa Vasquez the moment he heard what he recognized as silenced shots outside, instantly reaching for the gun holstered on his belt.
His eyes landed on the two white men standing in the hut entrance, widened. One had a rifle strapped over his shoulder and, more importantly, a pistol in his right hand aimed at Pedro’s chest. The other held a submachine gun.
Pedro straightened, staring at them, his fingers clenched around the butt of his own weapon.
“Fuck you,” he said, and spat. “You might as well do it.”
Lathrop centered his Glock on Pedro’s chest, fired a third round from its barrel, and looked over his body into the hut as it fell.
“There’s our girl,” he said to Ricci. “Safe and sound.”
Ricci saw Marissa Vasquez shackled on the floor at the rear of the hut and rushed through the entrance a half step behind Lathrop.
Then he noticed Lathrop drop back and halted, not thinking about why, or consciously thinking about why, just turning to look at him.
A cell phone had appeared in Lathrop’s left hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
Lathrop flipped open the phone. “We need to contact Salvetti and tell him we’re done,” he said.
Ricci stood looking at him.
“That can wait,” he said. “He’ll find out when we get back to the mesa.”
Lathrop held the cell phone open in his left hand. The Glock had remained in his right.
“The plane needs to get warmed up,” he said.
“That plane can take off on a dime,” Ricci said. “And you know it.”
Lathrop’s gaze went to his.
“I’m making my call.”
“To Salvetti,” Ricci said.
Their eyes remained locked.
“Or whoever I want,” Lathrop said.
Ricci shook his head.
“What’s the game this time?” he said. “You call Salvetti and he calls somebody else with a message? Or did you only toss his name at me on the spot.”
Silence. Lathrop held the phone.
“Give it to me,” Ricci said. “This isn’t worth it.”
Lathrop shook his head. “Sure it is,” he said. “We can double our take on this job. Triple it. Doesn’t hurt anybody or anything except some dope dealer’s bankroll.”
Ricci nodded toward Marissa Vasquez.
“How about her,” he said.
Lathrop nodded, the phone raised in his left hand. Ricci had grown more aware of the Glock in his right.
“She just gets home a little later,” Lathrop said.
