The men wore big bulletproof vests, so with cruel determination the American assassin knelt to the hot pavement, thereby creating a flight path for his bullets that would not send them through his targets and then into innocents. He carefully fired a short burst into the back of each man’s head below the helmet. They pitched and tumbled forward into fleeing civilians; their Colt sub guns and Beretta pistols flew from their hands and fell silent. Court held his rifle in his right hand and fired again at the men on the ground, double-tapping the forehead of each man as he pushed past them.
He came to a group of terrified civilians frozen in fear; they were obviously a family, a father nearly hysterical as he tried to shelter his wife and three children from the flying lead and thrashing and kicking bodies as he attempted to get out of the way of it all. Just as Court caught the terrified eyes of the man, the Mexican’s head lurched to the side, and blood erupted from his jaw. Gentry spun his head to find one of the plainclothes agitators in the crowd re-aiming his big silver revolver, having missed Court with his first shot. Court ducked and rolled on the ground, crashed into others around him like a bowling ball, but he successfully dodged another pistol shot that no doubt struck an innocent person behind him.
The Gray Man emptied his Colt 9 mm into the fat man’s gut at twelve feet, sending him into spasms before he tumbled back dead.
Court dropped the spent submachine gun, crawled forward on his hands and knees, and hefted the dead man’s smoking pistol.
He rose, sprinted forward towards the stairs; his new weapon dripped blood, and he shoved and pushed and even pointed the gun at innocents so they would get the fuck out of his way. He did everything within his power to catch up to Cullen and the fleeing Gamboa family, obscured still by the hundreds pushing in both directions on the wide steps running up to the street in front of the Talpa Church. At one point he found himself climbing onto a bench, jumping high onto the backs and heads of the crowd, literally bodysurfing over a particularly tight gathering of Puerto Vallartans too terrified to move.
SEVENTEEN
Chuck Cullen was eighty feet above and ahead of Court, just more than halfway up the stairs with the Gamboas and the other GOPES family members right behind him. The crowd ahead thinned suddenly on his right, so the retired captain decided to shift his entourage in that direction. He led Elena forward and past him so that he could take Luz by the hand to pull her through the surging riot of screaming people all around.
At the top of the stairs, another thirty feet away, three federal policemen on Suzuki motorcycles drove through the mob and dismounted; they drew pistols from their drop-leg holsters and looked down the stairs towards the gunfire. They waved the escaping memorial attendees past, encouraging them to run for their lives, and they seemed to cover them with their guns, scanning for threats down in the plaza.
More gunfire. More honking horns. More screaming and shouting.
More cries of agony.
Elena Gamboa led her family up the stairs now. She slowed when she noticed the federales, but she saw their motorcycles, just like Eduardo’s; their uniforms, just like Eduardo’s; their ski masks and sunglasses, just like Eduardo’s. She ascended the crowded stairs just as fast as her pregnant body would allow.
The policeman directly above her at the top of the stairs beckoned her forward with his free hand as he furiously searched the crowd for threats.
More gunshots from behind Elena as she hurried towards the safety of Eduardo’s colleagues.
Chuck Cullen got Luz moving again, checked quickly to see that Laura held Ernesto around the waist and kept him pressing forward behind his wife. The aunt and uncles and nephew and brothers had pushed on ahead; they passed Cullen on the left-hand side of the staircase. The seventy-two-year-old retired American naval officer turned to see Elena advancing quickly up on the right; she’d gotten ahead of him while he helped Eddie’s mother. He rushed to arrive at the top of the stairs at the same time as she so he could protect her from any danger there as well as direct her up the alley behind the church where his car was parked.
He was still a few feet behind her and to her left when he saw the policeman, at the top of the stairs and seven steps above Elena.
The two other federales stood to his left. They all held automatic pistols out in front of them. As one their weapons’ muzzles left the threats at the bottom of the stairs and leveled instead on the families of the dead GOPES men rushing up towards them.
These men weren’t protecting anyone. They were assassins.
Chuck watched in utter horror as a handgun’s barrel pointed directly at Eddie Gamboa’s pregnant wife.
Captain Cullen moved faster than he’d moved in forty years, hurtling himself upwards, throwing himself up the four steps, and jamming his body between the weapon and the woman.
The pistol barked, pain tore into the old man’s gut, still he grabbed at the cop, pulled him tight in a bear hug.
The other masked police began firing as well, pouring lead down the stairs into the Gamboa family as they approached the top of the staircase.
Captain Cullen was shot again in the ribcage by the man in his grasp, his arms relaxed the hug, and he slid slowly down the cop’s body, onto his knees at the top of the stone staircase. Slower still he slumped forward onto his chest as Elena screamed.
To avoid the crowd on the staircase Gentry leapt high in his stocking feet onto the wide and steep stone railing that ran up the right side of the steps; he began running upwards with his arms out for balance and the revolver he’d taken from the plainclothes gunman jutting out from his right hand. He looked away from his feet for an instant and up towards a new commotion in the thick crowd at the logjam at the top of the stairs. Before his eyes could fix on the action a pistol round cracked and Court saw Elena. In front of her was the captain, and in front of him stood a black-clad federale.
Court understood everything in an instant. The cop had been gunning for Eddie’s wife and unborn child, and old Chuck Cullen had thrown his body over the gun.
More gunshots, rapid-fire pistols blazing, and Court saw the other two officers murdering the families of the special operation’s group as they ascended towards them.
Gentry sprinted upwards on the stone railing. He raised the silver Smith and Wesson revolver and put the weapon’s front site on the back of Elena Gamboa’s head, shifted aim a fraction to the right, and fired a single.357 Magnum round.
The bullet left the weapon, tracked up and over the crowd on the stairs, passed two inches to the right of Elena Gamboa’s ear, and struck the killer of Chuck Cullen on the left collarbone above his Kevlar vest, blasting bone and blood and muscle out of the man’s shoulder and spinning him away and down to the ground as his pistol flew out of his hand and twirled in the air above him like a whirligig.
Court was still thirty feet from the top of the stairs. Gunfire continued, and the crowd behind the Gamboas turned as one and began running down now, away from this new danger above them. Some of the younger and more ambulatory on the steps jumped over the railing, falling fifteen to twenty-five feet to the concrete Parque Hidalgo below just to escape the flying lead. Some of these people crossed Gentry’s line of fire, kept him from getting clean shots on the two remaining police assassins.