Most of them carried police issue shotguns or M1 carbines, a sixtyyear-old American rifle that is still seen all over Mexico, mostly in use by security guards at banks, department stores, and the like. Though venerable compared to any current frontline rifle, it fired a potent .30-caliber bullet from a fifteen-round magazine, and it got the job done.
Just as Gentry and the two GOPES had suspected from their inspection of the terrain, the attacking force came over the back wall, dropped down into the dark.
They moved through the overgrown grasses in pairs, kept their eyes on the dark building in the distance, still fifty yards beyond the patio and the pool. They ducked down behind the few lime and orange trees growing wild in the back, and then they ran in short, labored zigzags to the statues, and ducked down behind these as well.
They were close now; all sixteen had made it to the edge of the back patio. Seventy-five feet from the colonnade, where the rear doors to the main room sat invitingly. The teams of men began a disorganized leapfrog advancing maneuver, some nearly colliding with one another, others ducking down behind planters alongside the pool.
Fifty feet now, the former army officer, the man who was nominally in charge of this array of shooters, stood and waved all forces forward. He had not anticipated making it this far without resistance and had not planned for everyone to hit the same entry point, but the patio doors were closest, and once inside the house, his men could separate and begin the killing.
The man could already count the money that Spider would give him.
“¡Ataque!” he shouted.
Then, without warning, there was the rumble of a big engine to the right of his position on the patio, on the other side of the rectangular pool. A huge pickup truck had somehow been pulled up against the outer wall of the colonnade and covered with vines, far away from the front driveway and totally hidden from view. The sixteen men stood like the statues around them for stunned, precious seconds as the high-beam lamps and spotlight rack of the big F-350 flipped on and the entire rear patio flooded with blinding white light.
The leader spun towards the origin of the light, shielded his eyes from its glare, and raised his rifle one-handed to fire at its source.
But ten feet from the tips of his boots, in the filthy black pool, a noise and a movement caught his eye.
The Gray Man had spent nearly three minutes under the water, had spent the previous ten with only his head and shotgun above the thick, greasy surface of rotten leaves. When he heard the faint whistle from Martin that the attackers were coming, he submerged, breathing through a bamboo reed with his eyes shut tight, just waiting for the noise from the truck to tell him it was time to act. Ramses started the vehicle with the remote key fob when the sicarios were close enough to engage.
When Court surfaced, he was careful to do so facing away from the massive flood lamps. He immediately saw targets before him like fish in a barrel, and he showed no mercy. He rose from the water, spitting the hollow length of bamboo from his mouth as he did so, leveled the long side-by-side shotgun at the first man he saw, and he fired a barrel of birds hot into the man’s ample gut.
Boom!
Above him, to his right, he heard the short belching of a 9 mm submachine gun, Ramses firing from the mirador on the second floor. Another pistol cracked from ground level, coming from the patio door of the house. Court did not know who that was; he had assigned no one to that position.
Boom!
He fired his remaining chamber, sending over one hundred tiny beads of steel shot into the lower torso of a man in a green police uniform who spun away from him on the patio.
Splashes of water stitched close to him, and he ducked back under the lily pads to reload his shotgun while submerged. He kept the shells in his front pockets. He exchanged two fresh ones after dumping the two spent rounds, and he kicked himself into the shallower end of the pool as he did so, so he could come back out of the water at a place other than where he’d gone under.
He shot up again from the black water into the cool night air, found two targets who had just passed his location as they ran towards the casa grande, and he shot both men in their lower backs, sending them tumbling forward. Again he ducked below the surface to reload and swim to another part of the pool.
Six matones were down in under ten seconds; those to the rear of the attack had retreated out of the bright lights from the truck and dived back into the tall grass. But two men, both Jalisco state police, had been advancing up the right side of the pool, near to the truck, as it was turned on remotely. They fired on the vehicle with their M1s, blew out the headlamps but not the floodlights, and then ran past it as their own men began firing in their direction.
The two men made it under the colonnade that ran along the back of the house. It was pitch-black here and free of the wayward gunfire of their own forces. They ran away from the patio doors; after nearly a minute of keeping their right shoulder on the stucco wall, they found themselves turning the corner at the southwestern edge of the building. They continued in the deep dark along the stucco wall enmeshed by thick moneda vines. Far behind them the gunfire had dropped off now to an occasional crack and an answering boom.
They arrived at a window at floor level. It was locked, but one of the men used the butt of his carbine to smash the glass. He reached in and opened the latch, swiveled the window open, and stepped inside. His partner followed behind.
It was not honor or duty or glory that propelled them. It was money. It was the money they would get from this hit and the prestige they would get around their town from having their stock go up with Los Trajes Negros.
They found themselves in a darkened space, could barely make out the large oaken furniture of a master bedroom. On the other side of the window stood a large door, and it was shut. The two cops were both reasonably certain the shattering of the windowpane would have gone undetected by anyone on the other side, especially with sporadic gunfight still going on. The men stood and began crossing the tile floor to the door, were more than halfway there, when a sudden movement on their left caught their attention.
A voice in the dark. “Guillermo? My son? Is that—”
Both men fired their M1 carbines; in the light from their muzzle blasts they saw an old man, sitting up in his bed. His chest exploded, and he tumbled off the side, rolled head over heels, and settled hunched like a heap in the corner of the room.
Ramses and Martin met up in the sala, both responding to the sound of gunfire in the house. The men shouldered up, with Martin in front, and they moved in a well-practiced tactical maneuver that would allow them to attack enemies to the front of them while protecting each other. They arrived at a right angle in the hall, and then, just around the corner, they heard two pops from a pistol and a woman’s shout.
The two special operations group officers spun around the corner as if they were attached at the hip: Martin ahead and to the left, Ramses just behind and to the right. They trained their weapon lights on the hall and found Laura Gamboa Corrales on her knees in front of an open door, her back to them, and her pistol pointed into the darkness of the master bedroom.
Just then another loud crack and a flash of light from the bedroom. Ramses Cienfuegos flew back and down to the floor with a grunt as the air in his lungs fired from his mouth.