Ears ringing, Uriah knelt beside him, and they poured on the fire, knocking two of the gunmen off their feet.
“Reloading!” Vaught dumped the empty magazine, pulling a fresh one from inside his jacket. Uriah dropped his own empty weapon to draw his Glock 21, firing into the remaining three gunners. Another went down, but not before Uriah took an AK-47 round to the chest plate and fell over backward.
Vaught brought the CQC pistol back up and cut down the remaining two men as they fumbled to reload. Uriah rolled to his feet and helped the other DSS men cover their diplomatic charges. With the storefronts along this block locked up behind metal gates, there was no place to seek shelter. The burning vehicles provided some cover, but there was the danger of further explosions.
Three masked motorcyclists zipped past, spraying them with 9 mm fire from Uzi automatic pistols. A DSS agent fell dead with a bullet through the brain. Another was struck in the legs. Downly’s male aide crashed to the sidewalk, hit through the liver and spleen. He would bleed out in seconds.
Downly screamed and dropped to her knees beside the aide, covering her head with her hands. The bikes whipped back around in the now-empty street and made a second high-speed pass, spraying the scene again while the DSS men returned fire. Ambassador Louis and another DSS agent went down. Vaught ran out into the street to draw a careful bead on the last rider as they raced away, squeezing the trigger and knocking him off the bike with the last round in the magazine.
The four motorcycle cops suddenly reappeared, speeding past him in hot pursuit of the other two fleeing motorbikes.
“Where the fuck are the cops going?” Uriah screamed. “We need ’em here!”
“It’s a goat fuck!” Vaught switched out the magazine as he came back from the street. “The whole thing’s a goddamn setup! Help Bogart get Downly off the ground while I check on Clay. We gotta move!”
“To where?”
“Anywhere’s better than here!”
Bogart’s real name was Stevens, but he looked a lot like Humphrey Bogart, and he was having trouble getting Downly up with one arm, needing to keep the other arm free to shoot. The drug czar was completely petrified, refusing to carry her own weight and screaming hysterically with her hands pressed over her ears. Uriah grabbed her other arm, and they hauled her to her feet.
Vaught crouched beside Agent Clay, the DSS man hit in the legs. “Can you move under your own power?”
Clay shook his head, gripping his weapon, eyes searching everywhere, bleeding from both thighs and a knee. “The knee won’t support my weight. We’re in deep shit here, Chance. Why are all these fucking storefronts locked on a Tuesday?”
Vaught stated the obvious. “To keep us out here on the street.” He stood and pulled Clay up onto his better leg. By now, the remaining Chevy was also fully engulfed in flames, having been too close to the other burning vehicles. “Let’s skirt around the bus and keep moving up the street until we find an open building. We should be hearing sirens any time now.”
“Why aren’t we hearing them already?”
“They’ll wait until they’ve gathered a large enough force to handle whatever the hell they think is going on down here.”
Just then Clay’s body exploded, spattering Vaught with the soldier’s blood and viscera. He staggered back as the cannon shot echoed up the avenue from down the block.
“Holy fuck! It’s a Barrett! Everybody down!”
Hesitating a fraction of a second too long, Bogart was struck in the back by a .50 caliber sniper round weighing 45 grams and traveling at 2,800 feet per second. The bullet blasted off his left arm and shoulder, sending the appendage twirling up into the air. He fell on the concrete, locking eyes with Vaught as the life ran out of him. The arm and shoulder landed beside Downly. She shrieked in horror, scrabbling back to her feet and running frantically out into Avenida Reforma.
Vaught and Uriah looked at each other from across the walk, knowing that to go after her was suicide. “Stay down!” Vaught sprang up and gave chase. He was almost halfway across the avenue when Downly exploded at the waist, her entrails whirling off in what seemed like all directions as the two severed halves of her hit the pavement in a twisted mess, with nothing but her spinal cord holding them together.
Vaught had completely failed in his mission to protect his charges, and he’d lost nearly his entire team in the process. It might not have been through any error of his own, but he was still responsible, and he knew it.
With the image of the bullet’s vapor trail — cutting through the morning air faster than the microscopic water molecules could get out of its way — seared into his brain, he knew now where the sniper was. Without pause, he spotted an abandoned taxi and sprinted past Downly knowing that to turn back would give the shooter a clear shot at a motionless target, even if only for a fraction of an instant.
Vaught took cover beside the taxi and got on the radio to Uriah. “I know where the fucker’s at. He’s firing from the rooftop of the glass building on my side of the street at the end of the block. He doesn’t have an angle on you, so stay put. I’m going after him.”
Uriah’s reply was immediate: “If he’s shooting from the glass building, he doesn’t have an angle on you either. Just stay outta sight and let the local heat handle this!”
They could hear sirens now far up the avenue.
“I’m going after him!” Vaught said. “You stay alive and make sure our people know what happened. Don’t let the Mexicans debrief you without somebody from our embassy being there.” He doubled-checked his weapon and jumped into the taxi, speeding off as a dozen federal squad cars and trucks came screaming down the avenue behind him.
2
Vaught sped around the corner in the procured taxi, tires squealing, gunning the motor halfway down the block. Abruptly, he slammed on the brakes and bailed out of the taxi, shedding his jacket and making sure his DSS badge was still hanging around his neck. A half dozen curious bystanders stood huddled in a group at the end of the block. When he asked them in Spanish whether anyone had come out of the glass building, they backed away around the corner.
A bored-looking old man sitting on a stoop and smoking a cigarette pointed up and said, “Francotirador.” Sniper.
Vaught saw for the first time that the building was still under construction and that the lower floors were wrapped around with heavy plastic to discourage the general public from entering. He found a way inside and vaulted up a staircase, knowing he had twelve floors to climb. As he arrived at the tenth floor, a door clanged open up on the twelfth; he heard hurried voices descending, weapons clanking against the steel railing. He peered up between the stairs and saw four shadowy figures circling quickly downward.
Two masked men arrived on the landing directly in front of him, and he blasted them from ten feet, splattering the freshly painted white wall with bullets and dark crimson. Someone above fired down and missed, but he felt the spall from the ricochets cut into his shins and danced back out of sight, spraying a burst of fire upward. Sirens howled outside the building, and booted men were quickly mounting the stairs below. The men above retreated back toward the roof, and Vaught gave chase.