When they reached the balcony, out of breath, Akil wiped dirt and sweat off his forehead and said, “And I thought Iraq and Afghanistan were messed up.”
“Welcome to Mexico.”
The bleeding from Nieves’s neck seemed to have stopped, but he was still in shock, and his pulse was weak and thready. As they carefully carried him downstairs and toward the armored car, a black helicopter banked overhead.
“Medevac?” Akil asked.
Crocker squinted into the morning haze. It was a Black Hawk with POLíCIA FEDERAL painted along the back of the fuselage. “Apparently not,” he answered. “Load him inside.”
The interior of the M706 was extremely hot and had room for a driver, a gunner, and eight other occupants on benches along the sides. Mancini drove while Akil manned the machine gun. Nieves lay on one bench and Davis on the other. Crocker crawled on his knees from one side to the other, monitoring each man.
“How about getting some air in this crate?” Crocker asked.
Mancini shouted, “The air conditioning doesn’t seem to be working.”
“Try the fan.” Crocker tossed his cell phone to Suárez, seated crossed-legged on the floor. “Call Lane. Tell him where we are.”
The M706 growled and lurched toward the front gate.
“No answer,” Suárez shouted over the growl of the engine. “I left a message.”
“Try again!”
Once they reached the street, Mancini cranked the Chrysler 361 cubic V-8 engine as fast as it would go and tried to trace his way back to the FBI safe house. The Polícia Federal Black Hawk followed about sixty feet overhead.
“What should we do about the helo?” Akil asked from the turret.
“Ignore it.”
“What if it fires at us?”
“Shoot back!”
Suárez pointed to the phone and shouted, “Still no answer!”
“What the hell is Lane doing?”
He grabbed the cell phone back and tried himself. It rang and went to message. Crocker said, “Lane, we’re on our way to you. We still need medical assistance, badly. Call me back!”
Nieves’s pulse was growing weaker by the minute. A cool, clammy sweat covered his face and arms. His lips had started to turn blue.
“Manny,” Crocker shouted, “if you see a hospital, stop!”
“What?”
“A hospital! Stop if you see a medical facility.”
“I’m staying on as many well-traveled roads as I can and riding next to buses and cars, to deter the Black Hawk from shooting at us.”
“Good man.”
Crocker couldn’t see shit-just grim, battle-weary faces and bleeding men. The big vehicle roared, hit holes in the pavement, and lurched forward like a tractor on steroids.
“Hold on!” Mancini shouted as he took a sharp curve. The metal beast tipped as if it was in danger of turning over. Crocker held Nieves so he didn’t fall off the bench.
“Where the hell you get your license?” Suárez shouted.
“Mexico!” Mancini shouted back.
Crocker waved Suárez over. “Hold Nieves. I’m gonna see if that big baboon knows where he’s going.”
“Probably not.”
Crocker squirmed forward on his belly and tried to peer through the forward slit window. “Move your big head aside so I can see,” he said to Mancini.
“See what? I just turned onto the street.”
“What street?”
“The street with the FBI house. It’s straight ahead.”
Mancini slowed the vehicle, executed a wide turn, and stopped abruptly, causing Crocker to hit his head.
“Fuck! There go another couple million brain cells.”
“You don’t need ’em!”
Akil laughed. Suárez hopped out the side door and rang the bell by the gate. When that didn’t work, he banged on it with the butt of his weapon. When no one answered, he climbed over and opened the gate from inside.
“What the fuck happened to that Ramón guy?” Akil asked.
“Who’s Ramón?”
“The old Mexican dude. The guard. Remember?”
“Maybe he took the day off.”
Mancini braked to a stop on the gravel. They were all soaked with sweat and out of water.
“What do you want to do now?” Akil asked.
Crocker thought fast. “You stay here and man the thirty cals,” he said. “Manny, you and Suárez help me carry Nieves and Davis out so they can get some fresh air. Then I want you to hydrate and guard the front gate. I’m gonna go find Lane.”
“Got it.”
“What about me?” Akil asked from the turret. “I need some fluids, too.”
“Suárez, on your way to the gate, bring a water bottle for Akil. See if you can find one with a nipple on it.”
“Very funny.”
It was all in fun, but then it wasn’t. Because as soon as Crocker stepped outside, he heard the Black Hawk roaring overhead. Looking up, he saw the helmeted gunners of the.50 cals leering down and gesturing.
He ignored them and with Suárez’s help lugged Nieves inside and set him on the porch sofa.
“Anyone home?” he called out. “We need help here.”
He hurried back to get Davis with Mancini’s help.
Suárez shrugged when he returned. “There’s no one here.”
“Where the hell did they go?” Crocker asked, trying to catch his breath as he peered into the shadow-filled living room.
Suárez shrugged, then seemed to notice a dark stream of something slowly creeping out through the living room door.
“What’s that?” asked Crocker.
The second he finished posing the question, he knew the answer. Stepping over the dark puddle on the tile floor, he entered the living room and was hit by the thick, musky smell of death. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and made out four stacked, headless bodies in the middle of the floor.
“Holy shit.”
“God have mercy,” Suárez groaned at his side.
“Look.” Mancini pointed to four heads lying on the coffee table like Halloween masks. Lane, red-haired Karen Steele, Sheriff Higgins, and some blond-haired guy Crocker hadn’t met. Karen had the added indignity of a severed penis stuffed in her mouth.
“Savages,” Crocker groaned as he ripped down one of the mustard-colored curtains and laid it over the heads. Then he used its partner to cover the bodies.
“That’s what they plan to do to us,” Suárez muttered as he made the sign of the cross.
“Fuck that,” Crocker growled. The savagery of the deaths unleashed a rage inside him that was almost uncontainable. Finding the handheld, he pushed a button and said, “Akil, you read me?”
“Yo. Where’s my fucking water?”
“That Black Hawk still hovering over you?”
“Say fifty feet with assholes in the doors shooting me the bird.”
“You got a good bead on them?”
“You know it.”
“Take it down!”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now!” Crocker shouted.
“Copy.”
He stood seething with anger and listened to the twin.30 cals roar outside, which had a strange calming effect. And he realized that he had reached a state of absolute freedom that he’d almost never felt before. He didn’t care about orders, or protocols, or whether he died in Mexico or not. He was going to pay the fuckers back who had kidnapped Lisa and Olivia Clark, wounded Nieves and Davis, and desecrated Lane, Steele, and the others, no matter what it took.
The cacophony of firing continued. Mancini screamed in his ear. “Boss. Boss, what the hell are you doing?”
Crocker pushed him in the direction of the front gate. “You and Suárez go. Don’t let anyone in the gate! Do whatever it takes.”
Mancini opened his mouth to say something but was drowned out by an explosion. As the sound dissipated, Crocker heard Akil shout over the radio, “Got ’em! Mission accomplished!”
His ears followed the whining sound of the injured Black Hawk as it spun out of control, clipped the branch of a tree, and crashed somewhere in the yard. He didn’t take the time to look.
“Make sure you finish off any survivors,” he said into the radio. “Then stay on alert. Anyone who approaches this house either by air or on land, you shoot them unless I tell you not to.”