The Castañeda man looked around wildly. Spotting the cruisers and ICE vehicles parked on the far side of the corral for the first time, he grabbed a Tec-9 machine pistol from his lap and sprayed Landry point-blank with a twelve-round burst of 9 mm fire.
Landry flew off the running board, landing flat on his back with his neck and face blown apart. The Castañeda jammed the rig into gear and floored the accelerator, aiming for the cruiser where the sheriff and Deputy Jeff stood gaping.
“Holy Christ!” The sheriff jerked a .357 from its holster, emptying all six rounds at the oncoming tractor trailer. Four of the bullets struck the windshield on the driver’s side, but the rig kept coming.
Jeff drew his 9 mm Beretta and stood firing at the grill of the truck, while the sheriff skirted to the other side of the cruiser, dumping the empty shells from the cylinder as he moved. Jeff jumped aside as the rig zoomed between them and plowed into the cruiser, bashing it easily aside to roar on toward the ICE vehicles.
The sheriff snatched a speed loader from his belt to reload the .357 with six Federal hollow-points, running after the rig as fast as his squat little legs could carry him.
Jeff chased along after the cab on the passenger side, firing the last three rounds from the magazine into the front right tire. The rig crashed into the parked ICE vehicles and came to a halt. Jeff was fumbling to insert a fresh mag into the Beretta when the Castañeda bailed out on the passenger side, landing in the dirt before him to level the Tec-9 on Jeff’s belly, his eyes appearing flat and reptilian in the dim light.
Jeff froze, the fresh mag jammed into the butt of his pistol with the bullets facing backward. “Don’t shoot me!”
The Mexican cut him down and dashed toward the rear of the trailer.
The sheriff was running up the driver’s side toward the cab when he heard the burst of fire that blasted Jeff’s guts open. He jerked to a stop, pivoted on his heel, and waited to see where the Mexican would show his face. Spitting tobacco juice, he called out, “Donde estás, cabrón?” Where are you, asshole?
The Castañeda sprang out from behind the trailer, and both men fired at the same time. The sheriff’s hollow-point round struck the Castañeda right between the eyes to blow out the back of his skull, and the Castañeda’s four-round burst struck the sheriff in the belly, dropping him to his knees.
“Goddamn!” the old man groaned in agony. “What I get for not wearin’ a vest.”
He didn’t have a portable radio on him, and the cruiser was fifty yards away, which may as well have been fifty miles. He was in too much pain to move, bleeding out fast. He swiped at the blood pooling in his shirt and looked at his hand. Even in the night, he could see the blood was very dark, realizing he’d been hit in the liver.
“Must be why it hurts so damn bad.” He rolled onto his back, tossing the .357 aside. “I shoulda taken Castañeda up on that offer,” he muttered. “I coulda been in Tahiti.”
3
Zakayev and the Castañedas hunkered near the walls on either side of the passageway, bracing for an attack.
Javier ordered his men onto their bellies and covered them with a tarp. “Let them come as close as possible before you fire.” He knew that because of the crazy Chechen with his finger on the bomb, they would have to kill every cop coming against them in order to escape with their lives.
Zakayev gripped the dead-man switch, keeping a wary eye on the Mexicans. He wasn’t worried about the RA-115 taking damage in a firefight. It was of Russian manufacture, awkward looking and ugly but built to take a genuine beating.
Flashlight beams came dancing down the walls from the north.
Agent hitch spotted what appeared to be a lump of cargo on the floor near the wall 150 feet down the tunnel. He held up a fist to halt the column.
“Looks like they took off and left their shit.” He moved out again, determined to catch the smugglers before they made it back to the other side. It didn’t matter to Hitch how far down the tunnel they caught them, just so they grabbed them before stepping out of the tunnel on the Mexican side. Let their lawyers try to prove they’d been bagged south of the border.
As they drew within fifty feet of the lump in the floor, Hitch made out the muzzles of the AK-47s sticking from beneath the edge of the tarp, stopping in his tracks.
Javier shouted, “Fuego!” and the AK-47s opened up with a deafening roar.
Hitch was struck in the face, arms, and torso, dead before he hit the concrete. Gutierrez and another agent went down at the same time, exposing three more agents to enemy fire. These three were also cut down before ever firing a shot. The seven remaining ICE men hit the deck and opened up with their MP5s.
The two groups blasted away at one another with automatic fire at 50 feet, nearly point-blank range for any automatic weapon.
The Castañedas’ ammo was old and corrosive, a mark manufactured in Korea during the midseventies, so the tunnel quickly filled with an acrid smoke, obscuring everyone’s vision. To make matters worse, a number of lightbulbs were shattered by ricocheting spall.
When the guns finally fell silent, there were only four men still left alive on each side.
Zakayev remained hunched behind the RA-115, with a death grip on the trigger mechanism.
“Deja de disparar!” Agent Gutierrez screamed. “Cease fire!”
“Regrésate!” Javier shouted from where he lay on his belly. “Go back!” He was amazed to still be alive and didn’t want to risk another hideous exchange of gunfire.
“We’re going back!” Gutierrez said. “Just give us a chance to pick up our wounded.”
“I give you one minute,” Javier shouted. “Then we fire again!”
“Cálmate,” Gutierrez said easily. “Cálmate, amigo.” Calm down. He couldn’t see much through the smoke but could hear the Castañedas switching out their magazines over the ringing in his ears. There was nothing to be served by continuing the battle. Besides, he was pretty sure he was bleeding to death, hit in the brachial artery of his right arm.
“We’re throwing away our weapons!” he called. “Just give us time to get the fuck out of here! De acuerdo?” Agreed?
“Okay. De acuerdo,” Javier replied, satisfied the fighting was over and the Americans were leaving.
Gutierrez told his men to throw away their weapons and struggled to his feet, bleeding profusely from the right arm. “I’m gonna need help,” he said to the others.
The ladder was more than twelve hundred feet back the way they’d come.
“Motha’fucker,” muttered the only unwounded ICE man, stepping over the bodies of their dead compatriots to slip Gutierrez’s good arm over his shoulders. “We just got our asses handed to us.”
“Hitch was an idiot,” Gutierrez grumbled, glancing back at the body.
“Goddamn glory hound,” added one of the others in disgust.
Gutierrez saw one of the agents still gripping a pistol. “Put that weapon down!” he ordered. “You trying to get us killed?”
The agent dropped the weapon as if it had suddenly burned his hand.
“This fight is over—we lost! Now let’s get outta here while we still can.”
Javier remained crouched near the wall, bleeding from a shoulder wound. All things considered, he didn’t feel too bad about the firefight. He had just led a battle against the supposedly unbeatable Americans, and he had driven them back with their tails tucked. Now all he had to do was get the crazy Chechen to put away the bomb’s detonator so he could shoot him in the head. He waited five minutes after the gringos were out of sight, and then ordered his men to their feet. He walked up to Zakayev and stood looking down at him, where he remained hunched behind the bomb.