Layton spun around at the sound of voices and movement in his left peripheral.
From forty feet away, five men, a mix of Latinos and Africans, armed with AKs and M16s appeared in the street from a nearby alleyway. The Colombian police car was parked some twenty feet behind them. The two officers inside were slumped over, riddled with bullets, the car’s windows blown out.
“Fall back!” Layton commanded his agents. His mind suddenly recalled a dozen flashbacks of the hellish urban combat of Fallujah, taking fire, dead and wounded marines in the streets, and his instincts kicked in. He became driven by the single-minded determination not to see another of his agents die. “Everybody back inside now!”
Two surviving FAST shooters retreated back into the apartment building, grabbing onto Nolan and dragging him along. The surviving Colombian cop, who covered them, took multiple hits from at least two directions and fell over.
Two more DEA agents laid down covering fire at the attackers in the street and on the rooftop, while Layton stopped to stoop over and grab onto a wounded agent lying on the street by the back of his vest. Bent over and leaning forward to keep a low target profile, Layton pushed his legs, taking wide steps backwards toward the door, and dragged the wounded man’s weight with him across the sidewalk.
Bullets continued to pepper the pavement and the cars around them, and the front of the apartment building. Layton flinched when he heard the crack in the air and felt the heat of a shot zipping by inches from his face. Then he watched helplessly as a barrage of rounds shredded the wounded agent’s legs. The Empresa shooter elevated his aim, stitching a line upward across the agent’s chest and face, and then moved his aim up to cover Layton.
Taking multiple hits across his vest, and one across his right arm, Layton cried out. As his arm suddenly went slack, and he reeled from the hit, he staggered back and involuntarily released his grip on his wounded teammate. He fell back, tripping over his own feet, but he managed to stay upright and regain his balance. He dodged another volley of bullets as he stumbled across the rest of the way to the front door, where a pair of hands grabbed onto him and hauled him the rest of the way inside, behind the safety of the sturdy brick wall.
Another agent, Paul Harris, was right behind Layton. The last man in, he turned around to pull the door shut and throw the latch.
“Radio HQ for help,” Layton, breathless, ordered Agent Chuck Weaver. “We need an emergency evac now! We’re fucking slaughtered if we go back out there.”
Weaver had already pulled out his encrypted Globalstar satellite phone and was patching it through to Gerardo Tobar López Airport.
Layton swept his eyes over the other agents, making an assessment of who was alive and what condition they were in.
Harris had his back planted against the wall near the shot-out front window, looking out, with his MP7 held in front of him, finger indexed over the trigger guard, barrel pointing up. There was the sound of bullets peppering the exterior wall.
Agent John Tyson ran his hands over his body looking for holes and signaled to Layton with an upright thumb that he wasn’t hit.
Weaver shouted into the satellite phone with one finger plugged into his opposite ear.
Agent Dan Foster lay on his back with one bullet through his side, barely missing the liver, and that wasn’t the worst of it. He was bleeding out through a femoral artery nicked by a small but hot, razor sharp piece of shrapnel. Tyson was a former navy corpsman, and he did what he could for Foster, but options were limited since he didn’t carry a full med kit. He applied a makeshift tourniquet, applied QuickClot sponges, and elevated the leg.
Layton next looked to Sean Nolan, who stood in the corner, leaning against the wall. Layton’s eyes locked onto him and bore in on him like a shark.
“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted at Nolan, nearly pushing Weaver out of the way to get to the Irishman.
Four feet away, Harris fired two bursts through the window from his MP7 to hold back the approaching attackers. He took careful, aimed shots. Each man carried only two or three additional magazines for his MP7.
“You think I fucking know?” Nolan shouted back at Layton as the DEA agent grabbed onto his shirt and pulled him close. “I had nothing to do with this. If I knew you fuckers were coming, you think I’d sit around in fucking bed all bloody morning waiting? Do you know who those guys out there are?”
Layton stared him down and said nothing.
“They’re La Empresa. They’re cold blooded killers, fucking animals. I wouldn’t trust them to save my ass.”
Nolan saw the rage burning in the American agent’s eyes, and the grip tightened on his shirt.
Layton released Nolan, took a couple steps back, and raised his MP7 one handed, pointing it at Nolan from five feet away. Layton required every bit of will power he possessed not to pull the trigger right then and there. He lowered the subgun when he felt a hand on his shoulder and Tyson’s voice in his ear say, “Ease up, boss. We need this asshole alive, or this was all for nothing. You’re hit. Let’s take a look at it.”
Then Layton became aware for the first time of the pain in his right arm and in his left thigh. With Tyson’s assistance, he applied QuickClot sponges to stem the bleeding, plus disinfectant and bandages. It was only a temporary fix, but the next few minutes would determine if they lived or died, so Layton brushed off the medical attention and told Tyson to focus on Foster.
“We need to get Dan out of here ASAP,” Tyson said. His best efforts did little to slow down the blood pouring out of Foster’s leg like a spigot.
Layton helped Weaver drag a large, heavy couch across the foyer and set it against the door.
Bullet strikes continued to sound against the building. The attackers directed their fire at the windows, spraying glass through the foyer. The bullets hammered the internal walls, but their reach was limited, and the Americans were clear of the incoming fire.
The agents kept their MP7s trained on the windows. It was a vulnerable spot, but it was better than being caught on the street, in the open. They’d have the slightest tactical advantage if the attackers outside attempted entry through the windows.
The gunfire gradually tapered off, and it became quiet.
Layton expected that the Empresa shooters were now coordinating their plan of attack. He wasn’t certain of their motivation — if they were here to free or silence Nolan, or simply to ambush and slaughter Americans — but there was no doubt in his mind that they’d soon breach the building. They had the numbers and the firepower. All they had to do was launch a couple attacks to force the Americans to expend their ammo, and then they could come in by force.
“Just what the hell are we going to do with him?” Weaver asked Layton, cocking his head to indicate Nolan. “We can’t arrest him. We don’t have jurisdiction.”
“You think I’m going to fucking let him go now? We’ll worry about it when this over. Until then, consider him in our protective custody.”
They listened to Weaver’s call in the ops room at Gerardo Tobar López Airport. Everyone immediately reached for their own cell phones to call their respective superiors.
“The nearest FAST team is in Bogotá, on a training exercise,” Slayton said, shaking his head, a minute later. “They’ll never make it in time.”
“Police and army units in Buenaventura are at this moment responding to another unfolding crisis,” Daniel reported. “Government buildings in the city have come under mortar fire this morning, shortly before the operation to arrest Nolan. The army won’t be in position to launch a rescue mission for at least thirty minutes.”