Before the first target was on the ground, Avery already shifted aim onto the next one as the Empresa man slammed a fresh banana-shaped magazine into his AK’s magazine well and wracked the bolt. Avery’s first shot missed as the Empresa man dropped to a crouch and shouldered his rifle, but he caught Avery’s next pair of bullets through his abdomen. He dropped the AK and groaned as he fell over with one hand clasping his ruptured guts.
Avery shifted the truck into reverse, gently gave it some gas, and turned the wheel left, backing away from the utility pole. The pole lurched a couple more inches, but remained planted into the ground. The truck handled sluggishly, and Avery felt the drag from the blown out tire and heard the metal of the wheel grinding loudly against concrete, metal grinding and sparking.
He put the truck back into drive and hit the accelerator. He reached forward with the Glock to knock a couple remaining glass shards out of the windshield.
Fifteen feet ahead, the wounded Empresa worked his way onto his knees, one hand against his stomach, one of the most painful places to catch a bullet. He stared at the oncoming truck. Avery plowed right through him. The Empresa’s head smacked against the grill, cracked open, and he went under. Avery felt the truck bounce along as one of the rear tires tumbled effortlessly over the body. When Avery saw him again in the rearview mirror, he was an unmoving heap sprawled over the cement, his body twisted around at an unnatural angle.
Avery stopped twenty feet later, behind the target building. He grabbed his M4 off the floor and flung his door open. Standing up in the doorframe, he aimed the rifle over the cab’s rooftop and fired twice into an Empresa shooter sneaking up along the back wall of the building.
Twenty seconds later, Avery’s eyes caught movement through the building’s back door. He sighted on the center of the doorway and relaxed his finger on the trigger and averted aim when he saw who came out.
Weaver appeared first, sweeping his MP7 left to right. Aguilar and Layton followed, carrying a wounded, limp agent whose pants were soaked in blood. Behind them was a white man with his hands secured behind his back. Harris exited last, covering the team’s six. He spun around once to fire his MP7 back into the building a couple times.
Avery surmised that the Empresa had already made entry from the front. He came around to the front of the truck as Aguilar and Layton loaded the wounded agent into the cab’s rear seating.
Three Empresa men crept up alongside the building’s exterior wall in the gangway. Avery managed to get off a single shot before they spotted him. He hit one of the gunmen high in the shoulder, but it didn’t put the man out of action. Avery dropped as they acquired him and opened fire. The rounds passed over his head or struck the truck.
Aguilar shouldered his Galil, loaded the under-barrel grenade launcher, and let one fly. The blast wiped out the three Empresa, leaving one survivor on the ground with his leg cut off at the knee, bone sticking out, and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his intestines. Aguilar shot him twice in the chest, ending his suffering and everything else about him.
Then Aguilar reloaded the grenade launcher and popped off another one through the back door of the building where it exploded in the hallway, decimating another group of Empresa who had breached the building from the front when the DEA agents made their retreat.
The rest of the team loaded into the pick-up.
Harris and Weaver pushed Nolan into the cab, and piled in next to him.
“Where the fuck is Diego?” Avery asked Aguilar, after doing a head count and realizing that someone was missing.
“He should be on his way down now.”
Avery swore, got behind the wheel, and gassed it the eighty feet to Diego’s building.
Here, he stopped, opened the door, and jumped from the truck, still swearing.
“I’ll cover him. If the shit hits the fan here, leave. Do not wait for us,” Avery instructed Aguilar, who was in the bed of the truck, aiming his rifle over the cab’s rooftop.
While Avery took off in a sprint, the DEA agents dismounted and took firing positions around the truck.
It was quieter now. Avery didn’t even hear Diego’s machinegun going at it anymore from above, but he heard engines starting up and vehicles on the move nearby. He couldn’t imagine that the Empresa had too many guys left. The bodies were scattered everywhere.
At the building’s side door, Avery threw his back against the wall. He radioed to Diego that he was about to make entry. To his relief, Diego responded that he was coming down the stairwell now.
Avery turned. Bringing the M4 to bear, with the stock nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, he followed it into the building and stepped over the bodies from the earlier contact here. The man whose balls he’d blasted before was now still and quiet, a massive puddle of blood beneath him, with his hands, even in death, clasped over his the remains of his manhood.
The front door crashed open.
Two pairs of Empresa men poured in.
Avery’s mind assessed the situation, his eyes following the positioning of the Empresa as they dispersed throughout the foyer. They surrounded him, had him covered wherever he moved, but they were smart enough not to get in each other’s crossfire, and Avery accepted the grim reality that he was outgunned and would be able to take down one, maybe two at most.
As Avery trained his sights on the nearest threat, simultaneously bracing himself for the bullets about to pour into him, he heard Diego’s voice scream, “Get down!”
Avery reacted instantly and hit the deck.
The earsplitting staccato rattle of Diego’s NG7 blotted out all other sound as the Colombian solider hosed the Empresa gunmen full of 5.56mm ball ammunition while he came down the stairs into the foyer. The gangbangers were chewed up, punched full of holes, and ripped apart like raw meat. Blood spilled in the air and splashed across the carpet and walls. Bodies opened up with organs hanging out, and mangled corpses hit the floor. Smoke hung in the air and spent brass rolled across the floor.
“Just in time,” Avery said, looking up after Diego had stopped firing. His ears rang, and his heart beat harder than it ever had before. It took several seconds for his mind to catch up with what had just happened and appreciate the fact that he was still alive.
Diego still held the NG7 in front of him, its barrel smoking.
Avery jumped back onto his feet. He stepped over the bodies, setting his boot down in a sticky puddle of coagulating blood along the way, and moved to the front of the foyer to get a look through the windows. He saw the tail end of a pick-up truck driving away, four armed men in the bed.
“Looks like the street’s clear,” he told Diego. “The others are taking off.”
Or they were moving to come around to the back and cut them off, he realized.
“Come on. We have transportation out back.”
Diego followed Avery to the truck in the alley. He frowned when he saw their getaway vehicle.
Avery took the driver’s side, and Diego climbed into the bed, taking up aim with Aguilar across the top of the cab. Avery threw the truck into gear and hit the gas, mentally recalling the maps and visualizing the layout of the city’s streets, and where the Blackhawk’s landing zone was located in relation to their current position.
Halfway down the alley, the Empresa truck Avery had spotted barely a minute earlier turned off the street and appeared ahead of them, its engine wheezing as the driver floored the gas. Muzzle flashes lit up from the bed, over the rooftop.
Avery braked hard and switched to reverse to maintain the gap between both vehicles, while Aguilar lobbed off a grenade from his under-slung launcher. His aim fell short. The grenade landed several feet in front of the pursuing truck and exploded. Shrapnel ripped through the windshield and engine, killing one of the passengers, but the truck rolled forward through the smoke and flames. The driver slowed down to allow the Empresa men in the bed to jump out. They spread apart and opened fire from their rifles.