17. A Promise Is Given
a promise is given
Solomon
I t's a still, warm, beautiful day. The sea is tranquil and glassy, a gentle wind fluttering the palm leaves. Sunrise is a glorious display of vivid, brilliant oranges and reds and pinks washing across the sky.
A lone figure wanders the beach, a good half mile away from where Gonzales skids the Zodiac ashore. The figure pauses, watching us for a moment, and then resumes their perambulation away from us.
There's a thin screen of palm trees and a dirt road running parallel to the beach. Each of us is armed with nothing more than a pistol and a single spare magazine. Lorenzo has a cell phone, and Scarlett has an emergency satellite phone, but using Scarlett's sat phone will alert her people at the CIA that she's back on the grid.
With no other real options available, we simply start walking inland. Lorenzo, once we're a few miles inland, gets enough of a signal to pull up a map of the area, giving us a rough idea of where to go and what kind of a journey awaits us should we have to walk the whole thing. Lorenzo tells us he does have contacts he could call, but he worries that contacting anyone at this point is a risk—Mercado has the resources to have phones tapped, and at this point, we can't rule out the possibility that Lorenzo is a known quantity. Safer just to walk, even though none of us particularly relishes the thought of a thirty-some-mile hike.
I mean, at least it's not the Amazon.
It begins well enough. Not exactly flat, but not horrible. As the day unfolds, however, the early morning warmth turns to stifling heat, and the geography becomes downright brutal—wicked, knife-edge ridges, the road cutting and curving and switching back on itself. Captain Perez was kind enough to provide us with water bottles and some food, but only enough to last the four of us a day, at most, if we ration. The positive news is that we're in an area that's civilized rather than stranded in the middle of the fucking Amazon rainforest. So, by midday, we've only covered five miles, but we do come across a supermarket. Lorenzo goes in and returns with a box of protein bars and bottles of water. Despite having lost his big bag of goodies, Lorenzo has managed to hold onto his rucksack, which he and I take turns carrying.
More hours of walking along a narrow dirt road that winds through a dense tropical forest, climbing steep hills and descending them, weaving and jogging.
In the late afternoon, we're deep in the hills north of the beach, sweating buckets in the heat and humidity, the four of us strung out with almost a thousand feet between Lorenzo at the front and me in the rear, with the women between us. Cars rush past now and then, and more frequently, cube vans and box trucks, with an occasional motorcycle or bus.
The rattle and clatter of an old diesel engine howling its way up the hill greets our ears—another delivery truck of some sort, I assume. But as it passes me, it's an ancient Greyhound bus that's been painted a garish profusion of eye-watering colors in Jackson Pollock-esque splatter and randomness. A spare tire has been mounted to the rear, and a luggage rack affixed to the roof, piled high with strapped-down luggage and at least four spare fuel cans. "Mike and Mer's Troubadour Tour" is painted on the side in white block stencils, the O's turned into 60s-style peace signs. Music notes—don't ask me which ones—surround the lettering, along with bumblebees complete with dotted line flight paths, butterflies, dragonflies, and more than a few not-so-discreet cannabis leaves.
The windows are all open, emitting the wafting scent of burning cannabis, as well as the strains of music—a guitar, played with some skill as far as I can tell, a mandolin, an accordion, and several voices, male and female.
The bus squeals to a halt and all four of us stop walking—it stops nearest me, and the others turn and come back toward me. The narrow folding door rattles and protests as it opens.
"Hey there, fellow American," the young man behind the wheel says, grinning at me. "You are American, right? You look American."
"I am," I answer. “Name's Solomon."
“Greetings, Solomon," the young man says. "I'm Mike, and this is my bus, Betty White. You like?"
I grin. "I do. She's...certainly colorful."
“Indeed she is! Where are you are your esteemed colleagues heading?" Mike asks.
"Who are they, Mikey?" A female voice says, coming to the front.
Mike is twenty-five or so, rail thin with long blond dreadlocks bound back by a gauzy, tie-dyed scarf, a thin, wispy beard hiding a weak chin, and bright blue eyes; he's dressed in baggy patchwork pants, barefoot and shirtless, covered in colorful tattoos depicting landscapes and animals.
The young woman who joins him is pretty, carrying a few extra pounds around her butt and thighs, with dreadlocked brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a bright, flowy yellow dress, barefoot and braless, a red bandana over her hair. I deduce before she speaks that this is Mer.
"I'm not sure yet, honey-bunches, we're still working on introductions," Mike says. "Solomon, this is my celestial partner in light and love. Her name is Mer. Mer, this is Solomon."
Celestial partner in light and love, huh? Okay then.
The others have joined me at the door of the bus. We never really cleaned up much after the battle, so we’re dirty, sweaty, and coated in stiff, old blood, and we are clearly not tourists who got separated from their group.
Despite being visibly stoned, Mike's gaze is perceptive. "You fellow itinerants have been through some interesting shit. I hereby officially invite you to enter the transportational sanctuary that is our dearly beloved Betty White. Come in peace and come in love, just don’t come on the seats."
Scarlett turns a bark of laughter into a cough, and a quick glance over my shoulder shows that even Inez is fighting a smirk. Lorenzo has an eyebrow raised, looking less than amused.
"Where are you headed?" I ask.
"Wherever the wind takes us, my scary new friend. Where would you like to go?"
"San José?” I say, turning it into a question.
"We're goin' to San Jose!" Mike yells.
From the back comes a chorus of hooting and hollering, as if that's the best news any of them have ever heard.
The chorus of shouts becomes a chant of "San José, San José, San José!”
"Wait, Mikey—why?” A voice asks from the back of the bus. “Didn’t we just come from there?"
"Yeah, but our new friends are going to San José, so back we go!"
"Cooooool," says the other voice, a very stoned male. "I forgot my ukelele at the hostel anyway."
"See?" Mikey says, throwing his hands to the sky as if he's proved a point. "The universe provides!" He does a seated bow, sweeping an arm toward the back of the bus. "Speak friend and enter."
I put a foot on the bottom step. "Am I supposed to say ‘friend?’”
He just laughs. "No, man, it's from Lord of the Rings . Duh."
“I see,” I say and step up into the bus.
The front half has been converted into a kitchenette with a tiny electric stove, a dorm-sized fridge, a sink, and a handful of cabinets. Beyond that, the back half is further subdivided into two sections. The middle section is an eating and lounging area, with a long, narrow table facing a booth-style bench. Opposite the long book, on the passenger side, is another long bench without a table. The rearmost section is a single large bed set into a platform, with storage in the platform; the king-sized bed is a nest of brightly colored pillows, blankets, oversized stuffed animals doubling as pillows, and rolled-up sleeping bags.
Four more people occupy the rear of the bus—a large young man with coppery hair and a huge beard that's been braided and adorned with ribbons and flowers and beads, hanging to his mid-chest; a woman with the largest breasts I've ever seen in real life, which are only barely contained by a thin and far-too-small camisole, concealing precisely nothing, her hair white-blond and braided into a crown around her head, also liberally decorated with flowers, beads, and ribbons; another young man, this one Hispanic, with a wild shock of thick black unwashed hair sticking out in every conceivable direction and a scraggly goatee, who is currently painting his toenails a garish Kermit green, a joint hanging out the corner of his mouth; last is a Black woman of the same age as the rest—mid- to late-twenties—with a gorgeously bouffant and perfectly round afro and a large gold hoop through her septum, wearing an eye-wateringly bright paisley romper, playing a scratched and battered guitar.
The big ginger is playing the accordion, and a mandolin is lying on the couch, hand-painted with pastel chalk paint in 60s-style flowers and peace signs. The air in the bus is hazy with cannabis smoke.
"Jesus fuck," Scarlett murmurs in my ear. "Did we go through a portal into the 60s? Holy shit."
"Better than walking all the way to San José,” I murmur back. "So be nice."
"Yeah yeah," she mutters.
We take seats on the couch opposite the booth. The Hispanic kid painting his nails smiles at us, plucking the joint from his lips and handing it to us. "Hola, new amigos," he says in unaccented English. "Welcome aboard the SS Betty White."
Lorenzo accepts the joint and takes a hit, passes it to Inez, who does the same—neither one fully inhales, I notice, so Scarlett and I do the same, handing it back.
"I'm Hector," he says. "This is Yolanda, we call her Yolo," he indicates the Black woman, who gives us a smile and a wink. "Big guy with the accordion is Brian, and that's his lady wife Ella."
"Nice to meet you all," I say, pointing to each person in turn as I name them. "I'm Solomon, and this is Scarlett, Inez, and Lorenzo."
Brian and Ella greet us, a wave from Ella and a chin-lift from Brian.
Despite having not inhaled, there's so much secondhand smoke in the air from the constant train of joints floating around the bus that all of us get a little stoned, which makes the slow, winding drive somewhat enjoyable.
"So," I say after Yolo and Brian put away their instruments. "What's a troubadour tour?"
"Oh, that's us. We're troubadours."
"I don’t know what a troubadour is," I admit.
"Oh, well, like, historically speaking, they were court poets," Brian answers. "It's a pretty narrow and specific thing, historically. But in modern parlance, it just means a wandering singer of folk songs."
"So you guys are just, what, driving around playing music?" Scarlett asks.
"Pretty much, Scary Lady Number One," Hector says. "Our fearless leaders, Mike and Mer, are big-time hashtag-van-life influencers. They have, like, big money sponsors and everything. So we are on an epic quest to drive the whole of North and South America. We began in Barrow, Alaska—"
"They changed the name to Utqiagvik," Mike says from the front. “We have to honor the switch to the native name, my most excellent companion.”
"Right, I forgot—my bad." Brian flips a hand. "Anyway, that was over a year ago. We drove south through Canada, Washington, Oregon, and California, down through Mexico, and all the way here."
"What's the plan from here?" I ask.
"Well, South America, obviously. Down through Argentina to Tierra Del Fuego, and up the east side of the continent, back to the good old U-S-of-A and along the Caribbean and then up the east coast, back into Canada, and end up in Ut-Whatever again."
I stare at them. "That's...a hell of an ambitious trip," I say, shaking my head. "It took you a year to get this far?"
Yolo laughs. "We're in no hurry. We stop wherever we feel like stopping and hang out until it's time to go. We spent, like, a month in a little village on the coast in Baja because the vibes there were just so ferociously chill."
"What are your plans for the Gap?" Lorenzo asks.
They all stare at us, uncomprehending.
"The what?" Brian asks.
Lorenzo looks at Hector as if for help. "The Gap? The Darién Gap?"
Hector shrugs. "Don't look at me, man, I'm from Connecticut."
Inez looks like she's bitten into a lemon. "You set out on a multi-year quest to drive all of North, Central, and South America, and you haven't even heard of the Darién Gap?"
Ella looks at us. "You're making it sound like something we are supposed to know."
"I mean, it's a pretty big deal," Scarlett says.
"Care to fill us in?" Brian says.
"Maybe Mikey and Mer ought to hear this," Yolo says.
"A fair point, m'lady," Brian says and then turns to yell toward the front. "Yo, Mikey! Pull over and come back here. Our friends have important information to impart unto us."
The bus's brakes squeal, and a moment later, Mike and Mer glide to the lounge area. Mer reaches beneath the bench, opens a drawer, and pulls out a massive glass bong, which she fills with water from a plastic gallon jug from the fridge and then hands it to Mike, who produces a Ziploc bag of ground-up cannabis from another drawer and packs the bong.
The bong makes its way around the group, but we all wave it off, earning us shrugs but nothing else.
"So," Brian says as he exhales a billowing cloud of pungent smoke. "What's the Darren Gap?"
"The Darién Gap," Inez says, accentuating the proper pronunciation. "Obviously, you know that South America is connected to North America by the isthmus of Panama. The Pan-American highway links the continents, going from Alaska to Argentina."
"Yeah, Scary Lady Number Two," Hector says. "That's what we're taking, mostly."
"Well, you clearly didn’t research enough. The Pan-American highway doesn’t fully connect. There's a seventy-kilometer section between Panama and Colombia where there are no roads of any kind. It's some of the most dense, remote, and inhospitable terrain on the planet, with steep mountains, swamps, hostile jungle, and huge, fast-flowing, turbulent rivers. There are bandits, robbers, and gangs hiding out there, as well as Indigenous tribes who violently oppose anyone entering their territory. The wildlife is dangerous, the people are dangerous, and the weather is dangerous. There's no medical support." She leans forward. "What I’m saying is that it is categorically impossible to drive from Panama to Colombia.”
Silence greets this pronouncement.
"So, like, there's got to be a ferry or something, right?" Hector asks.
"No,” Inez answers. "There is no official or commercial transit around the Gap."
"So...what? It's just impossible?" Mikey says. "There's got to be a way."
"There is, but it's complicated and expensive. You need to book a RORO—“ she pronounces the acronym as a word, rho-rho, “and you need special insurance, and there are narcotics checks, and you need separate transit for you guys and your vehicle. Also important to know is that you can't bring cannabis or any paraphernalia. Just getting the vehicle prepped and inspected takes days, and you should book the RORO weeks in advance. A travel agent can make this process easier."
"What's a RORO?" Brian asks.
"Roll-on Roll-Off," Inez answers. "A specialized vehicle transport."
"That sounds, like, hard," Mer says, frowning. "How did we not know this?"
Mikey just shrugs. "Beats me, ladylove. But at least we found out before we got to Panama, right? We still have time. Maybe we can hire someone in San José to set things up for us."
Yolo eyes us. "So, what's y’all’s story?"
We exchange glances.
Inez answers. "It's best if you don't know anything about us but our names."
Mikey nods seriously. " It has not escaped my notice that you don't seem like tourists."
"We aren't," Lorenzo says.
"You're not terrorists, are you?" Mer asks. “Or, like, a roving band of serial killers?"
Brian chortles. "Mer, babe, serial killers work alone. Duh. They're not serial killers.”
"Nah," Hector puts in, not looking at us as he takes a huge hit from the bong. "They're feds or something. My dad works at the Pentagon. I know the type."
"We're not terrorists, serial killers, or feds," Inez answers. "We're just some people trying to get to San José.”
"But you're all, like, bloody," Ella says.
"Ella, my love, don’t be rude," Brian says. "I'm sure they know."
I can't help but laugh. "Just get us to San José and then forget you met us."
"Are you spies ?” Ella says, leaning forward, excited—the act of leaning forward makes her goddamned enormous tits spill out of her top and onto the table, which she doesn’t seem to notice at all.
"Not exactly," Scarlett says. "But close enough."
"Are we in danger just from associating with you?" Mer asks.
We all hesitate. Lorenzo finally answers. "Honestly, maybe. If anyone asks you about people matching our description, just tell the truth. Tell them everything they want to know."
Brian glances at Mikey. "We did talk about being more careful about picking up strangers after that one guy."
"That was one dude," Mikey says. He looks at us. "My brother from another mother is still salty about the fact that I stopped for a hitchhiker who stole our weed back in California."
"That was primo flower, man," Brian says. "I spent a fortune on it."
"He was in a bad place, Bri-Bri. He clearly needed it more than us. The universe provides, right? Two days later, we picked up that old couple who gave us their whole stash of, like, even better flower. That guy stole a few ounces and they gave us a few pounds. It all works out in the end, man, you just have to, like, believe."
"I would listen to your esteemed colleague," Lorenzo says to Mikey. “Especially once you get to South America. I wouldn't go picking up strangers. It's dangerous down there, my friend."
A few more minutes of chitchat, and then Mikey wafts back to the driver's seat and we continue toward San José.
Once we're rattling and bouncing down the road again, Scarlett leans close and whispers into my ear. "I think walking may have been better," she says, giggling. "I’m high as fuck just from second-hand smoke. If we get hit, I dunno what'll happen."
I sputter a laugh. "I know, right? But it's fine. We're professionals. We’ll have them drop us off outside the city. A bit of a walk in the fresh air will sober us up and hopefully make sure they stay well clear of any trouble. They're nice people, and I don't want our shit getting them hurt."
"Nice but delusional," she says. "Driving from Alaska to Baja is one thing; driving from Columbia to Argentina is a whole other thing, let alone all the way around the entire continent. Especially in this old bucket of bolts.”
"I know," I say. "But you gotta give 'em credit for trying."
She shrugs. "They're gonna end up a statistic, Sol."
"Don’t be negative."
She just rolls her eyes.
The closer we get to San José, the more grateful I am that we scored a ride—the terrain is brutally hilly, with knife-like ridges and endless switchbacks.
About an hour after picking us up, Mikey slows. "So, my intrepid new friends. Is there any chance that the super fun-looking dudes ahead have something to do with you guys?”
I scramble forward, kneeling to peer out the windshield. Mike has stopped at the top of a hill—at the bottom, where the road narrows around a sharp curve, a black two-ton troop transport has been parked across the road, and soldiers in black tactical gear wait in ranks, armed with assault rifles, balaclavas hiding their faces.
"Fuck," I mutter. "Yes, there's an excellent chance."
I glance over my shoulder. “This is our cue," I say to the others. "Time to go." To Mikey, then. "You, Brian, and Hector need to get out of the bus and argue loudly with each other. You're creating a screen so we can sneak off the bus and into the jungle."
Mike frowns. "I have a better idea." He parks the bus and stands up. "Impromptu concert, y’all. C'mon!"
A few minutes later, the six of them have set up at the top of the hill in a line abreast, each with an instrument—Mikey has a pair of drums that hang from his neck, Mer has her mandolin, Yolo the guitar, Brian the accordion, and Ella a flute. When they start playing, I'm honestly shocked—they're very, very talented, playing an old folk song from the sixties with an easy fluency that speaks of having played together for a long time.
I duck and shuttle behind them and into the jungle, Scarlett follows, and then Lorenzo and then Inez last. We creep out of sight of the bus and make our way roughly parallel to the road, skirting around the roadblock.
The music carries through the jungle, an incongruously joyful melody running counterpoint to the tension of sneaking past a truckload of killers.
We make our way parallel to the road, swinging wide around the checkpoint in case they have scouts watching for an end-run exactly like this.
Which they do—Inez spots him first, a black-clad figure leaning against a tree trunk, looking bored, smoking a cigarette with his balaclava pulled down. Scarlett drops him with a single silenced round to the forehead before he has a chance to even see us.
Over the next two hours, we creep, sneak, trudge, slip, and climb our way through the jungle until we've put several miles between us and the roadblock, at which point we rejoin the road, keeping a wary eye and ear out for approaching vehicles.
With San José finally within sight, we hear a familiar diesel rattle, and we scurry out of sight—a moment later, Betty White rumbles past, trailing pungent pot smoke and the strains of an accordion, a mandolin, a guitar, and singing voices—they're covering “Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, in rousing folk style.
“God, they were weird," Scarlett says as we watch the van disappear around a bend.
"But cool," I say.
"No. Just strange," Inez says. "They should stay on this side of the Gap."
Lorenzo chuckles. "I like them. They're braver than they are smart, though. Once we have a signal in the city, I'll make some arrangements for them. Put a word out for my friends in various places to keep an eye on them."
I can't help but laugh at that. "You think they'll notice that things seem to just sort of magically happen for them?"
Lorenzo chuckles with me. "Hopefully not. That would ruin the fun."
San José is a bustling, modern place with McDonalds, KFC, and Jeep dealerships. We manage to snag a taxi once we've hupped our way past the outskirts, and Lorenzo has the driver take a long, circuitous route through the city as we watch our backtrail for signs of pursuit; so far, nothing.
The cab driver eventually brings us to a neighborhood on the far north edge of the city and drops us off at a street corner, taking off in a blue-gray cloud of exhaust. Lorenzo leads us down a narrow alley littered with trash and across another street, dodging cars and box trucks and cyclists. He brings us to a low, red brick condominium building with bars on the windows and a broken buzzer; either the door isn't locked or the lock is broken because he waltzes right in and up the stairs to the second floor. He halts outside a door, knocks in a precise, complicated pattern, and waits. There’s the sound of locks being opened, and then the door opens; a bottom-heavy woman on the far end of middle age greets Lorenzo by name, embraces him, kisses him on both cheeks, and then bustles past us without so much as looking at the rest of us.
Within, the condo is low-ceilinged, with black-out curtains across the windows keeping the interior dark and cool; a window AC unit rattles noisily, blasting frigid air. The narrow galley kitchen is lit by a single naked fluorescent bulb, and food simmers on the stove—a big pot of what smells like beans, rice, and chicken.
"She cooked?" Lorenzo mutters. "God bless that woman."
"What is this place?" Inez asks. "And who was she?"
"Sort of an aunt," Lorenzo says. "She was a mother figure to my whole squad when I was with the Brazilian army. When I retired, so did most of my unit, and she moved up here to be closer to her grandson, who lives in San José. All of us have used this place as a safe house over the years. I called her and told her I'd need to hide out here for a minute."
"And she took that to mean feed us?" Inez says, stirring the food with the long-handled wooden spoon resting across the open top of the pot.
"Apparently. It's how she is," Lorenzo answers.
"How is she connected to Brazilian Special Forces?" I ask.
"Not sure. Clerical assistant to a senior office, maybe? She was just always around, taking care of us, cooking for us, and treating us all like her favorite grandkids. To this day, I don't know who she is or what her connection is, but I love the woman like a mother."
"You can't find out?" Scarlett asks.
"Sure I could," Lorenzo answers. "But if she wanted me to know, she'd tell me. I choose not to know. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore, anyway. Now, she's just an old friend with a condo I occasionally use as a safe house. She knows how to lose a tail and has her own network of spies and protection. No one fucks with Nina."
"Well, like you said, God bless Nina," I say. "Because that smells amazing, and I'm fucking ravenous."
We spend the next half an hour devouring the food, washing it down with a nice pale cerveza from the stocked fridge.
For a while, it's easy to pretend we are just tourists hanging out in an Airbnb.
Then, a little past sundown, Lorenzo's phone rings.
He answers it, listens, thanks the person in Spanish, and hangs up. "Break time is over, kids. That was Nina. She just got word that Mercado is making his move on our location. We're surrounded, apparently. She has people waiting for us about a mile from here, but we have to get to them. And to get to them, we're gonna have to fight through Mercado's forces."
I pull my pistol, check the load, check my spare, and glance at him. "I don't suppose this safe house has any hidden goodies, does it?"
Lorenzo grins. “I’m glad you asked, Solomon. Because yes, it does."
He goes into one of the bedrooms and lifts the bare mattress—a hidden hydraulic system raises the bed, revealing a hidden tray disguised as a platform bed. Within, a tidy array of submachine guns, magazines, boxes of ammo, and handguns, all using the same ammo size. We all load out in silence.
"Some grandma," Scarlett says. "I like her. I wanna be her when I grow up."
Lorenzo laughs at this, but the levity is short-lived.
Outside, there's a short burst of automatic weaponsfire, a moment of silence, another burst. A single sharp crack of a heavy rifle. More automatic chatter.
It's close.
As we head for the exit, Inez grabs my arms. "Sol."
I pause, meet her eyes. "Yeah?"
"If I tell you to go, you go." Her eyes are deep and dark and serious. "You promised. Remember?"
"Inez, I'm not gonna agree to leave you behind."
She tightens her grip on my arm until it hurts, nails digging in. "Solomon. You have to trust me. This is my fight, not yours. Not Scarlett's. Lorenzo I can't give orders to; you, I can. If I tell you to go, you go. You gather the boys, and you get me out. I’m not saying abandon me to my fate; I'm saying trust me. If I say go, you fucking go. Got it?"
I blow out a frustrated breath. "Goddammit, Inez. You know better than I do what'll happen if you get taken by this dude."
"Yes, I do." She loosens her grip, moves her hand to my shoulder in a gesture of familiarity and affection that freezes my breath in my lungs. "You are my responsibility, Solomon. And what's more, you're only here because of me. Once Rafael's men have me in custody, they'll leave you alone. I cannot and will not allow you to be killed on my account. Which is what will happen if we try to fight them."
"I'd break my oath before I let them take you, Inez. Fuck that."
"Solomon.” Her eyes soften, forcing my frown to deepen. “You have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. As long as my son's location is kept secret, Rafael will not risk my death, and I can handle anything short of that for my son. You promised.”
I wipe my face with my hand. "This goes against everything I am, Inez."
"I know."
I sigh. “I promise. When you say go, I'll go."
She nods, hand dropping away. "Very good. Thank you." She precedes me out the door.
Scarlett follows me out. "Allowing a monster like that to take her alive? Big brass fuckin' balls on that one. Especially knowing what she went through just to get away the first time.”
I shake my head, my promise sitting in my throat like a hot, acidic knot. “Yeah."
“She'll be okay, Sol." Scarlett's voice is quiet and reassuring.
"I know." I shake my head again as we follow Lorenzo and Inez down the stairwell. "I just...I almost wish I hadn't gotten to know her like I have. It'd make leaving her behind easier."
Scarlett doesn’t have an answer for that.
Outside, gunfire is loud and close, echoing and dopplering, making it hard to tell where it's coming from.
We come out in an alley, empty but for an overflowing dumpster. There's a shout, an answer—too close.
A rifle cracks.
Lorenzo is on the phone, crouched against the wall at the end of the alley. He ends the call and puts the phone in his back pocket. Shoulders his MP5.
Inez does the same. Glances back at me, nods once. I don’t nod back—I'm pissed at her for forcing that promise out of me.
Lorenzo rolls out around the corner, crouched, MP5 to his shoulder, firing in short bursts. Inez goes next, and then Scarlett.
I hesitate, and then follow suit.
The veritable army facing us is a stark display of the fact that everything we've faced up until now has been little more than a feint, drawing us out, exhausting us, making us think we had a chance of getting away.
Cat and mouse, indeed.
I push thoughts out of my mind, dropping to a knee behind the bullet-riddled hulk of an old car, and start picking off targets. I'm not aiming for heads, but I can't honestly say I’m trying not to kill anyone.
Because promise or no, I don't know if I can just let Inez get taken.
I just can't.