Chapter 1
ENEMIES TO KILL
INEZ
Rage is an old familiar heat, forever pulsating at the core of me. Some days it gutters like a candle flame, other days it is a bonfire casting long coruscating shadows within me.
Now, the fire of my rage has burst its banks like floodwaters cascading over the top of a levee.
I see red—literally. My vision is narrowed to a hyper-focused tunnel, so the only thing I see is the doorway of the trucking garage.
All else is red-tinged nothingness, my hammering blood pressure filling my eyeballs with a flush of blood, staining everything a hazy crimson.
In contrast to the nuclear heat of my hate, I also feel an icy calm.
It is a jarring juxtaposition. I am not acting recklessly.
My hands are rock steady as I check the load of my MP5, tap the mag home, charge the weapon, and snug the butt against my shoulder.
I've got four spare mags in my pockets and vest, four frag grenades, and two flashbangs.
I stomp across the road toward the warehouse, but before I reach it, I hear an engine behind me, and the crunch of tires on gritty asphalt as yet another car enters the trucking yard.
I spin in place, drop to a crouch, draw a bead on the driver of the early-aughts Corolla. There is no thought, no intent, only instinct. Reaction, instantaneous and automatic.
CRACKCRACKCRACK!
My MP5 is not a silenced model, unfortunately.
I'd rather have an HK416, but my contact down here couldn't get his hands on any—jolts my shoulder as the rounds crater the car's windscreen.
I see the driver jerk in the split second before the interior is bathed in a spray of red—I must have gotten a headshot.
The driver's foot mashes the brake pedal as his body catches up to the reality that he's dead, and then his foot slides off the brake pedal and buries the accelerator to the floor, sending the car squealing forward in a wide arc.
I hear shouts in panicked Spanish from the other occupants.
The car smashes into the side of a parked trailer, wedging under it; the shouting cuts off abruptly upon impact.
I feel Lorenzo behind me, but my rage leaves no room for him. And I know Lorenzo. He'll have my back.
Rickety old wooden steps judder under my weight as I ascend them, and the oppressive heat of the Mexican sun is abruptly replaced by the relative cool of the shade beneath the covered loading platform.
I should wait for Ren.
Fuck it.
I kick the door in, planting my boot beside the doorknob.
The frame splinters and the door slams open.
Shocked exclamations greet me, a sea of surprised faces turning toward me, guns leveled at me.
I spray a burst blindly before my eyes have adjusted; I have no idea if I hit anyone, but a howl of pain tells me I did.
My eyes adjust as I enter. Within, the interior of the warehouse is dimly lit by yellowish, flickering fluorescent bulbs, casting dancing shadows on cracked concrete.
There's a split-second of doubt—but the rage overwhelms it. These men are being paid by Rafael. They do his bidding. They know who he is. They know what he does. Upon his orders, these men will murder children and rape their mothers. I've seen it. I have been that mother.
I have felt their hands holding me down. I have tasted their hands smothering my screams as they force themselves inside me.
Not these men, but men like them. Gutless, soulless, mindless monsters, all.
The murder in my heart takes over.
They're stunned, confused into inaction. A couple of men return fire, but they are panicked and their rounds go high and wide.
Just inside the door at an angle, forgotten, is a large, waist-height rolling tool chest. I duck behind it, pause for the space of two breaths.
Swivel out from behind the tool chest onto one knee and spray a long burst into the crowd, raking my barrel at chest height from right to left. I duck back behind the cart as screams of pain rattle against the corrugated metal roof overhead.
They're not confused anymore—gunfire erupts, rounds dinging off the chest, smacking noisily into the bay doors behind me. I glance right as a long shadow stretches across the floor—broad shoulders, lean hips, ball cap: Lorenzo.
His hand drops from the grip of his MP5, grabs something from his vest. He tosses the object a moment later and then vanishes from the doorway.
The object clatters; I peek out and see the telltale shape of a flashbang, and swivel back behind the cart.
I plug my ears with my fingers and squeeze my eyes shut just in time.
The light and noise are tremendous, and even plugged, my ears ring; even with my eyes shut and hiding behind a solid object, I have to blink the flashes away.
The small army of thugs and mercenaries is disoriented, stumbling into each other, rubbing eyes, shaking heads.
I grab a frag from my vest, pull the pin. "FRAG OUT!" I shout, so Lorenzo will stay behind cover.
I release the spoon and lob the grenade underhanded into the midst of the men and then duck back behind cover myself.
BOOOOOOOM!
Smoke boils and shrapnel cracks, dings, and ricochets in every direction, leavened by screams of agony.
"Moving," Lorenzo says, entering the warehouse and standing tall behind me, his MP5 barking in rapid three-round bursts.
Further along the nearest wall is a stack of semi-truck tires.
I sprint for the relative cover of the tire stacks as rounds chew up concrete at my heels, and then the tires thunk hollowly.
I drop to a knee and drop a tango with a burst that craters his chest. Bodies lay in writhing piles. Lorenzo is reloading. I see an enemy trying to flank us so he can get a bead on one of us. I send a burst over Lorenzo's head—close enough that he jerks when the rounds buzz and snap.
We work in effortless concert, then, firing while the other takes cover.
Two, perhaps three minutes total have elapsed since I kicked in the door, those handful of seconds elapsing in a stretchy, fast-slow wobble.
Death stinks.
Screams echo:
"Ayuda me!"
"Mama!"
"?Está La Víbora!"
A door clangs open somewhere at the rear of the warehouse, and the sudden silence is deafening.
"Get them," I snap to Lorenzo. "No survivors. No prisoners."
He doesn't respond, only jogs across the warehouse while reloading. I watch him pause in the doorway, assessing the rear yard before trotting out after the escaping tangos. I hear his MP5 chatter once, twice, three times.
A wail of pain shudders off the ceiling; the penny tang of blood is thick in the air, the choke of leaking effluvia acrid and sour.
I cast my gaze across the warehouse floor, looking for the right victim.
I see him. He's trying to crawl away, leaving a snail trail of blood from mangled legs, one arm useless and dragging. His ears are bleeding.
I let my rifle dangle as I march toward him, kicking weapons out of reach. Crouch in front of him.
"La—La Víbora—La Víbora. Por favor…” His dark eyes are terrified as he babbles at me in Spanish. "Don't kill me. Please don't kill me."
I flick out my butterfly knife, touch the blade's razor edge to his lips. "Hush," I murmur.
He falls silent, except for the ragging, rasping pant of agony and exertion.
"You have a choice," I tell him, applying a touch of pressure so the blade digs in, a trickle of blood dripping from his lips. "Tell me what I wish to know and you'll die quickly and painlessly. Refuse, and you die slow, bleeding out, begging for your whore mother."
"Please, please," he whimpers, drooling bloody saliva. "I don't know anything. My friends say we will be paid a lot of money to go to the States and shoot someone. I don't even know where we were going or who the target is."
I assess the rapidly spreading pool of blood beneath his legs, the chattering of his teeth, the fading focus in his eyes. "I do not believe you."
Across the warehouse another man leans against a post, fumbling with a pistol and a magazine, his eyes flicking between me and his desperate, clumsy attempts to reload his pistol.
I stand and pace toward him a few steps, letting my rifle dangle at my side by the strap.
"Go ahead," I tell him. "I'll give you a chance. "
Instead of raising the gun at me, he touches the barrel under his chin. His mistake is hesitation.
I draw and fire my sidearm left-handed, a skill I've spent hundreds of hours practicing until I'm nearly as fast and accurate left-handed as I am with my right.
His hand disintegrates in a splash of red, the gun clattering to the ground.
His belly is a mess of red, shredded by shrapnel.
He might survive with medical attention, but it's not likely.
I cross to him and drop to one knee. "Who is the target?"
"I don't know," he grits out. "They didn't tell everyone."
"Who knows, then?” I ask.
His eyes scan the writhing bodies, the still corpses.
He juts his chin at a man who must have dropped in my initial burst after I kicked open the door—he's near the front of the crowd.
He's on his back, gasping short, shallow, whistling breaths, fingers scrabbling at the concrete, heels kicking, digging.
I cross to him, pistol in my left hand, blade in my right. Twin holes in his chest whistle, suck, gurgle.
"Target," I snap. "Who? Where? When?"
"C-c-c…" His mouth flaps.
I whip my balisong closed, pocket it, and scan the area around me—someone dropped a plastic wrapper on the ground. I tear it open flat and press the clean side to his sucking chest wound—the plastic creates the necessary vacuum in his chest so he can suck in a gasping breath. "Answer me."
"Club…" he wheezes in English. "Vegas."
He's older, late forties or early fifties, grizzled, scarred, tattooed, ugly. The look in his eyes tells me he'll tell me what I want to know as long as I let him die quickly.
"What about the border? How were you planning on getting a caravan of armed men across the border?"