Nightmare in Red (Nick McCarty #5)

“Bait,” Quinn answered as the guards’ heads burst like ripe melons.

Sonny and Jean ran to his side. Sonny handed Quinn their old M2 Browning fully automatic .50 caliber machine gun Quinn handled like a rifle. Sonny assisted with the belt feed while Jean would watch their backs and sides. Sonny opened the door. Jean threw in grenades. They ducked down as the grenades exploded everything glass out of the warehouse mountings. They casually walked into the building of screams. Quinn opened fire from a crouch with Sonny feeding ammo. Jean shot two Norte?o soldiers on the catwalk. Quinn moved every five second burst, hosing the interior of the building with fire so devastating not a single thing made of anything but metal remained standing or in one piece when Sonny tapped his shoulder.

“Watch my six, guys,” Jean said, shouldering her machine pistol. She took out her sidearm and methodically fired into every body lying in pieces or dead throughout the warehouse, having learned from her Dad to assume nothing in combat.

They reloaded. “We’re done in the main room, Dad. Twelve down. Moving to the rooms if you have a heat signature.”

“The one straight ahead Viper,” John said. “One warm body.”

“Do you want to question him, Dad?”

“If you can do it without getting schooled, then yeah,” Nick answered.

Jean growled as suppressed humor sounded over the networked com units. “Very funny. Just for that, Sonny and I will practice our knife throwing skills.”

“Don’t-”

Jean turned off her com unit as Sonny sighed and took his off too. Quinn followed their lead.

Quinn banged the door down with one kick before stepping to the side as a burst of automatic weapons fire blasted through the doorway. Jean then dived low right and Sonny left. The man with the weapon fired at Sonny’s larger figure a moment before a knife buried itself to the hilt in his shoulder. Before he could do anything but scream, a second knife slammed into his other shoulder from the rear. Quinn ran to him, disarmed the man, and dragged him out by the scruff of the neck. Gus and John entered in a panic. They relaxed when Quinn waved reassuringly at them. Sonny and Jean worked over their victim, retrieving their knives and using their emergency medical kit to patch his wounds.

“Muerto’s unhappy with that last maneuver, Viper,” Gus said.

“He’ll get over it,” Jean replied.

“I’m surprised at you, Sonny,” John said.

“Cracker does what I tell him to do,” Jean said, nudging Sonny. “Do you want to question this guy or not?”

“Muerto only wants to know if anyone else knows about Mike and his Dad,” Gus answered.

Jean knelt next to the wounded man. She slapped him in the face until she had his attention. “Do you know who Mike Villa is?”

When the guy didn’t speak right away, Jean pulled her hand to launch again.

“Wait! I had to think. The lawyer guy, right?”

“That’s the one. Does anyone but your little playmates know about him?”

“No one I know of. I…I don’t know everyone. The guys we’ve smuggled in from overseas may know about him. They’re not here.”

“We have the Company on that tidbit,” John said.

“Close enough then.” Jean shot him in the head. “Let’s go before Dad comes down from his perch and leaves our backdoor open.”

*

Sonny and Quinn loaded the body of Jess Morado into their van, wrapped in a throw rug while Nick conferred with Cala.

“What did he say about Mike the lawyer?”

“He didn’t know, Muerto. Are we going after the smuggled overseas guys?”

“Absolutely, but we’ll need to make sure our clients and restaurant are safe. Then we get the rest.”

“The rest? What rest,” Jean asked. “We killed the last of the Norte?os in our area. We’re done, finished… the end.”

“Doin’ right ain’t got no end.”

Jean recognized the line from ‘Outlaw Josie Wales’. “Can we at least go to the beach a few mornings before you launch a new war?”

Nick grinned. “Absolutely.”

The End… for now.

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