CHAPTER 89
The opening assault went according to plan. The breach door was not locked.
Carson and Diaz had been instructed to lay down fire as soon as the door opened.
It did open, and they opened fire a millisecond later.
The guards were stunned by the attack, jumping to their feet, dropping cigarettes and beer cans and snatching up weapons.
By then of course it was too late.
Carson and Diaz took out five of them with the opening salvo.
Then Mecho and Puller hit them like an Abrams tank at full throttle.
They used their guns, their knives, their fists, and their legs.
Guard after guard dropped under their overwhelming attack.
They were an army of two.
Puller killed and moved on to the next target, a seamless flow of compartmentalized savagery.
Next to him Mecho was doing exactly the same thing, perhaps with a bit more savagery.
Precise gunfire rained down from above as Carson aimed and shot, aimed and shot, dropping guard after guard.
From below Mecho and Puller hammered the enemy relentlessly, shooting, stabbing, killing to such an extent that the superior force of guards was quickly turned into an inferior force through sheer terror.
That’s when things started to go wrong.
A round fired by a guard hit a vapor-filled fifty-gallon fuel tank and it ignited into a flame ball. Oxygen-fed, it flared to twenty feet high. Thick, toxic smoke engulfed the room.
The remaining guards, giving up all hope of defeating the invaders, started pumping rounds into the cages, dropping prisoner after prisoner.
Puller and Mecho did their best to shoot them down, but the smoke was making it difficult to find the right targets. The last thing Puller wanted to do was kill any of the prisoners.
Diaz and Carson’s vantage point from above was quickly turned to a disadvantage because of the smoke. They could no longer fire because they couldn’t see what they were firing at.
Mecho and Puller kept low and moved through the smoke and haze.
They killed what they could.
Puller reached the first cage, shot the lock off, and the prisoners started streaming out after Puller motioned to them to keep low.
Mecho did the same with another cage.
Puller next reached the cage where Diego and Mateo were.
Diego saw him and shouted, “Behind you!”
Without looking Puller whirled with his Ka- Bar in hand.
The guard fell forward with his throat cut, jugular to carotid.
Mateo saw this and started screaming.
Diego grabbed him and pulled him through the opening.
Puller snagged Diego by the arm. “Nice work on leaving your ring behind.”
“It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“You both okay?”
“Yes.”
“Go out the door we came through. Take the steps up. There are people up there who’ll help you.”
Diego nodded and he and Mateo fled.
Puller shouted at the others in every language he knew to follow the boys to safety.
All the prisoners still alive were free now and escaping the room through the door.
Meanwhile, Mecho gutted one guard while he shot another. A pistol round tore through his left forearm, but he kept fighting with his right.
Puller was slashed on the leg by another guard’s knife an instant before he put a bullet in the man’s head.
The two men looked around and saw no more opponents.
Mecho grabbed blankets and attempted to beat the flames down. Puller snagged a fire extinguisher off the wall and hit it from the other side. Smoke poured out of the now dying fire.
Puller dropped the empty extinguisher, turned, and stopped.
Landry stood there with smoke misting around her. She looked like the sole survivor appearing from an apocalypse.
Puller noted that her gun was pointed directly at him.
He said, “I wondered where you had gotten to.”
“Sorry about this,” she said.
“Like hell,” said Puller.
She pulled the trigger two quick times.
The gun fired just as it was supposed to.
Yet Puller still stood there, unharmed.
She pulled the trigger two more times.
Again, her pistol fired twice.
And again Puller simply stood there.
“No body armor,” he said. “You can take a head shot if you want.”
She did, right between the eyes.
Nothing.
She turned when she sensed him behind her. Mecho ripped the gun from her hand and bent her arm behind her back. She cried out in pain as he drove her elbow to an angle it was not designed to go.
Puller took the gun from Mecho and slid out the clip.
“I carry blanks in my duffel, as a means to fire warning shots without doing any damage. I substituted them for your live rounds when I was getting the weapons ready. And if you got your hands on another gun and tried to kill us, Diaz up there had orders to take you out. It was probably why she was nervous, killing a cop and all. Goes against her instincts, I guess. Even when the cop is dirty.”
They all looked up to see Diaz pointing her weapon directly at Landry’s head with a determined look on her features.
Landry gasped, “If you knew, why did you ask me to come out here?”
“Simple. Friends close and enemies closer.”
“I don’t understand how you could have known.”
“It’s all a matter of timing, really, Cheryl. Just timing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d explain now, but we’ve got a few more things on our to-do list. And you’re going to help us cross them off.”
“I’m not helping you.”
“Yes you are.”
“Go to hell.”
It only took a second, but Landry whipped her body around and slammed a knee into Mecho’s crotch. He doubled over. She grabbed the knife from his belt and was about to deliver a killing strike to the back of his neck when the blade was knocked from her hand.
She turned in time to see Puller’s fist coming at her.
That was the last thought she had before Puller slammed his fist into her jaw.
She fell to the floor, unconscious.
Puller stood over her.
“Yes you are,” he said quietly.