The Lawless Kind (23 page)

I searched for an exit that offered a way to surprise the driver. Midway along a loose tin sheet allowed me to slip into a narrow space that was chock-full of oil drums and less identifiable trash. I began squeezing my way to the front. Despite my efforts to move with the stealth that Rink exhibits, the empty drums foiled me, and one of them made a hollow thrum as my knee knocked against it. I ducked, and not a second too soon. From the front the narrow space was lit by machine-gun fire.

The drums had given away my position, yet they redeemed themselves by saving my skin. The bullets cut through the first few, but the metal barrier slowed them enough that they didn’t make it all the way to where I crouched. As the shooter reassessed his firing position, I bobbed up and fired at him. Didn’t hit him though. He sprang to the corner of the shed, and began hollering to his friends. I recognised the voice and its Scottish burr. Ian McAdam, the bastard.

McAdam leaned round the corner and fired again. The piece of shit had got his hands on an M-4 Carbine, an assault rifle. But I was waiting for him to make such a move, and calmly fired, in total disregard of the bullets tearing my surroundings to shreds. McAdam cursed, a new note of pain making his voice more whiny than usual. He ducked out of the way again.

Immediately I went forward, because he’d expect me to go the other way, and doubtless he was directing his buddies to cut me off. I dodged and swerved round the drums, then raced out of the gap between the sheds and into the open. I dived for the floor as McAdam let loose a hail of death. Only my surprise move saved me, because he was unprepared for my appearance and his shots were wild and off-target. I fired back at him and while he was engaged in scrambling for his life, I did likewise. One of the others, having given up on the assault of the first shed, fired his pistol, and the earth next to my right knee lifted in a mini-explosion of dirt. Swearing loudly I commando-rolled away and found shelter behind their SUV. A glance downhill told me that my position was growing more precarious by the second. The headlights I’d noted earlier had grown to a procession of vehicles streaking towards the battle; it would be minutes before they arrived. Fuck it, I told myself, concentrate on the immediate problem. Rushing to the front of the SUV, I propped my SIG over the hood and shot at the man who’d come close to killing me. He fell, telling me that I’d scored a hit, but not enough to finish him. He backed up, butt-shuffling away even as he returned fire. Checking for McAdam, I assumed the Scotsman had taken refuge inside the building where I’d hidden moments before.

The two other men weren’t immediately apparent.

But that scenario only lasted a few seconds. One of them was in the narrow space filled with oil drums. He shot at me, using the angle of the alley to line up his shots. His bullets struck glass and metal on the SUV but thankfully didn’t find flesh. I shot back at him, making a mental note of how many rounds I’d used. Too many had been wasted for me to have any hope of taking on the number of reinforcements coming. I required more ammo, more guns.

McAdam leaned out of the building and let loose with the M-4.

The SUV danced on its chassis as the rounds punched through it. I ran, zigzagging to avoid making an easy target. Unbelievably none of the bullets ripping through the air hit. It was that or I was dead and it was my spirit that continued the run. As I went to my knees and felt the shock go all the way to the top of my head I was sure that I still inhabited my corporeal body. Graceless, I went down on my front, before rolling side over side, bullets churning the ground where I’d been seconds earlier. Then I positioned myself to shoot at the gunman approaching from my right. It was the third of the assault party, the man with the Eastern European accent. He swore and I made him as Estonian. I’d fought his like before, listened to their guttural obscenities. I hit him in the throat and cut off his next curse. He went down, dead from a severed spine, and his gun was knocked from his fingers. Unfortunately it was well out of my reach. To go for it would make me a sitting duck for McAdam and the injured man, who’d managed to back all the way to the doorway of the first shed I’d entered. The last gunman was still in Oil Drum Alley, but from the collision of knees against metal he was ploughing forward to join his friends.

Bullets cut towards me from two directions and I was forced to move, running for the field of garbage Rink had brought us across. He’d squashed the barbed-wire fence under the tyres of the Dodge, but it had sprung back up – albeit less level than before – and blocked my passage. Rather, it tried to. I went through it, mindless of the barbs that clutched and tore at my already tattered clothes. I was sorely scored, but when weighed against a few bullets in the spine, I’d gladly take the minor abrasions, though, I stupidly thought, I might require a tetanus jab at some point. Lockjaw was the least of my fucking problems.

Beyond the wire fence was a shallow ditch, and I went into it belly first. The sides offered only meagre protection; they wouldn’t halt the bullets, but they offered concealment as I crawled away. As it was, my opponents were wary of my strategy and began shooting at various points along the ditch, hoping to pin me down while one of them could move in and finish me for good. Immediately I jerked up, fired two rounds and the slide locked back on my SIG. Swearing under my breath, I searched for the mag that held the few spare bullets I had on me. Dropping the depleted magazine, I slapped in the new one, fully understanding that I’d barely enough bullets left to kill the three here, let alone the number who must now be approaching in the convoy of vehicles. Yet I refused to be fatalistic, and reversed my crawl, worming my way back towards the original position where I’d come through the fence. McAdam and the seated man continued to fire at where they perceived my crawl to have taken me. I knew without looking that the last of my opponents would be moving in, now that he was clear of the alley, to shoot me from behind. I sat up quickly, eyes scanning, and saw the man less than ten feet away, already past my current position. He caught my movement in his peripheral vision, but before he could fully turn I shot him in the side, then as the impact twisted him, placed another round in his open mouth.

That left two enemies.

Only one bullet, though.

The odds of killing both men with one shot were beginning to look decidedly against me.

Chapter 28

McAdam’s assault rifle chattered and eruptions of dirt danced overhead. I flattened down in the ditch. Huge spurts of dust, pebbles and plant life hosed my prone body, but to my relief none of his bullets hit.

Then there was a cessation of the noise and fury.

‘You can’t get out of this alive, Joe,’ McAdam taunted me. ‘You may as well give up and come out of the ditch or it’ll end up being your grave. Come out and I promise I’ll do you nice and clean. I’ll even see that you get a decent burial.’

‘You’re all heart, McAdam,’ I called back. ‘Actually, that’s not true. You’re full of shit; no room in there for a heart.’

‘If I come over there, I’ll have to gun you down. But that won’t be the end of it. You’ll be taken back, your body paraded by Jorge Molina for all the cartel bosses to see.’

Probably hung from an underpass and disembowelled, I thought.

‘So come on over, McAdam. See which one of us is left lying in a ditch.’

He must have switched to semi-auto, because there followed three shots so closely grouped that the triple rattle blended into one hit on a snare drum. Earth danced at the rim of the ditch, forcing me to squeeze my lids shut to protect my eyesight. Not for a second did I believe that McAdam was coming for me.

‘Come out, Joe. For old times’ sake I’ll be good to you. Clean shot to the back of the head. You won’t even see it coming.’ His voice remained distant. But the sound of approaching engines was growing louder. Also, I heard a shuffle of movement further to my left. While McAdam tried to distract me, the other man was sneaking in to finish me off. He was lame from my earlier bullet, dragging a leg as he moved in on my hiding place.

I glanced at my SIG. One round. One shot. One kill. I had to go for it, and have faith that McAdam didn’t put a bullet through my skull during the brief time I was in his sights.

‘What are you getting out of this, McAdam? Hope they’re paying you well for turning on your old mate?’

‘I’d do this for nothing,’ he called back. ‘We were never mates, I always thought you were a tosser.’

‘Funnily enough, I thought the same about you.’

While I was still calling out, I sat up, gun held in both hands for stability. I zoned in on the sound of shuffling and saw the silhouette of the injured man as he prowled towards the lip of the ditch a good twenty yards away. In the dark, in a bad position for shooting, it was going to be a tricky shot, but I had to take it while McAdam was still absorbing my words and considering his response. I almost pulled the trigger, but didn’t.

There was no need.

Rink – who’d been absent from the fight for good reason – suddenly came off the floor like a prowling tiger going for the kill. Even I had no idea where he’d got to in the darkness, and the men trying to kill me had temporarily forgotten about him. The injured man tried to turn his gun on the unexpected attack, but he was too late. Rink drove the garden fork he’d taken from the Dodge into the man’s gut with such force that he was lifted off his feet. The sharp tines speared through his innards and spine and protruded from his back. Rink was no slasher-movie killer; he didn’t go for the grandiose by lifting the man on the end of the fork, he simply thrust downward, taking the man to the ground, and then released the handle so he could grab the dropped handgun. He placed a bullet in the man’s head, putting him out of his misery. Rink is like that: a thoughtful killer.

There was no room for philosophising, and I didn’t think of his merciful act at the time. Then and there I still had McAdam, and an M-4 Carbine, to worry about. I twisted quickly, sighting on the ex-para. More correctly I sighted from memory of where his voice had last come from. He was very close to the SUV now, and it was partly between him and me, offering him some protection. He had turned, staring in a moment of horror at what had just happened to his friend, but he had the machine-gun shouldered, and he was a moment away from spraying Rink with bullets. I fired first.

My bullet missed him, but it struck the corner of the SUV with a bang and a spray of sparks. It made him flinch, and his barrel went high as he pulled the trigger, hopefully higher than Rink was tall. McAdam swore, bringing the gun round on me. I swarmed out of the ditch, keeping low. Now the SUV that offered him protection gave me some cover too. McAdam had to move in order to aim round the back of the big vehicle to get a bead on me.

He fired, and my only recourse was to go belly down on the earth again. My sore leg screamed with pain, but I had to keep moving, and I went across the ground on my hands and knees as McAdam’s bullets first sought me then arched away to tear Rink to bits.

The dull roar of the M-4 was punctuated by three rapid cracks.

The machine-gun fell silent.

Glancing through the dust that swirled in my vision, I saw Rink advancing, holding the gun ready in case he had to put McAdam out of his misery too.

I rose up, beckoning Rink. If McAdam was still alive then it was my duty to do the merciful thing.

Except McAdam was as dead as dead could be.

Rink’s shots had found heart, throat and skull, amazing shooting at any time, let alone while under fire from a machine-gun: amazing or incredibly lucky. I knew which Rink would choose if asked – for such a centred guy he could also be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek braggart when it came to his prowess. Now wasn’t the time for bragging though. Under difficult circumstances we’d come through, but things were about to get much worse.

The foremost vehicle of the convoy was now ploughing its way across the landfill site, while two others continued up the track to cut off our escape route, the three of them all trying to trap us with our backs to the open desert. Shoving away my SIG, I lifted the M-4 from McAdam’s dead fingers and shot at the nearest car. The bullets churned their way up the front grille and found the windscreen. Men’s shouts of alarm rang wildly from within, competing with the smack of bullets through metal. Doors flew open and those inside leaped out, seeking a safer place than the confines of the car where the ricochets were as dangerous as a well-placed bullet. I fired another spray of bullets and then the mag was empty. A quick check of McAdam’s prone body didn’t hint at a spare magazine. But I didn’t throw away the gun, I ran for his abandoned SUV, just as Rink also charged for it.

If there was extra ammunition I didn’t see it, so I threw the gun in the back while I hit the button to start the engine. Rink climbed in, choosing the back seat where he could manoeuvre and offer covering fire.

‘That was an impressive move with the garden fork,’ I told him.

‘That guy didn’t dig it so much. Didn’t have the guts for gardening, eh?’