Part 26 (1/2)

Griga muttered and shook his head, shoving the door open and sliding through the doorway simultaneously. Olmos caught a glimpse of a blood-splattered wall beyond the short hallway a fraction of a second before the Russian's body blocked his view.

”No!”

The Russian disappeared in an explosion that blasted Olmos into the car behind him. He slammed into the front of the pa.s.senger side door and crumpled to the ground, where he lay on his stomach for a few seconds-until pure survival instinct took over. He needed to get out of this alley. Ears ringing and still unable to draw a breath, he tried to push himself up onto the pavement, only managing to lift the left side of his body. When he turned his head against the pavement to see why his right arm didn't respond, he identified the problem right away. His arm was missing from the elbow down.

When a second, more distant explosion rattled the ground, Olmos took the only option currently available to him. He squirmed into the smoldering office.

CHAPTER 41.

A deep, crunching sound rattled the bathtub, which Keira mistook for her sign to get up. She'd just begun to lift her head when a deafening blast shook the tub like an earthquake, showering them in drywall fragments. Sprawled atop Owen, she kept the tips of her fingers pressed against her ears underneath the helmet and her elbows grinding into the nonslip surface of the tub above her son's shoulders until she felt a strong tug at her backpack, followed by a burst of automatic gunfire, which caused her to stiffen and resist the pulling.

”We have to go!” yelled Nathan, his face inches from hers.

She forced herself to climb off Owen and out of the bathtub. Pulling Owen to his feet, she allowed Nathan to drag them toward the bathroom door, which stood at an angle against the wall, blasted from its hinges. Eyes stinging from the dust and explosive residue blasted into an aerosolized powder, Keira gripped her son close to her as they pa.s.sed through the door. A thick cloud of smoke masked the desperate struggle being waged in their motel room. Two figures knelt behind a flaming, doubled-over mattress, firing sustained bursts from their suppressed rifles into the thick haze obscuring the front of the room.

Nathan pushed her through a scorched, man-size oval hole blasted in the back wall of the motel room a few feet away from the bathroom door. She emerged in a mirror-image room that didn't look any better than the one she had just left. A figure dressed in body armor squatted next to her, aiming his rifle at the room's open door.

”Clear the hole!” he yelled, pulling her deeper into the room.

She recognized the voice as one of the operatives who had helped them escape Mexicali. The man pulled the rest of her family through the jagged breach, ushering them to the front of the room, where he put a hand on her husband's shoulder.

”We're heading down the breezeway stairwell and then across the back parking lot,” he said, pointing through the clearing smoke at a row of palm trees beyond the door. ”No matter what happens, you get to those trees. I got a man waiting for you there. You do what he says.”

”Get them f.u.c.king moving!” yelled a frantic voice from the other side of the hole.

A bullet snapped through the wall next to the hole, thunking into the window frame a few feet away from Keira.

”This is Bravo. I'm moving the Fishers,” he said, before turning to Keira. ”You ready?”

She nodded nervously, flicking the selector switch on the MP-20 to semiautomatic without taking her eyes off Bravo. He patted her on the shoulder.

”We'll be on the road in thirty seconds,” he said, disappearing through the door.

CHAPTER 42.

In the moments leading up to the office explosion, Alpha licked his cracked lips and watched the mercenaries outside room 204. One of them had nearly finished taping a linear explosive charge along the room's door. The group's leader crouched behind the man setting the explosives, pointing his fingers at the door and moving his mouth. Alpha wanted to kill the leader first, but the circ.u.mstances leading right up to the moment he pulled the trigger would determine where to send the bullets.

”Jackson. What's going on with the office?”

”Two men moving cautiously . . . hold on. They picked up the pace,” said Jackson.

”Bravo?”

”Ready.”

He needed to make a decision in the next few seconds. The team leader looked impatient, and Alpha couldn't let them detonate their breaching charge.

That's it. He was cutting it too close.

”Jackson. Focus your fire on the two men in the alley. The a.s.sault team is almost done with the door,” said Alpha. ”Bravo. Stand by to detonate your charge.”

”The first guy just reached the office door,” said Jackson. ”A few more seconds, and they'll detonate the charge.”

”We don't have time. They're about to blow the door to room 204,” said Alpha, moments away from giving Bravo the order to blast a hole between the back-to-back motel rooms.

”He just pushed the door open and walked inside,” said Jackson. ”Looks like they're in a hurry to clear the office.”

That's because their team leader was rus.h.i.+ng the job. The man planting charges on Fisher's door was at least ten seconds away from finis.h.i.+ng. Alpha would count down from five and then give Bravo the order to blow the hole that would provide the Fishers their escape route. That was as close as he was willing to take this. Ideally, the two men in the office would trip the charge first, momentarily disorienting the mercenaries stacked outside room 204. Whatever happened, he couldn't allow them to blow the door.

”Bravo,” he said, ”detonate on my count. Five.”

”The second guy just entered the office,” said Jackson.

”Four. Three.”

”Second guy just backed out,” added Jackson.

”Two. One.”

The windowsill shook violently from the antipersonnel mine detonated inside the office a few rooms away from Alpha, cracking the window in place and blocking his view.

”Breach. Breach,” yelled Alpha, moving away from the window as a second explosion thundered.

He pulled his room door open to see gla.s.s raining down on the Fishers' SUV. All of the mercenaries on the second-level walkway turned away from the window, crouching or kneeling in protective positions. Alpha pressed his rifle into the door frame and centered the reticle on the leader's head. His finger was a few pounds of pressure away from vacating the man's skull when Alpha caught something in the far left side of the sight's field of view and s.h.i.+fted the reticle onto a mercenary detaching a grenade from his tactical vest. The rifle bit into his shoulder, planting a three-round burst of tungsten-carbide bullets in the middle of the mercenary's back. A bright red spray hit the wall behind the man before his body collapsed to the deck. Alpha quickly searched for the leader, not finding him before bullets started to fly in his direction.

The team's return fire was inaccurate, but that would change rapidly as the seasoned mercenaries shrugged off their initial confusion. Needing to delay that as long as possible, Alpha flipped the selector switch on his rifle to automatic and started raking the men on each side of the motel room with gunfire, careful not to send any bullets directly into room 204. The mercenaries on the walkway screamed in Russian as his bullets tore through muscle and bone, splattering the motel facade with gore. One of the men raised his rifle above the edge of the walkway with two straight arms and fired blindly at Alpha. A few of the bullets ripped through the door frame and walls, causing him to drop flat onto the floor. It was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky.

”I have them pinned down on the walkway, but not for long,” said Alpha. ”Start angling your fire through the adjacent rooms.”

”Copy,” said Carlos.

The wall behind the outstretched rifle on the second-floor walkway exploded outward, as the bullets fired by the team inside room 204 ripped the Russian's arms apart. Jagged holes st.i.tched across the walls and doors of the adjacent rooms, keeping the rest of the mercenaries pressed to the walkway.

Alpha decided to take advantage of the cross fire to make his escape. Despite the appearance of a slaughter on the balcony walk, he knew better than to a.s.sume the Russians were done. One mistake could pin him in place long enough for the Russians to gain the upper hand, or bring the entire Sinaloa cartel down on him.

”Alpha moving to SUV,” he said over the radio net.

”Copy. We're pulling out. The Fishers have been moved to the other room,” said Carlos, the sound of gunfire echoing in his transmission.