…and at that moment, one of the bearded men looked up and noticed Castillo kneeling in the doorway with his M-16 aimed at him. “Hey!” the guy shouted. What the fuck? Who the hell are you?”
Something exploded in the veteran Mexican soldier’s brain. “¡Muerte a América!” he shouted, and he started pulling the trigger. He surprised himself at how calmly he operated: with incredible control and accuracy, he picked off the four standing men. His targets were very close—centimeters away, close enough for the muzzle flash to hit the closer targets—but he kept himself steady, his weapon on single-shot, and his breathing perfectly measured.
Four targets, four trigger pulls, four down.
“¡Pare el tirar! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Salinas shouted. He threw open the tent flaps and swept the interior with his .45 caliber automatic, finally aiming at the only American alive inside. The soldier—a U.S. Army officer—that had been seated in front of the table had curled up into a ball and dropped under the table when the shots rang out, cowering in fear from the muzzle blasts thundering around him. Now he was on his back halfway under the table, his knees folded up against his obese belly, his hands covering his ears, his eyes behind his thick horn-rimmed spectacles bugging out wider than Salinas had ever seen before. His entire body was trembling so bad that his teeth rattled…
…and to Salinas’s horror, he noticed that the soldier’s hands and the front of his fatigues were covered with blood. Blood dripped from the table, huge pools of blood were on the floor—it was the most horrendous sight he had ever seen.
“Who…who are you?” the soldier screamed, his voice screeching and uncontrolled. Through the smell of cordite hanging thickly in the air, Salinas could smell feces and urine—the smell of fear, the smell when the guilty knew they were about to meet their just punishment.
“Su repartidor,” Salinas said. “Her avenger.” He pulled the trigger on his .45 Colt and kept on pulling until the magazine was empty.
“Sir.” Salinas couldn’t hear anything through the roaring of blood pounding in his ears for several moments. “Sir.” Salinas looked up at Master Sergeant Castillo, who motioned at the woman on the table. After several long moments, Salinas holstered his pistol and looked…and his throat instantly turned dry as the desert, and his mouth dropped open in complete shock. “Mi Díos, Teniente…!”
“Get…get everyone loaded up and out of here, now,” Salinas ordered. “Get some men in here and help her up, carefully.” He turned to the sergeant major and said, “Have the dismounts meet up here on the double.” Their eyes locked, and Castillo nodded, signifying that he understood the unspoken orders.
Castillo directed four men to help the women into his Humvee, then issued orders to the dismounts when they came over to meet up with the team minutes later. Salinas slipped behind the wheel of the Humvee, waiting for the camp to be evacuated. Two shots rang out from outside the tent, but Salinas was too stunned, too horrified to notice. Within minutes, the Mexican patrols were on their way, and less than five minutes later, they were safely across the border with their precious cargo.
FARM TO MARKET (FM) ROAD 293,
JUST WEST OF PANHANDLE, TEXAS
LATER THAT NIGHT
“Rise and shine, Major.”
Jason Richter found his vision blurry, his eyelids oily, his throat dry as dust. Cold rough hands grasped his shirt and pulled him to a sitting position, which made his head spin, then throb with pain. He ran the backs of his hands across his eyes to clear the grit and dirt away, then blinked to try to focus his eyes. When he could see again…
…he was looking right into the face of Yegor Zakharov himself. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Major. I trust you had a good nap.”
“Screw you, Zakharov,” Jason murmured. He could tell he was in a moving vehicle—it looked like a passenger van, although it was too dark to tell for sure. He was seated on the bench seat behind the driver, with several other persons seated very close to him.
Zakharov motioned to one of the men, retrieved a plastic bottle of water, and tossed some water into Jason’s face; he lapped the welcome moisture up as fast as he could. The Russian terrorist was kneeling between the driver and front passenger seat, his sunglasses off, streaks of reddish-brown fluid dripping out of the empty eye socket and down his cheek. “Do not be cross with me, Jason. You are still alive, thanks to me.”
“What did you do to me, Zakharov?”
“Tiny amounts of thiopental sodium administered over the past several hours,” Zakharov said, smiling. “We have had several interesting and entertaining conversations about your Cybernetic Infantry Device. I have also learned much more than I ever wanted to know about your childhood, National Security Adviser Jefferson, your Oedipal conflict with one of your aunts, and your rather perverted sexual fantasies about Ariadna Vega.”
“Fuck you.”
“Let us get down to business, Major,” Zakharov said, his smile gone. “We know all of the commands to use with the device except the most important one: the activation command. Apparently this is the only command that only the authorized pilot can give—according to you, anyone can pilot the robot once it is activated. That is why you are still alive. You will give the activation code once we are in position.”
“I’m not giving you shit, Zakharov.”
“You may want to reconsider, Major.” Zakharov reached over and grasped the face of the person sitting next to him, pulling her into Jason’s view. “Major, meet Marta. We found Marta playing in her front yard a few towns away, and we decided to bring her with us. She is ten or eleven years old, I do not really know. We also found a few others like Marta, another girl and a boy, who we also decided to bring along with us.”
“You sick fucking bastard. Go to hell.”
“Cooperate with me, Major, and you and the children will live,” Zakharov said. “Refuse me, and you will all die. It is as simple as that.”
“There is no way I’m going to help you do anything.”
“Then you will be responsible for their deaths,” Zakharov said matter-of-factly. “Do not try to be a hero now, Richter. You have no weapons, no robots, and no support. I have your robot and the hostages. You have lost this round, plain and simple—admit it and live. I am not a child killer, but I will slaughter them if you do not cooperate with me.” Jason did not reply. “Have a little faith in the system, Richter. You are only one man. You can save the lives of these children by giving me access to the robot. My men and I will be gone, and you can return these children to their homes and families—but more important, you will live to fight another day.”
“How do I know you won’t kill us all after I give you control of the CID unit?”
“My fight is against you and your government, Richter, not these children,” Zakharov said. “As I told you, I am not a child killer, but I am a soldier, and I will do whatever it takes to complete the mission. All I offer is my word, soldier to soldier. Give me access to the robot, and I will let you take these children home. Once they are safe, our battle resumes; but I promise you your life, and theirs, until then.” He exchanged words with the driver. “You have thirty seconds to decide, Richter, and then I will order the driver to pull over into a field, and I will start killing these children in front of you.”