Hancock, meanwhile, had been moving along a rooftop on the opposite side of the street when Vaught opened up. He heard the grenade explode and saw the flashes of Vaught firing on full automatic. But by the time he got the Barrett unslung, Vaught had disappeared behind a large plastic water tank called a tinaco. So he set the bipod of the giant rifle on a ventilation duct and waited for Vaught to reemerge on the opposite side. When he didn’t reappear, he began to suspect he’d been spotted.
Vaught stood with his back against the tinaco, indeed having spotted a shadowy figure on the far roof. Confident he’d come within a breath of having his guts blown out, he tapped on the tinaco with his knuckle to make sure it was full of water, which would stop even an armor piercing round from coming all the way through.
The cannon across the street went off a few seconds later, and he felt the impact of the round reverberate through the tank. Water began leaking out onto the roof — and not from one hole but two. Hancock had shot the side of the tinaco near the bottom, leaving entrance and exit holes no more than six inches apart.
A second shot boomed out, and water began running out from two more holes.
“How much water you got over there?” the sniper shouted.
Vaught wasn’t sure, but he doubted the tank held more than three hundred gallons. The great gun went off again, and two more holes appeared on the opposite side.
After a fourth shot, water was literally gushing from the tank.
“Goddamn, that’s gotta be scary!” Hancock taunted, his laughter carrying over the distant echo of the battle being fought on the east side of town. “Two minutes from now, you’ll be dead!”
Vaught sank into a deep crouch against the side of the tinaco, measuring the distance to the next rooftop, where a three-foot-high parapet encircled the edge. But the truth was that even if he made it to the next roof, Hancock’s armor piercing rounds would easily defeat the simple clay-brick and mortar parapet, which had not been built with the intention of stopping antiaircraft bullets.
“The bastard’s right,” he muttered, thumping the muzzle of the rifle against his forehead in frustration. He double-checked the distance to the south, back the way he’d come, where the parapet was thicker, but the distance was twice as far.
Then he remembered the smoke grenade in his trouser pocket. “Dumb-ass!” he hissed at himself, pulling the grenade and popping smoke on the north side of the tinaco.
“You’ll still never make it!” Hancock shouted. “Too far!”
Vaught jumped out on the south side of the tank where there was no smoke, firing the grenade launcher and pulling back.
The grenade detonated, and he took off north through the smoke, sprinting across the roof and vaulting the thin parapet to run clean across to the next building and into a concrete cupola encasing a stairwell.
Hancock, covered in mortar dust, sat up behind the air duct and rested back on his hands, a loud ringing in is ears.
“Clever prick,” he muttered, spitting out bits of grit.
He got back behind the Barrett and saw the smoke dissipating over the far rooftop. His prey had escaped — but only for the moment. He used his phone to call the men below, ordering them to hunt Vaught at street level.
The narcos in the street fired an RPG through the door of the building into which Vaught had escaped and stormed inside.
Vaught heard the explosion and started back up the stairs. Hiding inside the cupola, he waited and fired on the first shadows to appear below, killing three men and forcing back the rest.
Vicious threats were called up to him, but he ignored them. He did not step out onto the roof, believing that Hancock would burn him down the second he showed himself.
Knowing he had the angle on the men below and plenty of ammo to keep them at bay for the time being, he was content with a standoff.
“We’ll let the situation develop,” he said quietly, crouching down and tucking a pinch of tobacco into his lip. “Good shape here … good shape.”
82
Chief Diego Guerrero had the makings of a disaster on his hands, and he didn’t need Special Forces training to see it. His force was outgunned and outnumbered at least two to one. He’d tried calling again for federal assistance, but the phone lines were down, and the enemy had managed to knock out cellular service as well. He supposed they had destroyed the cell towers, a common tactic.
Wounded men were being brought into the coffee shop by twos and threes now, leaving blood all over the place. One machine gun emplacement had already been hit by an RPG from the roof of the bank, and the enemy was moving in and out of their perimeter almost at will. There were no more motorized patrols. The trucks that weren’t burning were being used to move or provide cover for the wounded.
“There’s no more word from Sergeant Cuevas,” said another sergeant, tossing aside the radio. “They must be dead.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Diego said. “We’re going to lose the city. There are too many of them. And with the rockets …” He shook his head. “I’ve failed. It’s time to consider surrender.”
“Surrender?” the sergeant blurted. “Are you crazy? They’ll line us up and shoot us!”
Diego shook his head. “No. Only me. I will offer my life in exchange for yours. Ruvalcaba is smart enough to see the sense in sparing the men. A slaughter will only make it more difficult for him to buy friends in the government.”
The sergeant, a man named José, pointed out the window. “Ruvalcaba’s not out there! He’s probably hundreds of miles from here! Do you think you can negotiate with wild animals?”
Diego was calm. “What choice do I have but to try, José? The men will certainly be killed otherwise — all of them.”
“Then let them die fighting,” José insisted. “Not stood up against a wall!”
Diego looked around at the almost twenty bleeding men crowding the coffee shop, many of them barely conscious. “What do you men think?”
“We fight on,” one of them said. He gestured with a pistol. “Or we kill ourselves.”
“No surrender,” said another.
“Never surrender!”
“Never!”
The others nodded in stubborn agreement.
“Very well,” Diego said. “Then we will fight.” He accepted a carbine from an officer too badly wounded to walk and collected his spare magazines. “Let’s go, Sergeant. Our Calvary awaits.”
They ducked outside and darted across the square to the nearest machine gun emplacement.
Diego took a knee beside the gunner as bullets flew through the trees over their heads. “How much ammunition do you have?”
“After this belt, one box,” the officer said. “We’re going to lose the square, Jefe. You should take a truck and try to get through to the capital. Someone has to tell what happened here.”
Diego patted him on the back. “That will be a story for someone else to tell. I will never abandon you men.”
The officer squeezed the trigger, putting a burst into a parked car where a couple of narcos had just taken cover. One of the narcos sprawled out dead, and the other scurried back around the corner of the bank.
“There!” José exclaimed, pointing above the courthouse. “I saw a man with an RPG.”
Diego looked around. His men were pulled into a protective perimeter in the town square, using their trucks, as well as park benches, statues, and trees, for cover. He estimated that half his force was dead or wounded. “Let’s go,” he said to José. “We have to kill the man with the rocket.”