“Bueno,” said Barney, “Because you’re going to drive.”
Picture the gate to the Palacio as the crossbar of the letter H, with the entry through the lower half. Inside that staple-shape a surveillance camera monitored the tunnel, which was arched, almost Moorish, from a tamper-proof mount high on the left. Dark inside. There was no security door cut into the gate; it was not designed to admit pedestrians. This was for deliveries.
Outside on the street, two men walked past the tunnel entryway, the bottom of the H. One paused, apparently to light a cigarette. The other continued walking.
When Sirius and Armand had bracketed the tunnel they each tossed in smoke. Red and yellow clouds combined to form a bilious orange, rather akin to a fire without the light or heat. It clogged the tunnel in five seconds. Sirius folded himself into the artificial fog bearing a shotgun adapted to fire the smoke cartridges. His station was upper left corner, below the now-blind camera, the elbow of the bottom of the H. Armand took right corner. Karlov was on standby outside. Under his coat he wore his fabulous four-gun holster rig.
Direct approach was impossible, due to the road jog and a dirt-surfaced side road that cut through the opposing block. The tunnel was meant to be turned into, not accessed head-on. The panel van lurched over the side-road, making about forty-five before it had to grab a sharp right and sail into the tunnel, like a trick-angle shot in billiards.
Taped into the driver’s seat was Condorito, looking mildly insane, Barney’s gun barrel nestled in his occipital ditch. To external view Condorito was just another lunatic Mexican driver hopped up on goofballs and playing the road as a video game. The van went briefly airborne after clearing a rut, and two wheels left the ground on the turn. They were hammering a solid half-buck when they split the smoke in the tunnel and struck the gate.
The stanchions securing the gate ripped out of concrete and eviscerated the van’s transmission on the way through. Iron trespass teeth gutted the tires and the van nosed down sharply, grinding through on rims. The left arm of the gate flew free of its hinges and landed in the courtyard, sliding, striking sparks. The right arm banged back to fan the billow of smoke disgorging from the tunnel. The van fishtailed to a stop and sat there steaming, quickly enveloped by the smoke.
Inside the courtyard, men were yelling.
Sirius had stepped aside to let the van juggernaut past about a foot away from him. When his side of the gate vanished with a metallic clang he eeled around the corner, hugged the wall, and began to peg smokers around the perimeter. Karlov came through right behind him, quick-drawing his .40 with his good hand and potting two rounds through the chest of a sentry who was just regaining his senses enough to raise a weapon at Sirius.
On Armand’s side, the swinging gate had center-punched another guard, who was just getting to hands and knees and groping around for his Uzi on the ground. Armand’s Magnum blasted the guy into a surfer flip and he went down and stayed still.
Barney kicked out through the rear of the van as men on the second floor of the atrium opened up, full auto, on the intruder vehicle. Condorito died an inglorious death at the hands of his co-workers, shredded by bullets that vaporized the windshield, destroyed the cabin and made both him and the upholstery into floating chaff. What several hundred incoming bullets will do to an automobile — not mention the hapless bastard inside — is a minor miracle of horror.
An alarm klaxon began to bark, echoing in the courtyard, which was now fogged in with orange, then laced with green and blue as Sirius placed his smokers in what he called a “Dr. Pepper spread” — ten, two, and four o’clock.
The enemy, surprised and lacking visual targets, concentrated on the van. Barney’s team had planned how to move, and did not necessarily need to see.
Barney knew this place. His ears knew it. His memory confirmed it. The graveled pavement beneath his feet was a sense picture. He had been muscled along this very surface with his head bagged. There would come a door, a narrow hallway, an elevator. The secured rooms that served as cells. Tannenhauser’s office, brain central for the kidnapping ring. Barney remembered the toy soldiers grouped on one corner of Tannenhauser’s computer desk. He and his men were the soldiers now, coming home.
Even with the best of intel, it had been impossible to plan textbook moves such as link-up points, limits of advance, areas of responsibility or fields of fire. Knowing they had to wing it, Barney’s team stayed tight if for no other reason than to avoid shooting each other in the smokescreen.
Karlov tapped Armand on the arm and together they got a sight picture on Sirius. They married up and proceeded leftward, blasting the occasional running gunner back into the smoke. They found the east wall.
A door opened and two gunners came ready to fight. They looked up into a fusillade of bullets that hoisted one of them completely back into the building. His partner simply vanished into a billow of red smoke.
Barney materialized out of the riot of rainbow fog and pointed toward the door. None of them had uttered a syllable since the gate breach.
Inside they encountered minimal resistance. Sirius caught a frag from the wall in the forehead and instinctively returned fire with the shotgun. The orange smoke canister caught the shooter square in the noggin, almost somersaulting him backward. His MP5 skittered across the floor. As Barney stepped over him, he put a round in the guy’s ear and the man stayed still.
If this was another wrong building, at least it was full of motivated hostiles with heavy ordnance. Nobody chopped so far could be deemed an innocent.
Barney located the elevator. They set it for the third floor, lobbed in a smoker, and moved for the stairs.
When they kicked through the stairway door on the second floor and deployed right-left-up-down, muzzles everywhere, a consternated sentry flung his pistol toward them and rabbitted away.
Long corridor, five rooms, max lock.
Barney held up his pinky finger, indicating flechettes for the shotguns. Spiked brass rods instead of shot, heavy powder, used by Feds to blow door hinges from the outside. Sirius smoked the far end of the corridor while Armand turned the first door to confetti. It was a heavy wooden door, cross-barred, but once it lost its hinges it sagged like an old prom queen. Inside a child was screaming, balled into a wad in a far corner. No leg shackle. Television. It was a little girl about eight, her long hair beautiful but filthy, her coal-brown eyes dilated in terror. Barney had to slap her lightly to get her attention. “Cuidado,” he said. “Quedarse aqui, nina. Regresamos inmediatamente; vamanos ahora. ¿Entiendes?”
He had tried to say watch out, stay here little girl, we’ll be right back, we’re leaving today. No doubt it sounded like me-Tarzan you-Jane to the panicked girl, but he did not want her running out into gunfire. She seemed to grasp most of it and nodded, her eyes shining with tears. He held her face with his mutilated hand and made sure she registered the reassurance in his own gaze. Then he pointed for her to stay right where she was. “¡Permaneces!”
The alarm on his wristwatch peeped. Simultaneously, El Atrocidad’s watch would be signaling, too.
It rains a great deal in Mexico City and its outback, generally short bursts during midday in the wet season — May through October on the tierra fria. It had rained during Barney’s first visit and no doubt had rained a lot during his incarceration, although he had no memory of hearing or smelling rainfall while he was shackled. The rain, then, had not mattered or affected operations. Outside the Palacio, now, it had begun to rain...