Barney sprawled on his side, gasping, his eyes staying on the gun even though his vision was hazed and occluded. Or had Sirius let off another grenade? Didn’t matter. Put your hand on that pistol.
Still sucking draughts of oxygen laced with green smoke, Barney pulled the .45 free of Sucio’s pants. Sucio was trying to crabwalk himself toward the far wall, his metabolism blowing fuses, his blood flooding out to soak the floor.
Barney snapped the action of the semi-auto to chamber his first thank you to the man who had meant so much to him.
After steadying himself against the wall, Barney pushed off like a swimmer and emptied the magazine into Sucio’s chest at point blank range.
Contrary to entrenched cliché and what nitwits repeatedly say on the evening news, shots do not “ring out,” and anybody who tells you they do has never heard gunfire. Report is more akin to the startlement of a heavy door slammed by a gust of wind; you know how that makes you jump, and no matter how prepared you think you are, the sound always comes as a surprise. It stops time for a millisecond and obliterates all other sound. Ignition and launch of a bullet evacuates the air from around your head in a phenomenon called blowback. If you’re not ready for it, the noise jump-starts the human fight-or-flight reflex in some small primitive corner of the brain. You freeze momentarily until the gunshot allows the rest of the world to come back. Once you’ve gotten past that first shot, subsequent shots are easy — you can even make them without blinking because your mind has processed that initial speed-stop, which no way, nohow, never in history, “rings out.”
Pink, frothy lung-blood was slobbering from Sucio’s mouth. Barney could see the tiny lights in the man’s eyes, fading to black.
Blood was coursing from both of Barney’s hands, oozing past the snugs on the shooting gloves. His new hands would always be limited in certain ways. But they could still give Sucio the finger, which was the last thing he saw before he died.
Then the corridor filled up with shouting men in Mexican wrestling masks, and Barney knew the cavalry had arrived.
Karlov was dead.
He had breathed his last after pumping the final rounds of his .357 into Sucio, from where he had slumped on the floor of the room with the naked lady in it. His body armor had shielded him from all the hits in the hallway except for the one wild, heavy-caliber shot from Zefir, which angled in by sheer chance to slam his femoral artery so hard that it ruptured beneath the skin. All the time he was calming the rape victim, helping Barney, and holding up his end of the assault, he was hemorrhaging, and he finally ran dry. Internal bleeding left his leg completely black.
Their guns were literally too hot to holster.
Barney’s plan was to alert El Atrocidad and his men as soon as the assault commenced. By the time they could rally and storm the Palacio, the shooting would be done... and the masked superstars of lucha libre could take credit for rescuing thirty or more hostages. It should have come as no surprise that the wrestlers were standing by and eager to jump; they showed up early by Barney’s wristwatch, and got to pound a few criminal heads in the deal. The most astonishing part was that they showed up in costume — flamboyant spandex, filigreed masks and boots for stomping. A couple had sequined capes. Flecha de Jalisco was wearing a gray business suit and tie, but with the sleeves ripped off due to his gunshot wound. These men were accustomed to fighting in their sacred masks, and barreled into the Palacio practically foaming to take on all comers with a hysterical bravery that would make you think it was a pay-per-view event.
Armand had discovered Flecha’s son Almirante locked in a third floor room, west wing. The boy’s fingers were all intact. One more day and the merch might have devalued enough for the kidnappers to begin lopping parts.
Some bad guy stragglers caught the worst of it, getting flung two stories down, hammered until they were raw meat, or centered in a kicking contest by two or three luchadors. No way this fighting was fake, and the blood was more real than ever.
All the masked men thought Barney was el campeon de justicia, and Atrocidad told him so.
“But that is not the reason you do this.” El Atrocidad winked at Barney from the depths of his green, vinyl-flamed mask, his grin like a grille, his face like the front end of a Chevy low-rider. “The champion of justice, that is part of the lucha libre leyendo, the legend. You do this thing and want no one to know it is you, except those you punish.”
“I’m no hero,” said Barney. His throat was still scoured and aching. Breathing hurt. “I’ve killed unarmed men. I’ve lied and bushwhacked them for no other reason than revenge.”
“You might think that,” said Atrocidad. “You might even talk yourself into believing it. But I know better. You came back to Mexico for a right reason, correcto, ¿no?”
There would never be any way to explain it to the big goateed man.
If El Atrocidad was exuberant, Flecha de Jalisco was gushing, effusive, verging on tears, and who was Barney to say the man’s gratitude was not deep and genuine? He had reclaimed his son from the forces of evil men. But Barney could not take much more gruff good cheer in the name of justice.
What now? During the mop-up, everybody looked to Barney as though he was some kind of leader, and all Barney could look at was the lifeless form of his good friend Karlov, lost thanks to his vendetta.
“Now?” said Barney. “What now? We get the hell outta Dodge before the news trucks show up. But first we have to give them a show. Once El Atrocidad and his men get the hostages clear, we burn this fucking place to the ground, to ashes. If Tannenhauser isn’t here, then there’s nothing left. His scumbag army are all dead or fled. One thing — I want to find the room. The room. The burning starts there.”
“Yeah, well before you go all pyromaniacal on us,” said Sirius, “I’ve got a guy handcuffed to a water pipe up on Three you might want to have a word with. Over next to the computer room.”
Barney just wanted to sleep. Post-combat metabolic flush, when your adrenalin has cooked away, is opiate in its draining effect. Sirius told him more, but it washed over Barney, who clumped along, unhearing.
Seeing the guy Sirius had detained woke Barney up doublequick.
“Saaay, amigo!” said the battered man braceleted to the immovable pipework. “It’s you! They kill you and you don’t die, eh? Or are you el espectro, a ghost come to visit his havoc on earth? Amigo! What a pleasure to see you!”
“Mojica,” said Barney. “You’re Mojica.”
“Aha, see?!” The shaved dome of the too-fervent, murine man was leaking nervous sweat. His trademark mirrorshades were trampled on the floor. “Remember I told you I help you get out? And you got out! You remember me, eh? You remember that I help you so this maricon don’t shoot me?” His introduction to Sirius had not been amicable.
“I’ll shoot you myself,” said Barney, “if you don’t tell me where El Chingon is. Tannenhauser. Whatever that stick-up-the-ass animal calls himself.”
The entire front of Sirius’ face crumpled together in a frown. “You know this dude?”