“Deion? Are you hit?” Nancy yelled.
He peeked around the car, bullets pinging and ricocheting, as the man in the car peppered his location. He saw the backs of the two Arabic men running down an aisle of cars before they turned the corner and were gone. He hated to admit it but Eric was right, things had spiraled out of control. “Roger, meet up with Martin. Block the exit.”
“We’ve got another car,” Martin breathed. “And another one.”
In the distance, Deion heard gunfire, a mix of different weapons, and knew the operation had gone to shit.
The wiry man stopped firing. Deion glanced around the corner and saw the man get back in the Crown Vic, rev the engine, then throw it into gear and plow diagonally into the pile of cars where Nancy hid. He jumped out and sprayed the car with gunfire, but it was too late. The stack collapsed backwards.
“Nancy!” He rushed forward and yanked open the door to the Crown Vic, only to find the wiry man a bloody mess, shredded by his MP5SD. The smell of death stuck in the back of his throat, and he choked on the smell.
“Deion?” Nancy yelled from the stack of cars. “I’m stuck. I’m in the floorboards of a car on the bottom. I can’t get out!”
Thank Christ. “Hang on,” he hollered. “You’re safe for now. I’ve got to help Roger and Taylor.”
“Don’t you dare leave me, you asshole!”
I’m going to catch hell for this. “Just sit tight, I’ll be back in a minute.” He pictured the junkyard from overhead, the way he remembered it from the drone video, then ran toward the front.
He heard more gunfire.
“Man down,” Martin gasped.
Man down?
“Deion,” Eric said. “Fall back and regroup. You can’t stop them if you’re dead.”
“Martin, get your ass to the south east, near the entrance.” He waited, but there was no acknowledgment. “Martin?” He threw caution to the wind, racing down the empty row of cars and turned the corner, almost stumbling over Roger’s body.
He was too late. Roger’s head was slick with blood, a clump of hair dangling from the back, and when he turned him over he saw the small hole in his cheek. The bullet had gone slightly to the left of Roger’s nose, under the eye, and exited through the back of the head.
Fuck!
He didn’t have time to mourn. As he stood, he heard a noise behind. He turned as the older Arabic man fired at him with an AK-47, the younger Arabic man joining in. In a flash of insight, Deion wondered whether the older man was Abdullah.
The bullets slammed into his chest, like a sledgehammer, and his world erupted in pain before everything went black.
Abdullah wasn’t surprised by the man’s unwillingness to sell them the caesium. The two Federal agents were another matter. He watched as Jakobs was cut down in a bloody hail of gunfire, and then the woman opened fire on the bald man, killing him instantly.
Ahmed grabbed the AK-47’s from the Camry and yelled at Abdullah to run.
He was stunned, but Ahmed’s voice broke the spell and he tore off through the junkyard, leaving the gunfire behind. If they were captured, his plans would be for naught. He heard Ahmed yelling behind him and he stopped to let Ahmed catch up and hand him one of the AK-47’s.
They ran through the stacks of cars until they came to the entrance. The scene was chaos. Several Latino men lay on the ground, their bodies riddled with bullet-holes. Two cars had entered and were now abandoned as a group of Latino men fired at a lanky black man with a bullet-proof vest like the other Federal agents. The agent ran between the junk, bullets pinging madly around him, but was hit by the combined gunfire and fell to the ground.
He recognized the dark blue Taurus, and saw Manny standing next to it, eyes wide, raising a semi-automatic pistol. Abdullah beat him to it, pulling the trigger on his AK-47, the gun barking in his hands. Manny screamed and dove to the side, barely escaping as the bullets chewed up the ground where he had stood.
Before he could aim, Ahmed shoved him out of the way and dropped to his knee, firing at Manny. Ahmed missed, but caught several of the men in the chest. They fell, and Ahmed took the opportunity to yank Abdullah up by his shirt and they headed back through the junkyard, seeking shelter.
As they rounded a corner, a white man with thin black hair and a bulletproof vest burst through. Abdullah pulled the trigger on his AK-47, and the man’s eyes widened, one of the bullets catching him in the face. The man’s head snapped back and he dropped like a stone, lifeless.
Ahmed grabbed his arm. “Hide,” he hissed. Abdullah saw a rusted metal fuel tank, cut in half, and he ran to it, pulling Ahmed with him. They took shelter behind the tank just in time as the first Federal agent rounded the corner and stumbled over his teammate’s body.
Abdullah pressed against the tank, then carefully eased around the side, his denim shirt catching against the rusted steel. The Federal agent was hunched over, checking his teammates body, and Abdullah aimed, slowly and with great care. The man stood and turned as Abdullah emptied his gun into the man.
The agent staggered forward, then sprawled over his teammate’s corpse.
He turned to Ahmed, who stood wide-eyed. “We have to get the caesium.”
Ahmed shook his head. “We must leave.”
“Allah is protecting us.” He saw the fear in Ahmed’s face and smiled. “We have not come this far to give up.”
Ahmed nodded and they headed back to the middle of the junkyard. As they approached the pickup truck, they heard the roar of an engine. The Taurus spun around the corner and he registered Manny in the driver’s seat, his face contorted in rage, as the car blew past. The driver spun around the next corner, moving too fast to stop, then they heard the car’s tires sliding through the loose rock and the squealing impact of metal-on-metal.
He spied a stack of oxygen tanks not far away. He pointed to them. “Help me!”
Ahmed nodded and they ran to the tanks. Abdullah grabbed the top of the first brown cylinder. “Lift on the bottom,” he commanded.
With Ahmed’s help he set the oxygen tank on a car frame and Abdullah searched wildly until he found a sledge hammer with a broken handle.
There was a squealing of metal and the engine roared as the Taurus backed around the corner, front tires spraying rock. Abdullah motioned for Ahmed to duck. When the car was next to them, Abdullah stood and swung the hammer, knocking the valve assembly off. With a mighty whoosh the tank shot forward, striking the car in the driver’s side, smashing the door like a tin can, then bouncing off. It spun wildly, bouncing around the aisle, knocking into car frames, finally coming to rest in the dirt.
Ahmed emptied his AK-47 into the car. Manny screamed as the bullets tore through him, his screams turning to wet gurgles. Ahmed’s gun ran empty and he stopped, panting from adrenaline and exhaustion.
Abdullah calmly emptied the rest of his AK-47 into the passenger, Rafael, the short Latino man who helped ferry him through the underground tunnel in Nogales. The little man jerked to the rhythm of the gunfire, then slumped forward, blood staining his white undershirt.
Abdullah turned at the approaching footsteps. His gun was empty, so he held it by the barrel, like a club. When Darrell came around the corner, Abdullah took a deep breath and smiled.
“We have to go,” Darrell shouted. “It’s a war in here. The cops will be here any minute.”
They hurried back to the F-150. They heard a woman’s screams from a collapsed stack of cars.
“What about her?” Darrell asked.
Abdullah shook his head. “She’s trapped like a rat in a cage. Leave her.”
Darrell nodded and searched Jakobs’s pants for the keys, then started to the driver’s side of the truck.