She turned her head to the side, giving the appearance that she didn’t want to look at him, but really, she was making sure the road was clear. The other gunman from the road sauntered toward her. He wore a tight T-shirt and a similar gold chain but his had the Blessed Virgin hanging from the bottom, a strange bit of irony to say the least. A blue bandana covered his face from the nose down. As the two in the truck cabs finished their task, got out, and waited eagerly for more instructions, she could see they also wore similar disguises.
“How do you want to do this?” the approaching gunman asked. His weapon hung at his hip.
“I get her first,” tank top answered. “We’ll use the closest truck’s tailgate. You can go second.”
The other one snorted. “Why do I get seconds?”
“Because I found her first. Besides, no one wants to go after you.”
As they joked, Adriana subtly eased her hand to the weapon stuffed in the back of her shorts. She kept it there and waited for the right moment.
The two laughed, and tank top returned his attention to Adriana’s shorts. His fingers played with the button for a few seconds until it came loose. He licked his lips and started to pull on the zipper. As he did, his gun fell loosely to the side.
Adriana’s right hand moved like a flash of lightning. She whipped her pistol around and squeezed the trigger as the barrel passed in front of the man’s head. The blast splattered blood on the other gunman’s face. His reaction was immediate but hampered with shock at what had just happened. Before he could raise his weapon, she turned her gun to the right and put a round in the front of his skull from such close range that it exited out the back. The first victim dropped to his knees and toppled over on his side. The other fell backward, his head smacking against the asphalt.
In one, smooth movement, she tucked her pistol back in her shorts, stepped over to tank top, scooped up his weapon, and pulled the slide. The other men saw what happened, but one had left his gun in the truck and the other’s was propped against a tire.
The latter reached for the rifle, but Adriana was already taking aim as she stalked in front of the Land Cruiser’s headlights. Her barrel blazed with rapid, thunderous booms. Hot rounds sparked on the pavement, exploded in the dust, and pierced the tire and exterior of the truck bed. As the target lifted his gun, he spun around and took a round in the leg, stomach, and chest. He never got off a shot before falling to the ground prostrate, his face landing like a bag of sand.
Adriana trained the gun to the left. The last man had turned and started running for the cab of his pickup truck. She tracked him, keeping the sights a few feet ahead of him, and opened fire. The rifle blasted again. Metal rounds zipped by the man, one or two ripped through the side of the truck,but none of them hit the target before the weapon clicked, signaling the magazine was empty. She kept striding toward the parked pickup truck as the man started up the engine. Adriana reached back, grabbed her pistol from her shorts again, and took aim, nearing the third body as she unloaded the entire magazine in less than six seconds. One of the rounds pierced the rear window, sending a spiderweb crack through the glass. The other rounds struck the tailgate or the rear side of the cabin, but again, none found their mark.
Her quarry shifted the truck into gear and spun his tires on the gravel and dirt on the road’s shoulder. The vehicle fishtailed as he steered it out onto the asphalt, but he corrected it and gunned it, trying to make his escape.
Adriana kept walking, dropped her pistol on the ground in frustration, and leaned over while moving to pick up the fallen gangster’s weapon. She hefted it quickly and pulled back on the slide, taking aim at the truck as it sped away. He was almost out of range, thirty yards and gaining every second. She kept her sights on the headrest on the driver’s side and let out a deep breath before squeezing the trigger one more time.
The weapon thundered,and a split second later the rear window had a new hole, right behind the headrest. The driver slumped forward onto the wheel, and the truck jerked left, veering off the road and slamming into a sandy hill.
She took a few deep breaths and looked around at the carnage. Dropping the gun next to the body, Adriana picked up the pace and walked quickly back toward the SUV. She reached down, grabbed her pistol, and ejected the magazine, wishing she’d brought more than a couple extras after this encounter.
The sun was almost completely gone now, leaving a pale, peach-colored sky on the horizon. She stepped over the two bodies that lay close to the Land Cruiser, slid back in the seat, and sped away.
If those really were Sanchez’s or Espinoza’s men and they were on the clock, someone would be looking for them in the next few hours. If they were out there on their own just trying to pillage for their own pockets, it could be as late as the next morning before the cartel found out about what happened. Either way, Adriana knew that word would get back to him before the party. That would mean heightened security, and everyone going into the mansion would likely get an extra set of hands searching for weapons.
She’d have to find another way to get her gun and knife inside. Hiding the tools of her trade, the lock pick and the other items,would be easy enough. They’d fit in a bra and wouldn’t register on a metal detector since they were ceramic. Angrily, she mashed on the gas pedal, and the SUV lurched ahead faster. If those idiots hadn’t got in the way, this whole thing would be simpler.She knew she didn’t have a choice. They had to be killed. It wasn’t like she’d killed innocents. They were drug dealers, gangsters, murderers, and rapists. No trace of guilt or trouble touched her mind in that regard. The only regrets that lingered were that now the mission had just got a lot trickier.
20
Allyson sat on a plush couch next to a rounded edge of the pool behind Jorge Sanchez’s fifteen-thousand-square-foot art deco home. A pergola with white sail fabric usually covered the wooden beams, but with the sun gone for the evening, Sanchez’s men had pulled it away so they could get a better view of the stars. He sat close, propped up on one arm as he stared at her. She gazed up at the stars.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked, swirling a glass of red wine in one hand.
“It’s breathtaking,” she said.
Sanchez’s home was perched on a hillside around ten miles outside of Guadalajara. Off to the east, the city’s lights polluted the sky and blotted out many of the stars. Only the moon’s bright light could challenge the growing city.
Out here, though, in the countryside, away from all the faux illumination, the stars shone bright. Even a trace of the Milky Way could be seen above, a thin mist that stretched through the sky from one horizon to the next.
“It helps to be at a higher elevation,” he explained. “We are on a small mountain here, and Guadalajara is around five thousand feet above sea level. That elevation takes much of the pollution out of the air and clears the view.”
She was impressed with his accent and his appreciation of the scenery. She’d played him like a drum so far, being flirty enough to be attainable yet coy enough to keep him guessing. And Sanchez had moved to every beat. Allyson knew that moving too quickly into a conversation about drugs and bringing them into the United States would be hasty and could end in disaster. So she kept things casual at first, letting the evening’s discussions progress naturally.
“Growing up in the city, I didn’t get to see stars like this very often.” She volunteered a piece of her past with ease. It wouldn’t hurt to mingle her fake story with a little truth. She found doing so almost always made the entire ruse much easier to perform when some of the details were real. Occasionally, keeping a string of too many lies together could come unraveled with one misstep.