“Agreed, but we have noncombatants up here. I don’t want some fucking kid catching a stray round. We’ll stop on the third floor landing, and hopefully catch them coming up.”
While Avery kept his M4 angled down the stairwell, trained at the third floor landing, Aguilar stepped over to the apartment door and pounded his fist against it. In Spanish, he shouted out, “Get in the fucking bathtub and stay down!”
A woman’s voice yelled something back, but Aguilar had already walked away and came back up beside Avery.
“Ready?” Aguilar asked Avery.
They could hear wooden stairs creaking under the weight of footfalls coming up.
“Let’s do this.”
Aiming their rifles on down angles, they descended the eight steps onto the landing, stopped there, and stacked up against the wall, pointing their barrels down the next section of stairs. They could hear the rowdy voices and footsteps of men coming up the stairs from below.
Avery swung his rifle left, aiming down the second floor hallway, ensuring it was clear. He next selected an M84 stun grenade from his vest. He snapped off the pull ring and squeezed the safety lever in his right hand, while Aguilar dropped onto one knee, three feet from Avery’s side, covering him with his Galil.
Avery gave the M84 a curved throw, tossing it around the corner and down the stairs.
A voice shouted in Spanish and was cut off by the thunderous, 180 decibel concussion of the grenade’s detonation.
Even from behind the corner and through clenched eyes, Avery saw the radiant flash of bright white. He felt the walls shake around him and the floor shudder beneath his feet.
“Go!” Avery shouted.
He and Aguilar readied their rifles and stepped around the corner.
A black Empresa shooter opened fire immediately with his Uzi. He sprayed blindly, his rounds going high above Avery’s and Aguilar’s heads, drilling the walls and ceiling. Avery sighted his target and tapped his trigger twice.
Another blind, disorientated Empresa man staggered into a wall, lost his footing, and fell over onto the second floor landing. Aguilar aimed low and stitched him in his exposed upper back and shoulders. The body twitched with each hit, and splashes of blood rooster-tailed into the air as the 5.56mm bullets passed through him.
The gunshots were amplified within the tight confines of the stairwell. Ejected shell casings arced through the air, rolled, and clattered down the stairs.
Two more Empresa were caught on the second floor landing, on a six-foot downward slope from Avery and Aguilar. One had his M16 raised and waved it left to right while he blinked his eyes madly, trying desperately to restore his vision. The other had his rifle aimed upward as he bent over and reached down with his free hand to feel for what had just landed in front of him, unaware it was the body of the man Aguilar just shot.
Avery and Aguilar instantly acquired their targets and fired simultaneously before either Empresa knew what hit him. The bodies became piled up at the bottom of the stairs.
Avery and Aguilar continued down the stairs, stepping over the bloody bodies and turning the corner of the second floor landing onto the stairs going onto the ground floor. A gray smoke haze hung in the air, carrying the stench of nitroglycerin and graphite.
Two more Empresa waited on the ground floor. Upon seeing the American and Colombian operators appear on the second floor landing, one managed to get off a burst from his M16 that went too low and bore through the stairs beneath Avery’s feet.
Avery fired back too fast, missing his target, before he and Aguilar retreated back behind the corner of the landing, where Avery pulled his remaining M84 from his vest. He tugged the ring and let the grenade fly around the corner, down into the first floor foyer. They waited for the detonation, and charged back around the corner, following their rifles down the stairs.
One Empresa shooter had been standing too close to the grenade when it went off, and the bottom of his pant leg was on fire. He tried desperately to put it out, presenting an easy target, and Avery shot him through the top of his head, splitting the skull like a melon and spilling blood over the floor.
Avery stepped clear of the stairs with Aguilar behind him.
There were two more shooters in the foyer. One was far back, near the front doors, and seemed unfazed by the stun grenade. He had his AK shouldered and hit the trigger the second he saw Avery emerge from the stairwell. Avery sidestepped right as he came into the foyer, out of the way of the 7.62mm, so close he could feel the shots streak past him through the air, and he shot the Empresa man three times in the chest and once in the head.
Coming into the foyer right behind Avery, Aguilar took out the remaining Empresa attacker, who had dropped his rifle, his eyes unfocused and flickering madly, and was now on his knees with his hands held up in the air in a futile show of surrender.
They swept the rest of the ground floor, and a raspy, wheezing cough caught Avery’s attention. He followed the sound to its source and crouched down to flip over a body. A wounded Colombian stared up at him, bleeding rapidly from the hole in his chest. His body felt like limp, deadweight, but he still clung to his Uzi. Avery pulled the gun out of the Colombians hand and tossed it aside.
“Fucking gringo pigs,” the man breathed. He spit blood onto Avery’s pant leg. “Bunch of fucking pussies.”
Avery took a couple steps back. Aiming low from three feet away, he discharged a single shot into the Colombian’s crotch. Blood exploded across the Colombian’s lap, and he screamed uncontrollably. After kicking away a nearby M16 to ensure there were no weapons within reach, Avery turned and walked away, leaving the gangbanger to painfully bleed out.
With Aguilar, he proceeded out the side door, and headed into the alley. Additional gunfire sounded around them as the DEA team continued to hold off the Empresa and Diego laid out more fire from the rooftop above.
Avery and Aguilar leap-frogged the length of the alley to the building where the DEA agents were held up, and Avery alerted Layton over the radio that they’d be coming in through the back in about one minute. He gave Layton a description of what he and Aguilar were wearing. Layton acknowledged, relief in his voice, and urged them to hurry.
The alley was narrow. Brightly colored, crudely rendered graffiti decorated the walls of the buildings. All manner of trash littered the ground, pouring out of overfilled and overturned receptacles.
Approaching the target from the alley, two Empresa men were crouched down firing into the blown-out open spaces of the building’s door and windows. Turning a corner, Aguilar saw them first, their backs to him, and he held up a hand to warn Avery and signal him to slow down.
Avery took Aguilar’s cue, saw the shooters, shouldered his M4, and drilled one of them through the back, just below the neck, from thirty-five feet away, severing the spinal column. As the body went immediately limp and collapsed, like someone flipped his off switch, his partner started to turn around, leading with his rifle. He was too slow, unable to bring his weapon to bear before Aguilar’s finger tapped his Galil’s trigger twice, hitting him in the eye and cheek, blowing out the side of his head.
Avery scanned their surroundings — it was clear — and contemplated his next course of action. Now that they were here, they still needed a means of escape, otherwise they’d quickly become pinned down alongside the DEA agents.
“I’m going to secure us transportation to the LZ,” he told Aguilar. “Layton has too many wounded to move out on foot, and the Empresa will overrun us anyway if we stay around too long. Stay with Layton’s team until I get back, and tell Diego to be ready to move.”
Aguilar set a new magazine into the bottom well of his Galil, and asked, “You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own?”