Having someone’s head explode all over you while you are talking to them provides a jolt of astonishment that even a seasoned killer can’t instantly overcome. The few beats of disorientation can give the shooter the edge she needs, even if she has to spring up a couple of steps.
Susana was within twenty feet of Quito, and already dropped down in a shooter’s crouch before he could even pull his pistol. He raised his hands shoulder-high. Her accuracy had already been proven.
She waggled the long muzzle of the pistol at him.
Quito could not believe what he was seeing, but he knew the drill. He was careful. This woman knew all the tricks of handing over a weapon, and he didn’t want to die. Buying time, no matter what that time might hold, was every man’s first thought when faced with the prospect of instant death.
He carefully put his pistol on the floor and shoved it out of his reach without Susana even having to tell him.
“What’s the story inside?” she asked.
He didn’t bother about being clever. He had instantly calculated what it had taken for Susana to be crouching there, and he had a great deal of respect for a woman who could overcome those kinds of odds after he had just left her in the backseat of Mondragon’s Mercedes with her hands and feet tied. By his calculations, there was no one left but him and Mondragon. His other people were too far off, and not nearly as experienced at close work as the men who had already been killed.
“Baida and Bern have their hands tied,” he said.
“Where are they?”
“As you go in the door, there’s the body of the dead woman on the floor in front of you. Behind her, across the room, Bern is tied in an armchair on the left. Baida is tied in another chair on the right.”
“And Vicente?”
“I don’t know.” Quito swallowed. “But he’s not armed.”
“What’s happening in there?”
Quito swallowed again. “I don’t know, but it’s not good.”
Susana stood and, being careful not to slip on the blood and brains on the floor, moved to the doorway that opened out into the patio outside Baida’s apartment. It was still raining, but not driving like before. It had slackened a little.
She stepped on the other side of Quito to get away from the guard’s body.
“We’re going to walk across the patio to- Are there any windows on this side?”
“No.”
“Okay, then we’re going to walk across the patio to the front door. Are the lock and latch broken from your guys going in?”
Quito nodded.
“Then we can just push it open?”
Quito nodded.
“Okay. Then we’re going to stop just outside the door. No talking. You in front of me. When I tap you on the shoulder with this”-she waggled the silenced pistol again-“I want you to hit that door and charge into the room. I want you to charge Mondragon and take him to the floor. If you don’t do that the second we clear the door, I’ll kill you.”
Quito nodded. “And then what?”
“Get your hands into the air so I don’t have to think about them. Let’s go.”
Quito stepped over the body of the guard, and Susana followed him out into the rain. They crossed the patio in the drizzle. By now, Susana had been soaked through and through several times, but she didn’t even know it. She was concentrating on the precise movements she would make as she entered the room.
At the front door, Quito paused as instructed. Susana looked over his shoulders at the door latch. It was splintered apart, as he had said, and she could tell the door was slightly ajar. Good.
She tapped Quito on the shoulder.
His arms went up, and he burst though the door, slamming it back against the wall as Susana followed him in, as close behind him as she could get.
After what seemed an eternity of muted and pitiful squealing, Baida had finally passed out, and for the last quarter hour Bern had alternately watched and turned away from Mondragon cutting away at Baida’s face. About half of it was gone. And Mondragon hadn’t spared the lips.
At the moment Quito burst in, Mondragon was beginning a new flay line under the left side of Baida’s jaw. He spun around just in time to catch the full impact of Quito’s body, which took both of them off their feet and sent them crashing into the dining table behind Baida’s armchair.
Susana snatched the butcher knife off the floor and swung around and swiped the blade through the plastic ties around Bern’s feet and hands. She thrust the Sig Sauer into his hands, then swung around again as she leveled her pistol at Quito and Mondragon, who were scrambling to their feet near the overturned table.
Bern quickly ripped off his gag and blurted, “Guns on the table!”
Susana knew instantly what the calculating Quito had done, and she yelled at him: “Don’t do it! No! No!”
But Quito stepped out from behind Mondragon, swinging up the pistol that Baida had given Bern.
Again, Bern heard the same smacking sound that he had heard when Quito’s men shot Carleta de Leon, and Quito slammed back against the dining room wall with only half his head.
Susana then turned her pistol on Mondragon, who froze.
It was only then that Bern looked again at Baida. He was aghast to see blood spurting out of the side of Baida’s throat. Quito had burst in at exactly the wrong moment, and Mondragon’s knife hand had flinched… or had he had the presence of mind to be deliberate about it?
Bern lunged over to Baida and slapped his hand over the wound and held it there, reminding himself not to choke him to death trying to stanch the hemorrhage. By now, both pieces of the sheet that had been wrapped around Baida’s shoulder and leg were thoroughly saturated and were seeping blood. And, of course, his face was gored with blood from Mondragon’s hacking lacerations.
Bern couldn’t believe it. He was frantic, glancing around the room, not even knowing what he was looking for, just some answer… some answer.
“Jude,” Susana snapped, unaware of what she was calling him in the adrenaline rush of the moment, “has he talked?”
“No!”
“Nothing? You don’t know anything?”
“No!” Bern released the pressure and the blood swelled through his fingers like a fresh spring. Baida seemed to be in shock, or in a coma. Shit, thought Bern. He couldn’t tell which, didn’t know how to tell. Ghazi hadn’t had the benefit of the anesthetizing drugs that Mondragon had mentioned having had during his ordeal. His right eye was closed, but the lidless one was motionless and gazed outward to infinity. If it saw anything at all, it saw an apocalyptic vision; Bern was sure of it.
Again, irrationally, Bern eased up on his hand and was surprised to see that the flow of blood was subsiding.
“Oh!” he said. “God.” Hopeful, he lifted his hand some more. The blood still came, but it was seeping, and even that was subsiding. “Shit! Good, good!”
“Jude,” Susana said again, trying to get his attention, and then she caught herself, but before she spoke again, she saw that Bern already had begun to realize that Baida was dead.
Remaining on his knees, Bern knelt there awhile-he didn’t know how long-and stared at Ghazi Baida. He looked at the half-flayed face of a terrorist and a drug trafficker, the face of hatred and fear. The face of hopelessness. The face of a man.
Bern slowly got off his knees, turned around, and looked at Susana. She hadn’t moved an inch. She hadn’t-not even for a second-taken her eyes off Vicente Mondragon.
“Stay right there,” Bern said to her.
He walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, the way he had seen Mondragon go to get the knife. He went to the sink and washed his hands under the faucet and then bent down and washed the blood and brains of Carleta de Leon off his face and neck. Methodically, he soaped his hands, lathered them, and then soaped his face. Then he rinsed off his face and hands, and washed the woman and Ghazi Baida down the drain.
He dried his hands and his face with a towel that he got off a hook on the side of the cabinet, and then he hung the towel back on the hook. He returned to the living room and picked up the Sig Sauer that was on the floor beside Baida’s chair.
He gave the gun to Susana, who seemed to intuit everything perfectly, as if they were sharing the same mind. She held both pistols on Mondragon until Bern took the one with the sound suppressor from her. He walked over to Mondragon.
The two men looked at each other. Bern remembered the first time he saw Mondragon, the sad, hideous spectacle of his disfigurement. He remembered how Mondragon had challenged him to look his fill, to get his morbid curiosity out of his system so that they could move on to more important things. More important things. God, if Bern had only known then.
“Did you know what we were trying to do?” Bern asked. “Did you know what Ghazi Baida was going to give us?”
Mondragon seemed to hesitate. It was strange, but even without a face, he seemed to convey a sense of defiance, an imperious attitude of self-absorption that swept aside everything that got in its way. Nothing was more important to Vicente Mondragon than his own outrageous suffering, suffering that he knew would not end until he drew his last breath, suffering that could never be revenged enough, not even at the price of ten thousand lives. His grief for himself was insatiable.
“Ghazi Baida was a fucking liar,” Mondragon said.
Bern raised the pistol and shot him in the front of his head.