Cartel (35 page)

Father Rodrigo stood behind the fallen man, holding the big Colt .45 revolver in his fist. A tendril of smoke rose from the muzzle.

The priest waved the big Colt in a come here motion and shouted "Follow me."

"Donde esta Rosalita?" Benny said.

But Rodrigo had already turned around and was clam-bering through the gaping hole the hand grenade had blown in the wall. Scott motioned for Benny and Victoria to follow him. Then he ran after Rodrigo, squeezing his daughter close and clutching the Beretta pistol.

"Who is he?" Victoria shouted as she trailed Scott. "He looks like a priest."

Scott didn't answer.

He scrambled through the hole in the wall carrying Sa-mantha, then stood in the narrow alley and reached back to help his wife and son. Benny climbed out last.

Night had fallen and the alley was shrouded in dark-ness.

Rodrigo was waiting for them. Benny grabbed his arm. "Donde esta mija!" Where is my daughter!

Rodrigo nodded down the alley. He glanced at Scott, then looked back at his niece and said in English, "Rosalita is safe. She's in the rectory. But we have to hurry." He turned and loped down the alley. Everyone else followed him.

At the end of the alley, Rodrigo stopped and peeked around the corner. He held his Colt revolver ready. Benny squeezed up next to him.

Scott set Samantha down, and Victoria did the same with Jake. Both children grabbed onto their mother's hands. Scott dropped to one knee and spoke to his kids. "Whatever happens, hold on tight to your mom. Move when she moves. Stop when she stops. Stay quiet. I promise you I'm going to get us all home. Do you understand?"

They nodded. Scott stood and laid a hand on his wife's shoulder. "We're going to be fine. Just stick close to me."

Victoria nodded at Rodrigo and Benny and whispered. "Who are these people?"

"They're friends," Scott said. "They're trying to help us."

Scott turned around and edged up beside Rodrigo and Benny. He popped the magazine out of the Beretta. There were three holes spaced vertically along the back of the magazine. The top hole had the number "5" engraved beside it, the middle hole had "10," and the bottom hole had "15." If the head of a cartridge was visible in any of the holes, it meant you had at least that many rounds left. Scott only saw a cartridge in the "5" hole. The other two were empty. Which meant he had at least five rounds left in the maga-zine, maybe as many as nine, plus one in the chamber. Ten rounds max. He shoved the magazine back into the pistol and held it in a two-handed combat grip.

Rodrigo looked back at him and nodded. Then the priest stepped out of the alley. Scott followed with his family close behind him and Benny trailing them as rear security.

As soon as Scott stepped away from the alley, he saw a narrow wooden door standing open at the back of the main church building. He covered it with his pistol. "What's through that door?" Scott whispered to Rodrigo. Scott was thinking of Jones and G.I. Joe and how fast they had disap-peared.

"The sacristy," the priest said. "Sort of a storage room behind the altar."

A few more steps took them to the rectory. The heavy wooden door with its iron fittings made a formidable barrier, Scott thought, and the small viewing portal could be used as a firing port. Rodrigo shoved a huge key into the old lock and turned it. He pushed the door open, then stepped back and motioned the others inside. Scott stepped aside to let Victoria and the children go first. Then he nodded at Benny to follow them.

As Benny stepped across the threshold, a bullet smacked against the door and Scott heard a sharp crack behind him. He turned and saw the muzzle flash of a second shot come from inside the open door at the back of the church.

Scott and Rodrigo fired simultaneously at the unseen gunman. There were more flashes inside the dark church and more bullets slammed into the door behind them.

Rodrigo's revolver clicked on an empty chamber.

"Go," Scott shouted. "I'll cover you."

Rodrigo turned and ran through the door.

Scott fired twice more. Then the slide on the Beretta locked back. The gun was empty and he didn't have another magazine.

"Come on," Rodrigo shouted.

Scott spun around and charged through the door just before Rodrigo slammed it shut. Then the priest shot home the thick iron bolt.

"Are we trapped?" Victoria asked. Her voice was high and strained, on the edge of panic. She wrapped her arms protectively around Jake and Samantha.

"That's a solid door," Rodrigo said. Then, as if to prove his point, a bullet thudded against the outside.

"But they can get through it eventually," Victoria said.

Rodrigo flipped open the cylinder of the Colt revolver and dumped the six spent shell casings on the floor. "We won't be here that long," he said as he grabbed a handful of .45 cartridges from the wicker basket beside the door and re-loaded the Colt. He snapped the cylinder closed and shoved the rest of the cartridges into one of his front pockets.

Victoria wasn't convinced. "How are we going to-"

Scott laid a hand on her arm. "Victoria."

She looked at him.

"We're going to get out of this," Scott said.

After a few seconds she nodded.

Benny was gone. Scott turned to Rodrigo. "Where's Benny?"

Rodrigo pointed through the den into the kitchen.

Scott led his wife and children into the kitchen, where Benny was on her knees hugging her daughter. Benny turned when she heard them enter. Tears were running down her face. "She's all right," Benny said, her voice choked with emotion. "My little girl is all right."

"We have to go," Rodrigo said.

"The priest hole?" Scott said.

Rodrigo nodded.

"What's a...priest hole?" Victoria asked.

"An escape tunnel," Scott said.

Rodrigo pulled open a narrow door that revealed a pan-try not much bigger than a phone booth. Shelves filled with dry goods and canned food lined the walls. A hand-woven rug covered the tile floor. Rodrigo yanked the rug aside. Be-neath the rug lay a square of wood, two feet by two feet, that fit into a hole cut in the tiles.

Victoria stared at the trapdoor, her eyes wide with fear. "Where does that go?"

Scott looked at Rodrigo. He hoped the tunnel at least went somewhere and wasn't a dead end.

"A hundred years ago there was a farm behind this church," Rodrigo said. "The tunnel used to lead to a barn about two hundred meters away."

"And now?" Scott asked.

"I don't know."

"Is there a way out?"

Rodrigo shrugged.

Something heavy banged against the front door.

Rodrigo stared at the trapdoor. It had been almost twenty years since the last time he was down there. Since Benetta was a little girl. He didn't even store wine there anymore and had forgotten about it until she mentioned it last night.

The trapdoor had a narrow slot cut into its center, just big enough for a man to slip his fingers into. Rodrigo reached into the slot and pulled the trapdoor up. It wasn't hinged and he lifted it straight out and leaned it against the pantry wall. Beneath the floor, an old wooden ladder led down into a dark hole.

Another heavy bang sounded against the front door.

"Is there a light?" the American woman asked.

There had been no time for introductions, but Rodrigo assumed the American woman was Scott Greene's wife and the two children were his also. Rodrigo reached up and found an aluminum flashlight on one of the shelves. He flipped the switch. Nothing happened. He banged it against the palm of his hand a couple of times. The light came on, but it was weak. He handed the flashlight to the gringa.

She took the light from him but shook her head. "I'm not going first."

"Yes, you are," Greene said. "You, Jake, then the girls. Then Benny and Father Rodrigo. I'll go last."

Whatever was slamming against the front door did it again.

"I...can't," the woman whispered, pleading with her husband. "You know how I am with tight-"

There was a burst of gunfire outside and the sound of splintering wood in the den. The American woman screamed. All three children started crying. Whoever was outside was trying to shoot through the door and shatter the lock. But the "lock" was, in fact, an old iron bar. It would hold them off for a few more minutes.

"Go!" the American shouted at his wife, and this time she did as she was told. Holding the flashlight in one hand, she squeezed through the opening in the tile floor and climbed down the old ladder.

The hole was eight feet deep. She reached the bottom and looked up. In the dim glow of the flashlight, Rodrigo could see the fear on her face but also the determination. "It's not so bad," she said, holding up a hand. "Come on, Jake. Show your sister and...Show them how to do it."

The boy glanced at his father. "Her name is Rosalita," Green said. "And your mom is right. Show the girls how good a climber you are."

With that, the boy scampered down the ladder just as more blows hammered the front door. Greene then held his daughter by her wrists and lowered her down as far as he could before dropping her into her mother's arms. Rosalita didn't wait to be lowered. She scuttled down just as fast as the boy had. Rodrigo smiled. His niece was a tomboy, just like her mother.

He looked at Benetta. "Vete," he said. Go. "Vete de aqui." Get out of here.

"Usted primero," she said. You first.

"Estare detras de ti." I'll be right behind you.

More gunshots at the front door.

Rodrigo jabbed a finger at the hole. "Vete," Go. "Vete ya!" Go now.

Benetta climbed down the ladder.

More banging against the front door. Then it crashed open.

Rodrigo turned to the DEA agent. "You go. I'll hold them."

The American shook his head. "I can't do that."

"We can't all make it."

More gunshots echoed through the rectory. Whoever had broken down the door wasn't taking any chances. They were shooting first.

"Save your family," Rodrigo said. "And my niece and grandniece."

The American hesitated.

"Go," Rodrigo said. "I've made my peace with God."

Scott Greene opened his mouth to say something. But he didn't. He just nodded. Then he climbed down the lad-der.

Rodrigo pushed the trapdoor back into place and cov-ered it with the rug. He heard footsteps in the den. He stood in the narrow pantry doorway and waited.

* * * *

To Scott, the sound of the trapdoor dropping back into place overhead was like that of a coffin lid closing.

The tunnel wasn't quite six feet tall. Scott had to stoop. And it was narrow, only about two feet wide. His shoulders touched both sides. With the trapdoor closed, the darkness was almost total. It pressed in on them from all sides, and the old flashlight Rodrigo had given Victoria didn't do much to beat it back.

"Where's tío?" Benny said.

Scott looked at her in the dim light. "He stayed be-hind."

"No." Benny tried to push past him to get to the ladder.

Scott held her back. "It's what he wanted."

Struggling against him, she said, "He can't stay."

"He's trying to buy us time. And we're wasting it."

She stopped struggling.

As he released her, Scott said, "We need to go."

Benny closed her eyes and a tear ran down her cheek.

Victoria laid a hand on Benny's arm and held out the flashlight to her. "Can you lead us to the other end?"

Benny took the flashlight and nodded. Still holding the pistol in her other hand, she wiped her face on her sleeve, then squeezed past the children and took the lead. Rosalita followed her, but Jake and Samantha stood still. Both looked at Scott. "Go," he said. "And stay close."

Rodrigo saw two Los Zetas gunmen step into the kitchen, both carrying M-16s. The second one through the door was limping. The right leg of his tracksuit was torn and stained with blood. The other one seemed unhurt. Then Humberto Larios walked in behind them. He was dirty. His left ear was bleeding, and the blood had run down his neck and stained the collar and shoulder of his tan guayabera shirt. In his hand he clutched a pistol.

For a moment the Los Zetas didn't see Rodrigo, dressed in black and standing in the darkened pantry. He aimed the big revolver at the three men and cocked the hammer slowly, so they could hear it, so that each click of the cocking mech-anism echoed across the tile floor. The Colt was a double-action revolver and didn't need the hammer cocked to fire, but the sound it made, the steady clicks of smoothly ratchet-ing steel on steel, especially in the silence of the rectory, was unmistakable.

It sounded like death.

The men stopped.

"Drop your weapons and leave," Rodrigo said. "And you may go in peace."

"Where are they?" Larios said. "Where did you hide them? If you tell me now, I might let them live. But if I have to find them myself, I'm going to fuck that little girl right in front of you and then make you watch while I feed her and her whore of a mother to my pigs."

"No, you're not."

"How are you going to stop me, priest?"

Rodrigo switched the revolver to his left hand but kept it aimed at the cartel leader. "I wasn't always a priest."

Larios smiled. "What were you, an altar boy? Some old priest's play toy?"

Rodrigo didn't answer. Instead, he reached out with his right hand and made the sign of the cross. As he did so, he spoke in Latin, "Requiescant in pace." May they rest in peace. Then in Spanish, he said, "Vaya con Dios." Go with God. His left hand was steady as he pulled the trigger.

His first shot hit Larios in the center of his chest. The feared Los Zetas leader crumpled to the floor with a hole the size of an American quarter punched straight through his heart. The two gunmen swung their rifles up and opened fire, but their weapons were set on full-automatic and their first bursts went wide.

Rodrigo squeezed the trigger again. The man with the injured leg went down next, after a .45-caliber bullet ripped through his neck and blew out a piece of his spine. Then several bullets from the last gunman's M-16 cut across Ro-drigo's belly, hitting him low and punching into his pelvis. Rodrigo sat down hard on the tile floor.