Constant Fear (27 page)

CHAPTER 47

N
avigating the darkness like an experienced spelunker, Jake returned to the intersection where the tunnel’s distinct sections converged. From his ankle holster, he removed the Glock and pulled the tang of the firing pin toward the rear of the slide to make sure the gun was ready to shoot. He holstered the Glock. The gun would come out later. Above his head, Jake was aware of the sturdy, insulated electrical and communication cables that ran along the ceiling.

The ceiling here was about eight feet high, and Jake’s outstretched arms acted as an antenna of sorts that helped him to feel where to grab. His fingers were soon wrapped around a bundle of thick, industrial-strength cables from which he now dangled.

He gave a solid tug, testing to see if it could hold his body weight. Satisfied, Jake engaged his upper-body strength to hoist himself up. He swung his legs behind him, so he was facing the floor, and wrapped his ankles around the cables to secure him in place. If Solomon could see him, Jake would look like a fly caught in a monster spider’s web.

To his credit, Solomon was quiet as a church mouse. Everything was perfectly still down here. The silence would eventually lure these men toward his ambush. Sure enough, Jake’s ears picked up the sound of feet scuffing across the concrete floor. The pace of footsteps quickened, less cautious, more brazen. They were coming, and coming fast.

Jake retrieved the Glock from its holster. That fraction of movement was enough to cause the cables supporting his weight to go slack. He dropped maybe half a foot. He heard a groaning sound, an indication the fasteners holding the cables were starting to give.

Ahead of him, not too far away, Jake saw the first flash of light bounce off the tunnel walls. Without warning, Jake felt a second sensation of falling before the slack cables became taut again. Jake’s body jolted violently at the end of his free fall.

Though he had dropped another several inches, Jake was still high off the ground and would be able to take his pursuers by surprise. But the fasteners that held him suspended in midair were one big breath away from becoming completely dislodged. The sound of footsteps rumbled in Jake’s ears. For the first time, he heard a man speak.

Two men emerged directly in front of Jake, no more than ten feet away. In one hand, they held flashlights; in the other, they carried large-caliber handguns—Glocks as well, 37s, super-advanced, big-bore technology, power-packed firearms in a compact frame. They slung rifles over their shoulders.

These men were clearly prepared to take over the school by force, so it was no surprise to Jake they came equipped and carried flashlights. Those lights illuminated a thin and muscular man, with a horribly scarred face, in the lead, followed by a tank of a man in the rear. As they approached the intersection where the tunnel angles changed, they moved with caution—the way a marine might cut through a jungle stitched with trip wire. Something had put them on guard. Those flashlights canvassed the tunnel area, the walls, but not the ceiling, and soon settled on the Kevlar some sixty feet away.

Jake took aim with his Glock, when the cables sagged again. The groan of those fasteners coming loose sent his nerves crackling. He couldn’t move, certainly couldn’t shoot without dislodging the cables supporting him.

“¿Qué es eso, Efren?”
the scar-faced man said.

Jake had heard the name before.

Scar Face fired an indiscriminate shot down the tunnel at the Kevlar. The blast was earsplitting at such close range. Gunpowder scented the air.

Oh, God!
Jake thought.
Was Solomon hit? Did the Kevlar protect him?
Impossible to say. But Jake couldn’t let them shoot again, so he fired off a single shot, which entered Scar Face’s skull and never came out. The now-dead man’s eyes rolled back into his head as his knees gave out. At the same instant, the already-brittle concrete holding those fasteners in place broke loose from the ceiling with a sharp crack. Entangled in cables, Jake plummeted straight to the ground and landed with a loud sound. It was the sound that flesh makes when it smacks concrete. The gun dislodged from Jake’s hand upon impact.

Efren froze. Shock. Surprise. Both. Jake fought to get air into his lungs. The flashlight that had been in Scar Face’s hand was now on the ground and lit the tunnel enough for Jake to see his remaining opponent.

Efren’s white tank top had collected so much grime it looked like something dragged out of a fireplace, but it showed off arms with muscles that protruded like baseballs sewn under the skin. The big man had a head like an anvil, and Jake figured he’d shatter the bones of his hand if he hit him wrong. But Jake wasn’t about to punch his face. This monster sweated aggression and his expression was that of a rabid dog’s.

Jake’s Glock had skirted out of reach; so without fully recovering, he unsheathed his knife and sprung from the ground. His swipe was aimed for Efren’s gun hand. Had he got there a split second sooner, it would have found flesh. Instead, Efren yanked his hand away, and twisted at the waist as if executing some advanced dance move.

A fraction of a second later, Efren unleashed two quick strikes, which rattled Jake’s kidneys and produced the kind of lightning pain that turned vision white. Close-quarters combat was not ideal for gunplay, but the butt of the Glock worked fine as a club, and Efren brought the weapon down hard against the side of Jake’s head.

Jake could do little but hit the ground face-first; and thanks to the stunning blow, his arms didn’t get the message from his brain to brace for impact. Jake’s chin smacked against the concrete floor and snapped his jaws together with enough force to crack several teeth. At least he managed to keep hold of the knife. A heavy boot came down against Jake’s ribs and something went haywire inside. The boot found his side again, and it was a repeat of the earlier earthquake to his body.

Mustering his remaining strength, Jake flipped onto his back and flung the knife at his attacker. He’d had enough knife-throwing practice to hit pay dirt, but the blade sank into the meatiest part of Efren’s thigh. To Jake’s dismay, the huge man’s face showed not the slightest indication of pain. But the contact provided enough of a distraction for Jake to reach his Glock.

No sooner had Jake produced his weapon than the hulk fired his gun.

At first, Jake didn’t know what to feel. When he tried to squeeze off a shot of his own, nothing happened. Then the pain came with the intensity of a speeding train. Warm blood oozed out a sizable hole in Jake’s hand, where a bullet had gone through.

Efren fired again, but Jake rolled to his right, just in time, and that bullet missed by inches. Jake’s Glock didn’t roll with him. No way to hold on to the gun with most of the bones in his hand shattered.

Jake was on his back, scrambling to get away. Efren lurched forward and took aim with his weapon. He straddled Jake, but he didn’t shoot. Instead, he set his boot down hard on Jake’s bloodied hand and applied tremendous pressure. The screams that blew out of Jake’s throat were hardly human. Efren grinned.

With his right hand still pinned under Efren’s boot, Jake ignored the pain as he lifted part of his body off the ground. Reaching with his left hand, he seized the handle of the knife protruding from the Goliath’s leg and gave a hard yank. The razor-sharp blade sliced through muscle and tendon as if cutting air. Jake opened a gash that extended the length of the thigh. Efren fired his weapon, but the discharge went toward the ceiling as his big body fell toward the ground.

With his hand freed from the boot, Jake scrambled to his feet and jumped onto Efren’s back to try and pin him down. The monster bucked and thrashed beneath him, but could not get Jake dislodged. Reaching with his left hand, his good hand, Jake yanked down a slack portion of cable and wrapped it like a noose around the man’s beefy neck. With the cable secured, Jake pushed his knees into Efren’s back as he pulled with his arm.

Underneath him, the hulking man went wild. His enormous body thrashed in every conceivable direction. With each thrust, each twist, Jake tightened his grip on the cable, and through gritted teeth pulled on it like a horse’s reins. Maybe it was thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. But at some point, all that bucking, and thrashing, and moving about just stopped.

Breathless, Jake slid off the dead man, clutching at his bleeding hand. He retrieved the flashlight from nearby and examined his wound, a nasty red hole ringed black with gunpowder. The bullet had passed clean through, but the hand was useless to him now.

Jake took off his shirt and used the fabric to stanch the blood flow. He staggered over to Solomon and, with the flashlight, saw where a bullet had struck the Kevlar. Jake pulled the makeshift shield away to reveal Solomon’s panic-stricken face.

“I did it,” Solomon said. “I kept quiet. I kept quiet.”

The boy’s cheek was red and bruised, marking the spot on the Kevlar where the bullet had struck.

“Yeah, you did it,” Jake said in a shaky voice.

Jake’s body was covered in blood, dirt, grime, and smeared greasepaint from his camouflage, but Solomon took no notice. Relief radiated off the boy like light from a star. The good vibes didn’t last long. Jake’s ears filled with sounds of footsteps and gunshots. The third man was coming, and fast. Light from one of the dropped flashlights revealed the location of Jake’s Glock. He took a wobbly step toward the gun. It seemed so far away. Jake felt completely enervated, and his breathing bordered on hyperventilation. Pain commanded every nerve in his body. Even if he reached the gun, Jake hadn’t trained at weak-hand shooting.

“Get that shield back up,” Jake said to Solomon. His voice came out lacking authority. Solomon got his protection back in place.

Jake assessed the probability of his getting to the gun before this armed man appeared and started shooting. It was somewhere between zero and none. The shirt wrapped around Jake’s injured hand was already heavy with his blood. His vision came in and out of focus. He was going to lose consciousness at some point, he could feel it, and those footsteps were getting louder. But Solomon’s body blocked the only way out.

Jake swallowed hard and took another uneven step toward his weapon. From behind, Solomon shouted, “Hey! Hey!”

Jake spun around just as Solomon vanished into the hole. Somebody must have grabbed his legs and used tremendous force to yank him through. A second later, Andy, flashlight in hand, poked his head through the opening where Solomon had been stuck.

“Dad!” Andy yelled. “Let’s get out of here. It’s go time.”

Jake didn’t need a second invitation. He spun around and slid through the narrow opening just as a hail of bullets came screaming from the darkness.

CHAPTER 48

F
austo Garza stepped over the lifeless bodies of Efren and Armando so he could take aim at the man at the end of the hall. Rage owned him. The mission was gone; he had nothing left to salvage.

Fausto did not know how many fighters his team had gone up against. Five? Had to be that number, at least. His entire team was dead, that much he knew. He also knew that he had followed the wrong path. While Efren and Armando went to investigate the commotion they heard, Fausto followed the other trail, thinking they could have split up. He wasn’t sure what had made him turn around. Instinct, perhaps. At some point, he knew he had fallen for a trick and so he returned.

As this played out, Fausto contemplated his options. They were limited. He could hide in the tunnels, but eventually he’d be found. They’d bring dogs down that would sniff him out like a fox in the hunt. He could try to escape into the woods, but he could be caught. The response from law enforcement would be intense, massive. The game was over, but there remained one thing for Fausto to accomplish.

Efren’s and Armando’s bodies meant nothing to him. They were just carcasses, pieces of meat. What mattered to Fausto was whoever had put them down. He would shoot at anybody he found down here. Though bullets to the body would not provide much satisfaction. He’d prefer to flay those responsible alive. No matter what happened, Fausto would not be taken into custody. Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He would go out in a fiery blaze of bullets, like the outlaw he believed himself to be. He was born into a world of violence and death, and he refused to leave it any other way.

But a question burned in his mind, one he did not know would ever be answered:
What happened to Soto’s money?

The kids would have given it up if they had it, Fausto believed. He had guns to their heads. The countdown was no joke. The money really
was
gone. Soto would take over from here. He would keep up the hunt and never rest. Money was like air to that man—it kept him alive.

Fausto leveled his assault rifle and uncorked a flurry of bullets that would have taken out the knees, had the man up ahead not vanished through a narrow opening. Fausto screamed with rage and sent a volley of gunfire into the concrete. Some of them might have flown through that hole, but Fausto had a feeling his bullets hadn’t killed anybody.

And so the chase was on.

 

“Go! Go! Go!” Jake screamed as he shoved Solomon hard from behind to hurry the boy along.

He had no weapon and no plan but to flee from his pursuer as fast as possible. Jake was well aware his son had just saved their lives. But that was seconds in the past, and irrelevant now. They were sprinting once again; this time, Andy, with flashlight in hand, was taking the lead. The blood-soaked shirt functioned as a pretty decent makeshift bandage, but the pain in Jake’s hand was brutal and throbbing. It pulsed with its own beating heart.

From behind, Jake heard the crack of gunfire and felt a burning sensation tear up the back of his leg. A sharp, stinging pain followed. The force of the bullet’s impact knocked him down as if a baseball bat had struck him from behind. Lurching as he fell, Jake skidded on the ground, jarring his shoulder painfully on impact.

Andy whirled and saw his father splayed on the ground behind Solomon.

As he stumbled back to his feet, Jake screamed, “Run! Run!”

From the dark, Jake heard a taunting voice call, “Did I hit you? I hope so! I have plenty more where that came from!”

Andy came toward his father, but Solomon went the opposite direction and vanished into darkness. Jake understood why. Somebody was coming up behind them.

Andy aimed the Ruger at the hole they’d just crawled through and fired enough times to empty the magazine. The hole was a good twenty meters away, but it looked like Andy shot with tremendous accuracy. The ringing in Jake’s ears was now as persistent as the throbbing in his hand. Andy helped his father to his feet. The bullet had just grazed the back of Jake’s leg. He was hobbled, but could walk.

Making their way in the darkness, Jake and Andy caught up with Solomon just before they came to a tunnel branch on the left, which led to the exit under the Terry Science Center. Andy was first to go that way. For a moment, no bullets came at them. Whoever was in pursuit had slowed. Even if someone did fire at them, they were safe unless the ammunition happened to be smart enough to make a sharp left turn.

Shirtless, sweating, covered in filth, blood, and violent-looking scratches, Jake’s chest heaved as he fought to take in as much air as possible.

“The others?” Jake asked as he removed his belt. He quickly secured the belt around his injured leg as a second makeshift tourniquet.

“Safe,” Andy said. “They went into the woods, and I came back to look for you.”

“You and Solomon get out of here, take the exit,” Jake said.

“No, I’m staying with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“That’s Fausto,” Andy said in a shaky voice. “I heard his voice. He’s the worst of them all, Dad. Please don’t stay. You can’t fight. You can’t shoot. Let’s get out of here.”

“He’ll follow you. All of us. We can’t risk it. You’ve done enough, son. Get going. Now!” Jake barked the command.

Andy flinched a little. They had no time for arguing. This was about survival, and Andy listened and understood. He and Solomon took the exit, but they left Jake with the flashlight. Jake used that light to watch them go. When they were out of sight, he emerged from the relative safety of the branch and returned to the main tunnel. Only one target remained.

Fausto.

Jake would not leave this final job to the government or to law enforcement. He trusted no one but himself. Nobody from the cartel could leave this place alive. The only way to safeguard his son, and the others, was to protect their identities. If Fausto had yet to pass that information along to his boss, then the last man who knew them by name was coming this way.

Jake slipped out from the tunnel branch and was on the move again. He walked loudly, and as he went, he smeared on the walls the blood that seeped from his injured hand. There would be no question which path to follow.

 

Fausto wasn’t going to waste ammunition. He could fire at that opening until all his bullets were gone, but it would accomplish nothing. No, he had to go through the hole in the wall, same as the others. If anybody waited in ambush, he would make an easy target, but retreat was not an option. Caution was tempered somewhat by blind fury. He went in headfirst, shooting rounds from his rifle to provide some cover, and emerged from the hole into a section of tunnel dark as the others. His flashlight allowed him to see somewhat, but the rifle was useless to him. He couldn’t fire effectively one-handed. His pistol would have to do. Fausto’s prized gun was his Glock 37, with gold accents and mother-of-pearl grips. The gun was a totem to the pistol Carlos lent him back in Ciudad Juárez many years ago—the one that Fausto had used to commit his first murder.

Fausto paused and took stock of his surroundings. Nothing ahead looked unusual. No sounds. No signs of life. He proceeded at a cautious pace. At one point, he checked the pistol’s magazine and saw only six shots left, plus one chambered round. He was down to one magazine for his assault rifle, and seven shots in the Glock.

Fausto heard footsteps; sound carried well down here and he discharged two bullets in what surely was a wasted effort. He set off at a quick pace, and it was not long before he came upon the blood smeared along the tunnel wall. He saw a branch to his right, but he followed the blood, expecting the trail to vanish. It did not. It continued. It wasn’t like the fabric or crushed flare that had tricked him before. Something human had left this stain. Fausto imagined an injured man using the wall to keep himself propped up, and the notion pleased him.

He followed the trail of blood like a shark tracking an injured fish.