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Booth swore. The round ricocheted off the waist-high concrete wall behind him and grazed his lower-right leg. It hurt, but he couldn't pay it any mind or the thugs who were so happily spraying bullets at him would get an advantage. He popped up, Glock 10mm in hand and let off two rounds at one of the Hispanic gentleman firing at him. He dropped back down before he heard the thug cry out and scream something angrily in Spanish. Booth guessed he got the guy.

He'd been doing surveillance on a drug cartel middle-management type who he had pegged as responsible for three corpses found shot execution style. That's when the guy and his thug bodyguards decided to pay him a visit. He was now in the parking lot of a mini-mall, crouched behind the last of the six or so cars parked in a row. Behind him was the waist high wall. The nice gentlemen had one known weapon each, a Tech-9 large capacity semi-automatic pistol. One of them was altered so that it would fire full-auto.

A burst of automatic fire sprayed the car and the wall behind him as the last bits of safety glass in the front passenger window fell on top of him. He hadn't had time to radio for back-up before the firefight started and he was not about to try fishing his cell out of his pocket. Hopefully one of the neighbors would call the cops. He mentally counted how many more he had in the magazine If he was right, which he was sure he was, he had seven shots left. Six in the clip and one chambered. He decided he would try and gain ground on the guys. He crossed himself and got ready.

He broke from behind the car, gun up, panning the area. He stayed as low as possible while running. He fired off a few rounds to keep the goons down for a second as he skidded to the ground behind the second car. He caught his breath and popped up again, loosing off two shots at the thug he had hit earlier; there was blood coming out of the guy's muscled left arm. He fired two more. His aim was good. The man crumpled in a heap, two rounds right in the center of his chest. He was gone. The other thug yelled something in Spanish as the car Booth was behind shook with the force of the rounds hitting it.

A car skidded to a stop out of his field of view and men jumped out. They were saying/yelling something in Spanish. Right as Booth was about to pop his head up to see what was happening, the ground started exploding all around him. He recognized the signature sound of the rifle without seeing it. From the sound of it, he was being fired upon by three separate Ak-47s. He swore. He was cut off from backup, engaged by three Ak-47s, and wasn't wearing his vest. He was hoping the 7.56mm rounds weren't the Teflon coated Tungsten round sometimes favored by these cartels. If they were, the car he was behind, any car for that matter, wouldn't do him any good.

He was caught between two choices, stay and fight, or run. If he ran he had a good chance of getting several new body orifices. If he stayed he had an even better chance of getting shot. He decided to try an obviously pointed tactic for the second time.

"This is the FBI! You are all under arrest! Drop your weapons, put your hands in the air, and surrender!"

One of the thugs replied in English. "Fuck you pig!"

"That takes care of that," Booth mumbled to himself.

There was a pause in the fire at him and he heard the sound of weapons being reloaded. He also heard the faint scream of sirens. He popped up and fired on the group. There were now four combatants, three men with the Ak-47s and the guy with the full-auto Tech-9. He opened fire, dropping the Tech-9 guy and one of the remaining three. He wounded another before he flew back into cover as they started shooting again.

The sound of the sirens got closer. One of them yelled something in Spanish and they took off running. Booth leaped from cover and took out after them. He fired two rounds as he went, but though they were close, neither hit. Booth didn't want to risk firing as he ran for fear he would miss and hit a civilian. One of them turned and fired before Booth could stop running to get off a better shot.

Three rifle reports filled the air along with a roar of agony as Booth fell.