Chapter Eighteen
Waiting for Death
He crept in the direction of the building, making sure to move the jungle around him as little as possible. Glimpses of grey concrete ahead and above him kept him on track.
His senses hyperalert, he spotted what anyone else would have missed. A trip wire. Cautious, he followed it to where it triggered the detonator on a primitive dynamite pack. El shook his head in amazement. The eternal damp of the jungle made it anyone's guess if the thing would even work. What's more, he wondered how often the wildlife or the wind set it off. He remembered what Sands had said about the kind of place the kids find while playing, and his jaw tightened. The impassable jungle made the location remote, but, in terms of simple distance, the cache was not that far from the city. Obviously these people didn't care if they blew an innocent to pieces.
He decided he would allow himself to enjoy killing them.
Too bad he had no way to warn his watchdogs about the trip wires. Shame, really.
Rather than being slowed by his find, El moved more quickly toward the bunker, avoiding putting his feet anywhere he couldn't see completely. He needed to be in position when the first explosion came.
He reached the edge of the cleared area, and saw the building: featureless except for small slits like archers' niches in forts, so the defenders could shoot without exposing themselves. The door was made of heavy steel set in the reinforced concrete walls. It stood partially open. In the cleared area in front of the door, someone had built thick barricades of sandbags for cover. Interesting. Bullets hitting sand made no shrapnel, unlike bullets hitting anything more substantial.
Still, El was not impressed. Heavy enough firepower could shoot through the sandbags, automatic fire or even shotgun blasts could shred the bags, and the barricades were only as high as a man's shoulder. Apparently the Orozcos had never climbed trees when they were children.
El selected his tree and scaled it agilely, alert for further traps. Then he waited.
It seemed a long wait, but El was sure that even if his watchdogs didn't get curious enough to come in closer, they'd have to come eventually, to determine if he had cut out on them or not. There was something diabolical about waiting calmly for someone to die a gruesome death, and El made a mental note to bring it up to his confessor if he got the chance.
An explosion finally rocked the area, almost directly opposite El's position to one side of the door. A man screamed with agony. Perfect. El had begun to wonder if the dynamite was all too damp.
Two men burst through the door and threw themselves behind the barricades, facing away from El. They carried not only automatics, but larger weapons El couldn't identify. One of them positioned the barrel of this larger gun on top of a barricade.
El shot each of them in the head or chest.
Time to move. There would be more shooters inside.
El leaped to the ground, just as a very high caliber rifle shot exploded the tree trunk where he had been. Someone inside was cool-headed and a good shot. Good to know.
He moved swiftly around the perimeter of the building's clearing, away from the explosion, toward the back.
A third man rolled out the door, and positioned himself behind the barricade on El's side of the clearing. The man snatched one of the large weapons from one of the dead men, and positioned it on top of the barricade, pointed at El's previous position. Now at ground level, El had no shot at him. El took cover and waited to see what the immense barrel would shoot.
Flames.
The weapon shot a stream of some kind of fuel, ignited. It might have been more effective had the vegetation not been wet. Or had it actually been aimed at where El was.
Under cover of the mighty distraction of the flamethrower, El broke cover and raced, head low, to just on the other side of the barricade from the man. He moved to below where the flames had been, popped up over the wall of sandbags, and fired.
Blood covered him. He had shot the man in the throat. Very messy.
He returned to the cover of the jungle and continued his maneuvering around to the back of the bunker, stepping over more trip wires as he went. The back of the building had no openings at all, he found. The builders had only allowed assault from the front. Of course, that meant the back of the building was blind.
El adjusted his spurs, created his grappling hook, and scaled the back of the bunker. He ran across the roof as quietly as he could to the front and lay down on his stomach.
This next part would rely heavily on his injured hands, so El took a moment to steel himself for the pain. He changed guns, setting this new one on semi-automatic. Then he slid over the side of the roof, hanging by one hand, and fired into one of the window slits. He shot in every direction he could reach by twisting his wrist. The hand supporting him screamed its objections, and his firing hand was hard pressed to hold position against the bursts from the gun.
In pain, El found he wasn't strong enough to pull himself back up to the roof. He was forced to drop down among the bodies behind the barricades. He'd be a sitting duck for anyone inside as soon as they were brave enough to approach the window slit again. He got to his feet, appropriated three guns from the dead guards and slid right in front of the locked door, pressed against it. The depth and narrowness of the "windows" ensured no one inside could see far enough to the side to see the door.
He caught his breath and nursed his throbbing hands, waiting for someone to get curious and open the door.
A long time passed.
An even longer time passed.
El usually had no trouble using patience as a tactic, but he was hot and sticky with blood. He was surprised that the Delgado thugs had not appeared, but then remembered they were probably frozen in fear of the trip wires.
Finally, bored, El slid alongside the building, away from the firing slits, and around a corner. He then re-entered the jungle, cautious, and went looking for his watchdogs. Someone whistled, and El followed the sound. He found Fat Man.
"Those motherfuckers!" the man exclaimed. "They've rigged explosives all over the god-damned jungle! One of them killed Dominguez!"
"So sorry to hear that," El said, dryly.
"You . . . you knew. You're walking around here like it's nothing. This is your fault!"
"Balls," El said. "I'm just not afraid to die. If you want your cocaine, you're going to have to blow up the door."
He watched as Fat Man struggled with his fury and fear and his desire to place blame for his compatriot's grisly death. El remembered there had been screaming after the explosion, and wondered for a moment how long it had taken Dominguez to die.
"They've turtled into their building," El reminded him, "and probably called for help. We don't have a lot of time."
Actually El had only just thought of that. Damn. They were only a few minutes by air from Villahermosa.
"I'm not touching this shit," declared Fat Man. He unslung a backpack from his shoulders and shoved it at El. "You blow the door."
"Work, work, work," said El, accepting the backpack.