Page 2 of Inez

"Moving," Lorenzo says, entering the warehouse and standing tall behind me, his MP5 barking in rapid three-round bursts. Further along the nearest wall is a stack of semi-truck tires. I sprint for the relative cover of the tire stacks as rounds chew up concrete at my heels, and then the tires thunk hollowly.

I drop to a knee and drop a tango with a burst that craters his chest. Bodies lay in writhing piles. Lorenzo is reloading. I see an enemy trying to flank us so he can get a bead on one of us. I send a burst over Lorenzo's head—close enough that he jerks when the rounds buzz and snap.

We work in effortless concert, then, firing while the other takes cover.

Two, perhaps three minutes total have elapsed since I kicked in the door, those handful of seconds elapsing in a stretchy, fast-slow wobble.

Death stinks.

Screams echo:

"Ayuda me!"

"Mama!"

"¡Está La Víbora!"

A door clangs open somewhere at the rear of the warehouse, and the sudden silence is deafening.

"Get them," I snap to Lorenzo. "No survivors. No prisoners."

He doesn't respond, only jogs across the warehouse while reloading. I watch him pause in the doorway, assessing the rearyard before trotting out after the escaping tangos. I hear his MP5 chatter once, twice, three times.

A wail of pain shudders off the ceiling; the penny tang of blood is thick in the air, the choke of leaking effluvia acrid and sour.

I cast my gaze across the warehouse floor, looking for the right victim.

I see him. He's trying to crawl away, leaving a snail trail of blood from mangled legs, one arm useless and dragging. His ears are bleeding.

I let my rifle dangle as I march toward him, kicking weapons out of reach. Crouch in front of him.

"La—La Víbora—La Víbora. Por favor…” His dark eyes are terrified as he babbles at me in Spanish. "Don't kill me. Please don't kill me."

I flick out my butterfly knife, touch the blade's razor edge to his lips. "Hush," I murmur.

He falls silent, except for the ragging, rasping pant of agony and exertion.

"You have a choice," I tell him, applying a touch of pressure so the blade digs in, a trickle of blood dripping from his lips. "Tell me what I wish to know and you'll die quickly and painlessly. Refuse, and you die slow, bleeding out, begging for your whore mother."

"Please, please," he whimpers, drooling bloody saliva. "I don't know anything. My friends say we will be paid a lot of money to go to the States and shoot someone. I don't even know where we were going or who the target is."

I assess the rapidly spreading pool of blood beneath his legs, the chattering of his teeth, the fading focus in his eyes. "I do not believe you."

Across the warehouse another man leans against a post, fumbling with a pistol and a magazine, his eyes flicking betweenme and his desperate, clumsy attempts to reload his pistol. I stand and pace toward him a few steps, letting my rifle dangle at my side by the strap. "Go ahead," I tell him. "I'll give you a chance."

Instead of raising the gun at me, he touches the barrel under his chin. His mistake is hesitation.

I draw and fire my sidearm left-handed, a skill I've spent hundreds of hours practicing until I'm nearly as fast and accurate left-handed as I am with my right. His hand disintegrates in a splash of red, the gun clattering to the ground. His belly is a mess of red, shredded by shrapnel. He might survive with medical attention, but it's not likely.

I cross to him and drop to one knee. "Who is the target?"

"I don't know," he grits out. "They didn't tell everyone."

"Who knows, then?” I ask.

His eyes scan the writhing bodies, the still corpses. He juts his chin at a man who must have dropped in my initial burst after I kicked open the door—he's near the front of the crowd. He's on his back, gasping short, shallow, whistling breaths, fingers scrabbling at the concrete, heels kicking, digging.

I cross to him, pistol in my left hand, blade in my right. Twin holes in his chest whistle, suck, gurgle.