Ballistic(145)

Cement continued to flow from its chute, now directly onto the hood of the truck.

The two bodyguards in the middle seat of Truck Two, one on either side of Nestor Calvo, pointed their weapons at the windows, awaited the order to exit the car. The leader of the detail, the man in the front passenger seat, hesitated. “Wait!” he shouted. “We don’t know how many there are. Calvo is safe in the truck.”

The men sat silently for a few seconds, then the radio came alive with the voice of an injured man from the rear truck. “We have wounded. Some are dead, I think. Help us.”

The lead bodyguard switched channels and put a call out for the local police.

Behind him a shaken but highly focused Nestor Calvo had already found his mobile phone on the floor, ended the call he was on, and had begun dialing his own contacts in the area.

The driver of Truck One saw him first. A man in dirty blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and a black motorcycle helmet with a smoked windscreen. Hanging low in his right hand was a black pistol, and in his left hand a black backpack swung at his side.

“¡A la chingada!” Oh fuck! “El hombre de gris!” The Gray Man! he said, then he grabbed his walkie-talkie to report to the other trucks.

But Truck Two had already seen him. “It’s the gringo!” shouted the guard on Calvo’s left, and he threw open his rear door, raised his short-barreled machine gun.

And then flew back inside onto Nestor Calvo’s lap. On his forehead and left cheek he wore ragged holes that gushed rich red blood all over Calvo’s suit.

The consigliere pushed the man out into the road and dove to pull the door closed, fumbling his phone into the air before his call could be connected.

The leader of the detail attempted to open his door to get out on the far side of the armored truck and engage the Gray Man from over the hood. But yards of thick cement had already pushed back to his side of Truck Two, and he could not get it open.

Instead he turned to the man behind him, on Calvo’s right. “See if you can get out!” He turned back to his own door and began rolling down the window.

The driver of Truck One scrambled across the center console of the front seat, into the passenger side, and he struggled to roll up the heavy bulletproof window left open by the man who’d been ejected during the initial crash with the cement truck. The men in the backseats argued about what to do and screamed into their radios, trying to communicate with the detail commander behind them over the screams and pleas of the survivors of Truck Three.

The man in the motorcycle helmet appeared at the driver-side window of Truck One, pulled a large rectangular object from his open backpack, and slammed it hard against the ballistic glass. When it hit it made a sound like a heavy, wet fish, and it adhered to the clear surface. The armed men inside the vehicle stopped screaming and stared at it for a moment, unsure what they were looking at. It was a black container made of metal, perhaps even iron, and covered in a thick black tarlike material. They saw the Gray Man pick his bag off the ground and move backwards, back up around the side of the huge cement mixer.

“It’s a bomb!” shouted the driver.

“Are we safe?” asked a bodyguard in the back.

“Yes,” replied one, certain the bulletproof glass would protect them.

Another man tried once again to call out to the detail commander in the vehicle behind for instructions, and yet another voiced concern that the side window glass was not as strong as the side armor of the SUV.

Finally, after looking at the sticky box on the glass for five seconds, the driver gave the order. “Bail out!”

Three hands wrapped around three different door handles inside the big black Suburban.

And then the bomb detonated, sent fire, iron shrapnel, and shards of ballistic glass into the SUV’s interior behind a shockwave that moved faster than the speed of sound. All the men inside were turned to pulp in eight-one-hundredths of a second, and the heavy vehicle rocked on its fortified steel chassis. The windshield blew out from the inside, shattered against the chute of the cement mixer, and flames engulfed the dead occupants.

The four men still alive in Truck Two, Nestor Calvo included, just watched. When it was clear the armored vehicle in front of them, a truck virtually identical to their own, did not survive the blast, the detail commander gave the order for his men to bail out.

The driver was the first through his door; he drew his .45 pistol as he stumbled out into the road.

In the black smoke billowing from the windows of the Suburban in front of him, the man in the motorcycle helmet appeared, he still carried the pack low on his left, and now his pistol was aimed high on his right.

The driver began to raise his weapon towards the threat, but three rounds to his chest spun him around, caused his .45 to sail from his hands. A fourth shot to the right side of his skull snapped his head to the side and killed him instantly. He fell dead on the blacktop as the two doors on the opposite side of the SUV opened and then closed again.