Finally, he turned at the base of the stairs, and he led the way, held Elena by the hand, and alternated between looking back to make sure the rest of the family had not been left behind and scanning forward up the stairs towards more pandemonium, searching to avoid threats or discover opportunities to hasten their flight from the danger.
More gunshots from behind, from different areas of the park and the street, and from different types of weapons. Laura trailed her parents, pushed at her father who, along with his wife, was suffocating at the bottom of the stairs, packed like cordwood amongst the others.
From just above them, “Go! Go! Move! Move!” Cullen spoke excellent Spanish, but he shouted in English, certain his meaning was obvious to all.
For much of his slow and arduous progression through the gridlocked park, Court could not see more than a few feet in front of him. He fought against the masses, punching and pushing and scratching to make his way. “¡Muevate! ¡Muevate! ¡Muevate!” Move! Move! Move! Nearing the staircase, stepping and leaping over dead and wounded along the way, he caught up to three sicarios federales, their backs to him. These men pushed forward, reloading their smoking submachine guns, completely unaware that an armed enemy was behind them.
The men wore big bulletproof vests, so with cruel determination the American assassin knelt to the hot pavement, thereby creating a flight path for his bullets that would not send them through his targets and then into innocents. He carefully fired a short burst into the back of each man’s head below the helmet. They pitched and tumbled forward into fleeing civilians; their Colt sub guns and Beretta pistols flew from their hands and fell silent. Court held his rifle in his right hand and fired again at the men on the ground, double-tapping the forehead of each man as he pushed past them.
He came to a group of terrified civilians frozen in fear; they were obviously a family, a father nearly hysterical as he tried to shelter his wife and three children from the flying lead and thrashing and kicking bodies as he attempted to get out of the way of it all. Just as Court caught the terrified eyes of the man, the Mexican’s head lurched to the side, and blood erupted from his jaw. Gentry spun his head to find one of the plainclothes agitators in the crowd re-aiming his big silver revolver, having missed Court with his first shot. Court ducked and rolled on the ground, crashed into others around him like a bowling ball, but he successfully dodged another pistol shot that no doubt struck an innocent person behind him.
The Gray Man emptied his Colt 9 mm into the fat man’s gut at twelve feet, sending him into spasms before he tumbled back dead.
Court dropped the spent submachine gun, crawled forward on his hands and knees, and hefted the dead man’s smoking pistol.
He rose, sprinted forward towards the stairs; his new weapon dripped blood, and he shoved and pushed and even pointed the gun at innocents so they would get the fuck out of his way. He did everything within his power to catch up to Cullen and the fleeing Gamboa family, obscured still by the hundreds pushing in both directions on the wide steps running up to the street in front of the Talpa Church. At one point he found himself climbing onto a bench, jumping high onto the backs and heads of the crowd, literally bodysurfing over a particularly tight gathering of Puerto Vallartans too terrified to move.
SEVENTEEN
Chuck Cullen was eighty feet above and ahead of Court, just more than halfway up the stairs with the Gamboas and the other GOPES family members right behind him. The crowd ahead thinned suddenly on his right, so the retired captain decided to shift his entourage in that direction. He led Elena forward and past him so that he could take Luz by the hand to pull her through the surging riot of screaming people all around.
At the top of the stairs, another thirty feet away, three federal policemen on Suzuki motorcycles drove through the mob and dismounted; they drew pistols from their drop-leg holsters and looked down the stairs towards the gunfire. They waved the escaping memorial attendees past, encouraging them to run for their lives, and they seemed to cover them with their guns, scanning for threats down in the plaza.
More gunfire. More honking horns. More screaming and shouting.
More cries of agony.
Elena Gamboa led her family up the stairs now. She slowed when she noticed the federales, but she saw their motorcycles, just like Eduardo’s; their uniforms, just like Eduardo’s; their ski masks and sunglasses, just like Eduardo’s. She ascended the crowded stairs just as fast as her pregnant body would allow.
The policeman directly above her at the top of the stairs beckoned her forward with his free hand as he furiously searched the crowd for threats.