More gunshots from behind Elena as she hurried towards the safety of Eduardo’s colleagues.
Chuck Cullen got Luz moving again, checked quickly to see that Laura held Ernesto around the waist and kept him pressing forward behind his wife. The aunt and uncles and nephew and brothers had pushed on ahead; they passed Cullen on the left-hand side of the staircase. The seventy-two-year-old retired American naval officer turned to see Elena advancing quickly up on the right; she’d gotten ahead of him while he helped Eddie’s mother. He rushed to arrive at the top of the stairs at the same time as she so he could protect her from any danger there as well as direct her up the alley behind the church where his car was parked.
He was still a few feet behind her and to her left when he saw the policeman, at the top of the stairs and seven steps above Elena.
The two other federales stood to his left. They all held automatic pistols out in front of them. As one their weapons’ muzzles left the threats at the bottom of the stairs and leveled instead on the families of the dead GOPES men rushing up towards them.
These men weren’t protecting anyone. They were assassins.
Chuck watched in utter horror as a handgun’s barrel pointed directly at Eddie Gamboa’s pregnant wife.
Captain Cullen moved faster than he’d moved in forty years, hurtling himself upwards, throwing himself up the four steps, and jamming his body between the weapon and the woman.
The pistol barked, pain tore into the old man’s gut, still he grabbed at the cop, pulled him tight in a bear hug.
The other masked police began firing as well, pouring lead down the stairs into the Gamboa family as they approached the top of the staircase.
Captain Cullen was shot again in the ribcage by the man in his grasp, his arms relaxed the hug, and he slid slowly down the cop’s body, onto his knees at the top of the stone staircase. Slower still he slumped forward onto his chest as Elena screamed.
To avoid the crowd on the staircase Gentry leapt high in his stocking feet onto the wide and steep stone railing that ran up the right side of the steps; he began running upwards with his arms out for balance and the revolver he’d taken from the plainclothes gunman jutting out from his right hand. He looked away from his feet for an instant and up towards a new commotion in the thick crowd at the logjam at the top of the stairs. Before his eyes could fix on the action a pistol round cracked and Court saw Elena. In front of her was the captain, and in front of him stood a black-clad federale.
Court understood everything in an instant. The cop had been gunning for Eddie’s wife and unborn child, and old Chuck Cullen had thrown his body over the gun.
More gunshots, rapid-fire pistols blazing, and Court saw the other two officers murdering the families of the special operation’s group as they ascended towards them.
Gentry sprinted upwards on the stone railing. He raised the silver Smith and Wesson revolver and put the weapon’s front site on the back of Elena Gamboa’s head, shifted aim a fraction to the right, and fired a single .357 Magnum round.
The bullet left the weapon, tracked up and over the crowd on the stairs, passed two inches to the right of Elena Gamboa’s ear, and struck the killer of Chuck Cullen on the left collarbone above his Kevlar vest, blasting bone and blood and muscle out of the man’s shoulder and spinning him away and down to the ground as his pistol flew out of his hand and twirled in the air above him like a whirligig.
Court was still thirty feet from the top of the stairs. Gunfire continued, and the crowd behind the Gamboas turned as one and began running down now, away from this new danger above them. Some of the younger and more ambulatory on the steps jumped over the railing, falling fifteen to twenty-five feet to the concrete Parque Hidalgo below just to escape the flying lead. Some of these people crossed Gentry’s line of fire, kept him from getting clean shots on the two remaining police assassins.
Court was near the top now; finally, he got a sight line on a target ahead. Both cops were kneeling behind their motorcycles, reloading their pistols. Court aimed at the first man, began pressing the trigger as he leapt off the railing and onto the steps, but again someone got in his way. In half a heartbeat he took his finger from the trigger.
It was Elena, she was falling backwards; the crowd had cleared the top portion of the steps and behind her nothing but hard concrete for ten feet awaited her.
Gentry threw himself at her, dropping the revolver to free both hands. He landed behind her and caught her; he slid his arms around her head and belly, and the two of them slid with the other bodies cascading down the stairs.
Court took the brunt of the impact as they fell; he kept Eddie’s wife safe and her head and belly protected as they slid.