Ramses knew he could not ready his weapon before his enemy could raise his. He could not pull back the charging handle one-handed without propping the butt of the gun on the tile, and he had no time to do this. He wore no handgun, he’d given it to Major Gamboa’s sister, and without a loaded rifle he had no way to engage his foe. So he let the rifle fall to the floor, sat there on the cold tile. His legs splayed out in front of him, and he relaxed, thought of his family, and waited to die.
The marine leaning on his side ahead of him grimaced in pain as his weapon rose. He clearly saw he would get the drop on the federale, and his face, contorted in pain, morphed into a smile.
Ramses Cienfuegos drew a long breath and sighed. Watched his killer enjoy the moment.
“¡Come mierda!” Eat shit! Ramses shouted.
And then, as silent and as fast as the predawn breeze that drifted through the hacienda, the American sprinted from around the corner and into the tile colonnade behind the marine. He carried the long, old, side-by-side double-barrel shotgun, and his eyes were down at the open breach of the weapon. He was trying to reload it as he ran, but when he recognized the scene in front of him, the gringo’s eyes widened. Ramses watched the gringo discard the two fresh shotgun shells back over his shoulder, and then the wounded Mexican federale watched the American toss the big shotgun into the air in front of him while he ran forward as fast as he could.
The marine assassin knew nothing of the danger behind him. He took his time to level his Sig Sauer pistol at the injured man sitting ahead of him on the tile.
The wooden-stocked scattergun spun through the air backwards, the gringo caught it with both hands around the barrel near the muzzle as he neared the unsuspecting marine on the floor in front of him. The American took hold of the weapon by the barrel, reared back as he ran, and swung the shotgun with all his might—like a baseball batter swinging for the fences, like a golfer forcing every ounce of energy behind the head of his driver—and the hickory butt stock of the shotgun connected with the back of the sicario’s head, just as the Mexican began to pull the trigger on his pistol.
The impact of hard wood on flesh and bone was sickening, the smack of a melon impacting the street after falling from a truck at speed. It echoed across the courtyard and blood splatter showered the tile and stucco column just ahead of where the assassin sat.
The sicario would have died no faster had he been decapitated. He tumbled forward behind a spray that shone in the moonlight, and he fell on his face. His pistol disappeared under his body.
Ramses blew a long sigh of euphoric relief as the American dropped his shotgun and ran up the hall to check on him.
Just then two more marinos appeared behind the gringo; they made the mistake of first looking right instead of left, and Ramses saw the men before they saw their two targets. They recovered in a second though and began turning towards the left, began raising their rifles.
“¡Atrás!” Behind! Ramses screamed at the American while sliding his stubby rifle hard down the tiled hallway towards him. “¡Cárgalo!” Charge it! he screamed, and the bearded gringo understood immediately, dove headfirst with his arms out, slid forward on his chest to reach the weapon.
The cracks of rounds and the concussion of the withering gunfire of two weapons rocked the narrow hall. Stucco and stone ripped from the walls just above both men, sending sharp shards of two-hundred-year-old building materials through the air like jet-powered hornets. Gentry grabbed the blood-smeared sub gun not ten feet in front of Ramses, he rolled onto his back while racking the bolt back on the little rifle, and began firing before he’d even found his targets.
As the two sicarios’ bullets stitched lower along the walls on either side of Court and Ramses, Gentry’s return fire advanced on the tile floor, creating a fault line–like fissure that chased towards the two men forty feet on. Terra-cotta exploded in sparks and smoke closer and closer to the men, until both marine assassins reeled backwards, spinning and jolting from multiple gunshot wounds as they stumbled and died.
“Fuck!” shouted Court, but he could not hear himself. His ears rang. He kept his eyes and the sights of the nearly empty Colt trained on the two forms slumped in the smoky moonlight ahead. Behind him he heard Ramses crawling forward.
“You okay, amigo?” asked Court without taking his eyes from the gun sites.
Ramses crawled up next to Court, lay on the tile on the American’s left side. Ramses spit out a mouthful of stucco and terra-cotta and sweat. He answered back in English that was delivered in some sort of poor impersonation. “Yeah, dude. That was awesome.”