Consent To Kill

58

Castillo stood near the edge of the porch with a man on each side. He was getting more frustrated by the second. This was supposed to be easy. Slam a couple of RPGs through the front door, rush the house, and let loose with the machine guns. Just like Scarface. That's what he'd told his posse. There wasn't a guy in the gang who hadn't seen the movie at least ten times. "Shoot anything that moves," he'd told them, "other than each other." That had been his only real worry-that and getting back to the city without the cops stopping them. The tricked-up Suburbans would take care of that, though. They'd already deceived the stupid guards. The one dumb son of a bitch was so fooled he hadn't even drawn his weapon. Castillo realized that was about all that had gone right so far. They were supposed to have been inside the house almost five minutes ago. The boys had been pumped. He'd told them they'd all get $10,000 cash for a night's work, and get to kill a bunch of feds in the process.

One minute into the operation Castillo had been counting his money, and now things weren't looking so easy. Having given up on the door after four shots, he fired his last RPG round through the window. It created a nice clean hole, but other than that the window was still intact.

Castillo pointed his Uzi at the window and asked, "Are you guys ready?"

The two men raised their Car 15s and nodded. Castillo opened fire and the other two did the same. In less than five seconds they'd drained their magazines. Castillo yelled for them to reload as he inspected the pockmarked and spider-veined glass. When everyone had reloaded, they unleashed another volley at the window. Shell casings littered the porch along with chunks of plaster that had fallen from above. The men themselves were sprayed with tiny shards of glass that had chipped under the deluge of bullets. There wasn't an unblemished spot left on the window, but it was still intact.

"Goddammit," Castillo screamed. His Uzi was jammed. "Where in the hell are those two idiots?" Castillo had sent two of his men around back to get a couple of RPG rounds. He had five and the team around back had five. He couldn't be sure with all the noise, but he swore he'd heard only one explosion from the back of the house. "Give me that crowbar!" he yelled to one of his men.

Castillo set his Uzi down on a chair and grabbed the three-foot steel bar with both hands. He took a couple of huge swipes at the window. The glass made a cracking noise. Castillo redoubled his effort and put all of his weight into it. The upper left corner began to peel away and he was finally making some real progress when one of his men started screaming obscenities. Castillo turned around to see what the man was so exercised about and saw one of his guys lying on the ground with a pool of blood growing around his head.

"What the fuck?" Castillo barked.

"I think you guys killed him."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The bullets! They bounced off the window."

Castillo actually considered this for a second, and then he saw the boots of another one of his guys. The man was lying in the bushes with a hole where one of his eyes used to be. Castillo's ears were ringing from all the gunfire, and his head was starting to hurt. He moaned out loud and wondered where in the hell his luck had gone. Leaving them here would be stupid. Their bodies were covered with MS-13 tattoos. He looked up toward the vehicles to tell Hernandez to load the bodies into his truck, and that was when he saw two more of his men laying down on the job. The very next thing that popped into his head was a vision of $500,000 vanishing into thin air.

"Fuck." He pointed to the two dead men on the ground next to the Suburbans. "I suppose they were killed by ricochets too." Castillo tossed the crowbar to the man and said, "Open that window." Looking back at the other two guys he said, "One of the guards must still be alive." He was looking one of his men straight in the eye when the guy's face literally exploded, showering Castillo with blood and chunks of brain and skull. Castillo froze, his eyes trying to comprehend what had just happened, everything slowing down for a second or two, and then suddenly he snapped out of it and lurched for his Uzi, which was resting on a chair only a few feet away. He almost had his hand on the grip when he remembered the thing was still jammed. He kept reaching and then something slapped his hand away. Castillo looked down in shock, his brain not yet registering that a bullet had torn through his hand. To his left and right he noted two more of his men falling to the ground as he clutched his shattered hand. By the time he looked up a man was already coming at him from the far end of the porch, his gun extended. Castillo recognized the eyes. They belonged to the man he'd been sent to kill.