Constant Fear

CHAPTER 48

Fausto Garza stepped over the lifeless bodies of Efren and Armando so he could take aim at the man at the end of the hall. Rage owned him. The mission was gone; he had nothing left to salvage.

Fausto did not know how many fighters his team had gone up against. Five? Had to be that number, at least. His entire team was dead, that much he knew. He also knew that he had followed the wrong path. While Efren and Armando went to investigate the commotion they heard, Fausto followed the other trail, thinking they could have split up. He wasn’t sure what had made him turn around. Instinct, perhaps. At some point, he knew he had fallen for a trick and so he returned.

As this played out, Fausto contemplated his options. They were limited. He could hide in the tunnels, but eventually he’d be found. They’d bring dogs down that would sniff him out like a fox in the hunt. He could try to escape into the woods, but he could be caught. The response from law enforcement would be intense, massive. The game was over, but there remained one thing for Fausto to accomplish.

Revenge.

Efren’s and Armando’s bodies meant nothing to him. They were just carcasses, pieces of meat. What mattered to Fausto was whoever had put them down. He would shoot at anybody he found down here. Though bullets to the body would not provide much satisfaction. He’d prefer to flay those responsible alive. No matter what happened, Fausto would not be taken into custody. Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He would go out in a fiery blaze of bullets, like the outlaw he believed himself to be. He was born into a world of violence and death, and he refused to leave it any other way.

But a question burned in his mind, one he did not know would ever be answered: What happened to Soto’s money?

The kids would have given it up if they had it, Fausto believed. He had guns to their heads. The countdown was no joke. The money really was gone. Soto would take over from here. He would keep up the hunt and never rest. Money was like air to that man-it kept him alive.

Fausto leveled his assault rifle and uncorked a flurry of bullets that would have taken out the knees, had the man up ahead not vanished through a narrow opening. Fausto screamed with rage and sent a volley of gunfire into the concrete. Some of them might have flown through that hole, but Fausto had a feeling his bullets hadn’t killed anybody.

And so the chase was on.

“Go! Go! Go!” Jake screamed as he shoved Solomon hard from behind to hurry the boy along.

He had no weapon and no plan but to flee from his pursuer as fast as possible. Jake was well aware his son had just saved their lives. But that was seconds in the past, and irrelevant now. They were sprinting once again; this time, Andy, with flashlight in hand, was taking the lead. The blood-soaked shirt functioned as a pretty decent makeshift bandage, but the pain in Jake’s hand was brutal and throbbing. It pulsed with its own beating heart.

From behind, Jake heard the crack of gunfire and felt a burning sensation tear up the back of his leg. A sharp, stinging pain followed. The force of the bullet’s impact knocked him down as if a baseball bat had struck him from behind. Lurching as he fell, Jake skidded on the ground, jarring his shoulder painfully on impact.

Andy whirled and saw his father splayed on the ground behind Solomon.

As he stumbled back to his feet, Jake screamed, “Run! Run!”

From the dark, Jake heard a taunting voice call, “Did I hit you? I hope so! I have plenty more where that came from!”

Andy came toward his father, but Solomon went the opposite direction and vanished into darkness. Jake understood why. Somebody was coming up behind them.

Andy aimed the Ruger at the hole they’d just crawled through and fired enough times to empty the magazine. The hole was a good twenty meters away, but it looked like Andy shot with tremendous accuracy. The ringing in Jake’s ears was now as persistent as the throbbing in his hand. Andy helped his father to his feet. The bullet had just grazed the back of Jake’s leg. He was hobbled, but could walk.

Making their way in the darkness, Jake and Andy caught up with Solomon just before they came to a tunnel branch on the left, which led to the exit under the Terry Science Center. Andy was first to go that way. For a moment, no bullets came at them. Whoever was in pursuit had slowed. Even if someone did fire at them, they were safe unless the ammunition happened to be smart enough to make a sharp left turn.

Shirtless, sweating, covered in filth, blood, and violent-looking scratches, Jake’s chest heaved as he fought to take in as much air as possible.

“The others?” Jake asked as he removed his belt. He quickly secured the belt around his injured leg as a second makeshift tourniquet.

“Safe,” Andy said. “They went into the woods, and I came back to look for you.”

“You and Solomon get out of here, take the exit,” Jake said.

“No, I’m staying with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“That’s Fausto,” Andy said in a shaky voice. “I heard his voice. He’s the worst of them all, Dad. Please don’t stay. You can’t fight. You can’t shoot. Let’s get out of here.”

“He’ll follow you. All of us. We can’t risk it. You’ve done enough, son. Get going. Now!” Jake barked the command.

Andy flinched a little. They had no time for arguing. This was about survival, and Andy listened and understood. He and Solomon took the exit, but they left Jake with the flashlight. Jake used that light to watch them go. When they were out of sight, he emerged from the relative safety of the branch and returned to the main tunnel. Only one target remained.

Fausto.

Jake would not leave this final job to the government or to law enforcement. He trusted no one but himself. Nobody from the cartel could leave this place alive. The only way to safeguard his son, and the others, was to protect their identities. If Fausto had yet to pass that information along to his boss, then the last man who knew them by name was coming this way.

Jake slipped out from the tunnel branch and was on the move again. He walked loudly, and as he went, he smeared on the walls the blood that seeped from his injured hand. There would be no question which path to follow.

Fausto wasn’t going to waste ammunition. He could fire at that opening until all his bullets were gone, but it would accomplish nothing. No, he had to go through the hole in the wall, same as the others. If anybody waited in ambush, he would make an easy target, but retreat was not an option. Caution was tempered somewhat by blind fury. He went in headfirst, shooting rounds from his rifle to provide some cover, and emerged from the hole into a section of tunnel dark as the others. His flashlight allowed him to see somewhat, but the rifle was useless to him. He couldn’t fire effectively one-handed. His pistol would have to do. Fausto’s prized gun was his Glock 37, with gold accents and mother-of-pearl grips. The gun was a totem to the pistol Carlos lent him back in Ciudad Juárez many years ago-the one that Fausto had used to commit his first murder.

Fausto paused and took stock of his surroundings. Nothing ahead looked unusual. No sounds. No signs of life. He proceeded at a cautious pace. At one point, he checked the pistol’s magazine and saw only six shots left, plus one chambered round. He was down to one magazine for his assault rifle, and seven shots in the Glock.

Fausto heard footsteps; sound carried well down here and he discharged two bullets in what surely was a wasted effort. He set off at a quick pace, and it was not long before he came upon the blood smeared along the tunnel wall. He saw a branch to his right, but he followed the blood, expecting the trail to vanish. It did not. It continued. It wasn’t like the fabric or crushed flare that had tricked him before. Something human had left this stain. Fausto imagined an injured man using the wall to keep himself propped up, and the notion pleased him.

He followed the trail of blood like a shark tracking an injured fish.