Gun Work

“Now, this here is a beauty for close-ups,” said Karlov. With a showman’s flourish he displayed a Smith & Wesson revolver with an eight-inch barrel. From the side it looked like a real hand cannon.

“Twenty-two caliber, ten-round cylinder, the trigger is a feather and it shoots like a horny teenager. No kick at all.”

Superior caliber did not always mean bigger, fatter bullets. With a .22, you could put all ten rounds into someone without killing them, and usually by round five they would tell you whatever you wanted to know. It was all in the application.

“Moving to slightly larger armament...” Karlov opened his jacket to reveal a complicated web holster of his own design. It held four pistols, two on each side, revolvers on top, semi-autos below. He enumerated the guns: “A .357 Magnum... Super .40... 9-mil... .45. The spine rack holds three mags each for the semi-autos. Speed loaders for the revolvers up here.”

“Damn,” said Armand, stroking his chin.

“Body armor,” said Sirius, laying out what looked like a floppy, lime-green wetsuit top on the gun range counter. “Standard Kevlar is comprised of thirty or forty layers of synthetic fabric. It’s bulky and restricts movement. This is some new shit they came up with for the Army.”

“The liquid armor?” said Armand.

“Yeah. This is a sandwich of Kevlar fabric encasing a polymer infused with nanobits of silica. Basically, polyethylene glycol and purified sand. It’s called ‘sheer thickening liquid’ and it stiffens instantaneously into a shield when hit by a bullet. It reverts to liquid state when the energy from the hit dissipates. Even a top of the line bulletproof vest can’t protect you from stabbing, say, or shrapnel. This can. It’s lighter, more flexible, allows maximum mobility.”

Barney just whistled silently. “It’s a science fiction suit,” he said. “No way this is legal.”

“You didn’t say anything about legal,” said Sirius with a knowing grin.

“Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t. Hmm.”

“Let’s see your hands,” said Karlov to Barney, who displayed them.

The thumbs flowed toward the (former) middle fingers with a natural web of skin. Except for the fact that each hand was one digit shy, they appeared normal. When Barney made a fist, you could pick out a white webwork of scar tracks. That Dr. Brandywine wasn’t an artist; he was a sorcerer.

Karlov handed him the customized .22. “Let me see your reach.”

Barney extended the gun in the general direction of a paper target about forty feet downrange.

“Okay, now hold that extension for five minutes.”

And the end of three hundred excruciating seconds — which Sirius had to count off individually — Karlov said, “Now do your trigger pulls.”

Barney managed nineteen out of forty. His hand started to bleed and he blotted it with a paper towel.

“Thought so,” said Karlov. “I have confabulated a little assist for you.” He produced a pair of one-inch-wide strips of nylon that resembled dog leashes. “Thumb hole at this end,” he said. “The other end loops around your neck.” He threaded Barney into the contraption and bade him hold the pistol up again. “Now, lean forward. Push with your arm as though you are stretching. You see?”

The strap provided a stable hand-arm-eye link through very gentle tension. It was like a built-in bench rest. Karlov showed Barney how to adjust the tiny buckles he had installed for a snug fit.

“How’s your trigger wrap?” He was referring to the surplus reach afforded by using his middle finger to trigger.

“Feels like I’ve got a Vienna sausage spliced onto the end of my finger.”

The next gun he handed Barney was a Beretta .92FS Brigadier in 9-millimeter. “Try this with the strap.”

Barney’s hand wrapped the butt and his fingertip kissed the groove of the match trigger. Karlov had replaced the commander-style hammer with a skeletonized Beretta Elite. “What did you do?”

“Machined the frame myself. Fattened the grip to make up for the distance in your finger reach. Enlarged the backstrap and made a set of palm swells out of rubber with recessed screw mounts; you can feel out the different sizes and pick what feels natural for you. A four-pound pull in single action. Made the slide heavier. There was too much trigger travel so I put in a speedbump. I think it’s beefy, but the bulk should give you more control. Oh, and it will take hi-cap mags now — 22 rounds.”

“I’d lose those crappy sights,” said Sirius. “Put some Tritium night sights on it.”

“Not for close-quarter,” said Karlov. “Discrimination is more important for speed shooting.”

Sirius nodded. They had all seen men who could shoot faster than they could think. You spot a weapon in the hands of what you think is a hostile, your eyes zap to center mass, your finger pulls the trigger, and a round is flying before your brain catches up and informs you that you have just launched a bullet at a friendly instead of a gunner or at a hostage who turns out to be unarmed.

Armand rummaged in his bag for a rack of cartridges and loaded Barney’s clip. “Shoot these and tell me what you think. One hundred and twenty-three grain, full metal jacket.”

“Not hollow points?” said Barney.

“Might cause it to jam.”

Armand’s slugs rocketed from the muzzle at 445 foot-pounds and 1,280 feet per second. With the strap, Barney kept all his tags in the main torso grid of the target at twenty-five yards.

Most gun work took place close-up. Ninety percent of gunfights occur at distances of nine feet or less. Of that ninety percent, eighty percent happen within three feet. Amazingly, defensive shooters tended to score one shot in ten at those distances, because you had to factor in bad light, sleepiness, surprise, or compromised placement. A ten percent hit rate when you were shooting for your life was not acceptable.

“Coat those with Teflon,” said Armand, “and they’ll grease through a vest like butter.”

“Shotguns?” said Barney.

“Full size Benelli M4 semi-autos with a stock, a pistol grip, and a combat muzzle. Every load from buckshot to flechettes.” The M4 had originally been developed for Marine Corps and SWAT use. Pumpguns were for showoffs, or the movies.

“Smoke?” said Barney.

“Them smoke grenades are the only military ord we have,” said Sirius. “They’re not exactly what you wanted, but—”

“Do they smoke?” said Barney.

Sirius decided to put his explanation on hold. “Yeah, they smoke just fine.”

“Shipping?” said Barney.

“Already taken care of,” said Sirius.

“Jesus... anybody want a pizza?” Barney was surprised at how quickly he had run out of questions. These three men had him covered.

The reason they had thrown Barney their unconditional support was a bit dicey. They all possessed superlative gun expertise and none had cause to casually risk their lives. They all had been in life-or-death situations involving gunplay and the use of firepower. They all had known combat, urban or wartime, usually from a defense posture. What Barney had offered them was the kind of opportunity that comes rarely, and is almost never planned — a tactical assault on superior forces where each man’s knowledge and experience would determine the outcome. No safe fallbacks and no guarantees. You can talk for a lifetime of conviction to certain absolutes, but rarely do you get the chance to purposefully acid-test those maxims in a real-world context. This was a chance for these men to find out if what they knew — or what they thought they knew — was worth anything.

Frankly, Barney felt as if they had just been waiting around all their lives for the right excuse. The crime of non-action was on par with giving a talented artist plenty of paint, brushes, canvas, inspiration, and time... and then not allowing him to paint.

There was a wealth of wiggle time if anybody wanted to bail. Three more weeks, minimum, of working the guns on the range and warming up the newer guns through their break-in periods, usually measured in hundreds of rounds... or, in Barney’s case, two to three thousand rounds per gun before he began to develop the correct muscle memory for accurate handling in combat. Each weapon had its own personality and eccentricities, and familiarization was essential. Each weapon had its brothers and sisters, multiples of Karlov’s painstaking labor, and they all had to be broken in.

A lot of bang-bang, enough to make you wash the gunpowder out of your hair every night.

Training specs called for a 70/30 ratio of dry fire to live fire, with a shooting timer. Armand actually videotaped Barney’s range drills; tape doesn’t lie.

Before it settled into enough of a routine to make them lazy, Barney announced that he was taking a little trip, by himself.

Sirius was a tiny bit disappointed, since he had worked out labyrinthine plans for interstate firearms transport; there were the complications of multiple IDs for all them at various altitudes of impermeability, ticketing for trains and planes, proper camouflage of any potential paper (or Internet) trail, lodgings, rally points, emergency fallback rendez, and clean work cars with the right paper. All the coordination of logistics made Sirius feel like a career criminal, or a roadie for a heavy metal band.

“All this prep makes me feel like a career criminal,” Sirius said. “Or a roadie for a heavy metal band.”

“Hey, at least you don’t have to score big flour sacks of blow,” said Barney. “Or platoons of hookers.”

“Or waste time cherry-picking the right color M&Ms,” said Armand.

“I’ve got some ironclad resources here,” returned Sirius. “I just don’t wanna waste ‘em.”

“You’re not,” said Barney. “Just tell me who your guy is in New Jersey.” He was referring to a strip yard Sirius had mentioned where he could obtain a nondescript vehicle with alternate plates, not a junker.

Barney’s first port of call was New York City, a place where possession of a firearm can get you automatic jail time.

The hardest part about finding Felix Rainer in New York, for Barney, was choosing the right business suit. About half-strength Armani was what he required in order to present the correct nouveau-riche profile. The illusion only needed to fool everyone for less than a running minute of time.

The data pull on Felix Rainer was notably public. In 1995 — after the junk bond boom of the 1980s and the brief last-round flurry of dotcoms in the early 1990s — he split from a liquid but undistinguished brokerage firm to co-found The Bleecker Street Group with two other partners. They kept the company lean as they began buying corporate properties and learned the pleasures of private equity, then of running a hedge fund specializing in distressed debt. Through calculated strikes they prospered, branching out into brand-extensions and country-specific restructuring funds... which to Barney whispered “Mexico.”

On closer examination it was easy to see that Bleecker Street’s maverick risk structure was pretty kissin’ close to gambling, buying chemical companies out of favor in 2004 and taking them public in foreign countries when the old-economy names got hot again. Your best opportunities to sock away millions came when legitimate banks were willing to provide lender leverage into the billions. They acquired and unloaded office buildings faster than playing lightning Monopoly, and were always raising capital for their latest buyout fund.

Rainer was low-profile, hewing to the maxim laid down by Wall Street superstar Aldous Blackmoor: “Never be the poster boy. When the era changes, the poster boy gets ripped off the wall.”

Rainer and his crew were Harvard hustlers, always on the sniff for Justice Department investigations into what were called “club buyouts.” When quoted, they worried about interest rates; in private they amassed astonishing debt in order to bulk-purchase; Rainer’s phrase for it was “economies of scale,” which to Barney translated as that old TV commercial in which the screaming carpet salesman says, “How do we do it? VOLUME!”

It took less than a day for Barney to sketch Felix Rainer’s movement template. The guy began a rigorous workday at 7:30 AM sharp and went everywhere by chauffeured limousine. He owned the entire top floor of the ovoid Capitol Towers Building on Columbus Circle. Private staff and security measures had him pretty boxed, but Barney knew there was no such thing as genuine security this side of the grave.

Finding a photograph had been difficult but not impossible. Rainer was a fiftyish man with hair plugs and one of those skin-cancer sunlamp tans that looked radioactive.

Barney decided to take the guy in his limo, after business hours.

Manhattan was busy losing the last dregs of summer — warm days, cool nights. At a mid-town commercial shipping outlet Barney picked up a clad plastic case festooned with security tape and warning stickers: HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM — EXTREMELY SENSITIVE. The interior surfaces were sheeted in lead foil and the dense, high-impact foam padding ferried Barney’s work kit: a piece, several mags, cleaning kit, extra cash and alternate ID, and a coded emergency cellphone.

The gun was a solid, Nitron-finished P229 Elite in .357 SIG. Karlov liked SIGs and so did Barney. Some guys were Glock men; others swore by the myth-laden Colt, but the names were always spoken with a gravity religious people reserved for saints: Remington, Ruger, Browning, Beretta, Kimber, a whole pantheon of new gods for modern times.

SIG Sauer was proof that Germany had successfully invaded America. The “SIG” was an acronym for Swiss Industrial Company (Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft); the “Sauer” came from the incorporation of German gunmakers J.P. Sauer & Sohn, GmbH, of Eckernförde in the early 1970s. Nineteen eighty-five marked the rebirth of the entire assembly of companies as SIGARMS, which rapidly became a favorite of military and law enforcement during a time when cops were discovering how often they were outgunned in the street. Their handguns were devastatingly well-built and had stopping power to burn. They were also hefty — a real handful — but their actions crisp and their delivery, spot-on. They were no longer made overseas, but in New Hampshire. Barney had never been disappointed by a SIG.

This one featured a short reset trigger that eliminated “trigger slap” and made the pulls short and fast in either single or double action. Karlov had substituted Hogue wraparound grips and beefed the frame by half a pound. There was also a Safariland speed scabbard for concealed carry.

The mags contained Armand’s latest concoction, his version of a 150-grain EPR, or Extreme Penetration Round, that could penetrate 20-gauge steel or most body armor.

Barney had drilled with both this gun and this ammo for a month. It could devastate a kill zone but had the kick of a .22.

His gear installed in a newly-bought attaché case, Barney caught lunch at a Greek diner, barely tasting the food but registering the mild amp of the strong coffee. The nylon steady-straps Karlov had conceived were already around his neck, the thumb loops tucked into his jacket sleeves.

He had thought briefly of wearing gloves with built-in index fingers of foam, slightly curled for a naturalistic look, until he had wandered about in the walking world for awhile and realized no one really took notice of his hands. Some time later, he might have to hide his special attributes, conceal his difference, but he did not feel that way right now. These were his hands; the world would just have to cope. His hands were him — crippled, then altered, then reborn, but still functioning. Like a clip, his hands had so many shots in them before they were exhausted.

He spent an extra day to reliably clock Felix Rainer’s circuit, annotating in-times and out-times. The money-man, per an aggressive transactional profile, did not have time for lunches taken off-site. Evening functions used up 45 minutes in transit from the office to Capitol Towers, allowing for a costume change and spruce-up. Different weapons, evening-dress armament for a different brand of warfare. His chariot was a Corsair stretch that looked to Barney to be armored similarly to the limo he had driven in Mexico. He had two alternating drivers, both graduates of the school of physical threat — skintight suits over imposing bodies, packing hip holsters. The wait zone was a gated garage at Capitol, probably leading to a private elevator. Too many cameras there; too much exposure.

Okay, so it was a quitting-time date, then.

Barney had billeted himself in a mid-range hotel in the upper 50s full of foreign tourists or businessmen. Easy to blend, there. Since his credit card was imaginary, that bill did not matter. He could have watched all the cable porn he wanted. Content did not interest him but he did keep the TV on, volume dialed almost to zero, for the duration of his stay. It was another presence in the room and a harmless one, something he had keenly missed in Mexico, where another presence usually signaled yet another beating.

During off hours, Rainer’s limo enjoyed a special curbside yellow zone on West 58th Street near Eighth Avenue, probably with the sanction of bribed cops. While on duty it circulated around the business district; Rainer’s office was spitting distance from the World Trade Center site. If it parked, it had itself a hide and Barney never spotted it. The driver never seemed to take a meal or bathroom break, and he only left the vehicle to watchdog Rainer in person. The afternoon of the second day was spent tracking the limo’s ups and downs in the city, so Barney had found the car connection provided by Sirius to be useful, although he hated driving in Manhattan traffic as much as any sane person would.

Barney never stopped to ask himself if he was crazy. Any more than Rainer and lunch, he didn’t have the time.

This was going to have to go fast.

Within fifteen seconds of the limousine curbing in front of the skyscraper housing the Bleecker Street Group, at precisely 7:35 in the evening, Barney strolled up to the driver’s side door with his free hand grasping a shield wallet designating him as a New York City detective. He made the familiar hand-rolling motion and the driver, an enormous bodybuilder in livery, buzzed the window down and regarded him impatiently.

Barney stuck the SIG right into his ear canal. The chauffeur’s movements were restricted by the door, his seat belt, and the general fact that he tended to fill the entire driver’s space.

“Scoot over,” said Barney.

“Awww... shit,” said the driver, resigned.

Barney took note of the obvious bulge of gun saddle on the man’s right hip. He was a southpaw. Once they were safe and cozy behind tinted windows, Barney said, “Gun. Take it out, right hand, two fingers on the butt. Go on, belt yourself in. Good. Now sit on your hands, palms down. Good.”

The driver rolled his eyes, torqued at being blind-sided, knowing this would reflect badly on his rating. “What the fuck you want, man?”

“I want you to keep doing what I tell you.”

The driver’s gun was a simple Browning Hi-Power in nine millimeter, no jazz. Barney quickly found a backup piece in a drop door under the dashboard — a polymer-framed Cobra Patriot, also in nine. He hooked them through the open privacy divider into the cabin of the limo.

The driver did not have an ankle gun. He was not packing cuffs, a stun gun or a telescoping baton. Too much gear for the fit of his suit. About all he carried besides a wallet was his personal cellphone, which was in a slot on the dash. Barney popped the battery and chip and tossed that, too.

Barney quickly located the driver’s side “panic button” transmitter and disabled it. Then he neutralized the car phone.

“Fuck, dude, you gonna cost me my job, you know that.”

“No I’m not,” said Barney, scanning the perimeter. “Question One: Is he armed?”

The driver knew the advantages of all-business when facing down a gun. “No sir. He never carries a weapon. He voted for that asshole Schumer—”

“Pay attention,” said Barney, keeping him on track. “Question Two: How long?”

“Five minutes tops, from when he beeps me, sir.”

“Stop calling me sir. That leaves us about a minute and a half. What’s your name?”

The guy looked around as though he’d just taken a bite of pizza and lost a pepperoni in his clothes. “Uh, Malcolm, sir... I mean, Malcolm.”

“Okay, Malcolm. The man who pays your salary is a piece of shit, a Wall Street player who damned near got me perished. Play this wrong and you perish, my friend. You perish first. The slugs in this gun will go through anything you can get behind, and if you fuck me, you won’t be able to take cover fast enough, because I’m pissed off, and you don’t want me pissed off at you instead of your boss. You copy?”

Malcolm nodded, a single up-down head bob. “I have to get out of the car to—”

“No you don’t,” said Barney. “Let him be irritated. He’s always in a hurry, am I right?”

“Generally.” A massive sigh escaped the big man. “Shit... he gets in half the time by himself, anyway, unless there’s, y’know, somebody with him.”

“Somebody with him today?”

“No, sir. Dinner at Le Cercle Rouge at eight-thirty. He’s meeting people there.”

“Well, he’s going to be a tot late, I think.”

Felix Rainer, positive match on the photo, exited the revolving doors across a tiled promenade and beelined for the limousine.

“Okay, Malcolm, it’s shit-or-git time. You run and your boss is dead for sure, and so are you — I’ll make sure you’re first. You drive and do as you’re told and we all walk away. You try anything fancy — erratic driving, speeding, anything out of the ordinary trip back up to Capitol Towers — and I’ll put two in your back and one in your brain pan, right through the divider. You are to keep both hands on the wheel. Pretend they’re glued there. You move them off the wheel, and you catch three. You wink funny at the next car at a stoplight, and you catch three. You got all that?”

Malcolm nodded.

Before Malcolm could slip his shoulder harness, Barney was out of the driver’s side door and making a quick scuttle for the back of the limo — inelegant, but necessary since Barney knew on approach the rear doors would be locked until needed. Felix Rainer could not see a thing over the roof of the car. Barney knew Malcolm’s impulse would be to bolt, to dive out the passenger side, to telegraph some kind of warning, and it would take him a couple of seconds to figure it out and act in favor of his continued survival. Before Malcolm could fully resume the pilot position, Barney was slotted into the upper starboard corner of the cabin, where he could keep an eye on both driver and passenger. He swept the scattered cellphone parts and Malcolm’s guns into a bar cabinet just as Rainer opened his own door and climbed inside, oblivious, impervious to any drama other than his own.

“Malcolm, goddammit, are you asleep?”

Rainer had the door closed before he fully registered another person in the cabin with him. Businessman sort, with a slightly weathered (or battered) face, fair suit, attaché case.

“Just sit. Don’t talk. Malcolm: drive.”

It would take a few moments for Rainer to process his own outrage, and Barney had to tell him to shut up three more times.

A few more moments, for Rainer to think about diving out of a moving vehicle. No good. Several more moments, to fret. To look out the window at anything except the gunman sitting before him.

Finally: “I presume I’m being kidnapped.”

That was a laff riot. “I need one thing from you, Mister Rainer. I need the location of Carl Ledbetter. Can you provide that?” The SIG was trained unwaveringly on Rainer’s solar plexus, since he probably didn’t have a heart.

Rainer looked left, right, to the heavens. No help or guidance seemed imminent. Up close his face was even redder than the photograph, now going deeper crimson with barely suppressed fury. He blew out a breath like a snort. “Carl? That loser? Why, did he ass-rape you, too?” He seemed to rearrange his body to reassert his dominance, getting huffy. “And, Malcolm? You’re fired.”

To lend this man even a sense of his own superiority when confronted with lesser beings was a mistake, so Barney put a .357 round into the seat near Rainer’s shoulder. The blast boxed their ears with concussion in the airtight seal of the limo cabin. Barney was used to the noise; most people were not. Malcolm flinched but kept his cool. Sit, stay. His hands jumped off the wheel but quickly reseated themselves. Rainer had contracted into a fetal ball, knees in his face, almost ready to evacuate his bladder all over his nice leather seats. Nobody outside the vehicle noticed the flash-pop of muzzle blast. Rich folks, probably, taking snapshots.

“Malcolm says you have a dinner date. Now you can be late as in tardy, or late as in deceased. Pick one. I don’t want to kill you right now, but I will. Carl Ledbetter. Where?”

“You fucking asshole!” Rainer fumed. “Who are you?”

Barney leaned forward with the gun as if to fire again, feeling the neck strap cinch tight to make his aim rock steady. Rainer tried to astral-project and failed. “All right, all right, Jesus!” He was meekly reaching into his coat pocket.

“That hand comes out with anything on the end of it but a manicure, you’re done,” said Barney.

“Phone,” said Rainer. “You can talk to him yourself. I don’t want anything to do with whatever it is.”

“Slide it,” said Barney, not dumb enough to reach for it.

Carl Ledbetter had a New York City number.

“Can I have a drink, please?” said Rainer.

“No. Stay put. Malcolm, keep driving. Go around the park.”

Barney punched the number. Something in his gut roiled. Carl answered on the third ring. Moment of dead air. Showtime.

“Hey, Carl. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.”

Pause, for disbelief. There was no mistaking Barney’s voice, no save and no waffle leeway for Carl.

It would take every ounce of fiber Carl possessed not to hang up and run. Barney knew Carl knew that, or was realizing it right this second. He had just enough free time to try sucking air. Maybe he would faint.

“Tell me where you are, Carl, or your pal Felix is going to die an extremely messy and disgusting death. No meeting place. No rendezvous. Where you are right now. You stay there until I get there. Answer now.”

Imagine hearing the voice of a long-dead relative or loved one, and think about how you would react. Blasé is not among the potential multiple choice answers.

Carl babbled. Corrected himself. Added superfluous detail. Said it all again. Once was enough. Barney hung up on him in mid-sentence

Barney kept watch on Malcolm. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” There was a possibility that Malcolm might ram the limo into a parked car, dump himself free, and run for his life while his former boss ate a lot of bullets. Barney would have to bail and walk, blending into the pedestrians, losing the gun en route. Malcolm might have tried that; he certainly had the iron for it. But he had just been gracelessly sacked.

At Central Park West and 71st, Barney said, “Stop the car, Malcolm.” He moved to disembark, attaché case first. “Felix? Listen to me: If you ever see me again, it’ll be because you tried to call out the dogs or track me down, or tried to phone up some kind of retribution. You’re not hurt, just scared. Don’t let that make you do something rash.”

“Why don’t you tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do?”

“Go back to your life. Enjoy your dinner. Enjoy all the rest of your days, because they’re a gift I’m giving you right now. Do not squander this gift. Try not to hold it against Malcolm. He’s a good guy.”

Barney stepped out. Rainer had more to say. “Hey!” Barney expected some parting threat, some you-can’t-get-away-with-this horseshit. But Rainer said, “If you see Carl, do us all a favor and kill the sonofabitch, and I’ll forget you ever existed.”

Ever the dealmaker, that Felix.

As soon as he was clear of Felix Rainer, no harm no foul, Barney called Carl’s cell again, this time with specific instructions. The danger of Felix Rainer burning up his own phone as he vented anger and tried to vector on Carl was too great. Carl would have to be run around town a bit, from Barney’s secure cellphone.

Barney told Carl to go to Penn Station, buy a ticket for Elizabeth, New Jersey, board the train, and commute. Then Barney cabbed back to where his anonymous car was stashed, and caught up with a rattled-looking Carl while he was still in the ticket line. Carl proved too shaken to arm himself or attempt to set up a sting. Carl generally had other guys do that sort of work. Ex-friends, for example.

“Walk with me,” said Barney. “Twitch funny and I’ll blow your heart right out onto the pavement.”

For a moment Carl feigned surprise at seeing his old friend, then thought better of it. Like Rainer, he avoided Barney’s gaze, submissive, willing to be led, or at least impelled. His dislodged tooth had been replaced — badly, the substitute being slightly yellower than the rest of his dentition. Cheap cap. Overall, Carl appeared badly used by his most recent fiscal year.

“What do you want?” said Carl sullenly. He was in the bag and he knew it.

“Let’s start with your wallet.”

Carl started to say you’re kidding, but no comedy waited in Barney’s gaze. He mutely relinquished the same wallet Barney had seen in Mexico, containing the same picture of Erica, which was the only thing Barney appropriated. He handed the wallet back as though it was roadkill. Carl had exactly twenty-two bucks in cash.

“Yeah, take her,” said Carl, still moping. “Keep her. I wish I’d never met that creature. You deal with her. You’re welcome to her. I hope you’re up to it.”

Barney ignored the obvious bait.

Carl tried another tack: “How did you get to Felix?”

“Irrelevant. Tell me about Mexico.”

“Oh, god, there was nothing I could do! I tried, but there was no way out—”

“You left me for dead. I didn’t die.”

“— and I’m so goddamned sorry, man, you know how it went, I couldn’t help it—”

“Stop; I’m getting all misty over how much of a damn you gave for me. The money. Your little friends in the kidnapping business. Stay on track.”

“That bastard Tannenhauser promised that —” Carl saw Barney’s expression and clammed up. He clarified: “The guy in charge of the hostage hotel.”

“Tannenhauser,” said Barney. El Chingon had a name at last.

“Erica was banging him the whole time. But she outfoxed him and managed to scoot with most of the money — over a million-five.”

“Wasn’t Felix irritated about that?”

“Felix? Man, Felix didn’t give a crap. All he did was ice me out.”

There was no shortage in the world of greedy people looking for short cuts to financial success, as far as Felix Rainer was concerned. There was always fresh meat, or in Felix’s parlance, “fungible commodities.” If one deal went rancid, you divorced yourself from the particulars and concentrated on the next deal in the hopper.

Barney resisted the urge to grill Carl about the pipeline, about how Felix Rainer could see some sort of obscure profit from this labyrinthine process, or how Carl and Erica were supposed to make out using other people’s money. It didn’t matter. It was like most scores: There was a prize, and everybody was screwing everybody else to get it. It did not need to be made legitimate or sensible via reverse-logic, it was a classic black-box scenario. Doesn’t really matter what’s in the box. What matters is whether you might get killed for it, and how you could better your odds.

“One last thing: the blond fellow you sent to kill me. He didn’t make it.”

Honest confusion drained further color from Carl’s face. He had no idea what Barney was talking about. Score another point for Erica.

“Are you talking about a... a... hit man?”

“Yes, Carl. The kind of man you hire to do the sort of things you are too much of a coward to do. Like the way you lie to old friends so they’ll stop a bullet you’ve earned — a warm body to throw to the wolves so you can skate and pretend you’re innocent.”

Carl’s lips worked dryly against each other. He was taking his medicine like a punished child who thought the word sorry could set him free.

“If Erica is the heartless criminal mastermind you made her out to be, how did she get the money away from you?”

“We left Mexico on separate flights. When I landed I found out she’d flown to a different city.”

“Why didn’t Felix go after her?”

“What for? His deal was with me, period.”

“Where is Erica now?”

“I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I really have no idea, for almost a year, now.” Carl mustered a bit of gall, enough to add, “But what about you? How did you —?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Barney interposed.

Barney had steered him between Eighth and Ninth, on 35th Street, walking west toward the Javits Convention Center.

“I’m telling you, you can shoot me, torture me, whatever, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

They stopped. Cabs soared by. It was dark now.

“I know this sounds stupid,” said Carl, “but I’m glad you made it.” Right about now, Carl would say anything or perform any abasement just to keep breathing. He tried to play the buddy-buddy card. “You know that little piece of the GPS you stashed in my coat? I didn’t find out about it until they stopped me at the airport. I set off the damned alarm. That was pretty slick. I should have listened to you more...”

Barney put his hand on Carl’s shoulder in a comradely gesture. This was supposed to be the part where all was forgiven in gruff camaraderie. “Okay, Carl, I believe you. But you shouldn’t have left me twisting. Just shouldn’t have.”

Before Carl could respond, Barney jammed the SIG into his chest and fired two rounds completely through him. Before Carl could slump, Barney jammed the SIG under his jaw and blew the top of his head — and whatever else Carl was thinking — upward into the westerly breeze in a fine red spray.

The killing had begun.

Barney did not get a single drop on him. He was clean.

Action is transient. Context takes the rest of forever.

You’ve really lost it now, Barney thought. Let your anger boil over and get the better of you.

Shooting Carl Ledbetter on a public street in the middle of New York City was almost a reflex action. It freighted no pang of guilt or remorse. It was what needed to be done. Barney could tell by the way Carl was losing his wits and trying to dissemble that he was attempting to buy talking time to forge fresh lies, to con him, to excuse what he had done by saying it was just business, not personal. That was how Carl’s death had been — impersonal.

Strategically it was a matter of sheer gut sense. It was time. But Barney still felt played. He had done exactly what Felix Rainer had wanted, like a puppet or a robot. A hit man.

You’ve ignored gunshots, even though their sudden sound attracted your attention. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you dismissed or rationalized it: That’s not really gunfire. It’s a backfire. It’s construction noise. It’s always something else. That was how Barney could shoot a man three times and walk away. He was just another pedestrian who chose not to notice. Less than a block away, a gunshot made even less difference. Citizens ignored these sounds. They kept their noses down and minded their own damned business... although usually making sure to travel away from wherever the distressing sound originated. The same thing happened when someone screamed in the night. People shut their windows, turned their backs, cranked up the TV.

In seconds, Barney became just another person hurrying away from something potentially nasty, focused on doing the Manhattan shuffle, hands in pockets, eyes down. Had he lingered, he would have seen several other New Yorkers gingerly step around the fallen man on the sooty sidewalk. He’s a bum, a drunk, that’s not really blood, that’s not half his head gone; I’m just seeing things.

Barney walked north along the Hudson, disassembling the SIG, dumping the parts and ammo. His gun hand had begun trickling threads of blood.

He flew back to Los Angeles that night, using a standby scheme that was a fringe benefit of Sirius’ airline connections.

By the time Felix Rainer recovered his senses, he had nobody to look for and nobody to consult, since Carl was no longer talking.

Karlov asked, “How was the gun?”

“Perfect,” Barney told him.

Armand asked, “How was the ammo?”

“Primo,” Barney told him.

Sirius asked, “How was New York?”

“I can take the city for about ten days at a spell,” Barney told him. “But longer than that and my skin begins to itch.”

“How are your hands?” one of them asked.

“Well, I can still feed myself and wipe my own ass, which I count as progress.”

“Find out what you needed?” another of them asked.

Felix Rainer had been willing to sacrifice Carl Ledbetter, and Carl had been eager to sacrifice Erica, if only she could be found. Dead end. It really did start to look as though she had outsmarted everyone, and Carl had never even met this person who was responsible for his heavy losses. Never seen her live, in the flesh. She was the best ghost of all, an unbeatable mystery. What was the next link in the string, when everybody was equally willing to eat their own soldiers?

Armand said, “You look spent, amigo.”

“Yeah,” said Barney. “I’m gonna sleep now, lapse into a coma I feel I’ve earned. I have to check in with Dr. Brandywine. Two days, say, to lock and load. Then you guys suit up, because we’re going to Mexico.”

The four fishing enthusiasts wearing aloha shirts and tinted sports sunglasses assembled in the bar at the Hotel del Rey to discuss their strategies for bagging swordfish and marlin once they received shipment of their fishing gear and caught a connecting flight to Mazatlan, after tonight’s recreational stopover in Mexico City.

Their conversation was extremely boring.

The pallet holding their heavily insured custom fishing equipment was marked PRIORITY - CUSTOMS - EXPEDITE, and sailed through clearances with barely a nod of notice. As El Atrocidad had counseled, nobody smuggles stuff into Mexico... and that was not even considering the art of properly placed baksheesh, the bribe, a.k.a. el soborno or la mordida, literally “a little bite.”

The next day, once they checked out of the Hotel del Rey, they simply vanished. Happens all the time in Mexico. It happened to a hundred thousand people a year in the United States. People got lost, got waylaid. Got murdered and never found. Went underground. Changed identities. Advantaged ironclad credit for other people who never existed in the first place. They ran from spouses, assumed disguises, ducked under Witness Protection, or just plain etherized without a trace. Out of nearly seven billion people on the entire planet, the percentage was microscopic, not even worth mentioning.

When Barney introduced his crew to the hidden wonders of La Pantera Roja, it took Armand nearly a full minute to stop laughing. He buttoned his mirth when Barney informed him that a special deal had been cut with the management of the sex motel — absolute privacy for a premium price. The desk man, an avaricious toad named Umberto Somethingorother, had winked knowingly. Sí, comprendo totalmente.

“You told him we’re all gay?” Armand roared.

“Not in so many words, but it’s not a first for him,” said Barney. “Just tip big for his shitty microwave food and we’ll be fine.”

They swept the room for surveillance cameras or mikes and found none. There was a wall mount bored out behind a huge velvet painting of a naked Amazonian temptress (the frame hard-bolted to the beams, like everything else in the room), but nothing had been hooked up to it for years.

Each man set to the task of cleaning and checking equipment with a minimum of chitchat. They were no longer acting the part of visitors on fishing holiday and silently subsumed to their tasks with knowledge and competence — no rivalries, few jokes. The talk, the sizing up and slapjack of weapons, the speculations were for men between battles, not rubbing elbows with crunch time.

For the dirty and dangerous outing Barney had in mind, he had no wish to involve his local allies near the city, but he decided to risk a phone call to El Atrocidad in order to find the best and quickest way to procure a nondescript, used vehicle. As it turned out, the big wrestler was already involved. Past his pleasure and bonhomie at hearing Barney’s voice and learning he was still among the living, Atrocidad shared the bad news:

“Amigo, you remember Flecha de Jalisco?”

“Of course,” said Barney. The gravel-voiced técnico in whose debt he would always remain. “Cristobal. I hope nothing bad has happened.”

“His son, Almirante, was taken by los secuestradores last week. They demand a ransom, or will start cutting off his fingers.”

The news hit Barney like a body blow.

“There is something very interesting about these criminals,” said Atrocidad. “They specified a money drop at the bridge on the Rio Satanas.”

“I think I know where they might be keeping him,” said Barney. He described the brown brick building where he had captured Carl Ledbetter. “It’s in a bad part of the city, a freefire zone, like Neza.”

He pictured El Atrocidad going crimson with fury. “Can you find it?!”

The implication was that an army of incognito luchadors stood ready to rush the walls in a beefy, unstoppable wave.

“Give me a day, camarado. I promise I won’t leave you out. But, and this is muy importante, how many days for the money?”

“Dos dias mas.”

“All right, two more days. Tell Flecha that if he speaks to the secuestradores, to tell them he has the money, whatever amount it is. That he will make the drop exactly as instructed.”

“But he doesn’t have the money yet.”

“By tomorrow, amigo, they’ll have bigger problems than hurting Almirante — that’s my promise, too.”

“You are going to fight these culos? Not without me, not without Flecha and Medico Odio and—”

“Calmasé,” said Barney. “You’re not going to be left out.”

El Atrocidad struggled with this for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “Your word, that is enough.”

“My word. On mi vida. You keep your cellphone by you at all times.”

A modification to Barney’s plan had presented itself, and it solved a lot of problems. He had no desire to put these good men in harm’s way, but the resolution struck him with such clarity that it seemed perfectly, immediately, obviously important.

They were able to purchase outright a blue paneled van with a cracked windshield and most of the tread still on the tires, from a nephew of El Atrocidad’s who had managed to keep himself blissfully uninvolved with killers or kidnappers. The van stayed nicely low-profile in the Pantera Roja’s conveniently conceived security carport.

It fell to Barney to explain to his companions that they now had a complication... and a clock.

They switched their tourist duds for job clothes — loose, but not enough to snag; dark, but not so dark as to prevent ID by a friendly. Under their garments, Armand’s special body armor covered them in two pieces from mid-thigh to upper arm, about T-shirt length. Without the side zippers, donning them would have been like trying to squeegee into wet rubber.

Everybody paused to marvel at the bullet scars on Barney’s torso, which Barney endured with something like resigned tolerance. He drew the line at letting Karlov measure them.

“I didn’t know you wore jewelry,” said Armand, pointing at the polished agate nestled tight to Barney’s collarbone by a leather thong.

“Not jewelry,” returned Barney, his hand moving reflexively to touch the stone Mano had given him.

Karlov tossed Barney a pair of gloves — Blackwater Armor Skins tacticals with Kevlar, re-sewn to Barney’s hand dimensions and modified to keep his trigger fingers free.

“Just in case you start leaking again,” Karlov said.

They all wore ATAC Storm SWAT boots, nightshade cargo pants and zippered “511”-style response jackets. Each was kitted out with a fixed-blade knife and MagLite in addition to their chosen weaponry. The guns had been cleaned and checked, then checked again, then field stripped and checked, before being re-checked. Four to five mags maximum for the semi-autos — an overload of weight made it impossible to sustain an aggressive operational tempo, by encumbering maneuverability and causing fatigue.

Sirius had suggested handcuffs in case they needed to incapacitate anyone in transit; these were snug in scabbards and would bounce no light. Sirius was also the man who carefully polished each cartridge and loaded each mag wearing surgical gloves to prevent ejected brass from providing fingerprints.

Any item not mission-essential was dumped. You don’t carry spare change into a hot zone because the jingle might give you away. Ditto keys and what the pros called “mental comfort items.” They had Nomex watch caps which could be pulled down into ski-masks if needed.

Barney had driven the route in his stolen BMW more than a year ago, but nothing had changed. They hit the building at two in the morning...

... not that the atmosphere of deadly carnival was any different at that time of day in this hellhole, which defied the lockstep concept of business hours.

“That’s where Carl went in,” Barney said, indicating the iron speakeasy door recessed into a dark entryway.

“How about the roof?” said Sirius.

“No idea.”

“Give me the case.”

Armand handed over a Halliburton knock-off they had doctored back at the Pantera Roja — stacks of trimmed rag paper with bona fide $100 bands, and a genuine bill on top of each. Barney thumb-checked his SIG .40, his batter-up gun, to ensure chambered brass.

They scattered from the van so as not to cross the street in a group. There was a small traffic island to get past, not to mention assorted panhandlers, hucksters and prostitutes eager to triangulate on a non-Hispanic face. Barney was first in, all business as he rapped on the metal-sheeted door.

A glowering monster peeked out with cloudy, mud-colored lizard eyes. Barney said nothing and exhibited the case.

“Mostramé,” said a clotted voice.

Barney displayed the money in the case, careful not to expose it to street view. “¡Apúrate!” he said. Hurry up.

Five deadbolts threw back and a squeaky latch was undogged.

At the first crack of dim light from within, several things happened simultaneously. Barney hit the door full force, wedging the briefcase into the crack and prying a foot of open space. Karlov and Armand were already behind him, guns up. Sirius barreled through last, making Barney’s impact with the door and his own into one sustained breach. The bandana-wearing creep inside the door was propelled against the far wall in a narrow corridor, and was already bringing a nasty-looking .45 revolver into play. Sirius was quicker with his own .45, a Para-Ordnance Tac-Five LDA from which Karlov had removed the grip safety. He had two of them. Sirius dealt the slide to the guy’s skull, a left-right combo that rocked him like a bobble-head doll and rolled his eyeballs up into nighty-night.

They were bulling right into a range instructor’s nightmare: Unknown space in hallways always constituted a kill zone, and this one went in two directions, making a linear entry per the designates of close-quarter combat impossible. The goal is always to “collapse” the space — that is, mass your fire and visually pick up threats as fast as possible.

Barney had gone low to cover right while Armand slipped behind Sirius to cover left. Karlov backed through last, covering their backsides, stepping over the unconscious mug on the floor, as both ends of the hallway began to fill with armed men shouting alarm.

This was what Barney’s team had come for. Hitting a paper target is one thing. Winning a combat competition on a freestyle range against plywood jump-up assailants is another. Stalking and shooting a game animal, same-same. Hitting a moving target in gunfire and chaos, a target that is shooting back at you, is quite a different thing altogether, a biochemical state of mind/body fusion that cannot be simulated, at least not in the ways that count.

Each man was fit enough to recover solid shooting positions multiple times during an engagement, therefore healthy enough to affect quicker healing if hit. You don’t rely on the weapon to solve all your problems; you need strength, stamina, endurance, speed and the ability to “see before shooting” — that is, process threat information faster than your opponent — as well as the golden rule of servicing a bad guy: Shoot until they drop. This was the difference between live-fire training and real life; between a shooting and a gunfight. A shooting is unidirectional. A gunfight happens when the thing you are shooting at has the ability to shoot back.

A slug from a pocket pistol zinged off the wall near Sirius’ head as Karlov slammed and latched the door. Barney already had the shooter so framed he did not need his sights, put two in his chest from the SIG, and watched the man’s flung pistol bounce off the ceiling as his buddies hared back to cover. Armand did not wait to be shot at, and emptied the cylinder of his behemoth Ruger at the far end of his zone in a circular pattern that convinced a lot of people to be somewhere else. Through the gunsmoke Barney picked out an arm hit, a leg hit, and another uncertain — three down from the destructive power of a full-charge .44 Magnum cartridge meant three that would not come back into gunplay.

They moved as a group toward the Barney side of the hall with hard practical cover in all directions. Armand ejected his spent brass and nearly fumbled his speedloader. His hands were shaking, not with fear or incompetence, but excitement.

The initial response group, ragged and disorganized, was mostly retreating across a large interior atrium, just the sort of open space Barney had predicted the building would have. Sporadic gunfire came back at them, but it was unaimed, over-the-shoulder stuff. Barney popped one guy’s hogleg right out of his hand, then looked up to witness the spectacle of Karlov, arms extended, firing in two directions at once with his twin nine-millimeters — back the way they came and ahead of them, and scoring crippling hits both ways. A bouncing piece of hot brass jabbed Barney’s cheek.

Then somebody opened up on them from the second floor with more serious artillery, a full-sized Uzi carbine from the sound and delivery. Apparently the shooter did not care that Uzis tend to pull up and to the right on full-auto fire, and a double tap from Sirius’ .45 put the man away before he could correct his aim.

Karlov took two more stragglers from a kneeling position as Sirius fired over his head. Barney indicated a stairway to the second floor, and Sirius moved on it, Armand second. Incoming fire was light and undisciplined. Somehow Barney had expected these guys to be better shots, but then he remembered how they had handled machine guns at the bridge.

At the second-floor landing a pair of dazed women screamed and dropped flat, probably unintentionally, but it was the best cover they could have hoped for. A gunless guy with matted hair and no shoes did a spin-around in the hall, trying to figure out which way to run.

People were screaming and pell-melling to get out of the way, and very few of them had guns.

Barney kicked in the nearest door — no lock. He was afforded excellent cover by his men on the stairs and landing as he proceeded down a row of doors, coming through each one gun-first and then backing off without firing.

A hotshot young gunslinger with something to prove tried to nail Karlov on the stairs, and Karlov took some splinters in the face from the balustrade as bullets bit into the lumber. Sirius sent him packing with hazing fire that destroyed all the masonry around the man’s head. Sirius, too, had already sensed something was awry.

Barney double-timed it back to the group. “It’s an abort!” he shouted. “Everybody bail!”

They encountered only three more men with guns as they escaped through the rear of the building.

One man saw them coming, dropped his peashooter, and ran.

One man managed to hit Armand in the shoulder, and Sirius kneecapped him from a distance of twenty yards, firing one-handed — five shots for one hit.

The third man brought a shotgun to bear, a double-barreled howitzer loaded with 12-gauge buck, and they all felt the pellets. Then Armand, Barney and Karlov raised and fired as one, and separated the guy from his piece.

It had all seemed far too easy.

Back in the van they were panting, sweat-drenched and pawing at their collateral damage. Finally, Sirius said, “Okay — what the hell just happened?”

“Sorry, guys,” Barney said. “Wrong building.” His hands were bloody in more ways than one.

They all just looked at him, waiting for a punchline.

Barney told them what he had seen when he kicked in the first second-floor door, the door that, not to put too fine a point on it, had no lock. Inside were candles sputtering in wine bottles and an assortment of junkies sprawled like sniper victims, barely able to register the entrance of a man with a gun. They flopped about on dirty mattresses or stared at infinity points in space. Next room, same deal — freebasing crackheads and a mamacita on the nod who was trying to coax milk out of one flaccid tit to feed an infant who was either comatose or dying.

Wrong building. These were all victims of a different kind of kidnapping, with none of the administrative smell that would have told Barney he was in the right place. It featured the correct ratio of coke-addled meatheads with guns for a drug den, with the primary shooters being security and management. They were also the first to run, clearing out and marooning their ex-customers to find their own way.

Carl Ledbetter and Mister El Chingon Tannenhauser must have used this place as a meeting point, meaning the real hostage hotel could be anywhere within a radius of miles. The courtyard fit, but dozens of structures in this neck of the woods had them.

Wrong building.

Worse, Barney’s bad guess had just dropped Flecha de Jalisco’s son Almirante into the hot pot with the real kidnappers. The phone call confirming the money Flecha had not raised had already been made, on El Atrocidad’s advice, on Barney’s word.

The impact bruise on Armand’s shoulder was a blue-black starburst that grated his bones, but the liquid body armor had worked like a magic shield in a fairy tale. Karlov’s facial wounds were superficial.

“Yeah,” Sirius said when they were back at the Pantera Roja, “Except that we just shot seventeen or eighteen of the wrong guys.”

“No,” said Karlov, dipping witch hazel and antiseptic cream. “When you said you were in, that meant you were in even for this.”

“I didn’t shoot at anyone who didn’t shoot at me first, and that was the deal,” said Armand, nursing his shoulder.

“It’s on me,” said Barney. “I was sure that was the place. I was dead wrong. And now they’re going to slice off Almirante’s fingers one by one unless we find out where they really are.”

“Owww, damned shotgun got me right in the neck,” Armand complained when he saw the pellet track an inch from his carotid artery. They all had dimpled bruises from the shot, as though a finger had been dipped in ink and pressed to the skin. They were painful but the body armor had done its task and rendered them down from lethal.

Barney sight-profiled all of them and the chatter dropped to nil. The question before them was clear: We have weathered an accident and come out whole. It gets worse. Anybody wants to bail, raise a hand. The moment held for a few beats, then dissipated as though it never existed. Nobody left. Each man took turns at the mirror checking their wear and tear.

“So what do we do?” said Sirius, who found three dark dots delineating his waist on the left.

“We take the ransom drop. It’s a bluff, and we’re stuck with it, so let’s play it all the way. The difference is, now we have to snag one of the bad guys and not waste any time sweating him.” He cracked a crooked half-smile and stared at the floor. “I’ve done it before.”

Bulling in full-strength and unidirectionally was not the way to approach the Rio Satanas bridge drop. They had one day left on the ransom clock and Barney took them to the target twelve hours ahead of schedule, for best placement based on what he remembered from the first ransom delivery.

“The minute there’s gunfire, the secuestradores will know the deal has curdled,” said Barney. “It’ll take about two seconds for somebody to spread the news on a cellphone, and thanks to me, Almirante will probably lose a finger before they double their demands, but better a finger than a life.”

“No need to keep blaming yourself,” said Karlov. His face was dotted with little circular Band-Aids he had smeared to neutral with camo paint.

But Barney felt the bite of irony; it had him captured like a narcotic. His negligence would cause Almirante to lose fingers. He did his best to refocus his embarrassment into aggression, then froze fast in wonder at the fact he was concerned at all. Dormant feelings had roused deep inside him. He was not the reincarnation of the Old Assassin after all, or if he was, the sage old killer had been resurrected with a vulnerability, a soft spot. Emotion, however primal, had entered his target’s sight picture, and at that, Barney should have quit and withdrawn. You could not permit an objective to become polluted. His gratitude to the people who had saved his life had just been shoved into hot focus by the fact he was no longer acting solely on behalf of his vendetta, but to save the skin of one of their own.

The best course was to hop-to and not fuck it up, this time. He could psychoanalyze himself later, because right now there was brutal work to do.

Barney indicated the primary shooter slots, the directions from which the late Jesús and his runner buddies had hared forth to collect the cash, and the most likely strategic positions for cover and observation. Tannenhauser, the Mexican with the unlikely name and principal architect of the art of abduction, had been nearby when Carl and Barney had showed up the first time. Not only had he watched, probably through binoculars (which could put him a thousand yards away, or better), but he had gloated to Carl over the hostage cellphone in such a way as to indicate he was indeed seeing the whole exchange live.

But the boss would probably not attend tonight. In business, one learns from experience.

There was no way not to tell El Atrocidad.

“I and three of my friends will be waiting,” Barney said into the phone. “We don’t want to have to deal with friendly fire. Our objective is to capture one of the pickup men. Repeat, capture — not kill.”

“So you cannot locate the hotel of the rehéns?”

“No, my information was unreliable. I know Almirante is at risk, but we must take that risk.” Barney could not quite bring himself to admit out loud that he had screwed the pooch once already.

“You risk not only yourself, but your men,” returned Atrocidad gruffly. “For one of ours. We shall not bring las armas if you tell me that you will.”

“Consider your ass covered, big man.”

If anything, the meltdown district where the oddly fanciful bridge was located smelled even worse than Barney remembered. No memory puckers the pores like decomposing sewage and toxic spill. Karlov wore his shooting glasses with flip-down tinted lenses — he was a bit nearsighted — and within moments they all had mufflered themselves in bandanas in a futile attempt to filter the stench. You wanted to cover as much of your skin as possible in a place like this; even taking a sip of bottled water seemed hazardous, because the water made the briefest contact with the air before it got inside you. Nothing had any color here, beyond iron-gray and mud-brown. Nothing grew on the eroded banks of the river where La Llorona was said to call out in the night, at the full moon.

As the sun descended, the evil, poisoned ground gave up more odor in thick waves of released heat. The men were already sweltering in their gear, but to inhale a double lungful of this aroma was to induce vomiting.

Barney unsheathed one of the Benelli shotguns. He was positioned so as to neutralize the bridge shooter who had surprised him the first time. Different cast, same movie, only now Barney was the screen, looking at the audience. Two hours before the appointed meet, two full-size, flat-black SUVs with nonreflective rims showed up to disgorge about fifteen men. Barney’s team was secreted around the perimeter, concealed beneath reeking garbage and industrial litter, their faces eliminated by camouflage paint.

They all went hot on their conferenced cellphones, another tweak of Karlov’s.

“I can see the vehicles,” came Armand’s voice in a crackle. He was invisible somewhere off to Barney’s left. “They pulled back about forty yards, by the oil pumpers, whatever you call those things that look like dunk-birds. Two and two.”

Correction: nineteen men, all armed.

“Armand, take the cars,” said Barney.

“Copy, take cars and men. Done.”

“I’ve got five on my side of the river,” said Karlov. “Flanking out from the cars. They look to be cover fire or surprise backup. I can take these five but I’ve got to move closer for the rest.”

A phalanx of the men crossed the bridge and scattered, leaving a solitary shooter up top. No way there had been this many guys when Carl and Barney had first visited. Tannenhauser’s idea of security had gone practically American — more equals better.

“I’ve got men heading under the bridge,” said Sirius, slightly further back in a crow’s nest position with the Nitefinder binoculars.

“Can you get them all?” said Barney.

“You might have to pick up some spare change on your way over. Karlov, you’ve got two more moving up on your six o’clock.” Not good. Karlov’s hide now had shooters on both sides of it.

“Copy,” said Karlov. “Betcha a beer I can take seven before you take five.”

Sirius replied, “Meet me after. These are some scruffy-looking dudes indeed.” As an afterthought he added, “Packing autos; watch out for spray.”

“Complaints, complaints,” Karlov chimed in through a brief jolt of static. “Grow up. This is fewer than five each, and I have what you call the handicap.”

Armand’s voice came back: “I can take the bridge shooters from behind.”

“Negative,” said Barney. “Take the vehicles. Make sure they don’t go anywhere.”

“Copy.”

“Take them on my shot,” said Barney.

The sun ebbed and the shadows lengthened. It was getting crowded out here, thought Barney. The hidden watchers were themselves being watched by his team, better concealed.

At the appointed time, when the fetid atmosphere was bristling with anticipation, Barney saw El Atrocidad’s golden chariot slowly negotiate its way over roads that were little better than sodden goatpaths. It stopped the same distance from the bridge that Barney had stopped Carl’s limo, in another time.

Flecha debarked from the passenger side — Barney recognized the tank-shaped man immediately — which meant El Atrocidad was in the driver slot. The car was roughly between Sirius to the south, and Karlov to the north on the far side of the river.

He saw Flecha raise a cellphone to his ear.

Barney dog-crawled from his hide. He did not need nightvision, though he was aware the enemy probably had it.

Flecha repeated his instructions, his low purr of a voice audible, though not intelligible.

With the semi-auto Benelli in a low-ready dedicated carry, Barney did a double roll to bring him in line with the pathway on the bridge and fired twice from a distance of fifteen running yards. The shooter on the bridge screamed and fell over, pretty much a sieve from the knees up.

Gunfire perforated the night, muzzle flashes everywhere as the dumping ground transmogrified into a battlefield.

Sirius took the bridge runners, one-two-three, as they broke cover and started firing machine guns at Atrocidad’s car.

Karlov took the backup men, having correctly estimated the direction each of them would move once gunshots galvanized them. He poked up from his comfy foxhole and revolved like a gun turret, delivering both hi-cap mags — a blistering salvo of forty-four rounds — in under ten seconds, shooting both of his nines at once. Then he dropped out of sight like a jack in the box with second thoughts. His seven men were all down, dead or howling.

Barney ran across the bridge, eating up the real estate between him and the two SUVs, one of which was already moving. Two rounds from Armand’s Benelli caused the rear tires to shred apart and the chunky car sat down hard, ass-skidding into a crooked pyramid of rusty 40-gallon drums. Barney put his final four rounds through the windshield, which imploded in a sparkling black hailstorm of safety glass. Armand had command of the other car already.

Barney dropped the shotgun and cross-drew his .40, approaching the vehicles in a heel-and-toe step, careful not to cross one leg in front of the other and get tangled in his own limbs.

Sirius answered incoming auto weapons fire with his own shotgun. Then Barney heard the distinct cannonade of Sirius’ .44 clipping stragglers.

Start to finish, something like twenty seconds.

Gunsmoke spiced the toxic wind.

“Hey, amigo!” It was Atrocidad’s voice, coming from the car. “You there? I have a present for you!” The big wrestler’s guttural signature laugh echoed in the sudden silence.

Barney hustled over while his team checked the dead and the dying, to make sure no opponent could zombie up and start shooting again.

“Heeeeeyyyyyy!” Atrocidad’s grin was so wide that Barney was afraid it would split his face and make the top of his head fall off. He was holding a ransom runner by the scruff and randomly punching him whenever he twitched. The smaller man’s feet were off the ground.

“Look at you!” Atrocidad bellowed. “You’re up, you’re walking, you’re fighting, life is good!” He punched his captive again. “You’ll pay for my paintjob, pinche cabron.” Then he dropped his insensate prisoner like a mail sack and wrapped Barney up in a bear hug.

Flecha de Jalisco was smiling big as well, even though he had one massive hand clamped over his bicep, which was leaking blood through his suit. He gave Barney a thumbs-up. No big deal.

“It’s good to see you,” said Barney. “But we’re going to have to hold off on the celebration and reunion for a bit.”

“We know,” said Atrocidad. “But meanwhile, check this puto.”

El Atrocidad dragged his charge in front of the Cadillac’s headlamps.

Barney’s mouth belayed into a stall of disbelief. Even past the blackening eyes and ruptured nose, he could still recognize the guy Atrocidad had stopped on the run.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned and completely gone to hell if it’s not my old pal Condorito.” The skittish monkey-man from the hostage hotel, the one who had participated in Barney’s beatings after Sucio and the others had softened him up. Barney grabbed a fistful of his rank hair and got in his face. “This is a rare honor. It’s not every day I get to watch somebody’s life turn to shit right before their eyes, and today, old buddy, that somebody is you.” He held the dazed man’s head in his hands, resisting the urge to smash it to pulp with his SIG.

Armand came humping up. “Karlov’s hit. We have to get the hell outta here, pronto.”

A 9-millimeter slug from an HK MP5 had bored into Karlov’s forearm below the elbow, and boy, was he piqued.

“Damn stupid dumb luck,” he griped. Lacking a field dressing, he applied pressure to the entry and exit wounds by plugging his thumb and middle fingers into the holes and grimacing a lot. Karlov had stamina, no doubts there.

A brief debate ensued over whether Atrocidad should take him to the hospital along with Flecha, whose pistol wound would be easier to explain. Karlov vigorously protested, saying he needed to get back to his toolkit, and a first aid box they had back at the motel. Too many questions and not enough time. He needed to concentrate on processing the trauma.

“Let me stay,” said El Atrocidad after he had delivered Flecha to a clínica he knew close to Arena Coliseo. “You need little puto to tell you where los secuestradores are hiding; I can make him sing opera.”

“It has to be fast,” said Barney. “They’ll be chopping off Almirante’s fingers any minute now.”

“Sí, claro. But a man can lose many fingers before he is dead.” The wrestler opened his arms in brotherly entreaty. Barney himself was proof of what he said.

They wrung out Condorito in the motel room while Karlov treated his own gunshot wound. It was a toss-up as to which spectacle was bloodier.

Armand flinched when he saw Karlov ream out his arm with a sterilized barrel-cleaning brush. He poked it in one side and pulled it through the other while biting on a rolled-up washcloth, making a horrific noise like a prehistoric animal going down in a tar pit. Armand flinched again when he saw Karlov douse the tunnel with peroxide. The table flooded with pink fizzing foam dotted with tiny splashes of Karlov’s sweat, dripping freely from his brows and chin. He packed the wound with antibiotic gel and wrapped it in gauze.

“If you’ll pardon me now,” Karlov said, “I am going to go vomit, and then lie down. Do not even think of telling me I am out of the op, because I am not.”

“You can’t do gunfire,” Barney said, looking up from where he was dealing with Condorito on the far side of the room.

“I’ve got ten years on you, young man, so I outrank you. I just took down seven men firing two-handed. So don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.” Karlov shuffled off toward the bathroom, woozy from shock. He had a bit of trouble tacking on the doorway.

Barney returned his attention to Condorito, holding up the Smith & Wesson .22 revolver Karlov had given him. “Real simple. I shoot this through your foot, like so.”

Barney placed the eight-inch barrel on top of Condorito’s sneakered foot, beneath which El Atrocidad had lodged a phone book. The bang of the .22 was similar to the snap of a big mousetrap. They could shoot this piece in here all day and nobody would notice or care.

Condorito contracted in abrupt, undeniable pain. He could not kick or flail much; his extremities were all duct-taped to a tubular metal chair which Atrocidad held down in order to keep it from falling over as the smaller man juddered.

“Then,” said Barney, “we remove this.” He pulled a wadded towel from where it was crammed into Condorito’s mouth. Condorito blubbered a string of insults and admonitions. “Then,” Barney continued, “you tell us where the hostage hotel is, comprendes?”

Condorito offered several observations on the nature of pain, on Barney’s sexual proclivities, and possible heritage.

Barney shot him in the other foot. Bang. Flush, rinse, repeat.

“Your knees are next. Then your hands. Then your elbows. Then I’ve got two shots left in this cylinder I haven’t decided what to do with yet. You tell us where it is, because you’re going to show us where it is, no matter how many holes I put in you.”

There was a loud thump against the wall from the next room. Everybody held in position and caught their breath, except for Condorito. There was a pain demon trapped inside his skin, and it wanted out.

The men looked to each other. Another thump. No, a series of thumps, rhythmic. Then a muffled cry: “¡Ayyy! ¡Ayyy! ¡Papi! ¡Mijo! ¡Ayy! ¡Ayy!”

Somebody was ramming their dream date against the headboard in the adjacent room with slightly more abandon than you would expect from a comfortably married couple, which is to say a couple married to each other. La Pantera Roja did, after all, have many other paying customers.

“¡Ayy! ¡Alocate y haste mia! ¡Chupame la cola! ¡Ayy! ¡Ayy!”

El Atrocidad lit up the room with his grin as the others tried to match it.

Barney rolled his eyes and turned back to Condorito, gun in hand. “Nobody’s going to hear the gun, not in this place, and for sure nobody’s going to hear you squawking.”

Not a particularly brave man when it came to saving his life, Condorito spilled everything he could think of. Area, street, security, size of opposing force. Layout. Anything that would keep him from getting married to another tiny wasp-like bullet. El Atrocidad nodded at Barney through some of it. Barney made Condorito repeat everything several times, faster and faster, so no a la carte lies could slip through. By the time he was finished, Condorito’s palate was very familiar with the taste of the gun barrel.

“All right,” said Barney. “Tape him up and get him into the van.” The rest of their gear had been loaded by Armand and Sirius. “Don’t forget the grenades this time.”

Sirius winced. “Hey, I was all excited and shit, okay? Let it go.” In his rush to first blood at the crack den he had forgotten the grenade bag; fortunately they hadn’t needed it.

There was a more important reason for clearing out of the Pantera Roja: Once the kidnappers twigged to the massacre at the bridge, one of them might be smart enough to remember that the Pantera Roja was where they had re-acquired Jesús, and come calling with maximum warpower. It was safer to consider this base blown. Whatever came in the aftermath — food, showers, rest — would come at some other place, utterly unpredictable and totally anonymous.

“Amigo,” said Atrocidad. “Pardon me for saying so, but—”

Barney whirled on him. “What?” This man was going to tell him what he was doing was sadistic and unfair, despite helping him do it. This man was going to lecture him on the differences between right and wrong, good and evil, and what was righteous and what was low.

El Atrocidad spoke measuredly, to insure he was not misunderstood. “I was just going to say, amigo, that you... ehh, stink. Smell really bad, you know?”

Barney had mopped off his camo but his eyes were still raccooned and black sweat tracks grooved his face. They all smelled like the septic tank of an abortion clinic at high tide.

“We haven’t got time for a group shower,” Barney said, collecting his refreshed clips from Armand. The motel room was thick with a humid inversion layer of butchershop blood and locker room secretions.

“That’s what we do,” said Sirius, holstering his Magnum. “We all stink together, baby.”

Karlov rose from his cot to prove he was far from out of the game. “Or we most assuredly shall stink separately.”

They had time for one swig from one beer Sirius had left in the fridge. They passed it around and it came to Barney last. He drained it, taking a unique pleasure in seeing Condorito eye the bottle as though it was the closest the little man would ever get to his version of Heaven.

El Atrocidad did his damnedest to tag along but Barney prohibited it. His mission was to assemble a group of Flecha’s friends, luchadors all, and await a cue via cellphone. Barney stressed this. It was important to have the wrestlers involved, particularly since Flecha de Jalisco had himself been wounded in battle over his own son, but Barney convinced Atrocidad that it was even more important to wait for the cue. Timing was paramount, and if a ring superstar could not acknowledge that, he or she had no business waxing mythic.

Condorito, his gunshot feet padded in rags wrapped outside his sneakers, proved to be an adroit navigator once the right stimulus was applied. He even suggested shortcuts and alternate routes to avoid the worst of the traffic. From Barney’s dim memory of road-bumps, halts and sudden turns taken while he was hooded and blind, they seemed to be on the right track. If they deviated due to trickery, he would smell it and gift Condorito with another bullet.

Karlov was in the back of the van drawing and holstering, trying to coax his injured arm up to specs. He had adopted one of the neck slings he had designed for Barney’s aim and stayed busy adjusting it.

Armand was riding shotgun, and Sirius was next back, propping Condorito up between the seats to plot the course.

The Iztapalapa district west of Mexico City is a working class barrio ringed with shantytowns competing with monolithic, cinderblock industry, a fast lane in the superhighway of narcotrafico and crime, double-stuffed to bursting with overpopulation and violence-by-the-minute. Razed to the ground in the 16th Century by Hernan Cortez in a genocidal war against the Aztecs memorialized as the Sad Night, Iztapalapa was also the locale of Mexico’s first school shooting spree by a student, in 2001. It is not found on the usual checklists of things to see and do in Mexico, yet paradoxically it becomes the locus for hundreds of thousands of visitors on Good Friday, when the populace goes mad reliving Golgotha — a reenactment of the Passion that has been going on since the 1830s, when the area was decimated by cholera. Fake Christs lug crosses; others tart up in a kind of Busby Berkley approximation of Roman centurions, and amid religious chants and simulated flagellation the crucifixion is dramatized on a southern hill that later turned out to be a lost pre-Columbian pyramid covered in dirt, with squatters encamped at its base.

Good Friday was months distant, though, and today Iztapalapa was just another urban war zone into which Condorito, wounded emissary, led warriors.

The building he called the palacio was a half-block-sized brick rectangle with — as Barney had correctly guessed a year earlier — a large interior courtyard accessed through armored doors. It was an old factory fortressed up similarly to the crackhouse they had invaded: bars, metal plating, no window entry, razorwire ringing the roof. The north wall was a gigantic, faded beer advertisement that was decades old and buried in graffiti.

They circled the building for a look-see, and half the circumference was on dirt roads with no names.

“That’s where they go in,” said Condorito, pointing to a gated archway in the south wall. It was well back from the street inside its own stone tunnel.

“Can we drive through that gate?” said Barney.

Condorito mulled this over. “You hit it at about forty, you probably knock it down, sí, but then a lot of guys be shooting at you.”

“Sirius, how’re those smoke grenades?”

“They’ll do the job, like I said. But what I didn’t get to say is that they’re LZ markers.”

Karlov said, “What is he talking about?”

“It’s colored smoke,” said Barney.

Armand lifted one out of the pouch and examined it. “Look, we’ve got flavors: red, orange, green, violet, blue, yellow.”

“They’re fine,” protested Sirius. “Five vents, 50- to 90-second discharge, one-point-five second fuse.”

“But they’re in colors,” Barney said with a slightly pained expression.

“Oh, climb outta my butt,” Sirius said, his dander riled. “Look, we can even launch these out of the shotguns. See? Adapter. Click, bang, just like a TL-1.”

“Okay, all right, as long as we’ve got coverage.”

“In color,” Armand said, refusing to turn loose of the joke.

“Well, this oughta be festive,” said Barney. He turned to Condorito, who looked strung-out, but maintaining. “You positive this van can crash through that gate?”

“Yesss,” he said, drawing the consonant out, which meant pretty sure. “It swings open.” He demonstrated with his hands.

“Bueno,” said Barney, “Because you’re going to drive.”

Picture the gate to the Palacio as the crossbar of the letter H, with the entry through the lower half. Inside that staple-shape a surveillance camera monitored the tunnel, which was arched, almost Moorish, from a tamper-proof mount high on the left. Dark inside. There was no security door cut into the gate; it was not designed to admit pedestrians. This was for deliveries.

Outside on the street, two men walked past the tunnel entryway, the bottom of the H. One paused, apparently to light a cigarette. The other continued walking.

When Sirius and Armand had bracketed the tunnel they each tossed in smoke. Red and yellow clouds combined to form a bilious orange, rather akin to a fire without the light or heat. It clogged the tunnel in five seconds. Sirius folded himself into the artificial fog bearing a shotgun adapted to fire the smoke cartridges. His station was upper left corner, below the now-blind camera, the elbow of the bottom of the H. Armand took right corner. Karlov was on standby outside. Under his coat he wore his fabulous four-gun holster rig.

Direct approach was impossible, due to the road jog and a dirt-surfaced side road that cut through the opposing block. The tunnel was meant to be turned into, not accessed head-on. The panel van lurched over the side-road, making about forty-five before it had to grab a sharp right and sail into the tunnel, like a trick-angle shot in billiards.

Taped into the driver’s seat was Condorito, looking mildly insane, Barney’s gun barrel nestled in his occipital ditch. To external view Condorito was just another lunatic Mexican driver hopped up on goofballs and playing the road as a video game. The van went briefly airborne after clearing a rut, and two wheels left the ground on the turn. They were hammering a solid half-buck when they split the smoke in the tunnel and struck the gate.

The stanchions securing the gate ripped out of concrete and eviscerated the van’s transmission on the way through. Iron trespass teeth gutted the tires and the van nosed down sharply, grinding through on rims. The left arm of the gate flew free of its hinges and landed in the courtyard, sliding, striking sparks. The right arm banged back to fan the billow of smoke disgorging from the tunnel. The van fishtailed to a stop and sat there steaming, quickly enveloped by the smoke.

Inside the courtyard, men were yelling.

Sirius had stepped aside to let the van juggernaut past about a foot away from him. When his side of the gate vanished with a metallic clang he eeled around the corner, hugged the wall, and began to peg smokers around the perimeter. Karlov came through right behind him, quick-drawing his .40 with his good hand and potting two rounds through the chest of a sentry who was just regaining his senses enough to raise a weapon at Sirius.

On Armand’s side, the swinging gate had center-punched another guard, who was just getting to hands and knees and groping around for his Uzi on the ground. Armand’s Magnum blasted the guy into a surfer flip and he went down and stayed still.

Barney kicked out through the rear of the van as men on the second floor of the atrium opened up, full auto, on the intruder vehicle. Condorito died an inglorious death at the hands of his co-workers, shredded by bullets that vaporized the windshield, destroyed the cabin and made both him and the upholstery into floating chaff. What several hundred incoming bullets will do to an automobile — not mention the hapless bastard inside — is a minor miracle of horror.

An alarm klaxon began to bark, echoing in the courtyard, which was now fogged in with orange, then laced with green and blue as Sirius placed his smokers in what he called a “Dr. Pepper spread” — ten, two, and four o’clock.

The enemy, surprised and lacking visual targets, concentrated on the van. Barney’s team had planned how to move, and did not necessarily need to see.

Barney knew this place. His ears knew it. His memory confirmed it. The graveled pavement beneath his feet was a sense picture. He had been muscled along this very surface with his head bagged. There would come a door, a narrow hallway, an elevator. The secured rooms that served as cells. Tannenhauser’s office, brain central for the kidnapping ring. Barney remembered the toy soldiers grouped on one corner of Tannenhauser’s computer desk. He and his men were the soldiers now, coming home.

Even with the best of intel, it had been impossible to plan textbook moves such as link-up points, limits of advance, areas of responsibility or fields of fire. Knowing they had to wing it, Barney’s team stayed tight if for no other reason than to avoid shooting each other in the smokescreen.

Karlov tapped Armand on the arm and together they got a sight picture on Sirius. They married up and proceeded leftward, blasting the occasional running gunner back into the smoke. They found the east wall.

A door opened and two gunners came ready to fight. They looked up into a fusillade of bullets that hoisted one of them completely back into the building. His partner simply vanished into a billow of red smoke.

Barney materialized out of the riot of rainbow fog and pointed toward the door. None of them had uttered a syllable since the gate breach.

Inside they encountered minimal resistance. Sirius caught a frag from the wall in the forehead and instinctively returned fire with the shotgun. The orange smoke canister caught the shooter square in the noggin, almost somersaulting him backward. His MP5 skittered across the floor. As Barney stepped over him, he put a round in the guy’s ear and the man stayed still.

If this was another wrong building, at least it was full of motivated hostiles with heavy ordnance. Nobody chopped so far could be deemed an innocent.

Barney located the elevator. They set it for the third floor, lobbed in a smoker, and moved for the stairs.

When they kicked through the stairway door on the second floor and deployed right-left-up-down, muzzles everywhere, a consternated sentry flung his pistol toward them and rabbitted away.

Long corridor, five rooms, max lock.

Barney held up his pinky finger, indicating flechettes for the shotguns. Spiked brass rods instead of shot, heavy powder, used by Feds to blow door hinges from the outside. Sirius smoked the far end of the corridor while Armand turned the first door to confetti. It was a heavy wooden door, cross-barred, but once it lost its hinges it sagged like an old prom queen. Inside a child was screaming, balled into a wad in a far corner. No leg shackle. Television. It was a little girl about eight, her long hair beautiful but filthy, her coal-brown eyes dilated in terror. Barney had to slap her lightly to get her attention. “Cuidado,” he said. “Quedarse aqui, nina. Regresamos inmediatamente; vamanos ahora. ¿Entiendes?”

He had tried to say watch out, stay here little girl, we’ll be right back, we’re leaving today. No doubt it sounded like me-Tarzan you-Jane to the panicked girl, but he did not want her running out into gunfire. She seemed to grasp most of it and nodded, her eyes shining with tears. He held her face with his mutilated hand and made sure she registered the reassurance in his own gaze. Then he pointed for her to stay right where she was. “¡Permaneces!”

The alarm on his wristwatch peeped. Simultaneously, El Atrocidad’s watch would be signaling, too.

It rains a great deal in Mexico City and its outback, generally short bursts during midday in the wet season — May through October on the tierra fria. It had rained during Barney’s first visit and no doubt had rained a lot during his incarceration, although he had no memory of hearing or smelling rainfall while he was shackled. The rain, then, had not mattered or affected operations. Outside the Palacio, now, it had begun to rain...

... which would not only cleanse the air for a scant moment, it would also sabotage Barney’s smokescreen.

They worked the corridor, smashing open the bolted doorways which held the latest crop of hostages. Another child, not Almirante. A beautiful, bedraggled woman in a miniskirt, no doubt snatched outside a club. A man who had lost a finger already and demanded a firearm so he could get involved. A woman who remained in her corner seat when the door flew down, and smiled when Barney looked at her, as though she had known all along he would arrive, perhaps in answer to a prayer.

Barney pointed. Up. Next floor.

Shooters on the third floor were ready to rumble, but ill-prepared for the smoke delivered by Sirius, squinting to see through the blood clogging his eye from his head wound. Armand took a rolling dive and managed to bracket the corridor, firing and reloading his .44. His hands were no longer shaking. Barney saw Karlov holster one firearm and execute a one-handed clip-change on another, smacking the fresh load against his knee and grimacing mostly for show. Sirius had his shotgun bowslung and was lopping the opposition apart a limb at a time shooting his twin Para-Ordnance semi-autos two-handed, walking and firing alternately, left-right-left-right. The slugs carved vapor trails through the thick green smoke, found targets, inflicted destruction.

Barney was slammed to the floor by two wild hits in the back, their killing penetration dispersed by the body armor, but their motive force burly enough to knock him on his face. He crawled to a locked door across the hall, grabbed the knob and fought to hoist himself upright. The breath had been punched out of his lungs and he needed to draw new air.

Sirius and Armand walked point, giving the hall maximum coverage, expecting Barney and Karlov to follow in their wake to mop up by freeing the hostages on this floor.

Good god, how many people were held captive here? There were three more entire wings to the building.

Karlov handed over a shotgun and Barney blew the next door.

Instantly, gunfire erupted from within. Karlov snapped backward and fell down.

Through the dust and smoke as Barney ducked out of aimed sight, he glimpsed a naked man inside the room, emptying a big revolver at the intruders.

It was Zefir, the fat tormentor upon whom Barney had once puked, in another life. He had been interrupted in mid-rape by the invasion of the Palacio, but determined to achieve his wretched little squirt before his own special love-nest door wrenched apart into fiery splinters. Now he stood firing wild into the clouded green hallway, his pathetic erection barely visible in the shadow of his substantial belly. His victim was tied to a four-poster bed by athletic bandages and there was a game show blurring across the TV screen.

Barney fired with the shotgun from a distance of eight feet and the flechette round tore Zefir to ragged single-serve pieces. He actually glimpsed parts of his own body raining down around him before he dropped.

Karlov was attempting to sit up.

Barney saw this and watched long enough to see his comrade give a thumbs-up. I’m okay, don’t worry, move it!

What was left of Zefir lay in a widening scarlet puddle on the wooden floor, his cognizance purely reptilian. Barney slapped him to a semblance of awareness, then hissed, “Sucio. ¿Donde está Sucio?”

“Gahhh,” said Zefir. He died.

Karlov limped into the breached room, favoring his left leg. The woman on the bed had gone tharn while being rompered by Zefir, and naturally reacted to his intrusion as a preamble to further abuse. He had to calm her down but could not muster much Spanish.

More gunfire, from the hallway. Mostly Armand and Sirius, sweeping and clearing.

Barney handed the shotgun across, the message in his eyes clear. I’m going to follow them and open the remaining rooms. Karlov nodded just as the woman, arms freed, grabbed him like a lost daughter and started sobbing.

Other hostages were probably most secure in their locked rooms until the floors could be flushed of gunners. Armand and Sirius knew they had to find the room with the computers, the office of El Chingon. They had zipped open enough rooms to verify they were in the right place, doing the right thing.

Opposition began to wane noticeably. Gunners were either dead or hightailing it.

Barney stepped out into the hallway to reload, and that’s when the enormous Sucio smashed into him like a runaway bulldozer, grabbed him by the throat and hefted him clear of the ground.

Thirty or more big-ticket hostages at $500 U.S. per day was a rake of $15,000 every twenty-four hours — not bad when you considered it was above and beyond the ransom demands, which corkscrewed up into the millions more often than you would assume possible, given Mexico’s reputation as one of the world’s great sinkholes of poverty. Tannenhauser had a wonderful little slot machine going at the Palacio; it nearly always paid off. Tannenhauser was the man Barney wanted. Sucio was the man he got.

Sucio, the stone-idol sonofabitch who had snipped off Barney’s fingers, then forced them down Barney’s throat. Sucio, who had the blood-rage for the death of his brother Jesús at the hands of a pair of pinche gringos. Sucio, of the daily beatings and humiliation, head pervert of the guard branch of this madhouse. The man who had shot Barney four times and dumped his carcass into the sewer, albeit not in that order.

He was a year older, a year more aromatic, and his gouged eye had healed into a droop that mocked Tannenhauser’s lazy left orb. He emerged from the green fog like the legendary chupacabra, neckless, fulminating with anger, the size of a small bear. That make-believe bloodsucking cryptid, brother to Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman, was said to possess the power to give mortals nausea with its glowing red eyes. Sucio pretty much fit the profile.

Barney had rehearsed this moment a half-million times in his mind. He would track Sucio down, cripple him, make sure he knew who was killing him, and then finish him off, maybe after making him eat all of his own fingers. Or Barney would shoot him in the legs with his .22 until Sucio would gladly chop off his own penis to escape the pain. Something that was the ultimate in degradation. Barney would taunt the bigger man, spitting his venom back at him, trying for some humiliation that could compensate for what Barney had lost. But no matter what he did to Sucio, the only thing it would change was whether or not Sucio still occupied the world of the living. Payback ran deeper than that.

It was all an indulgent joke, anyway, with Barney as the butt. Because Sucio had appeared out of nowhere instead of being tracked and run to ground. He now had Barney’s neck in a vise-grip and was crushing his larynx. And in the big man’s face was no sign of recognition at all. None.

And now Barney was going to die by Sucio’s hand not far from the first Bleeding Room; joke squared.

Barney’s gun thumped to the floor at Sucio’s feet. Barney’s legs kicked and thrashed. No good.

Sucio increased the pressure with his weightlifter muscle. Hydrostatics would blast Barney’s eyes from his head like pimentos from olives. The world washed scarlet. Sucio was going to tweeze his head completely free of his body with the sound of a popped pimple.

Air was a memory as Barney struggled to breathe. Drowning, again.

Sucio flinched but kept Barney in his deathgrip. Flinched twice more. In delayed molasses-time, Barney vaguely registered the sound of gunshots. Twice more. Gradually the hammerlock on his esophagus eased back, just a notch.

Again. Again.

Karlov was sitting on the floor of the hostage room, legs out in front of him, wavering but accurately delivering the payload of his unholstered .357 into Sucio’s back one round at a time. Sucio dropped to one knee, still clutching Barney’s neck. Still twitching from hits. Barney’s swimming vision made dim sense of Armand, standing in the hallway, calmly aiming, firing, and walking closer with each round. Beside him, Sirius took alternate shots, adding more lead to Sucio’s body fat index. When the giant killer finally released Barney and slumped, Barney saw the heel of the Army .45 sticking out of his waistband — the old Colt 1911-A Barney had picked up cheap for the original ransom run, the one Sucio had taken from him.

Barney sprawled on his side, gasping, his eyes staying on the gun even though his vision was hazed and occluded. Or had Sirius let off another grenade? Didn’t matter. Put your hand on that pistol.

Still sucking draughts of oxygen laced with green smoke, Barney pulled the .45 free of Sucio’s pants. Sucio was trying to crabwalk himself toward the far wall, his metabolism blowing fuses, his blood flooding out to soak the floor.

Barney snapped the action of the semi-auto to chamber his first thank you to the man who had meant so much to him.

After steadying himself against the wall, Barney pushed off like a swimmer and emptied the magazine into Sucio’s chest at point blank range.

Contrary to entrenched cliché and what nitwits repeatedly say on the evening news, shots do not “ring out,” and anybody who tells you they do has never heard gunfire. Report is more akin to the startlement of a heavy door slammed by a gust of wind; you know how that makes you jump, and no matter how prepared you think you are, the sound always comes as a surprise. It stops time for a millisecond and obliterates all other sound. Ignition and launch of a bullet evacuates the air from around your head in a phenomenon called blowback. If you’re not ready for it, the noise jump-starts the human fight-or-flight reflex in some small primitive corner of the brain. You freeze momentarily until the gunshot allows the rest of the world to come back. Once you’ve gotten past that first shot, subsequent shots are easy — you can even make them without blinking because your mind has processed that initial speed-stop, which no way, nohow, never in history, “rings out.”

Pink, frothy lung-blood was slobbering from Sucio’s mouth. Barney could see the tiny lights in the man’s eyes, fading to black.

Blood was coursing from both of Barney’s hands, oozing past the snugs on the shooting gloves. His new hands would always be limited in certain ways. But they could still give Sucio the finger, which was the last thing he saw before he died.

Then the corridor filled up with shouting men in Mexican wrestling masks, and Barney knew the cavalry had arrived.

Karlov was dead.

He had breathed his last after pumping the final rounds of his .357 into Sucio, from where he had slumped on the floor of the room with the naked lady in it. His body armor had shielded him from all the hits in the hallway except for the one wild, heavy-caliber shot from Zefir, which angled in by sheer chance to slam his femoral artery so hard that it ruptured beneath the skin. All the time he was calming the rape victim, helping Barney, and holding up his end of the assault, he was hemorrhaging, and he finally ran dry. Internal bleeding left his leg completely black.

Their guns were literally too hot to holster.

Barney’s plan was to alert El Atrocidad and his men as soon as the assault commenced. By the time they could rally and storm the Palacio, the shooting would be done... and the masked superstars of lucha libre could take credit for rescuing thirty or more hostages. It should have come as no surprise that the wrestlers were standing by and eager to jump; they showed up early by Barney’s wristwatch, and got to pound a few criminal heads in the deal. The most astonishing part was that they showed up in costume — flamboyant spandex, filigreed masks and boots for stomping. A couple had sequined capes. Flecha de Jalisco was wearing a gray business suit and tie, but with the sleeves ripped off due to his gunshot wound. These men were accustomed to fighting in their sacred masks, and barreled into the Palacio practically foaming to take on all comers with a hysterical bravery that would make you think it was a pay-per-view event.

Armand had discovered Flecha’s son Almirante locked in a third floor room, west wing. The boy’s fingers were all intact. One more day and the merch might have devalued enough for the kidnappers to begin lopping parts.

Some bad guy stragglers caught the worst of it, getting flung two stories down, hammered until they were raw meat, or centered in a kicking contest by two or three luchadors. No way this fighting was fake, and the blood was more real than ever.

All the masked men thought Barney was el campeon de justicia, and Atrocidad told him so.

“But that is not the reason you do this.” El Atrocidad winked at Barney from the depths of his green, vinyl-flamed mask, his grin like a grille, his face like the front end of a Chevy low-rider. “The champion of justice, that is part of the lucha libre leyendo, the legend. You do this thing and want no one to know it is you, except those you punish.”

“I’m no hero,” said Barney. His throat was still scoured and aching. Breathing hurt. “I’ve killed unarmed men. I’ve lied and bushwhacked them for no other reason than revenge.”

“You might think that,” said Atrocidad. “You might even talk yourself into believing it. But I know better. You came back to Mexico for a right reason, correcto, ¿no?”

There would never be any way to explain it to the big goateed man.

If El Atrocidad was exuberant, Flecha de Jalisco was gushing, effusive, verging on tears, and who was Barney to say the man’s gratitude was not deep and genuine? He had reclaimed his son from the forces of evil men. But Barney could not take much more gruff good cheer in the name of justice.

What now? During the mop-up, everybody looked to Barney as though he was some kind of leader, and all Barney could look at was the lifeless form of his good friend Karlov, lost thanks to his vendetta.

“Now?” said Barney. “What now? We get the hell outta Dodge before the news trucks show up. But first we have to give them a show. Once El Atrocidad and his men get the hostages clear, we burn this fucking place to the ground, to ashes. If Tannenhauser isn’t here, then there’s nothing left. His scumbag army are all dead or fled. One thing — I want to find the room. The room. The burning starts there.”

“Yeah, well before you go all pyromaniacal on us,” said Sirius, “I’ve got a guy handcuffed to a water pipe up on Three you might want to have a word with. Over next to the computer room.”

Barney just wanted to sleep. Post-combat metabolic flush, when your adrenalin has cooked away, is opiate in its draining effect. Sirius told him more, but it washed over Barney, who clumped along, unhearing.

Seeing the guy Sirius had detained woke Barney up doublequick.

“Saaay, amigo!” said the battered man braceleted to the immovable pipework. “It’s you! They kill you and you don’t die, eh? Or are you el espectro, a ghost come to visit his havoc on earth? Amigo! What a pleasure to see you!”

“Mojica,” said Barney. “You’re Mojica.”

“Aha, see?!” The shaved dome of the too-fervent, murine man was leaking nervous sweat. His trademark mirrorshades were trampled on the floor. “Remember I told you I help you get out? And you got out! You remember me, eh? You remember that I help you so this maricon don’t shoot me?” His introduction to Sirius had not been amicable.

“I’ll shoot you myself,” said Barney, “if you don’t tell me where El Chingon is. Tannenhauser. Whatever that stick-up-the-ass animal calls himself.”

The entire front of Sirius’ face crumpled together in a frown. “You know this dude?”

“Just an acquaintance,” said Barney.

“O-ha, you kid, you kid!” said Mojica with false bluster. “That is the big joke, my friend, the biggest joke of all: El Chingon had to go to America. Come on, you can laugh, guy, it’s funny! He had some bigshot El Chingon business in Los Estados Unidos. He’s not even fucking here, ese! And I tell you sure as shit he’s not coming back now, not after you —” he searched for the right words “— redecorated this place, eh?”

“This little rodent pulled a nine on me,” said Sirius.

“You look okay,” said Barney.

“No worries.”

Mojica looked despondent. His chances sucked and he knew it. “So... you gonna kill me now?” He tried for a hopeful-puppy expression that was vomitous.

“I’ll do it,” said Sirius, unsleeving his .45.

“Wait,” said Barney.

That was all Mojica needed to recharge his battery, and during the next few seconds he was as obsequious as it is possible for a human being to be without actually devolving into a lower life form. Barney had to smack him to shut him up.

“Listen very carefully,” Barney said. “Escuchame bien. You tell me where he is. Where he has gone; where I can find him, not later, not maybe, not eventually, but right now. You tell me that, Mojica, and you’ll not only live, but you’ll go free, right now, tonight. And if you’re lying to me in any way, I will come back here just for the pleasure of taking your life in the most painful and drawn-out way I can conceive. Think about that, before you answer.”

“You remembered my name,” the little man said, quietly.

“I try to remember everybody who kicks the piss out of me. Helps at Christmas card time.” Mojica had sterilized his amputated fingers — his face floated up out of the dim cesspool of pain-memory. Mojica had done him one small kindness during his days of torment. That bought him some wiggle room, but did not forgive his other sins.

Maybe Mojica had helped Barney escape, if by no other way than not shooting him when Sucio did following Barney’s bridge dive, headfirst and with no form at all.

It was so easy to be seduced by the thought. Conned, tricked, made a stupid mark, yet again.

Sirius centered Barney in his gaze: We can’t let this guy go. Not after —

Barney imagined what Karlov might have said: For a man on the revenge trail you sure are sparing a lot of warm bodies.

And Armand: You cut him loose now, he’ll be a problem later. Not professional.

Against all this stood Mojica’s one little favor he had not had to do, but had done anyway.

“Los Angeles,” Mojica said. “He’s with that guy’s, your friend’s, you know, that redheaded puta. Your guy’s wife.”

There was much more detail and Barney ran Mojica through the repetition wringer to ensure the tale was not cobbled on the spot. In the end, Mojica sang like a crested warbler just for being uncuffed before Barney’s crew set the Palacio to the torch.

Barney stood in the empty room where he had once been held prisoner.

It was apparently the only room outfitted for problematical detainees. Real hostages got amenities — locked in, not chained up. Beds and television, though the beds were probably lice-infested, and if you need a quick way to go gibberingly crazy there was no quicker method than watching a lot of foreign TV.

Barney wished he could feel some surge of latent emotion, but the room had given up its haunts. It was just a depressing, empty space.

El Atrocidad appeared behind him, moving lightly with his big athlete’s grace. “Not all people in Mexico are like this, amigo,” he said softly.

“You’ve done far too much for me, for far too little return,” said Barney. “I’m in your debt. I always will be. There’s no way to repay... This is unusual for me.”

El Atrocidad made a chaa sound of dismissal. It ain’t no thing. “Look at what you have accomplished. Look at the people you have saved.”

“I didn’t do it to save them.”

“Evil men dealt with.”

“It won’t make any difference tomorrow.”

“You even give all the credito to us.”

“Take it. I don’t want it.”

“Then what do you want from this?”

“My friend back in the hall. His name is Christoph Ivan Karlov. I need you to take him out of here. He needs to be buried. I don’t think he would mind being buried in Mexico.”

He imagined Karlov’s response: I don’t care, youngster — I’m dead. You gave me the challenge of showing a man with crippled hands how to shoot again. You put my weapons in the hands of true gunmen. You gave me plenty. You don’t owe me nothing. Just get on with the mission, damn it.

“El Murcielago Sangriento tells me the news people are on their way,” someone said.

Armand brought up a gallon of gasoline from somewhere in the compound, and Barney splashed it around the Bleeding Room. Ignited it. Walked away. Within minutes the entire third floor was ablaze.

The Palacio burned for five hours, due to difficulties with firefighting response and a lack of local water pressure. News cameras loved fire, and only later got around to the poignant report of rescued hostages. The wrestlers got a lot of face time, explaining they were en route to a match as a group and spotted the flames. Their next bout at Arena Coliseo would be packed and they would he hailed as superheroes, some of the best Mexico had to offer.

When the conflagration embered down, even the brickwork had fallen, sundered by the collapsing interior of the building. By dawn the next day the site resembled the aftermath of a bombing, or just another run-down Mexican firetrap gone to its reward. The news of a fire in a shithole like Iztapalapa was not important enough to make the papers in the United States, and besides, nobody would believe that stuff about strongmen in circus-colored costumes giving a crowd of people their lives back.

For all intents and purposes, Barney and his men had never been there.