Guardian of Lies (27 page)

Halfway down, they stopped. The one holding the photograph held it out right next to the woman’s face. The guy holding her by the hair shook his head.

“
Es ella
,” said the one holding the photo.

“No.” The other one shook his head.

Before he could say another word, the man holding the photograph raised the guard’s pistol and fired a round into the woman’s head. Her blood sprayed the prisoner sitting next to her and the wall of the bus behind her.

The sound of the shot and the arbitrary manner in which it happened took Daniela by surprise.

“What’s happening?” Katia was glued to Daniela by the waist chain that bound them together.

“Just stay down and be quiet.” Daniela pulled the slide back on the Walther and chambered the first round as quietly as she could. The small pistol carried only six shots in the clip. She would have to make them count.

She wanted to try and get the two men closer before she fired. If she could drop them in the aisle a few feet away, she might be able to reach one of the assault rifles slung from their shoulders and fish for extra clips before any of the rest of them could board the bus.

Somewhere off in the distance she could hear the sounds of sirens punctuated by the bleep and blare of their electronics as the police maneuvered through traffic.

After killing the woman, the two button boys continued the process, pulling hair and quickly moving down the aisle. When Daniela peeked around the edge of the seat in front of her, they were just six rows away. Three or four more and she would show them the muzzle of the pistol and take her chances.

Suddenly she heard them talking again. One of them was dressing down the other in street Spanish; “
pendejo
,” calling him a “dumbass.”

Daniela peeked around the edge of the seat again. They had another woman by the hair and were holding the picture up to her face.

“I told you the other one wasn’t her.
Pero usted tiene que ser el hombre
. But you have to be the man.”

“Okay. Enough!” The other guy, who was closest to Daniela, standing sideways in the aisle, started to raise the pistol toward the woman’s head. In a fluid motion Daniela leaned into the aisle, dragging Katia with her. She raised the Walther in one hand, braced it with the other, and pulled off a round. It caught the man with the pistol in the left temple. His knees buckled and he went to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

As his buddy fell, the other one still had the woman by her hair. His head and eyes snapped toward Daniela. He let go of the hair. The woman started screaming instantly.

The man tried to swing the AK-47, its muzzle hanging down from the sling over his shoulder, up into firing position. His finger had just reached the trigger guard when Daniela fired the second round.

The sound of the shot was swallowed in the frantic screeches of the woman. A tiny speck of red the size of a pinprick appeared on the man’s forehead, above his frozen gaze. An instant later the spot spread to the diameter of a pencil. He toppled over backward, hitting the tubular steel along the top of one of the bench seats. His body spun as he slammed facedown onto the hard steel floor of the aisle.

The woman was still screaming at the top of her lungs, hyperventilating with hysteria and expelling everything.

“Move with me,” Daniela told Katia.

She tried. Katia pulled herself out into the aisle as her foot tugged and strained at the end of the ankle chain.

Daniela crawled forward down the aisle. She gained two or three feet, threw her body flat out on the floor dragging Katia with her. She stretched, reaching for the rifle on the first dead man. But the slack on the chain wasn’t enough. She needed at least another foot. She yanked frantically on the waist chain as Katia tried desperately to pull herself farther out.

The woman continued to scream.

“Shut up.” Daniela looked up at her. “Get the rifle. You can reach it,” said Daniela. “Just hand it to me. That’s all you have to do.”

The woman didn’t look at her. She stared out at nothing. Her face was being scratched by the frantic action of her own grasping finger as her frenzied screams reached fever pitch.

“Please!” cried Daniela. “Just lean over and hand me the gun. You’ll be fine. I can keep them away from us if I have the gun,” she pleaded.

One of the other women ten or twelve rows up crawled out from between the seats, looked back at Daniela, and then reached out and grabbed the assault rifle on the other dead man. She grasped it with one hand.

Daniela looked at her and smiled. “Good! Now pass it to me.”

The woman carefully slid the shoulder strap off the dead man.

“See if you can reach the bag on his other shoulder. It should have loaded clips,” said Daniela.

The woman reached out and got the bag. She looked inside, reached in and pulled out one of the clips, holding it up for Daniela to see.

“Good,” said Daniela. “Toss the bag first. Then the gun.”

The woman looked at her as the other one continued to scream. “How does it work? Do I just pull the trigger?”

“No, don’t do that,” said Daniela. “See the lever on the right, on the side above the trigger? Push it all the way up until it’s pointing in the same direction as the barrel. That will put the safety on.”

The woman found the lever and pushed it up.

“Good. Now throw the rifle back here.”

“No,” said the woman. “You’re too far back. You can’t protect us from there.”

“I can,” said Daniela.

“
Vamos. Apresurar.
Hurry up. What’s all the noise in there?” One of the men pounded on the outside of the bus two or three times. He was running, moving forward toward the open door of the bus.

The woman stopped screaming.

“We don’t have all day,” said the man.

“Throw it to me,” said Daniela.

The woman holding the rifle looked frantically back toward her. As she turned back toward the door, she seemed to freeze.

“The police will be here any minute.”

The man bounded up the steps and into the bus. “What’s taking so long? Let’s move.” He looked through the cage door down the aisle. The first thing he saw were the two dead button boys lying on the floor. Next he saw the muzzle of the rifle aimed at his chest.

For an instant she hesitated. Then she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She had forgotten to flip the safety lever down.

Daniela reached back on the floor behind her for the Walther, but it was too late. She touched the handle of the gun just as the ear-splitting sound of the man’s Kalashnikov and the odor of burnt nitrates from the gunpowder filled the bus.

Daniela got only a glimpse as the opening spray of bullets caught the woman holding the rifle full in the chest. It lifted her off the floor, leaving the rifle in midair, as if it were wired in place, for a full second before it fell. The impact threw her lifeless body across the seat and she collided with the wall of the bus.

Daniela hugged the floor, Katia right behind her, their heads down as the guy emptied the full banana clip into the passenger section of the bus. One of the rounds ricocheted off steel and caromed off the floor.

Katia flinched as she felt something hit Daniela.

It caught her at the top of the shoulder, snapping bone and missing her head by inches. She winced in pain as she heard the quick screams and the dull thud of bullets as they made their marks on others.

When the firing stopped Daniela lifted her head. The woman who had been screaming was sitting straight up in her seat, staring off into the distance. The wall of the bus behind her had more holes than a saltshaker, but the woman hadn’t been touched. It is true what they say, thought Daniela, God protects those who are crazy.

The shooter stepped back, away from the cage. Daniela saw him slip down behind the metal partition and into the well of the stairs. Then she heard the click of metal as he changed out clips. He called out to his friends outside and told them to come. There was trouble in the bus.

“If we want to live, we have to move,” she told Katia. They crawled on their knees back between the seats, dragging the clinking ankle chains with them. “Whatever you do, stay down,” said Daniela, “as close to the floor as you can.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Katia.

“I know.” Daniela’s right arm hung limp. The right shoulder and chest area of her jail jumpsuit were already soaked with blood.

The sirens were now closer than before. From the direction of the sound, they might be approaching on the freeway.

“We’ll be okay,” said Katia. “I know we will.”

They could hear the muted voices of the men as they talked just outside the door to the bus. They were frenzied, in a hurry. They had to know they were running out of time. Katia and Daniela could hear shooting in the distance, somewhere behind the bus.

“If they come again they will come very quickly,” said Daniela. “There may be explosions in the bus. It’s very important to stay down low, as close to the floor as you can get. In the confusion and smoke they may not see you. If you can survive for the next five minutes, you’ll be okay.”

Katia looked at her. Her friend’s eyes had a distant, glazed look to them. The blood from her shoulder had soaked much of the top of her blue jail jumpsuit. Katia reached down to the bottom of her own pants leg and pulled hard at the stitching on the inseam until the threads holding it together ripped. She quickly opened eight inches of the seam and then was tearing the fabric from around the bottom of her leg until the cloth came free. She folded it into a compress.

“Daniela, we have to stop the bleeding.”

“Katia, you need to know. My name is not Daniela. It’s Carla Mederios…”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Katia. “What I know is that you are my friend. The only friend I have.”

Idon’t want excuses,” said Liquida. He and the explosives man conversed over the walkie-talkies. “Take the bus and do it now.”

Liquida could see the highway patrol units as they closed in along the freeway. They had blocked off the highway in both directions, so the roadway was now empty. Two of the highway patrol cars were already parked under the bridge overpass. The cops were out of their cars, carrying shotguns and rifles, looking for cover and advantageous angles from which to fire.

Sheriff’s units from the jail had taken over the intersection of Magnolia and Prospect. They were exchanging gunfire with two of the button boys near the top of the ramp.

Liquida wasn’t bothering to inform his people of all the negative details. It would only sap their morale. If they waited much longer, the SWAT unit would arrive.

“How did your men get shot inside the bus?” he asked. “There was only the driver and one guard. You told me you killed them both.”

He listened for a second.

“Well, then, who shot your men? What do you mean you don’t know? Are your people afraid of a busload of women? Get your ass on board that bus, finish what you came for, and get the hell out of there. Get to the safe house. Otherwise nobody’s getting paid. Do you understand?” Liquida threw down the walkie-talkie and looked up at the sky.

They were beginning to breed like mosquitoes. Ten minutes ago there were two, now there were four local news choppers all circling over the action on the ramp.

How the hell did Demo Man think they were going to get to the safe house without being followed from the sky? If Liquida wasn’t careful, he would show up on TV. The arrival of the choppers had forced him back from the edge of the roof. He huddled in the shadows between two large air-conditioning units and continued to observe the activity on the ramp through the field glasses.

He watched as the demolition man fired up his soldiers, at least the two of them who were assembled near the bus door. Two others were up near the top of the ramp holding off the cops. The flaming cars were now just smoking rubble with an occasional flicker as fumes from the gas tanks floated past a hot spot.

The last lone soldier from Liquida’s army was positioned on this side of the bus, lying prone on the ground and taking occasional shots at the police who were trying to move in from the freeway side of the ramp.

The explosives man finished his pep talk. He reached into his bag of tricks, then walked toward the bus door with something in his hand. A second later he disappeared inside. There were two muted shots, what sounded to Liquida like a small handgun, and a second later the demolition man came off the bus holding his right shoulder. As Liquida watched him, a massive explosion ripped through the bus, blowing out the windshield and ripping a jagged hole in the roof. Smoke billowed from the front of the bus. The soldiers, armed with their AKs, stormed on board while the shock and impact of the blast was still having its effect. Automatic gunfire erupted inside. Liquida tried to zero in with the binoculars.

Suddenly a gun battle broke out at the top of the ramp. A large black SUV raced out from under the bridge on the freeway and drove past the bus, exchanging fire through the windows with the button boy lying on his belly on this side of the bus. Whoever was firing from the car must have hit him, because a second later the button boy dropped his rifle as his head slumped to the ground.

The black vehicle made a beeline for the bottom of the ramp, pulled a U-turn, and drove up the ramp in the wrong direction. It stopped on the other side of the box truck. The doors flew open and six men, all wearing black body armor and carrying short carbines and MP-5s, spilled out of the car. They raced around the truck and moved up the ramp.

Liquida could still hear shots coming from inside the bus.

One of his men at the top of the ramp began to retreat down toward the gully on the other side. Liquida lost sight of him for a moment. When he picked him up again, the button boy had joined up with the explosives expert and both of them were making their way up the embankment toward Magnolia Avenue and the van.

There was another flurry of gunfire at the top of the ramp. Liquida watched as police flanked the remaining lone button boy. Three shots rang out and he went down. Police started to flood down the ramp on foot, just as the six men from the black SUV reached the door to the bus.