Money to Burn (20 page)

'And in Argentina, what's the system there? D'you know what it is? A bullet in the balls!'

Dawn broke slowly and ponderously. To the drop in temperature was added the inconvenience of increasingly annoying rainfall. The firing continued spasmodically. When it was properly daylight the police, taking careful precautions, and over a period of two hours, were able to evacuate the tenants living opposite and below them, who'd found themselves trapped. The operation was covered by a fierce round of gunfire from the position overlooking the central well.

The Fire Brigade's largest ladder was propped against the balcony on the second floor, from where the residents could descend, their backs to the street, in the main terrified families who had suffered a situation of extreme anguish for a number of hours. They could observe housewives, their cheeks pale with fear, one of whom was begging that her miniature pooch, a Pekinese, be likewise saved and, together with her owner, placed in a police station, preferably the one on Maldonado Street.

'My daughter and I,' according to Señora Vélez (broadcasting on Radio Carve), 'spent all our time at the far end of the kitchen where, through the plumbing pipes, we heard the lads shouting and guffawing. They're hunting them down like rats
...
It upset me to hear that, you don't kill a Christian like that
...
'

'It seems to me they're all dead,' said Señor Antúnez from the flat next door to number nine. 'It's some time since we heard shouts and guffaws. We're all right, but it was like living through the Second World War.'

Once the adjacent apartments were emptied, the police prepared for the final offensive. Their first move was to order that the running water be cut off, after which came the electricity. Then they employed that super-well-known ruse of a 'Molotov cocktail', mixing them in empty bottles requisitioned from the corner bar. The idea was to throw them into flat number nine, seeking to start a fire that way. Once again, their efforts were in vain, as they were immediately caught and extinguished by the gunmen, who soaked blankets in the bath filled with water and succeeded in putting the fire out without allowing it to spread. Once again and on the spur of the moment, instead of becoming discouraged, the Argentines redoubled their efforts while the police intensified the gunfire in order to keep them busy.

Whichever way you looked at it, the gunmen's situation had become critical. By taking over flat number three (opposite on the second floor, very close to number nine), the police succeeded in opening up a fresh angle of fire via a skylight, a post occupied by Commissioner Silva and Sergeant Mario Martinez from the Robbery and Larceny Division, the skilled Thompson machine-gun operator. They took it in turns to fire and to reload the weapon. This new breach, which opened a tiny angle with access to the bedroom at number nine, was immediately covered by the bandits.

At eight in the morning, the Argentines resumed shooting their .45 pistols and the machine-guns resumed their response to every round fired by the police. They could only move around in an extremely restricted area of the apartment, as any attempt was blocked by the elite operatives.

At the same time, a special agent from 12a, Aranguren, twenty-one years old, married, and a father of two, together with agent Julio C. Andrada, another youth of twenty-five, were both assigned to the flat, to cover the door giving on to the corridor, a scant three metres away from the gunmen's own front door. One of the malefactors (Dorda) hurled himself into the corridor and, through the half-open door of the adjacent flat, released another burst of machine-gunfire. Aranguren fell where he was and, as they lowered him out of the window and down on to the street, Andrada, a plainclothes secret policeman, dressed in brown protective clothing, was also wounded and lay where he fell on the kitchen floor of the flat next door, sheltered beneath the sink and far from the reach of the criminals.

Finally, with the building plans in hand, a new method was sought: that of employing members of the fire brigade to perforate the floor of the upstairs flat leading into flat number nine and attack those already under siege from above.

Several policemen climbed up the extending ladder to the second floor where the firefighters had propped it against the window with considerable precision. In order to cover the operation from flat number eleven, a stipple of fire hailed in through the skylights: ditto through the window giving on to the stairwell while the police went into flat number thirteen on the floor above, directly over the besieged den.

That was how, at ten in the morning, a breach was opened in the floor of the flat over that occupied by the Argentines. The idea was to pump carbon monoxide in through the hole, and work was feverishly begun with a steel file in the flat overhead. The task progressed only slowly and in the end a compressor had to be requested from the electricity supply company in order to start working with a power drill.

With the aid of a winch, a pneumatic drill was brought on to the flat roof. They hoisted it up via the corridor on the second floor, which gave on to the roof of one of the bedrooms in flat number nine.

They drilled feverishly and in a few minutes a hole was opened up. The gunmen attempted to stall this latest manoeuvre by firing volley rounds, barely noticing that the hole was now admitting light. The intensity of fire through the windows giving on to the outside stairwells prevented them from gaining positions from which they could aim at their targets with any degree of conviction, let alone hit any of the workmen.

From then on their time was limited. Numerous bottles filled with petrol were launched through the breach in the ceiling, each with a flaming wick. As it was afterwards confirmed, the floorboards caught fire, all kinds of other objects did too, including furniture and curtains. The air became impossible to breathe.

They were also under direct fire from the breach, from as close as flat number eleven, situated beside that occupied by the gunmen.

Exhausted by the interminable hours of gun battle, having suffered the effects of such a terrible skirmish, the gunmen were once again forced out of the apartment, emerging on to the first floor corridor. At the same time, two cops stationed on the ground floor did the same, coming out into the corridor leading to the staircase, leaving them no option but to hurl themselves towards the front hall of the building, seeking the fresh air of the street. The gunmen crossing the hall without pausing in their shooting got to Miguel Miranda almost on the threshold of the front door, along with another agent with the surname Rocha, who had been posted beside the wall.

From outside there was a rush on the door by the troopers who'd heard another of their number fall, but the wounded cop turned and ran towards the entrance, firing with accuracy, and succeeding in forcing back the gunmen while he dragged Miranda's corpse on to the street.

There was a hubbub of protest and fury from the crowd, and several policemen requested permission to mount a pair of machine-guns, each directed towards the interior of the building, intended to put paid to any further resistance.

Silva's orders, and those of his Uruguayan officers, were to wear down the criminals before coming to the final offensive.

Back inside the flat Dorda and Brignone, like two ghosts, wearing dampened handkerchiefs over their mouths to reduce the effects of the gas, once more abandoned their lair, venturing a couple of metres at a time down the corridor, from where they fired off a number of rounds before again retreating into the apartment.

Their voices floated down from a distance, mingled with muffled sounds, with knocking in the pipes and the interminable barking of a dog. Mereles was leaning up against a door frame beside the kitchen window and now Dorda and Brignone had sat down together, glued to the window overlooking the street.

'How long have we been here?'

Shortly after midday another hefty round of firing resumed, indicating that from first to last the criminals were prepared for anything. Even for death, but only while killing. By now it was assumed that at least one of the gunmen was dead or at least severely injured. The next move was to throw the incendiary bombs into the flat, to succeed in forcing them away from the room with access to the skylight. That gave the further opportunity to other police officers to shoot from a number of different vantage points. That was when the battle climax was reached.

Several men staved in the windows of a neighbouring apartment on the block at number 1182 Julio Herrera, with access on to the street, and gained a foothold there to hold the gunmen at bay by shooting at them from yet another angle, while the drill worked its way through the wall in the adjoining flat. The hole was pushed through at a low level in order that bullets could be used which blazed through surfaces, and which proved more efficacious than those used hitherto.

When the hole was ready the criminals, who never disregarded any possible orifice through which to attack, fired in their turn, wounding another agent from station 12a, Nelson Honorio Gonzálvez, in the chest, causing him to fall immediately from the first-floor balcony to the street below. He was put in an ambulance, but died on the way to hospital.

The police redoubled their offensive and were responded to in kind from inside the apartment, but at the end of half an hour of deafening gunfire, the intensity of fire coming from the gunmen diminished, becoming more and more sporadic. It would seem that they were saving ammunition, but this really wasn't the case, merely that Brignone and Mereles had begun to weaken as a result of the wounds they'd received during fifteen hours of strife.

The only one thus far unhurt was Dorda, who from time to time let off another round of machine-gunfire, in between tending to his two companions. A policeman had been posted outside, in the corridor, and was shooting through the window.

Mereles got up to silence the fire from the sniper posted opposite, but before he could shoot, he received a blast that blew him into the living-room. He had gone into the kitchen to look for an angle of fire and died without being aware of what hit him, as if the effort involved in getting to the light of the window had drawn him beyond the world's domain.

Or so the Kid deduced, as he saw the light shining through the window at the far end, then heard the Crow's groans as he fell on his back against the door into the room.

'Crow,' the Kid said. But the Crow was already dead.

Brignone sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall, firing into the air with his machine-gun, while the police continued their hammering with the pneumatic drill on the roof, making an infernal din as if a train were running overhead.

Mereles had fallen close to the bedroom over which the breach had been opened up. The police barricaded outside behind cars and lorries received the news that possibly one of the criminals was dead. But given the flat's layout, it was impossible either to see inside or to verify the information.

Brignone wanted the Gaucho to fire from the veranda and, holed up in his corner, to give him cover while he went inside the kitchen and fired on to the corridor. They had abandoned the main room where the police were finishing their work on the breach, now opened, beneath the impact of the pneumatic drill that was causing the entire building to judder.

The police threw in a few light hand grenades, but in the end decided to opt for one of maximum potency, dangerous to release, with no guarantee as to where it might land. Commissioner Lincoln Genta slipped it in through the bathroom skylight, connected to flats nine and thirteen. The thing erupted on cue, forcing Brignone to race towards the living- room, where he was hit by the raking of machine-gunfire close to the bathroom door.

He fell flat out in the corridor, face upwards and eyes open, gasping, uncomplaining, extremely pale. The Gaucho was talking to himself in a low voice, in a strange sort of muttering like someone praying, while he dragged himself along the floor, the machine-gun still in his left hand, and approached the Kid.

Finally Dorda came level with the Kid and pulled him up against the wall, out of range, raising him against his body, holding him close, embracing him, half-naked.

They gazed at one another; the Kid was dying. The Blond Gaucho wiped his face and tried not to cry.

'Did I kill the cop who did this to me?' asked the Kid, after a while.

'Of course you did, sweetheart.' Gaucho's voice now sounded calm and loving.

The Kid smiled at him and the Blond Gaucho held him up in his arms like an image of the deposition of Christ. With difficulty, the Kid forced his hand into his shirt pocket and held out a little medal of the Virgin of Luján.

'Don't give in, Marquitos,' said the Kid. He called him by his name for the first time in a long while, in its diminutive form, as if the Gaucho were the one in need of consolation.

Then the Kid raised himself up ever so slightly, leaning on one elbow, and murmured something into his ear which no one could hear, a few words of love, no doubt, uttered under his breath or perhaps left unuttered, but sensed by the Gaucho who kissed the Kid as he departed.

They remained motionless for some moments, the blood coursing between the two of them. Total silence reigned in the apartment. The police leaned down into the breach. They were greeted with a round of machine-gunfire and yells from Dorda, now walled in behind Brignone's body.

'Come on you fat bastards, come up if you dare, let's see what you're made of
...
'

The afternoon was more or less about to begin, in the midst of the ruined apartment, surprising Gaucho Dorda who found himself suddenly wide awake and sure of himself, his wrap of coke there beside him and something of his life still ahead of him, taken aback by the number of people still in circulation and determined to view this as a good omen.

'When they come to get me, they'll send in one man on his own, perhaps Silva himself, that piece of shit, the ferocious and cowardly Commissioner Silva, he'll come all alone to assassinate me.'