RUNNING GAME (A SECOND CHANCE SPORTS ROMANCE) (103 page)

A
s we skidded
to a stop around the side of the complex, Hunter leapt off the bike. Dragging me to the dirt with him, he hissed into my ear:

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

I nodded, pulling my Glock from my holster.

He reciprocated the nod, rising up beside me with his hand against the outer wall. He slipped me a pair of goggles and put his own on as the bikers swung out around us, kicking up a fierce cloud of dust with their arrival.

I covered my mouth and held my breath with my free hand, following his vague shape as he pressed forward along the side of the building. I could hear the others dismounting, locking, and loading as a swarm.

The cloud began to dissipate just as the moon came through the cloud cover. It shone down on the complex, and I studied it quickly at a glance.

It was a low-hung set of adobe buildings, with a small warehouse attachment. A northward tower looked to be in construction, and some unfinished and half-assembled lights were laying about atop scaffolds and on the rooftops.

Hunter was right.

If we’d waited any longer to strike this place, we’d have lost our chance to hit them
hard
. They were still setting up shop, but soon, this place would be a fortress.

“This is it,” he murmured, hiding behind cover near the open front entrance. I crept up to his side, flanked in my approach by at least a dozen bikers. “Fortune favors us tonight, detective. This base is one hell of a shit-show…”

“But why?” I asked quietly. “Why risk moving somewhere like this when the place is barely together?”

“No idea,” he murmured. “I can only guess that the other cartels have been pushing them forward, taking territory further South.”

Hunter nodded to the other bikers, gave a signal, and watched as they quickly checked their weapons. With everyone satisfied, he adjusted his signal, and the team scampered out in front.

It wasn’t more than a few seconds before a few cartel gunmen with automatic weapons poured out into the open. Fanning out in a defensible formation, they strolled out and rained down gunfire as the bikers ducked behind vehicles and whatever cover they could find. Hunter and I watched from behind the cover. I was preparing to fire off a few rounds before he held up a cease-fire hand.

“No… not yet. Let’s not signal our position until they’re distracted…”

“They’re sitting ducks out there!” I hissed.

“These are the Outlaws you’re talking about,” Hunter informed me. “They can hold their own… just watch.”

The cartel formation continued fanning out, separating to cover more ground. A few of the nearer bikers, ducked behind a truck, glanced to Hunter for instruction.

He made a quick motion, earning the attention of the closest gunman. The bastard let loose some rifle fire our way, the rounds unable to penetrate the thick wall, but it gave the sequestered bikers the opening they needed.

We heard the gunman fall with an anguished shriek, and the others turned to return firepower. That pulled them away from their searches, allowing a few Outlaws to find more offensive positions along the edges… The bikers made use of the shadows, firing pot shots from the dark. Some stayed mobile, moving around when not in a line of sight, quietly creeping around to attack from a new vantage point.

The cartel fighters seemed to realize their error. They were standing directly in the moonlight and unable to see their enemies. They decided to rush the shadows, firing off a sweeping round in a wide circle.

“Now!” Hunter snarled.

The bikers descended from the shadows in an ambush and I watched as our enemies fell. The last two threw down their arms in surrender, and Hunter led me forward quickly.

We each took one of their rifles from the ground, shared a glance, and bashed them with a swift strike to the back of the head. The surrendering cartel members dropped to the ground, unresponsive to a pair of swift boot kicks to the ribs.

They’d wake up with a few broken ribs, but they’d live to see another day. Hunter had them hog tied before we moved closer to the building.

Several of the bikers snatched up remaining weaponry and pocketed their own pistols. My eyes scanned the vehicles and I spotted that bastard van off to the side in a line of trucks.

Pointing it out to Hunter, he nodded.

The abducted girls are here.

I could hear gunfire from inside – it was clear that the rest of the Outlaws had found another entrance or two, and were storming the unfinished facility from different approaches.

Another ten bikers slipped around the front and joined our battalion. We’d lost one of our men in the shadow ambush, although I was surprised that it hadn’t been more…

“These must be new recruits,” Hunter muttered, kicking over one of the fresh corpses. “They’re stupid motherfuckers, but this cartel isn’t usually
that
unprepared…”

“Where’s Grizz?” I asked suddenly, glancing around. Hunter was ripped from his thoughts, matching my sweeping gaze with his own.

“Leading a second team inside,” one of the bikers informed us. “Took a group of twenty and stormed towards the back.”

“That’s my boy,” Hunter chuckled. “Well, let’s not keep him waiting…”

Hunter strolled forward, leading our collective of armed badasses for the front gates. He had such a comfortable, confident swagger, slinging the rifle over his shoulder and whipping out a pair of pistols.

If only time could have slowed down there and then, like it does in the goddamn movies.

One of his Devil’s Dragons kicked the front door. The immediate bath of light demonstrated that
Víboras Verde
had done more work on the interior than they had on the outside.

As the sound of commotion filled the air with gunfire, smoke, and adrenaline, Hunter’s lips spread into a wicked grin.

“Sweep and clean house, boys.”

We strolled through the entrance as the bikers fanned out around us, automatic rifles at the ready. Every cartel gunmen that appeared around a corner or behind cover suffered from an immediate hail of bullets, shoving them back out of sight.

He signaled for the team to separate into three factions headed for different areas. One group of five or six broke off on either side, fleeing towards nearby halls or staircases as our remaining escort surrounded us in a circle and followed his lead.

“Yeah, this looks familiar,” Hunter acknowledged as he glanced around the interior. “This is the same kind of design I remember from our original strike… Can’t fault the fuckers for their consistency.”

We were in a large entrance room, apparently meant to host a mobile fleet to transport kidnapped cargo. The walls and ceiling were all adobe, reinforced by steel foundations and braces. Exposed wiring ran in the walls, only demonstrating further how unprepared this compound was for a siege.

A couple of vehicles were already in here, highlighting their intended expansion into a rolling armada of trucks and vans.

“Hmm. That’s new,” Hunter murmured, kicking at an open panel in a corner of the room. It exposed a staircase running downward, and he glanced at a few similar panels in the other corners.

“They built
down?
” I asked, swallowing my fear.
If they’re constructing down into the earth, then there’s no telling how far deep this place goes…

“They’ve learned,” he muttered in annoyance. “Well, I’ll be damned. The rest of this might be a façade… they’re more prepared than I gave them credit for.”

“What does this mean?” I asked him. A few of the nearby bikers shuffled their boots with tension, signaling their support to my question.

“It means we don’t underestimate them,” he answered obliquely.

The other two teams returned into the main room before he could continue.

“Killed every fucker we found,” one of them informed us loudly.

“What about the girls?” Hunter asked.

“None to be found.”

Hunter glanced back at the staircase, lifted his pistols, and then started descending. “The real fight’s down here, boys… pull your wits together, because there’s no telling what we’ll find…”

I trotted down by his side, both hands on my Glock. The combined teams flanked us as we descended; on the next floor down, we spotted a familiar face in some bad shape.

“Grizz!” Hunter shouted, dropping down to his second-in-command’s side. Grizz was gasping for air and clutching his leg. In his stead were two dead bikers, and half a dozen cartel corpses.

He checked Grizz’s wound briefly, then held up his head and asked: “What the fuck happened in here?”

“We just got ambushed,” Grizz groaned, painfully trying to shift into a more comfortable position. “Took out a couple of us in this corridor. We chased them from another stairwell… led us right into gunfire.”

“Dammit,” Hunter snarled, slamming the side of his fist into the wall. “Any of you fuckers know how to extract and patch up a bullet?”

“I’ll be fine… bullet passed clean through,” Grizz grumbled, his piercing eyes slightly dulled of their intensity. He barely even looked at me. “This corridor is clear,” he motioned to the side, “although I don’t know about that one. A few of my men chased after the assholes…”

Hunter directed a team of six that way, and pointed out another six. “Guard this man,” he said. “See to it that he stays safe and conscious. I want him with us when we ride out of this hellhole, understood?”

Grizz glanced up slowly, his fresh sweat splattered across his face. “I’m sorry… for holding you back, boss…”

“Not another fucking word,” Hunter growled in retort. “You conserve your strength. I can’t lose you here, Grizz. Understood?”

Grizz nodded painfully. “Crystal clear,” he acknowledged.

With his conviction renewed, Hunter gave him a nod, and then led the rest of us down the next flight of stairs. It was the bottom floor, and all that greeted us was a thick, steel door: it waited ominously with silence on the other side.

“There’s no way this goes any further down,” Hunter told us. “Must be bedrock below this…”

We could hear staggered gunfire from further into the complex above us. Sharing a glance, we steeled ourselves for a fight… and Hunter threw open the heavy, solid door.

The bikers released rapid-fire from their assault weapons to fend off the surprised cartel members. They had apparently been too compartmentalized to hear the fighting above their heads, and couldn’t draw their pistols fast enough.

Hunter and I put a few rounds in the chests of a few hostiles, pausing to reload our weapons behind cover.

“That is some
Dirty Harry
shit,” I muttered to him as I hastily slammed bullets into my pistol chamber.

He finished loading his gun, and we nodded together before rising up from cover. With reflexes just quicker than mine, he let off a couple of shots from both wrists, missing once or twice but downing three cartel fighters in the process. We continued to mount our assault, aided by our team of fighters – most of whom were members of the Devil’s Dragons. They defensively stuck close to their leader, ready to annihilate any threat that appeared.

Even down here, exposed wiring and limited panels showed just how new the structure was. The rooms appeared to be filled with scattered construction equipment and debris, and a lot of walls were only built on one side, or lacked external plating. Still, the further forward we went, the more the various rooms and hallways started coming together.

The cartel members were spread a little thinner here, and we reduced their numbers with every corner we turned.

Before we could sweep the entire floor, a pair of bikers caught up with us.

“We found them!”

Hunter whipped around. “How many?”

“Fifteen girls!”

He was stunned by the news, pausing to process this. His gaze shifted to meet mine, and then he asked the biker: “Any Caucasians?”

“No sir…”

“Damn,” he hissed. “But at least we found the other abductees. The cartel must have spent its time shifting operations up here, instead of actually getting around to selling the captives…

“Where were they?”

“There was a fortified room up a floor, tucked away real neat-like in the back,” the biker answered with a grin. “We mowed down their guards, but the girls look pretty drugged up…”

“Keeps them complacent and unaware of their surroundings… What else is going on up there?”

“Still some scattered resistance, putting up a fight. Nobody’s surrendering. They’re gunning down to their last man and there’s still no sign of any of this money you promised…”

“It’s here,” Hunter murmured. “Come with us and offer some backup. We’re going to find the leader of this shit-show and he’ll be sitting on enough money to make your goddamned head spin.”

We pushed forward, facing fewer opponents than before. I suspected that our three teams had mowed through the vast majority of them already, and that this was a skeleton crew down here.

“We’re close,” Hunter finally observed, gazing at a small map on the wall. “This looks familiar again… I think that we’re right on top of the brains of this little operation.”

His eyes glanced over to a few doors nearby. He directed the team to split up and take each door in trios, and left the furthest one for the two of us. The bikers bashed into the doors and started gunning down the remaining opposition.

“This is it,” he told me. “Are you ready?”

I nodded in agreement, and with his hand on the doorknob, he pushed open the entrance…

T
he chamber was brightly lit
, with metallic siding and a tiled floor. But the compelling imagery that stood out was the single, well-dressed Mexican gangster in the back, facing us with a highly reflective revolver in his hand.

More compelling were the three white girls he was pointing the gun at… They sluggishly glanced up at us as we entered the room, clearly doped up out of their goddamn minds.

The cheerleaders!

“Arturo Alvarez,” Hunter replied coolly as he held his pistol high. “If I’d known I’d have the treat of seeing
your
pretty face again, well… I’d have sprung for a nicer gun.”

“It’s… it’s
you
,” the cartel leader muttered in disbelief. His face curled into one of undying rage. “
You
, after all these years…
oh,
amigo
, how I have
longed
to put a bullet between your eyes after you killed my cousin!”

“Your cousin struck first. He tried to sell my
sister
into sexual slavery,” Hunter replied with gritted teeth. “As far as I’m concerned… the man got what was coming to him.”

“Who
is
this guy?” I asked.

“Arturo Alvarez is one of the most dangerous men in
Víboras Verde
,” Hunter replied, his eyes glued to our adversary. “Doesn’t surprise me that you’re heading up the kidnappings side of things here… although that’s a little disappointing, all things considered.”

“And why’s that?” He laughed. “You were so happy to see me again, you white demon…”

“There are much fouler cockroaches in this organization than
this
fucker,” Hunter answered, verbally knocking Arturo down a couple of notches. “You are
horseshit
in comparison to what I’ve seen.”

Our enemy bristled with irritation. “Horseshit,
amigo
? You think that I’m
nothing
? I’ve come a long way since we’ve last seen each other,
pendejo… d
on’t underestimate me.”

“If
you’re
the guy in charge here then your cartel just might survive my little midnight ride,” Hunter replied. “Which is a damned shame. I was hoping to find someone worth my time…”

Arturo bristled with anger again. “The others aren’t
needed
to deal with you.”

Hunter remained unfazed, but he lowered his voice to address me. “
Víboras Verde
is led by a vicious inner circle known only as The Brothers. This leadership is a union of four close friends, bound by spilt blood and heinous crimes… and eight years ago, I killed one of them.”

“The one who took your sister?”

“Not exactly… but the one who oversaw their kidnapping operations,” Hunter explained. “That leaves three Brothers left to put in the ground. I’m stuck with the runt of the litter here… this guy is
nothing
compared to the others.”

I realized quickly what Hunter was doing. He was egging Arturo on… Trying to get him to make a mistake.

“
Nothing?
” Arturo demanded. “You think that I am
nothing?
We are
equals
, the three of us are
equals,
you stupid motherfucker!”

I expected Hunter to chuckle, but he regarded Arturo Alvarez with something akin to pity. “You were always the weakest link… weaker than the one I’ve already put in the ground. Arturo, you will
always
be in their shadow. Why else would they send you so far from home? They put you in my fucking backyard for a reason Arturo.”

Arturo moved slowly, pressing his gun against the nearest cheerleader’s head. “I will
never
be in their shadow.”

His hostage mumbled incoherently, still trapped in her drug-fueled daze. I had to do something. We were trapped in our standoff, and Arturo was about to splatter her brains against the wall as a final act of defiance…

“Drop the gun,” I demanded.

Arturo’s smile faded.

“You would have me kill this girl?” He demanded, shaking her shoulder as he held his pistol to her head. “I’ll put a bullet in her skull…”

“And you’ll join your friends in hell,” Hunter said, his arm steady as a rock as he kept the barrel of his gun carefully trained on Arturo.

“If you were going to kill me, you’d have already done it,” Arturo replied, the edge of his lip curling upward. “You want something from me, don’t you pendejo?”

Hunter took a step forward. “The Brothers have been playing you. They put you here to get my attention and they knew one of us would end up dead… So yeah… I want something from you.”

Arturo glared at us.

“Spit it out white devil.”

“I want your brothers,” Hunter replied coldly. “You give them to me and I’ll let you walk out of here alive.”

“You want my
blood
? You want my
family
?” Arturo asked furiously.

“I want the men who sent you here to die,” Hunter replied as Arturo moved behind the cheerleader, placing her between the two of them like a makeshift shield.

“I’m walking out of here with this bitch… You touch me and I kill her.”

“You’re not leaving this room with that girl Arturo. You can die here now, or you can tell me what I want to know…”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because you’re dead if you don’t, and that pretty little thing you’re holding isn’t going to stop a goddamned magnum from punching a hole straight through your sorry ass.”

“If I accept… I have your word that I leave here alive?”

Arturo hesitated. I watched as the cheerleader he was holding up floated on the edge of consciousness, her head rolling slightly to the side. It fell forward, and he shifted her body just slightly, the barrel of his gun moving ever so slightly away from her face.

And a shot rang out.

My glock kicked upward, a single cartridge skittering off the floor to my side.

Arturo fired, a round bouncing harmlessly off the roof and sending a shower of concrete flakes across the room. There was no further movement as he crumpled to the floor, taking the cheerleader with him.

My eyes were on Hunter in a heartbeat.

“What the
fuck?
Why?!” Hunter snarled. “He was
surrendering!
He could have helped us destroy the entire fucking cartel!”

Hunter walked over to Arturo Alvarez and kicked the gun from his hand.

“And the second you let your guard down, he’d have taken your head off with that holdout up his sleeve,” I replied, nodding to the body. Hunter reached down and pulled the sleeve back, exposing the little silver nine millimeter.

“He was never going to take the offer,” I said.

“We haven’t destroyed the
real
men in charge Sarah. They’ll keep coming back if I can’t stop the other brothers…”

I wasn’t listening. My ears were still ringing from the gunshots, but my eyes were trained on the wall behind Arturo… And the small scratches on the floor.

“I wonder,” I murmured, walking past Hunter.

“Hmm?” He glanced over. “Do you have something, Sarah?”

I lifted the butt of my gun. With a steady whack, I hammered it into the back wall.

“What is it?” He asked curiously, rising to his feet and leaning near me.

I smacked the wall again.

“Do you hear that, Hunter?”

He tilted his head curiously, gazing between the wall and me. “No. What are you doing?”

“I noticed something when Arturo dropped,” I noted. “This floor isn’t connected to the back wall.”

Hunter’s eyes flared wide open, and he grabbed the gun from me. With a quick swing, he bashed the wall again. At the reverberating sound, a sly smile crossed his lips.

“Detective, you’re a genius,” he chuckled…

“He was guarding something in here,” I realized, pressing against the wall and feeling the click of a latch.

A few bikers had filed in behind us, and they started helping Hunter pull the shelves away from the wall, exposing the wide doorway.

“Well, look at that,” Hunter grinned, turning back to his fallen adversary. “You were holding out on me?
That’s
no way to treat a friend…”

With his pistol held high, he pushed the door open. I backed him up, my glock at the ready. Fumbling along outside the doorway for a light switch, I felt a slight bump beneath my fingertips. With a quick glance at the biker president, I flicked the switch on and doused the room in light.

It was surprising how similar Arturo’s secret chamber was to Hunter’s war room. Dominated by a large table in the middle, with no windows and little in the way of décor, the walls and tabletop were covered in maps, diagrams, and notes – all scribbled in Spanish.

The men around us seemed more interested in the huge stacks of hundred dollar bills piled neatly against the far wall.

“What
is
this?” I asked aloud.

Hunter surveyed the area. “No idea…” He lifted a few pages up, gazing at the scribbled text, and his gaze drifted across a couple of maps of Mexico.

“This looks too important to leave behind,” I commented. I noticed how conspicuous red marks were chiseled into the maps, highlighting what appeared to be areas of interest.

Hunter’s gaze met mine, and he nodded in agreement. “It does. We’re going to have to take this all and have it translated back in El Paso. We could have stumbled across something pretty good here…”

As if drawn like moths to the flame, more and more of the Outlaws were pouring into the room, carting out armloads of money as we studied the table. I pulled out my phone and snapped some pictures of the arrangement. “Just in case the positioning matters,” I mentioned offhandedly to him.

“Good thinking,” Hunter nodded with a sly smile.

“I’d like to think you love me for more than just my body,” I told him, laughing. “Now let’s go ahead and round up the kidnap victims and get the
fuck
out of here before it’s too late.”

“Anything you say,
Detective…
” Hunter replied, pulling me into a deep and
heavy
kiss.