The footage was so clear and so damn good that I almost shat myself. I got everything, and I mean everything, about that transaction. His pseudo-admission about being an informant. His complete admission about using the FBI for his own nefarious desires. Him commanding his men to fire the first shot.
And the second that first bullet popped off, all hell broke loose.
“Fall back! Fall back!” Stone roared.
The last shot on the video was Carlos in pursuit of Stone with a gun thrusted out in front of him. It was a glorious shot before I cut the video altogether, then I stuffed my cell phone into my bra. I pulled one of the grenades out of my pocket and pulled the pin. I tossed it into the middle of the crowd of cartel men gathering to help out their leader. And after ducking behind the tree, I plugged my ears as much as possible.
Before the bombastic explosion shook the fucking ground we all stood on.
“What the fuck was that!?” West roared.
I giggled to myself as I pulled out the second grenade and pulled the pin. I watched as a few men turned their heads in my direction, so the second I chucked it I picked up the shotgun and made a break for it. Bodies went flying. Men started screaming. Carlos was shrieking at the top of his lungs.
And with every body that dropped, I stopped to make sure it wasn’t West.
“Come on,” I grumbled, “I gotta get closer than this.”
Bullets fired off by the dozen and I managed to get close enough to one of Carlos’ goons with my shotgun. I shot him right in the back with a buck shot, dropping him to the ground as beads peppered his spinal cord. I tried not to watch. I tried not to think too hard about the lives we were ruining because of our efforts. This was life or death. Do or die. And god damn it, we’d all make it back to the warehouse.
“Come on, West,” I murmured as I searched the grounds, “where are you?”
“Stop!” Stone roared.
Everyone froze and I saw a man holding Carlos by his tie. A tall, slender man with salt-and-peppered hair held a gun to the man’s temple and I scrambled to get my phone out. I aimed the camera and pressed record, making an entirely separate video just in case the guys needed the encounter on camera.
And as everyone froze, the man that held Carlos was the first one to speak.
“Call off yer men,” he said with his thick accent.
Is he… Irish?
Carlos held up his hand and all of his men holstered their weapons. But I knew this shit wasn’t over yet. No one retreated, which meant the man had another ace up his sleeve. That much I knew for a fact.
“Don’t be stupid now,” I whispered to myself.
“God on High, I wish I could kill ye right now,” the slender man said, “but I kind of like the idea of making ye suffer just a little bit longer.”
Carlos chuckled. “You really think you can beat me at my own game?”
The Irishman raised his nose into the air. “The Banderas Cartel is now under my control, understood? The Lost Boys? The Celtic Riders? All of these men whose lives you’ve made a living hell? They’re now going to enforce, if need be.”
Carlos barked with laughter. “And what makes you think I’m ever going to allow that to happen?”
I stopped the video because I knew we didn’t need any of it, and I was glad I did. Because the second Carlos questioned the man, the one I’d call “Irish” from now on held his gun out toward his first victim and shot one of the dealers point blank between his eyes.
“Miguel! No!” Carlos roared.
Irish pulled the man closer to his face. “That is what will happen if ye don’t comply. And every time ye refuse to comply, someone else in yer circle dies. I’ll pluck them off, one by one, just like ye tried doing with us. Until there’s no one left to torture except you, strung up to your legs and sliced open to bleed like stuffed pig. I will kill you if you step out of line. If you don’t listen to me. The entirety of the Fitzpatrick Mafia will come down on your head. You think we play by your rules, Carlos? I know about your daughter. The one you hide in the Maldives, away from this life.”
Carlos stumbled over his words. “Th-th-there’s—there’s no way y-you—you're bluffing.”
Irish jammed the gun into the man’s gut. “Are you sure about that?”
And when Carlos didn’t respond, I knew we had it won.
“I will slaughter your entire family just so you have to watch them die,” the man growled, “and when every last one of them is dead, including your daughter, I’ll toss you into a jail cell so that every single day, all you have at your disposal are the memories of their blood spilling on the ground. I run this cartel now, and if you don’t like it? There’s my proposal.”
He shoved the man to the ground and Carlos just stayed there. He waved his hand in the air, as if he were waving a white flag of defeat, and that was when Clancy turned to the cartel’s goons.
