Brodie motioned Luis forward and they ran toward the street. Brodie glanced at the front door of the Hen House as they moved but couldn’t see any activity.
By now all the drivers who were parked haphazardly in front of the brothel had either taken off or taken cover in their cars. Brodie and Luis ran through the maze of cars along the road, headed uphill toward where he hoped Taylor was still parked, though he couldn’t see the Mitsubishi in the dark.
Just ahead of them a car window exploded in a hail of gunfire, and Brodie and Luis hit the ground. Brodie heard pistol fire coming from up the road, and he hoped it was Taylor. The car with the shattered window, a big black sedan, peeled off down the road, and another car took off behind it. Now they were exposed.
Brodie got to his feet and ran in the direction of the Mitsubishi, which was now just visible up the hill. Luis, apparently not used to physical activity, lagged behind. To cover him, Brodie pivoted with the AK as they ran,firing short bursts at the Hen House, keying off his white tracer rounds to zero in on the dark building. He pegged one guy, and saw another duck back inside.
As they got closer to the Mitsubishi, Brodie saw Taylor taking cover behind the open driver’s-side door. She fired a few rounds past them as they approached the car.
“Get in!” shouted Brodie.
Taylor squeezed off another two rounds, then jumped in the driver’s seat. Brodie heard the soft pop of Luis’ Beretta behind him; then it sounded like the mag was empty, and Luis tossed the pistol in the road and drew his other gun.
From the bottom of the slope, a white pickup truck roared uphill past the Hen House, its high beams on. Apparently the colectivo had been alerted and the posse was arriving. Brodie dropped to one knee and took a firing stance.
Luis was running past him, out of breath, and Brodie called out, “Take the back seat and tell Taylor to turn the car around!”
He heard the rat-a-tat of automatic fire as the oncoming truck weaved between the remaining parked cars in front of the brothel and sped toward them. A few tracer rounds streaked uphill and hit the road just short of Brodie’s position.
Brodie aimed the AK a foot above the headlights and fired a burst. The pickup lurched to its left and almost drove off the edge of the ridgeline before correcting. The vehicle kept coming. He fired again, then turned and ran toward the Mitsubishi just as Taylor had swung it around to face uphill. He jumped in the passenger seat and Taylor gunned it.
The road bent along the curve of the hill, and Taylor rocketed along the bumpy road at full speed. They were heading east, which was basically the opposite direction from where they wanted to go. But they needed to lose the pickup truck, which was still on their tail.
Taylor kept her headlights off, relying on the few points of light below to see where the edge of the road was in order to avoid taking the express route down the hill.
Brodie checked the rearview as another burst of automatic fire came at them from a guy riding in the truck’s flatbed. Brodie heard a shot ding offtheir rear bumper, and another went through the rear windshield and then out through the roof just above Brodie’s head.
It was a tight curve along the ridgeline; as Taylor sped up they lost sight of their pursuer, and the road began to flatten out toward the top of the hill.
Suddenly a motorbike shot out of an alley and into the road just ahead of them. Taylor instinctively swerved to avoid hitting the biker, who then swung toward them, drew a pistol, and fired two shots at their windshield. The first missed and the second punched through the top of the windshield between Brodie and Taylor.
Taylor kept her speed up and they whipped past the biker as he swung around and took after them.
Taylor made a sharp left turn at full speed onto a smaller road running downhill, and the car skidded perilously close to the wall of a building, but she cut the wheel and corrected. Brodie reminded himself that when it came to outrunning armed crazies, this wasn’t Taylor’s first rodeo. He also remembered that too many of these barrio roads dead-ended.
Brodie rolled down his window, turned in his seat, and leaned out with his AK-47. On the rear driver’s side, Luis too was leaning out with his Beretta.
The biker was maybe twenty yards behind them, his single head-beam lighting up the narrow road. Brodie saw three flashes from the biker’s pistol, and thought he heard one impact on the car.
Brodie took aim with his AK and squeezed off a short burst. He was firing uphill at a small moving target, and the AK tended to ride up on automatic, so he aimed low, and his second burst connected. The bike spun out in the narrow road and smashed into the side of a building, sending the biker airborne. Brodie was about to relax when he spotted the pickup roaring down the road after them, but it had to swerve around the bike in the road, which allowed them to get more distance as Taylor took a few more tight turns in the mazelike barrio roads. The Mitsubishi handled better than it looked.
Brodie sat back down in the passenger seat and kept his eyes on the sideview mirror. He couldn’t see the pickup, but he heard the roar of its diesel engine behind them, reverberating off the dense buildings as they navigated the winding barrio streets. He checked the AK’s mag and saw three rounds left.
They hit another straightaway and Taylor gassed it, then looked over at Brodie. “Everybody okay?”
Luis said from the back, “Sí, señora.”
Brodie said, “No Purple Hearts today.”
She asked, “What happened?”
“We were being chased by armed men.”
“I mean in the bordello, asshole.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“You got Mercer?”
