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Rafael released the button.
“They’re choosing sides fast. Sounds like more of Ciro’s men are falling in behind Mateo and Reyes.”
“We don’t need much longer,” Lachlan said.
A few steps farther, Lachlan opened the door at the end of the corridor and eased out beneath the covered loading bay.
Daylight hit me hard after the darkness below.
I stopped just inside the doorway.
The loading bay was big enough to handle supplies for the entire finca, with pallets and wooden crates stacked beneath the metal roof. A forklift sat abandoned beside a jeep, and several work trucks had been left wherever their drivers happened to be when the shooting started.
Beyond the covered loading bay, the concrete lot stretched roughly sixty yards to the retaining wall at the lower edge of the compound.
A service road ran along the wall, climbing toward the higher northern buildings in one direction and dropping farther down the mountain in the other.
Our way out was almost directly across from us.
A maintenance door had been built into the retaining wall, giving access to the drainage channel on the other side. A large box truck sat crooked beside it, its rear jutting into the loading area and its cab angled closer to the service door. The driver’s door hung open, and a dead man sagged halfway out of the cab.
Wonderful.
At least the truck gave us cover once we got there.
Getting there was the problem.
A row of five work trucks stretched partway across the loading area. Beyond the last one was a wide section of open concrete, then a pallet stacked chest-high with wooden supply crates near the middle of the yard.
After that, nothing stood between the crates and the truck beside the service door.
Men ran between the surrounding buildings, carrying rifles and ammunition boxes. I noticed one of the gardeners sprinting toward the fields. Someone shouted from the upper walkway, and another gunshot cracked somewhere closer to the main house.
Rafael came up behind me.
“The trucks will get us partway across. We’ll use the crates after that, then make the last run to the wall.”
Lachlan studied the open ground.
“Where exactly are we going?”
I pointed. “See the door behind the abandoned truck?”
“Aye.”
“That opens into the maintenance access for the drainage channel. Once we’re through there, we can follow it down the mountain.”
“It’s about sixty yards across the yard.”
Lachlan looked across it again.
“Longest fucking sixty yards I’ve ever seen.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Rafael moved first.
We slipped along the edge of the loading bay and reached the first truck without anyone noticing us.
