Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [202]
“No, we get you down first,” Krill said. He fitted his left arm around her waist and lifted her weight against him, then sawed through the pieces of clothesline that held her wrists to the rafter. When she fell against him, her cheek and hair touched his face, and he thought he smelled an odor like seawater on her skin.
“The holster is Velcro-strapped to his right ankle,” she said. “Take the pistol from the holster and give it to me.”
“You are a woman of peace, Magdalena,” he said. “You have no business with guns.”
“Don’t talk in an unctuous and foolish manner,” she replied. “A shadow just went past the window. Please do not waste time talking. The men upstairs will show us no mercy.”
Krill pulled up the right pant leg of the dead man and removed an Airweight .38 from the black holster strapped to his ankle. The woman took it from Krill’s hand just as he heard an upstairs door crash open and glass breaking and a burst of machine-gun fire ripping through walls and doors.
“You have to live for your children, Antonio,” the woman said. “You have to tell others what happened to them. From this point, you live among the children of light. You become one with them. Do you understand me?”
“I think I do,” Krill said.
“No, say it.”
“I understand, Magdalena. And I will keep my word and do as you have said,” he replied.
JACK COLLINS PUSHED Eladio and Jaime ahead of him, through the patio door and into the dining room, both of them resisting and looking back at him anxiously. “Get to it, the pair of you,” Jack said. “You look back at me again, you’ll discover another side to my nature. You kill everything that moves on this floor.”
“We are campesinos, Señor Jack,” Eladio said. “We do not know tactics. We do not even know what we are doing here. What is the profit in rescuing a Chinese woman who teaches superstition to our people?”
Jack stiff-armed him between the shoulder blades, pushing him forward through the dining room, knocking over a heavy antique chair, breaking the crystal ware on a serving table. The first of Sholokoff’s men to come out of the hallway was bare-chested, his shoulders and lats stippled with body hair, an automatic in his left hand. He raised the automatic straight out in front of him, his face averted, as though staring into a cold wind and a magic wand could protect him from its influence. At the same time, Eladio shouted out, “Not me, hombre! Do not shoot. I am not one of them! This is a great mistake.”
Jack fired on Sholokoff’s man, a burst of no more than seven or eight rounds that blew away the man’s fingers from his grip on the automatic and stitched his chest and destroyed his jaw.
Eladio stared in horror at the man crashed against the wall and fell to the floor. Then he stared at Jack, his eyes seeming to search in space for the right words to use. “I froze. You saved my life, Señor Jack. We must prepare to attack the others,” he said. “They’re hiding back in the hallway. I can hear them.”
“Your fear got the best of you, Eladio,” Jack said. “This isn’t like gunning down a bunch of teenagers at a birthday party, is it?”
“Yes, I was very afraid. I was speaking insane words.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You always knew how to cover your bets.”
“Let us now go forward, Señor Jack. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Just rest easy a second,” Jack said. With one hand holding the Thompson and the other holding Eladio’s cell phone, Jack pressed the redial number with his thumb. In the back of the house, a cell phone rang.
“You would think your bud would have enough sense to silence his phone,” Jack said. “That’s the trouble with treacherous people. Most of them cain’t think their way out of a paper sack. Your man in there sold out Sholokoff, just like you sold out me.”
“I don’t understand,” Eladio said.
“Your bud in there didn’t tell Sholokoff we were coming. Otherwise, Sholokoff would have set up an ambush. Oh, here’s your phone back.”
Jack tossed the cell phone to Eladio. When Eladio raised his free hand to catch it, Jack lowered the barrel of the Thompson and fired directly into Eladio’s chest,