Griga muttered and shook his head, shoving the door open and sliding through the doorway simultaneously. Olmos caught a glimpse of a blood-splattered wall beyond the short hallway a fraction of a second before the Russian's body blocked his view.

"No!"

The Russian disappeared in an explosion that blasted Olmos into the car behind him. He slammed into the front of the pa.s.senger side door and crumpled to the ground, where he lay on his stomach for a few seconds-until pure survival instinct took over. He needed to get out of this alley. Ears ringing and still unable to draw a breath, he tried to push himself up onto the pavement, only managing to lift the left side of his body. When he turned his head against the pavement to see why his right arm didn't respond, he identified the problem right away. His arm was missing from the elbow down.

When a second, more distant explosion rattled the ground, Olmos took the only option currently available to him. He squirmed into the smoldering office.

CHAPTER 41.

A deep, crunching sound rattled the bathtub, which Keira mistook for her sign to get up. She'd just begun to lift her head when a deafening blast shook the tub like an earthquake, showering them in drywall fragments. Sprawled atop Owen, she kept the tips of her fingers pressed against her ears underneath the helmet and her elbows grinding into the nonslip surface of the tub above her son's shoulders until she felt a strong tug at her backpack, followed by a burst of automatic gunfire, which caused her to stiffen and resist the pulling.

"We have to go!" yelled Nathan, his face inches from hers.

She forced herself to climb off Owen and out of the bathtub. Pulling Owen to his feet, she allowed Nathan to drag them toward the bathroom door, which stood at an angle against the wall, blasted from its hinges. Eyes stinging from the dust and explosive residue blasted into an aerosolized powder, Keira gripped her son close to her as they pa.s.sed through the door. A thick cloud of smoke masked the desperate struggle being waged in their motel room. Two figures knelt behind a flaming, doubled-over mattress, firing sustained bursts from their suppressed rifles into the thick haze obscuring the front of the room.

Nathan pushed her through a scorched, man-size oval hole blasted in the back wall of the motel room a few feet away from the bathroom door. She emerged in a mirror-image room that didn't look any better than the one she had just left. A figure dressed in body armor squatted next to her, aiming his rifle at the room's open door.

"Clear the hole!" he yelled, pulling her deeper into the room.

She recognized the voice as one of the operatives who had helped them escape Mexicali. The man pulled the rest of her family through the jagged breach, ushering them to the front of the room, where he put a hand on her husband's shoulder.

"We're heading down the breezeway stairwell and then across the back parking lot," he said, pointing through the clearing smoke at a row of palm trees beyond the door. "No matter what happens, you get to those trees. I got a man waiting for you there. You do what he says."

"Get them f.u.c.king moving!" yelled a frantic voice from the other side of the hole.

A bullet snapped through the wall next to the hole, thunking into the window frame a few feet away from Keira.

"This is Bravo. I'm moving the Fishers," he said, before turning to Keira. "You ready?"

She nodded nervously, flicking the selector switch on the MP-20 to semiautomatic without taking her eyes off Bravo. He patted her on the shoulder.

"We'll be on the road in thirty seconds," he said, disappearing through the door.

CHAPTER 42.

In the moments leading up to the office explosion, Alpha licked his cracked lips and watched the mercenaries outside room 204. One of them had nearly finished taping a linear explosive charge along the room's door. The group's leader crouched behind the man setting the explosives, pointing his fingers at the door and moving his mouth. Alpha wanted to kill the leader first, but the circ.u.mstances leading right up to the moment he pulled the trigger would determine where to send the bullets.

"Jackson. What's going on with the office?"

"Two men moving cautiously . . . hold on. They picked up the pace," said Jackson.

"Bravo?"

"Ready."

He needed to make a decision in the next few seconds. The team leader looked impatient, and Alpha couldn't let them detonate their breaching charge.

That's it. He was cutting it too close.

"Jackson. Focus your fire on the two men in the alley. The a.s.sault team is almost done with the door," said Alpha. "Bravo. Stand by to detonate your charge."

"The first guy just reached the office door," said Jackson. "A few more seconds, and they'll detonate the charge."

"We don't have time. They're about to blow the door to room 204," said Alpha, moments away from giving Bravo the order to blast a hole between the back-to-back motel rooms.

"He just pushed the door open and walked inside," said Jackson. "Looks like they're in a hurry to clear the office."

That's because their team leader was rushing the job. The man planting charges on Fisher's door was at least ten seconds away from finishing. Alpha would count down from five and then give Bravo the order to blow the hole that would provide the Fishers their escape route. That was as close as he was willing to take this. Ideally, the two men in the office would trip the charge first, momentarily disorienting the mercenaries stacked outside room 204. Whatever happened, he couldn't allow them to blow the door.

"Bravo," he said, "detonate on my count. Five."

"The second guy just entered the office," said Jackson.

"Four. Three."

"Second guy just backed out," added Jackson.

"Two. One."

The windowsill shook violently from the antipersonnel mine detonated inside the office a few rooms away from Alpha, cracking the window in place and blocking his view.

"Breach. Breach," yelled Alpha, moving away from the window as a second explosion thundered.

He pulled his room door open to see gla.s.s raining down on the Fishers' SUV. All of the mercenaries on the second-level walkway turned away from the window, crouching or kneeling in protective positions. Alpha pressed his rifle into the door frame and centered the reticle on the leader's head. His finger was a few pounds of pressure away from vacating the man's skull when Alpha caught something in the far left side of the sight's field of view and shifted the reticle onto a mercenary detaching a grenade from his tactical vest. The rifle bit into his shoulder, planting a three-round burst of tungsten-carbide bullets in the middle of the mercenary's back. A bright red spray hit the wall behind the man before his body collapsed to the deck. Alpha quickly searched for the leader, not finding him before bullets started to fly in his direction.

The team's return fire was inaccurate, but that would change rapidly as the seasoned mercenaries shrugged off their initial confusion. Needing to delay that as long as possible, Alpha flipped the selector switch on his rifle to automatic and started raking the men on each side of the motel room with gunfire, careful not to send any bullets directly into room 204. The mercenaries on the walkway screamed in Russian as his bullets tore through muscle and bone, splattering the motel facade with gore. One of the men raised his rifle above the edge of the walkway with two straight arms and fired blindly at Alpha. A few of the bullets ripped through the door frame and walls, causing him to drop flat onto the floor. It was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky.

"I have them pinned down on the walkway, but not for long," said Alpha. "Start angling your fire through the adjacent rooms."

"Copy," said Carlos.

The wall behind the outstretched rifle on the second-floor walkway exploded outward, as the bullets fired by the team inside room 204 ripped the Russian's arms apart. Jagged holes st.i.tched across the walls and doors of the adjacent rooms, keeping the rest of the mercenaries pressed to the walkway.

Alpha decided to take advantage of the cross fire to make his escape. Despite the appearance of a slaughter on the balcony walk, he knew better than to a.s.sume the Russians were done. One mistake could pin him in place long enough for the Russians to gain the upper hand, or bring the entire Sinaloa cartel down on him.

"Alpha moving to SUV," he said over the radio net.

"Copy. We're pulling out. The Fishers have been moved to the other room," said Carlos, the sound of gunfire echoing in his transmission.

"They should be at the stairs already!" yelled Alpha.

He fired a long burst at a partially visible head to the left of room 204, not sure if any of his bullets connected. A second burst discouraged another attempt to locate his position. With all of the Russians momentarily seeking cover, Alpha bolted out of the room and dashed toward the breezeway, plucking a fragmentation grenade from a pouch attached to his vest as he ran. He pulled the pin and released the lever, counting to three before he lobbed it toward the upper-level walkway. The grenade exploded just as he entered the breezeway, spilling chunks of concrete and splintered pieces of the wooden railing onto the asphalt parking lot behind him. A body tumbled over the side, crunching headfirst on the concrete parking lot b.u.mper two s.p.a.ces down from the SUV.

"This is Bravo. I'm moving the Fishers," he heard in his earplug.

"About f.u.c.king time," said Alpha. "I want Carlos and David with me."

"Everyone is moving," said Carlos.

A bullet snapped off the stucco wall next to his face, peppering him with stinging fragments. He caught movement in his peripheral vision and crouched, a second bullet striking the wall where his head had just been. Alpha found the sharpshooter standing next to a building across the parking lot and blasted a pinkish-red mist into the air behind the Mexican's head. While bullets hissed and snapped through the breezeway, pinging off the stucco above and behind him, he replaced his rifle's mostly empty seventy-five-round drum with a thirty-five-round magazine.

"Move faster, or the Motel 6 is gonna be our Alamo!"

CHAPTER 43.

Bullets snapped through the breezeway, chipping stucco and buzzing off the cement. Nathan hung over his son to shield him as he fought to determine the source of the gunfire. Alpha crouched next to a wall near the end of the short corridor, shooting furiously at targets Nathan couldn't see. He pointed his rifle in Alpha's direction and yelled over his shoulder.

"Does he need help?"

"Keep moving!" replied Bravo, sounding distant.

Nathan spun around, finding his family at the back of the motel with Bravo. He'd started to run after them when David and another CLM operative appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Go! Go!" yelled the operative, emphatically gesturing for him to catch up.

Nathan reached Owen and Keira before they left the highly questionable safety of the breezeway for the empty parking lot. His panicked mind saw the lot as an endless, open kill zone.

"Are you sure the back is safe?" he yelled, hovering over Owen.

A bullet ricocheted off the staircase railing behind them with a loud metallic crack, instantly smacking into the wall on the other side of the corridor. The Fishers flinched, reflexively dropping into a crouch and pressing against the wall next to them.

"The safest place for you is anywhere but here," said Bravo, another bullet zipping past, this one causing the operative to flinch.

Nathan put a hand on Owen's shoulder. "Ready, buddy?"

His son nodded, wincing from another ricochet.

"Here we go," said Bravo, stepping into the open.

They got halfway across the parking lot before bullets started chipping away at the brittle pavement around their feet. Bravo stopped and turned to face the parking lot entrance to their right.

"Keep going!" he said, firing a short burst at a gunman taking cover behind the far corner.

Running with his son, Nathan threw an arm around Owen's shoulders, placing himself between the new threat and his son, while Keira pulled tight to Owen's other flank, creating a compact human shield around him. A sustained burst of suppressed gunfire erupted from the bushes ahead of them, rustling the branches and leaves, immediately followed by a scream to Nathan's right. He turned in time to see a man holding a rifle drop to his knees in the middle of Mariposa Boulevard and face-plant into the street. The bushes rattled again, and a second man tumbled to the street, landing near the first.

When the Fishers reached the edge of the parking lot, the operative who'd been covering them emerged from the dry foliage to guide them to the vehicle. They wove through the bushes to arrive at an SUV identical to the one they had driven out of Mexicali. Bullets started to hiss through bushes, one shattering the left side of the SUV's plastic front grille underneath the dead palm fronds, another spiderwebbing the top right corner of the windshield. The operative opened the front pa.s.senger door, beckoning for them.

"Let's go!" he shouted, a bullet thunking into the bullet-resistant door.

Bravo burst through the bushes behind them, causing Nathan to spin and aim his rifle.

"Three targets to the front!" yelled Bravo, continuing past him to the SUV.

A volley of bullets tore through the bushes, several striking the open doors and windows. Bravo fired his rifle over the top of the door, while Nathan's family crawled into the backseat.

Nathan spotted three men running across the dusty lot. The lead gunman twitched before tumbling to the ground, undoubtedly a victim of Bravo's bullets. Nathan aimed his rifle at the second man, leading him with the sight reticle like his father had taught him. A controlled press of the trigger dropped the man in a b.l.o.o.d.y heap. The third shooter dived behind a thick clump of bushes and held his rifle in the air with both hands, firing wildly. Nathan drew down on the brown shrub, centering his reticle between the two arms, and pressed the trigger twice in rapid succession. A red geyser of blood erupted, soaking the shooter's arms before they collapsed.

When he turned around, Bravo was in the front seat, reaching for the door handle. They locked eyes for a moment, the operative nodding his approval. The car started moving forward before Nathan reached it, picking up momentum. He grabbed the luggage rail above the door and swung both feet into the backseat. Keira pulled him in by his vest just as the door hit the trunk of a palm tree and slammed shut. Bravo twisted in his seat.

"Keep your son as low as possible," he said, pointing into the rear foot well. "That might not be a bad place for him right now."

A bullet hit the center of the windshield, glancing off the top of Keira's helmet. Nathan pulled Keira down over Owen, covering both of them with his arms. He examined her helmet, finding nothing more than a shallow graze mark.

"Contact, one o'clock!" yelled Bravo, st.i.tching the windshield with fully automatic gunfire. "Need a little help here!"

Keira sat up, s.n.a.t.c.hing the MP-20 leaned against her door.

"Stay down with Owen!" said Nathan.

"I don't think that's an option right now!" she yelled, jamming her rifle through the opening between the bullet-resistant gla.s.s and the top of the door.

I guess not.

CHAPTER 44.

David reached the bottom of the stairs just as Nathan and his family bolted across the parking lot. He didn't like the idea of separating, but Carlos had tried to explain the logic on their way out of the room. They needed an even distribution of operatives and capable shooters between the vehicles. If David went with the Fishers, it threw off the number of operatives in each car. That was about all he got out of his new counterpart during the desperate scramble to escape. It wasn't until David's feet hit the ground that he processed the implications of Carlos's explanation. He grabbed the operative as bullets struck the stucco next to them.

"We're getting in that SUV?" said David, craning his head as far into the corridor as he dared to see if the vehicle was still intact.

"That's our only ride out of here," said Carlos, shaking himself loose of David's grip. "If it still works."

Alpha glanced in their direction from his position several feet closer to the inner courtyard.

"Looks good so far!" he said. "Cover me!"