Five Los Zetas gunmen carrying M-16s followed Humberto Larios through the side door. The last two dragged Father Rodrigo and a little girl with them. The girl wore the pleated skirt and white blouse of a school uniform. She looked un-hurt but terrified.
"Rosalita!" Benny screamed.
The girl saw her mother and tried to run to her, but the gunman held her back. She started crying. So did Benny.
Rodrigo looked worse. Much worse. He'd been beaten bloody. His black priest's shirt hung loose from his pants, and his Roman collar was twisted and pulled half off. Still, his face betrayed no emotion.
Behind Scott, the church's front door banged open. The American at his back looked over his shoulder to assess this new threat, but his pistol remained steady, jammed against Scott's spine. Scott turned his head just enough to see the silhouetted figures of two more men step into the church, both carrying rifles with the distinctive shape of M-16s.
The man behind Scott muttered, "Shit."
When Scott turned back, he saw Larios grinning like a jackal.
For several long seconds, nothing happened. Nothing except that the smug look slid off Jones's face. Replaced by shock. Then by fear.
Scott laughed.
Everyone stared at him.
He just kept laughing.
The American behind him pressed his pistol deeper into Scott's back.
Humberto Larios nodded at Scott. "Hey, gringo, what's wrong with you? What the fuck is so funny?" Larios had a smile on his face, the kind of smile a card player wears when he knows he has the winning hand.
Scott pointed at Jones. "He is. Sixty seconds ago he thought he had won. Now look at him."
Larios stared at Jones. Then he laughed too.
Scott spun to his left. The man behind him wasn't ready and took a second too long to react. Scott knocked the pistol aside and knuckle punched the man in the throat. Then kicked the man's legs out from under him. They both fell. The pistol went off. Scott felt the bullet rip past his ear. They crashed onto the hard stone floor. Scott landed on top and heard a rib snap. The man screamed. Scott slammed his el-bow into the man's nose. He heard it crack and felt cartilage splinter. The man screamed again.
Gunshots exploded behind Scott. None hit him, so he ignored them. He twisted the pistol from the man's hand. It was a Beretta M-9, standard U.S. military issue, meaning the man was probably a contractor. Scott shoved the muzzle un-der the man's chin and pulled the trigger. There was a muf-fled POP as blood and brains exploded from the top of his skull. Scott rolled away. And kept rolling until he was under the first pew.
More gunfire erupted inside the small church. The steady pop of pistols and the earsplitting shriek of M-16s.
Scott saw Benny on the floor, fighting the man who had been holding her at gunpoint, trying to wrestle the pistol away from him. Scott shot him in the head. Benny yanked the gun from his hand, another Beretta M-9, and slid under the first pew beside Scott. "Gracias," she said.
Scott nodded and scanned what he could see of the church from under the pew. Victoria was sprawled on top of Jake and Samantha in front of the altar, shielding them with her body. The children were screaming and covering their ears with their hands.
Jones and G.I. Joe were crouched behind the heavy wooden altar, firing over Scott's family at Larios and his men. Scott fired a couple of shots at the two Americans but his angle was bad. He missed and they ignored him.
Scott did have an excellent angle on Captain Delgado, although the corrupt Mexican police commander was already dead. He had caught a high-velocity bullet in the forehead, no doubt a .223 from one of Larios' men, and it had peeled back the top of his head like a PEZ dispenser.
Rodrigo and Rosalita were nowhere to be seen.
Behind Scott and Benny, from just inside the front door, the two Los Zetas who had been last to the party were firing their M-16s, the supersonic bullets cracking the air overhead and splintering the altar.
Jones and his pet G.I. were outnumbered eight to two and taking massive fire from two directions. They had no chance. In seconds the fight would be over. Scott was al-ready wondering what would come next. He didn't imagine that he stood in any higher regard with Larios than he had with Jones. In the end, dead was still dead, and it really did-n't matter if the bullet came from the CIA or from Los Zetas.
Then G.I. Joe lobbed something toward the front door. It was round and dark and about the size of a baseball. A piece of the thing sprang away from the main body as it arced through the air. Scott knew what it was. He'd seen plenty of them in Afghanistan, mostly hooked onto the vests and web gear of soldiers and Marines. It was an M-67 frag-mentation grenade. And in a gunfight, it could be a game changer.
The hand grenade fell short of the two gunmen-probably just as G.I. Joe had intended, since he looked like the kind of guy who practiced tossing hand grenades in front of a mirror-and landed on the stone floor between the pews. It bounced once, then skittering down the aisle until it exploded. The blast flattened the two Zetas and blew the big wooden door and a chunk of façade into the street.
An eerie silence followed the explosion. Then someone started screaming. At least one Zeta had survived the blast long enough to feel the pain of his mangled body.
Movement near the altar caught Scott's eye. He turned just in time to see G.I. Joe tossing a second hand grenade through the air, this one arcing toward the right side of the church, where Larios and his other gunmen were crouched. As the grenade reached the apex of its arc, one of the Zetas actually tried to shoot it out of the air. He missed.
Larios and the others ran.
Scott scrambled out from under the pew firing the Beretta at Jones and his partner and managed to pancake himself on top of his wife and children just as the second hand grenade exploded. Something stung Scott's forehead. He reached up and felt a piece of metal, hot and jagged, em-bedded in his skin. He yanked it out. His fingertips and the metal shard were bloody. Looking at his family, he could see that Jake and Samantha were screaming and Victoria was crying, but the shrill buzz inside his head drowned out all other sounds.
Jones stood up behind the altar and aimed his pistol at Scott. Scott didn't have a chance and he knew it. His gun was down at his side, way too far out of position to be of any use, and he remembered what one of his DEA Academy firearms instructors used to say: You can't outdraw your op-ponent's trigger pull.
Then a bullet slammed into the altar and fragments ex-ploded in Jones's face. The CIA man ducked just as another bullet struck the altar. Scott glanced over his shoulder and saw Benny firing. Then he raised his own pistol and turned back, ready to finally put a bullet into Jones, but the son of a bitch was already gone.
A Los Zetas gunman staggered out of the smoke and dust from the second hand grenade explosion, blinking his eyes and shaking his head but still clutching his M-16. Scott shot him twice in the chest.
"We're getting out of here," Scott shouted into Victo-ria's ear, although he could barely hear his own words. Then he hauled Samantha up and hugged her to his chest. Victoria picked up Jake. "Stick close to me," Scott yelled. He looked for Benny. She was on her feet, pistol in her hands. "Follow us," he shouted.
"I have to find Rosalita," Benny said.
Scott read her lips more than he heard her. Then he scanned the ruined church, searching for any sign of Benny's daughter, and for a way out. He worked his jaw and felt his ears pop. It brought some of his hearing back.
"Scott!" Victoria screamed.
He glanced at her and saw she was pointing. He fol-lowed her finger and saw a cartel gunman rising up from the rubble the second hand grenade had left behind. The man lifted his M-16. Scott turned to shield his daughter first. Then raised his pistol, but he was too late. And so was the cartel gunman. Because before either of them could squeeze off a shot, a bright flash erupted behind the gunman and Scott heard, or more accurately, he felt, the deep boom of a large-caliber handgun. The man flopped face first onto the floor.
Father Rodrigo stood behind the fallen man, holding the big Colt .45 revolver in his fist. A tendril of smoke rose from the muzzle.