Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(39)

At that point Rapp calculated the chances of successfully dealing with Gustavo Marroqui at around even money. When the sound of multiple automatic rifles erupted a few minutes later, he had to revise his estimate down to less than ten percent.

Their lead car was taking fire from two vehicles parked on either side of the street, causing it to stop short as civilians scattered in every direction. Rapp pulled his Glock from the holster beneath his right arm and instinctively twisted around in his seat. As expected, their chase car started taking fire a moment later, this time from three men who had appeared in storefronts.

The two men in the backseat of Rapp’s SUV rolled down their windows, shouldered their assault rifles, and started firing. They didn’t have an angle, though, making their effort little more than an exercise in wasting ammo and endangering civilians.

“Stop shooting!” Rapp yelled.

They either didn’t hear or didn’t understand. Carlos accelerated and Rapp turned to face forward as the vehicle hopped the curb. “That’s not an exit!” he shouted as the Guatemalan aimed at a too-narrow gap between shops and parked cars. Like his companions, though, he seemed uninterested in Rapp’s thoughts on the matter.

Fuck this.

Rapp threw his door open and jumped out, managing to stay on his feet as his momentum slammed him into the side of a water cooler delivery truck he’d identified moments before. The impact intensified his pounding headache but significantly improved his tactical situation. Metal and concrete weren’t as effective at stopping bullets as most people believed, but water could usually be counted on.

The roar of machine gun fire started to falter as the shooters in front expended their ammunition and were forced into clumsy reloads. Carlos discovered too late that Rapp had been right about the size of the gap he was going for and swerved, shattering the glass fa?ade of one store and crashing into the next.

The ground clearance of the water truck was high enough that Rapp was able to roll under it and come out on the street between it and a car that had been abandoned by its terrified occupant. When he did, he spotted three of the forward shooters, now concentrating their fresh magazines on Carlos’s immobile vehicle. Behind, Carlos’s men were trapped in the chase car, staying low, taking fire from all angles. Strangely, no one seemed to be paying any attention to Rapp. Why was a mystery, but no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth.

He rose to one knee and took careful aim. His first round hit one of the shooters out front in the head and his second penetrated another man’s side just below the shoulder. Both collapsed and Rapp moved around to the front of the truck. The third man didn’t seem to have any idea that something had happened to his companions and was fully invested in spraying Carlos’s vehicle on full auto. One of the men in the backseat had almost made it out but was now lying facedown on the asphalt with one foot tangled in a seat belt. Neither Carlos nor the other man who had been in the backseat was visible and Rapp assumed they’d escaped into the shoe store the vehicle was partially parked in.

The remaining shooter at the front seemed to come to the same conclusion and stopped firing, running in a direction that would take him past Carlos’s SUV and give him a shot at anyone behind it.

Rapp broke cover and scooped up a fallen AK-47, firing a controlled burst at the running man. To his surprise, he missed—punching a hole in the wall of a clothing store to the man’s left. Judging by the tight pattern he left, it was clear that it wasn’t his aim but instead the combination of a banged-up sight and a shit weapon. Apparently, these men’s work tended to be of the close-up variety.

Before he had time to compensate for the poor setup, the man had cleared the front bumper of the SUV and was adjusting his aim toward someone behind it. This time Rapp fired on instinct. It wasn’t particularly clean, but one of the rounds impacted the man’s forearm with enough force to cause him to lose his grip on his weapon.

Rapp sprinted across the street, staying low as the shooters focused on their chase car started to take notice of him. He made it back to the cover of the water truck and fired around it at three approaching men. He hit one before exhausting his magazine, prompting the others to seek cover. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carlos appear from behind his vehicle, but instead of picking up a weapon and coming to Rapp’s aid, he started kicking wildly at something out of sight on the ground. Almost certainly the man Rapp had shot. Carlos’s right arm was hanging limp and it was coated with blood flowing from a wound in his biceps. If he survived, he’d have a nice addition to his scar collection.

The two remaining shooters had split up and were trying to get position on them. Rapp ran toward Carlos, who was still focused on the unconscious man at his feet. He let out a stream of Spanish expletives as Rapp grabbed him and dragged him deeper into the store. It was devoid of both customers and employees, which suggested a rear exit. Rapp snatched a couple of shirts from a rack and led Carlos into the back room, where he shoved him against a wall.

“Listen to me,” he said as he tore the sleeve off one of the shirts and began winding it around the man’s wound. “We’ve got to keep moving. If they know I’m here, it’s not just those six guys. It’s going to be fifty.”

The man looked confused as Rapp tied off the makeshift bandage. He assumed that it was the language barrier, but when he started to repeat himself more slowly, Carlos spoke over him.