11- Hunter Unbound

11

Hunter Unbound

Kim sprinted down the halls and was surprised with how fast her pursuers were.  She was small and had been a runner her entire life but the two chasing her managed to stay only a couple of steps behind.  The only thing keeping Kim alive was her knowledge of the platform and its ins and outs.  She zigged and zagged around corner after corner in order to keep the two men behind her from getting a clean shot at her.

It was just a stall tactic, however.  The chess match would not end in her favor.  The only way she would be able to gain some distance was to find a straight-away and turn on the speed, but if she did that, they would have plenty of time to take aim and blow her away.  If she kept on like this though, her capture was absolute.

She decided she had one chance.

She cut another corner as the men behind her yelled to stop, their voices getting louder as they closed the distance.  She had to do something crazy.  She had to trust her memory and gamble everything.

Gamble her life.

She cut one more corner and found herself on the inner walkway on the lower level. Over the railing, the ocean’s call could be heard from hundreds of feet below.  She was panting and the lack of oxygen to her brain must have been making her hear things but she could swear the water in which the platform sat, sounded… hungry.

She picked up speed as she heard the two guards come around the corner behind her. Would the walkway be there?  Would it be where she remembered it?  Was she leaping to her death?

She heard the guards scream their final warning as they shouldered their weapons to take the shot.

Kim stepped up onto the railing.

The guns behind her fired.

She leapt.

****

Cazador stared at Ein in disbelief.  This little pudgy man was full of surprises.  How had he evaded capture and sure death at the hands of Chavez and his men?

“You are an interesting man, Gringo,” Cazador said with a smile.

Ein stared down.  His eyes were searching Cazador for something.  “Who are these people?  What are you doing on this platform?”

Cazador raised an eyebrow.  “What makes you think I know them?”

“I know you do,” he said, his stutter all but gone, the desperation in his soul taking over.  “I know, because my father owned this rig.  I know you and Chavez have been here before.”

Cazador seemed to stare for a long minute then smiled, “We are both ex-military.  Mexican army.  He was in charge of my unit.  We were high level wet work men.”

Ein looked confused.  “Wet work?”

Cazador smiled.  “Illegal operations.  Black operations.”

Ein looked generally surprised.  “There are Mexican black-op’s teams?”

Cazador rolled his eyes.  “Just because our country is smaller doesn’t mean we have less secrets.  You looked smarter than that, Gringo.”

Eisenhower felt embarrassed and Cazador smiled.  “In any case, eventually we had enough of the government telling us what to do, especially since we understood how everything worked better than they did.  Chavez saw an opportunity to go rogue and become freelance drug and gun runners.  So, that’s what we did.”

“The Mexican government didn’t come after you?”  Ein was shocked that Cazador had made the whole thing sound so simple.

Cazador began to frown.  “They did.  But we put an end to that.”

Cazador was suddenly assailed by the images of the children, the bodies, and the terrible realization that even he could go too far.

“So, why hasn’t he freed you?”  Ein asked the obvious question.

Cazador smiled.  “We had a little disagreement some time back. The nasty Scar over his eye is evidence of that.”

Ein nodded, understanding.  “So you have been hiding out here, right under his nose, ever since.  That’s why the power was already on when we showed up.  You have been keeping it running.”

“You’re catching on, Gringo,” Cazador replied.  “In fact, I was in the engine room to turn off the power because I knew Cazador would be coming to switch out his stock soon and if he saw the power was on, he would know someone was here.”

Ein seemed to retract into himself as if considering some things.  Cazador put two and two together and figured out why Ein had come to see him.  It wasn’t that hard, actually.  The gringo had been banking on him having some problem with Chavez, or maybe being willing to barter his freedom.

“I see why you are here, Gringo.”  Cazador broke the silence and captured Ein’s attention.  “I can do what you can not.  I am the monster you need to slay your enemies.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”  Ein asked, quickly.

“You can’t,” Cazador responded.  “Not yet, but give me a chance to earn it.”

“What if you just take off?”  Ein inquired.

“Then you are in the same place, and have lost nothing,” Cazador responded, never breaking eye contact.

Eisenhower’s eyes suddenly narrowed.  “Years ago when you came to this platform with Chavez, there was a man named Nakatomi.  An engineer who oversaw the platform’s operation.  Do you remember him?”

Cazador’s face broke slightly and he looked nervous.  The look on his face had a hint of guilt to it.  “What does this have to do with anything?”

“He died in a tragic accident right after he refused to help you and the general,” Ein continued.

Cazador felt the room’s air change.  He didn’t want to remember this, another sin on a long list Cazador could never outrun.  “What do you want?”

“Did you kill him?” Ein asked, dead serious.

There was a silence as Cazador considered how to answer, when suddenly, they could hear voices down the hall.  The guards were returning.

It was now or never.

****

Harriet had shouldered the rifle like a pro, using every crappy action movie trailer she had ever sat through as an instruction video on how to be a gun toting psycho. “EVERYBODY FREEZE!”

The room stopped moving on queue.  The women stopped beating the guard behind her.  The one eating cereal froze with the gun halfway to his hand still hanging off his shoulder, his bowl having dropped and shattered lucky charms all over the floor.  The one who had struck Thad had his gun shouldered and pointed directly at her downed friend, but he watched her with his eyes.  The sleeping one on the floor had woken up but still sat there, arms crossed, starting at disbelief.

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” Harriet yelled in the silence and all the men stared.

There eyes were seasoned soldier’s eyes and Harriet knew their training was trying to find a way out of this, a way to regain control of the situation.  They hadn’t retired yet.

Would she actually have to kill someone?

“My English… not so good.”  The one who was sleeping on the floor began to speak in a kind and almost frighteningly nurturing voice.  “But senorita… this not good for you.”

“Tell them to DROP THEIR GUNS!” she yelled back to him.

He shook his head.  “These men… they not drop guns.”

“I’LL SHOOT!  I SWEAR TO GOD!” Harriet felt herself getting hysterical and tried to will herself back to sanity.

“You…” The Mexican constantly searched for the right words as he spoke. “You can no win… They no think you will shoot, and if you do, you not fast enough to get us each…”

Harriet tried not to listen, tried to keep control of the situation.  “So what are they waiting for then?  If they have me so screwed, why they haven’t made their move?”

The Mexican shrugged.  “They no fear you, senorita.  They wait to see who you will shoot.”

Harriet grimaced as she listened, as the Mexican continued to lay out the scenario in his broken English.  “If you shoot Miguel,” he nodded toward the one behind the counter, previously eating cereal, “you will kill him.  But Sancho,” the Mexican nodded at the man with the gun pointed at Thad, “will kill your friend and then you.  The same will happen if you… how you say… visa versa?”

“What if I shoot them both?”  Harriet questioned his strategy.

The Mexican did what was now becoming trademark shrug.  “I kill you.”

Harriet stood there stuck in the standoff, unwilling to give up everything they had just worked for.  “You are going to kill us anyway?  Why don’t I at least take one or two of you with us?”

“You could…” The Mexican replied calmly.  “But as your amigo on the floor could say… it is harder to look down the barrel then to say you can…  You want life.  Even if only small time left.”

Tears dripped down Harriet’s face.  They came from anger.

They came from fear.

She gritted her teeth in pain and anguish.

 “This is hard.  But you must choose soon.” The Mexican continued.  “If you do not… we will all move and force you.”

Harriet’s lip quivered as she tried desperately to keep it together, but the fact remained…

…she had already lost it.

Her hands felt numb.

The gun fell to the floor.

As did their hope of surviving.

****

She was dead.  She leapt over the edge and plunged to her death.  The guards were shocked by the action but what’s done was done.  They then realized their place and headed back to their post.

They made small talk about what they had just witnessed.  In all their years they had seen a lot, but never a woman work so hard to leap to her own death.  It was downright strange.

Either way, it was done.

They returned to the door and decided it was best to check on Cazador, just to make sure.

They opened the door and there stood a short, slightly pudgy American with his hands in the air.

“Don’t shoot!” He said in English.

Both the guards pulled up their guns and leveled them on the American, and he took a  breath and closed his eyes.

That’s when the guard noticed the chair out of his peripheral view.

He noticed the chair was empty.

****

Ein watched as Cazador moved forward out of the shadow of the open door.  He took a breath and closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to die here.

He heard one of the guards scream something in Spanish, then a wet thud noise.

He opened his eyes to see one of the guards hit the floor.  The other reacted, spinning a second too late.  Cazador had moved in close and grabbed the end of his gun with his right hand.  The guard pulled the trigger out of reaction and a burst of gunfire exploded throughout the room.  The shot was so much louder then Ein had expected and his ears rang in pain.

Cazador’s other hand lashed out to the guard’s belt, where a large hunting knife was sheathed.

Cazador grabbed the hilt of the knife and, in one quick motion, drew the blade and slashed the Mexican’s carotid artery with his own weapon.

The guard dropped to the floor, clutching his own neck in a vain attempt to keep his blood from rushing out of his body.  In another second, he laid back and ceased to be a human.

The other was already dead, Cazador’s first blow having pushed his nose into his brain.

Two men lay dead at Ein’s feet and he stared in disbelief.  He had never watched someone die.

Never watched someone killed.

Never been a responsible party to such events.

Eisenhower Mills would never be the same.

Cazador picked up the machine gun, pulled the clip to check the ammunition, popped the clip back into the gun and racked the slide to chamber the gun.  He then turned to see Ein standing there, white as a sheet.

Cazador raised an eyebrow.  “Are you alright?”

Ein looked at him, and then promptly vomited.

TO BE CONTINUED….