“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 ag
ainst 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, the shell casings bouncing off the furniture and rolling across the hardwood floor.
“Señor Collins, I do not know what is happening here,” Jaime said. “Why are you killing my cousin? Why are you turning your gun on your own people? We came here to fight your enemies.”
“You’re not my people, son,” Jack said. “Turn around and walk into the hallway.”
“No, I cannot do that.”
“Why is that, Jaime? You don’t trust your compadres in there?”
“These are not my friends. You are a deranged man. You’ve killed Eladio. You speak craziness all the time, and now your craziness has killed my cousin.”
“Pick up the cell phone and hit redial again. I want you to give somebody a message.”
“What message? That you’re killing your own people?”
“I want to tell Josef Sholokoff I’m just getting started. Can you do that for me, Jaime?”
“No, I will not do this. I didn’t have nozzing to do with Eladio’s transactions. I don’t know nobody in there. I am not responsible for what Eladio may have done.”
“‘Nozzing’ again,” Jack said. “I changed my mind about taking you to a speech therapist, Jaime. There’s no cure for certain kinds of stupidity. It’s kind of like laminitis in a horse. Instead of the hoof curling up, your kind of stupidity shrinks the brain into a walnut. We put horses down, don’t we?”
Jaime was breathing through his mouth, staring at the muzzle of the Thompson, his nose crinkling, as though he had no place to put the fear and tension coursing through his body.
“You still have your Uzi,” Jack said.