Hard Rider

“These must be new recruits,” Hunter muttered, kicking over one of the fresh corpses. “They’re stupid motherfuckers, but this cartel isn’t usually that unprepared…”

“Where’s Grizz?” I asked suddenly, glancing around. Hunter was ripped from his thoughts, matching my sweeping gaze with his own.

“Leading a second team inside,” one of the bikers informed us. “Took a group of twenty and stormed towards the back.”

“That’s my boy,” Hunter chuckled. “Well, let’s not keep him waiting…”

Hunter strolled forward, leading our collective of armed badasses for the front gates. He had such a comfortable, confident swagger, slinging the rifle over his shoulder and whipping out a pair of pistols.

If only time could have slowed down there and then, like it does in the goddamn movies.

One of his Devil’s Dragons kicked the front door. The immediate bath of light demonstrated that Víboras Verde had done more work on the interior than they had on the outside.

As the sound of commotion filled the air with gunfire, smoke, and adrenaline, Hunter’s lips spread into a wicked grin.

“Sweep and clean house, boys.”

We strolled through the entrance as the bikers fanned out around us, automatic rifles at the ready. Every cartel gunmen that appeared around a corner or behind cover suffered from an immediate hail of bullets, shoving them back out of sight.

He signaled for the team to separate into three factions headed for different areas. One group of five or six broke off on either side, fleeing towards nearby halls or staircases as our remaining escort surrounded us in a circle and followed his lead.

“Yeah, this looks familiar,” Hunter acknowledged as he glanced around the interior. “This is the same kind of design I remember from our original strike… Can’t fault the fuckers for their consistency.”

We were in a large entrance room, apparently meant to host a mobile fleet to transport kidnapped cargo. The walls and ceiling were all adobe, reinforced by steel foundations and braces. Exposed wiring ran in the walls, only demonstrating further how unprepared this compound was for a siege.

A couple of vehicles were already in here, highlighting their intended expansion into a rolling armada of trucks and vans.

“Hmm. That’s new,” Hunter murmured, kicking at an open panel in a corner of the room. It exposed a staircase running downward, and he glanced at a few similar panels in the other corners.

“They built down?” I asked, swallowing my fear. If they’re constructing down into the earth, then there’s no telling how far deep this place goes…

“They’ve learned,” he muttered in annoyance. “Well, I’ll be damned. The rest of this might be a façade… they’re more prepared than I gave them credit for.”

“What does this mean?” I asked him. A few of the nearby bikers shuffled their boots with tension, signaling their support to my question.

“It means we don’t underestimate them,” he answered obliquely.

The other two teams returned into the main room before he could continue.

“Killed every fucker we found,” one of them informed us loudly.

“What about the girls?” Hunter asked.

“None to be found.”

Hunter glanced back at the staircase, lifted his pistols, and then started descending. “The real fight’s down here, boys… pull your wits together, because there’s no telling what we’ll find…”

I trotted down by his side, both hands on my Glock. The combined teams flanked us as we descended; on the next floor down, we spotted a familiar face in some bad shape.

“Grizz!” Hunter shouted, dropping down to his second-in-command’s side. Grizz was gasping for air and clutching his leg. In his stead were two dead bikers, and half a dozen cartel corpses.

He checked Grizz’s wound briefly, then held up his head and asked: “What the fuck happened in here?”

“We just got ambushed,” Grizz groaned, painfully trying to shift into a more comfortable position. “Took out a couple of us in this corridor. We chased them from another stairwell… led us right into gunfire.”

“Dammit,” Hunter snarled, slamming the side of his fist into the wall. “Any of you fuckers know how to extract and patch up a bullet?”

“I’ll be fine… bullet passed clean through,” Grizz grumbled, his piercing eyes slightly dulled of their intensity. He barely even looked at me. “This corridor is clear,” he motioned to the side, “although I don’t know about that one. A few of my men chased after the assholes…”

Hunter directed a team of six that way, and pointed out another six. “Guard this man,” he said. “See to it that he stays safe and conscious. I want him with us when we ride out of this hellhole, understood?”

Grizz glanced up slowly, his fresh sweat splattered across his face. “I’m sorry… for holding you back, boss…”

“Not another fucking word,” Hunter growled in retort. “You conserve your strength. I can’t lose you here, Grizz. Understood?”

Grizz nodded painfully. “Crystal clear,” he acknowledged.

With his conviction renewed, Hunter gave him a nod, and then led the rest of us down the next flight of stairs. It was the bottom floor, and all that greeted us was a thick, steel door: it waited ominously with silence on the other side.

“There’s no way this goes any further down,” Hunter told us. “Must be bedrock below this…”

We could hear staggered gunfire from further into the complex above us. Sharing a glance, we steeled ourselves for a fight… and Hunter threw open the heavy, solid door.

The bikers released rapid-fire from their assault weapons to fend off the surprised cartel members. They had apparently been too compartmentalized to hear the fighting above their heads, and couldn’t draw their pistols fast enough.

Hunter and I put a few rounds in the chests of a few hostiles, pausing to reload our weapons behind cover.

“That is some Dirty Harry shit,” I muttered to him as I hastily slammed bullets into my pistol chamber.

He finished loading his gun, and we nodded together before rising up from cover. With reflexes just quicker than mine, he let off a couple of shots from both wrists, missing once or twice but downing three cartel fighters in the process. We continued to mount our assault, aided by our team of fighters – most of whom were members of the Devil’s Dragons. They defensively stuck close to their leader, ready to annihilate any threat that appeared.

Even down here, exposed wiring and limited panels showed just how new the structure was. The rooms appeared to be filled with scattered construction equipment and debris, and a lot of walls were only built on one side, or lacked external plating. Still, the further forward we went, the more the various rooms and hallways started coming together.

The cartel members were spread a little thinner here, and we reduced their numbers with every corner we turned.

Before we could sweep the entire floor, a pair of bikers caught up with us.

“We found them!”

Hunter whipped around. “How many?”

“Fifteen girls!”

He was stunned by the news, pausing to process this. His gaze shifted to meet mine, and then he asked the biker: “Any Caucasians?”

“No sir…”

“Damn,” he hissed. “But at least we found the other abductees. The cartel must have spent its time shifting operations up here, instead of actually getting around to selling the captives…

“Where were they?”

“There was a fortified room up a floor, tucked away real neat-like in the back,” the biker answered with a grin. “We mowed down their guards, but the girls look pretty drugged up…”

“Keeps them complacent and unaware of their surroundings… What else is going on up there?”

“Still some scattered resistance, putting up a fight. Nobody’s surrendering. They’re gunning down to their last man and there’s still no sign of any of this money you promised…”

r /> “It’s here,” Hunter murmured. “Come with us and offer some backup. We’re going to find the leader of this shit-show and he’ll be sitting on enough money to make your goddamned head spin.”

We pushed forward, facing fewer opponents than before. I suspected that our three teams had mowed through the vast majority of them already, and that this was a skeleton crew down here.

“We’re close,” Hunter finally observed, gazing at a small map on the wall. “This looks familiar again… I think that we’re right on top of the brains of this little operation.”

His eyes glanced over to a few doors nearby. He directed the team to split up and take each door in trios, and left the furthest one for the two of us. The bikers bashed into the doors and started gunning down the remaining opposition.

“This is it,” he told me. “Are you ready?”

I nodded in agreement, and with his hand on the doorknob, he pushed open the entrance…

Chapter 56

The chamber was brightly lit, with metallic siding and a tiled floor. But the compelling imagery that stood out was the single, well-dressed Mexican gangster in the back, facing us with a highly reflective revolver in his hand.

More compelling were the three white girls he was pointing the gun at… They sluggishly glanced up at us as we entered the room, clearly doped up out of their goddamn minds.

The cheerleaders!

“Arturo Alvarez,” Hunter replied coolly as he held his pistol high. “If I’d known I’d have the treat of seeing your pretty face again, well… I’d have sprung for a nicer gun.”

“It’s… it’s you,” the cartel leader muttered in disbelief. His face curled into one of undying rage. “You, after all these years… oh, amigo, how I have longed to put a bullet between your eyes after you killed my cousin!”